The scramble for the Waste Lands: Trackingcolonial legacies, counterinsurgency and

international investment through the lens ofland laws in Burma/Myanmar

Jane M. FergusonDepartment of Anthropology, University of Sydney

Correspondence: Jane M. Ferguson (email: jane.ferguson@sydney.edu.au)

This article traces the revenue category and legal concept of the Waste Land in Burma/Myanmar

from its original application by the British colonial apparatus in the nineteenth century, to its

later use in tandem with Burma Army counterinsurgent tactics starting in the 1960s, and finally

to the 2012 land laws and current issues in international investment. This adaptation of colonial

ideas about territorialization in the context of an ongoing civil war offers a new angle for under-

standing the relationship between military tactics and the political economy of conflict and

counterinsurgent strategies which crucially depended on giving local militias—both government

and nongovernment—high degrees of autonomy. The recent government changes, including the

more civilian representation in parliament and its shift to engage with Western economies, raise

questions regarding the future of the military, as well as local autonomy and the rural peasantry’s

access to land. As increasing numbers of international investors are poised to enter the Myanmar

market, this article will revisit notions of land use and appropriation, and finally the role of the

army and its changing relationship with Waste Lands.

Keywords: Burma, colonialism, counterinsurgency, land law, Myanmar, Waste Lands

Back in the village, nothing was safe. We would worry that while we slept at night, soldiers

might pull up and steal our garlic crop from the fields before we could harvest it ourselves. The

Tatmadaw [Burma Army] soldiers are the same as stray dogs. It’s not necessary to feed them

because they find what they need to survive wherever they can (Aung Myo, who grew up in

a rural area of the Southern Shan State of Burma/Myanmar in the 1970s, pers. comm., Wan

Kan Hai, Thai-Burma Border, February 2011).

In September 2012, two Tatmadaw soldiers in uniform entered the busy Yangonteashop where I was sitting, one carrying an arm-length stack of assorted Burmesepaperback books. The soldiers approached each table with their wares, but failed to findan interested customer. The soldiers noticed me watching, and responded to my interestby approaching to show me some of the individual paperbacks, including a number ofbiographies of Aung San Suu Kyi, with covers graced with her portrait and the flag ofthe National League for Democracy. Only very recently had it become possible tomention ‘The Lady’ in public, so I found this situation to be perplexing, to say the least.After spending several minutes at this impromptu military book-browsing session, Igave in and bought one. It was 2000 kyat (about USD 2.50).

Shortly after this encounter, two contacts joined me at the teashop. I excitedly toldthem what had just happened, but they were not impressed at all. Ko Min picked upmy new book, and riffled through its pages. ‘This is printed on such cheap paper. It’s notworth nearly 2000 kyat. That’s just typical of soldiers, taking money from people (pers.comm., September 2012, Yangon).’ From crop theft to paperback book vending, these

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doi:10.1111/sjtg.12078

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35 (2014) 295–311

© 2014 The Author

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography © 2014 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and

Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

constitute just two of the myriad informal practices which the Tatmadaw soldiersdepend on to survive.

As international media headlines laud Myanmar’s ‘opening up’, by April of 2013, theUnited States and the European Union had lifted their nonmilitary sanctions(British Broadcasting Corporation, 2013). International corporations are poised to extractmore of the area’s abundant and valuable natural resources, and to enter the country’sconsumer market. Mining companies, energy conglomerates and internationally familiarcompanies like Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Ford, GE, Hilton, Mitsubishi, Unilever and Pepsihave recently set up shop in Myanmar. To facilitate this process, in 2012, Myanmarparliament passed two new land laws regarding conditions for purchase, lease andmortgage of land. These laws have attracted considerable controversy, as some groups fearthey will lead to new land grabs and increased displacement in the name of capitalistexpansion (Nyan Lin et al., 2012: 15). But Myanmar President Thein Sein has promisedthe country’s citizens both democratic progress and economic development, indeed, a‘New Myanmar’.

Meanwhile, the Tatmadaw remains the country’s largest employer, more thandoubling its number of employees from approximately 186 000 in 1988 to over400 000 personnel in 2000 (The Irrawaddy, 2000) and 370 000 in 2013 (Jane’sInformation Group, 2013), while commanding more government spending than thatof health and education combined (Turnell, 2009: 141) in a country of 52.8 millionpeople (World Bank, 2012). Ceasefire arrangements have problematically broughtsome former insurgent territories into the domain of the central government. But, forthe Kachin Independence Army, fighting with the Myanmar Tatmadaw began anewfollowing the abrogation of their ceasefire agreement in 2011 (The Irrawaddy, 2012).The Tatmadaw also attacked areas near Tangyan, where the Shan State Army-North islocated. Some observers argue that the effort is to clear the way for Chinese engineerswho have plans for hydropower dam construction in the area (Democratic Voice ofBurma, 2013). More than 6000 complaints of government land grabs has been filedwith a parliamentary committee in the past two years, and most of these complaintsinvolve the military (The Irrawaddy, 2014). In a country with a long history of ‘nation-alized’ land, followed by a military-directed state and recently transitioning to (osten-sibly) civilian rule, these issues of land seizure and ongoing conflict raise importantquestions regarding sovereignty, rent-seeking, the rule of law, and inevitably, the roleof the army.

Land laws constitute one apparatus through which the modern state exercises itsclaim over sovereignty, and the soldiers of the state are presumed to be the front lineenforcers of these laws. The exigencies of these two institutions can sometimes precludethem from working in tandem. Using the genealogy of land laws and how they wereoperationalized as a starting point, I will trace these dynamics from the beginning ofBritish colonialism to the present. ‘Waste Land’ as a legal category, was introduced bythe British, but after independence, land laws became increasingly intertwined with theneeds of the army in its ongoing counterinsurgency campaigns.

Therefore, the first section of this paper will describe the structural and legaltransformation of this area in mainland Southeast Asia from the prior myo system of ruleunder the Burmese crown to that of the territorial grid, or ward system under Britishcolonialism. This process made use of the concept of Waste Lands as an economicclassification, with the ultimate goal to bring more of the country’s natural resourcesand agricultural products into the fold of global capitalism, and therefore be controlledand taxed by the British colonial apparatus.

296 Jane M. Ferguson

The next section of this paper will discuss the challenges that beset the Union ofBurma at colonial independence, particularly issues of sovereignty and the presence ofvarious armed groups in opposition to the central government. Colonial-era land laws,including the concept of Waste Land, persist in independent Burma, although they takeon new significance as a result of the 1953 Land Nationalization Act. It is during thisperiod as well that the Tatmadaw emerged as the strongest political institution in thecountry.

Then, I will discuss the Tatmadaw as a counterinsurgent force which cruciallydepended on relative autonomy as an institution, and then in its manipulation ofindependent proxies. Also relevant at this juncture is the army’s counterinsurgentstrategy, hpyat lay hpyat (Four Cuts), which was partially borrowed from established‘strategic hamlet’ tactics, but had also been adapted in such a way that the underfundedarmy could rent-seek. Colonial Waste Land laws were adapted in the context ofBurmese military nationalism, and for the supply of the Burma Army at the local level.Once the army was more thoroughly entrenched, they manipulated the laws to profitfrom national and international business interests.

Finally, I will consider the 2012 Land Laws, and how the Myanmar government’smore open stance to international investment will potentially affect those most cruciallydependent on land use at the local level: the country’s 70 per cent agrarian-subsistencepopulation (U Mya Thein, 2012: 45). The latter’s issues are of particular relevance today,as the Tatmadaw and the increasingly civilian parliament court international investorsand seek to stake their positions as part of the newest so-called emerging Asian Tiger.

Structural transformation and colonial rubbishing

Before the colonial period, mainland Southeast Asia was relatively sparsely populated,and in the centuries prior to British colonization, political might was concentrated in asystem of interrelated kingdoms and vassal states, with the capitals as both bureaucraticand cosmological centres. Power was not derived through ‘territory’ per se (Ba Thun,2012: 101)1 but rather through controlling labour as well as relations with regionalpowers. Central authority waxed and waned, often in inverse relation to the autono-mous power of tributary states; the early Burmese state oscillated between being ‘fullycellular’ and ‘fully bureaucratic’ (Aung-Thwin, 1991: 597). During the RestoredToungoo era (1599–1752), for example, maritime trade and its profits provided thecentral Burmese authorities with income, with which they purchased armaments thatwould help them to consolidate their kingdom at Ava, thus diminishing the strength andautonomy of neighbouring polities (Lieberman, 1984: 117). The overall trend, though,was for approximately 23 independent Mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms to collapseinto 3, in the approximately 500 years before British colonialism (Lieberman, 2003: 2).

Local headmen were responsible for sending population registers of their domains,as well as taxes, to the kings. From local farmers, rulers were traditionally only to take10 per cent of a crop as tax-in-kind (Lieberman, 1984: 67). Arguing that power wasexercised over people, not through land, is not to suggest that boundaries did notmatter. On the contrary, access to trade routes and their markets was highly valued(Walker, 1999: 62), and fishing rights in precolonial Burma had very definite rules(Furnivall, 1909: 554). Furthermore, the Konbaung king owned and demarcated hismonopoly on the timber trade (Bryant, 1997: 39). All of these laws and bureaucraticinstruments of state power were points the British chose to downplay in their rhetoricwhich legitimized their colonial project (Huxley, 1997: 2).

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The first British institution of land laws came in 1839, with the stated intent to convertWaste and Vacant Lands into lands for cultivation (U Mya Thein, 2012: 46). Following theousting of Konbaung King Thibaw’s regime from power in Mandalay in 1885 and the finalannexation of the territory into British India, the British appointed Sir CharlesCrosthwaite as Chief Commissioner of Burma (Myint-U, 2001: 199). For the British, thecolonial capital would be located in Rangoon (Yangon) with greater access to maritimeroutes. Through Crosthwaite’s passage of the Village Act, the former system of taxationwas abolished, and replaced by a territorial grid system whereby taxes were collectedaccording to mapped wards with discrete boundaries (Callahan, 2003: 23).

This colonial mapping produced a fundamental divide in territories. There was thearea which became Burma Proper, which included all of Lower Burma acquired followingthe first two Anglo-Burmese Wars, and ultimately Mandalay, Magwe and Sagaing. Thesecond part of this division consisted of territories Northeast of Mandalay which wereformer vassal states to the Konbaung king. These would become the ‘Frontier Areas’,whereby the non-Burman saopha (Shan for ‘Lords of the Sky’, pronounced sawbwa inBurmese) princes in the areas were to maintain semi-autonomous rule over theirsubjects. These Frontier Areas, constituting 40 per cent of the total land mass (Smith,1999: 27), were not administered at the local level according to the territorial grid as wasBurma Proper. The Burma Forest Act of 1881 and the Upper Burma Forest Regulation of1887 provided for forest apportioning and management in these areas (Bryant, 1997: 83),but actual property rights were regulated through sanad (deeds in British India) betweenthe saopha and the British.2 The British administration system sought to minimizeindigenous autonomy in favour of colonial rule (Nakanishi, 2013: 59), and the VillageAct, as applied to ‘Burma Proper’, mapped this out at the local level.

Under the Village Act, records of land ownership were a necessary basis for taxation,and colonial surveyors declared the man and wife (only) who happened to be cultivat-ing a given plot of land at the time of survey as ‘land holders’. This not only changednotions of family life, but also eliminated the possibility of local ownership of fallowland3 at the time of survey (Hagen, 1956: 24). The British government sought toestablish a sense of property amongst the Burmese, by enacting the following laws(among others): charging fallow rates so that cultivators would not abandon land,taking full revenue from abandoned land and encouraging granting of unoccupied landfor free for a set period (Furnivall, 1909: 555). The Land Acquisition Act of 1894consolidated this, giving the government the authority to enter and take possession ofland, and as detailed in Part VI of the Act, which states

whenever it appears to the Local Government that the temporary occupation and use of any

waste or arable land are needed for any public purpose, or for a Company, the Local Govern-

ment may direct the Collector to procure the occupation and use of the same for such term as

it shall think fit (Governor General of India in Council, 1895: 21).

Waste, therefore, was an appellation in legal document only; these so-called WasteLands often included common areas used by villagers for livestock grazing and also bynomadic tribes (Ghotge, 2012). Thus, the British colonial classification of Waste Landwas not related to the land’s biological productivity or utility, but rather its capacity forprofit and taxation.

The British colonial government incorporated its concept of Waste Lands as part ofits ‘revenue model’ for land, and such was the case in many territories of the BritishEmpire in the nineteenth century, though results and application differ significantly. Forexample, the Crown Lands Bills (which had acts regarding Waste Lands) in Ghana were

298 Jane M. Ferguson

instituted to apply order to the ways in which European mining companies wereacquiring land from traditional power holders (Nti, 2013). Even though productivityand increased tax revenue were the goals, they were not necessarily realized. The WasteLands Act in Tasmania, Australia resulted in a decline in agricultural production, andunlike its applications in other British colonial contexts, was not justified through publicworks projects (Meikle, 2011).

For the British, classifying a land area as Waste was a moral stance,4 and a positionwhich has been argued to stem from attitudes in London after the 1666 Fire. The wasteremoval and rebuilding anticipated the segregated geographies of colonialism, with theidea that work made to correct the ‘wrong’ kinds of excess was a moral imperative, andtherefore constituted an important step to create trade, manufacturing and commerce(Gee, 2005: 103). Colonial missionaries made use of the metaphor of Waste as part of acivilizing project (Comaroff, 1989: 669). This resonates with Dipesh Chakrabarty’s ideaof places that ‘can be rubbished’, and though this stance is attributed to the West, thereis no exclusive monopoly on value-laden ideas about territories, commerce and hygiene(Chakrabarty, 1991).

By forcing the population to enter into a titling and commodity relationship with theland, the colonial state thus provided the intellectual and ideological justification for theultimate undermining of indigenous peoples’ claims to property rights and nativepractices (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). By territorializing, the state apparatus sought toconvert more land into productive revenue-generating land, and of course, into thecolonial taxation system which was based on the ward, not the myo. Members of theindigenous population tended to be perceived not as potential citizens, but rather asthreats to colonial commerce (Callahan, 2003: 3). How the postcolonial governmentwould make use of this framing remains to be seen.

Postcolonial Burma and military (nation) building

Upon independence in 1948, the Burmese government was in control of its entireterritory on paper only. It was various insurgent groups that controlled most of theforest, as well as areas of the fertile plains (Bryant, 1997: 158). The British grantedindependence to key players in the Burmese nationalist movement, comprised mainlyof political leaders from the Second World War and their affiliates. That leadership, aswell as that of the Tatmadaw, had largely gained initial military experience fightingWWII fascists, and saw themselves as part of a tradition which exceeded nationaldefence requirements and extended to domestic politics (Tin Maung Maung Than, 2001:163). They were neither technocrats nor businessmen; the political ruling class atindependence was hardly the capital-controlling class. Most large-scale businesses in thecountry were in the hands of foreigners, be they Europeans, Indians or Chinese, amongothers (Callahan, 1996: 32).

International politics increasingly came to bear on the fledgling independentcountry. With the expanding presence of Kuomintang troops in the Shan State, theYangon government pressured political leaders in the Shan State to do something aboutthe incursion. When the Shan leaders failed to produce a systematic response, theBurma Army began to take over (Callahan, 1996: 30). The ongoing internal conflict, theethnic separatists, the Burma Communist Party, and most importantly, Kuomintangincursion with its newer, more sophisticated forms of warfare, challenged the Tatmadawleadership to build a politically and militarily stronger army (Callahan, 2003: 169).At a commanding officers’ conference in 1952, in addition to their work in defending

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the country and suppressing insurgency, the Tatmadaw also began to discuss thesocio-economic development of the country, including issues of land reform and agri-cultural productivity (Maung Aung Myoe, 1998: 10). It is prescient that the armyleadership was already discussing land laws and reform in conjunction with strategies ofdefence and counterinsurgency. Yet, under the contemporary political system, they didnot have the authority to operationalize these plans.

Parliament then effected the Land Nationalization Act of 1953. Similar to manyother states throughout the world, discourses of development in Burma served as keystrategies of ideological legitimation. Growth, production and large-scale macroeco-nomic indicators constituted the language of development of the day, and much ofBurma’s government rhetoric was also explicitly socialist in its orientation. The fifthsection of the government’s Land Nationalization Act made all agricultural land state-owned, except for lands owned by agriculturalist families, lands owned by families sinceJanuary 1948, or family-owned lands where most of the family members are Burmesecitizens (Leckie & Siperingham, 2009: 514). One of the motivations behind the 1953Land Act was to deter the possibility of foreigners becoming large-scale landholders (BaThun, 2012: 105), but meanwhile, property rights for the small-scale farmer wereuncertain at best. The law did not permit complete private ownership of land, and liketheir colonial predecessors, the postcolonial laws made private rights to land contingenton that land being used ‘productively’, in the eyes of the state (South & Katsabanis,2007: 47).

To illustrate how the government articulated its plans, a book published in 1954 bythe Burmese government’s Economic and Social Board entitled Khet Thit MyanmaPyidawtha (Toward a modern Myanmar) detailed the government’s long term plans foreconomic and social development.

The pie chart indicates the land use during the years leading up to the SecondWorld War, 1937–41 (Figure 1). As shown in the chart, starting from the top rightquarter, 25 per cent of land is ‘not suited to agriculture’, 40 per cent is ‘not yetsurveyed’, 11 per cent is ‘forest’, 2 per cent is ‘uncultivated or fallow’, 10 per cent isin cultivation, and finally 12 per cent is ‘not yet cultivated’ (Sibwayay hnint LumuyayApwe, 1954: 41). According to this report, 2.5 million acres (1 million ha) of formerlycultivated land are no longer being used productively as a result of insurgent activities(thaung chan su pu hmu) and as a result, these fields are degenerating into derelict land(pun soe myay) (Sibwayay hnint Lumuyay Apwe, 1954: 43).5 The government publi-cation outlined a programme for national economic and social development, anddetailed the Land Nationalization Act under which seizure of land has surpassed thelimits set by the government, although it does not state what those limits are. Land‘reclamation’ is one of the primary goals of the government agenda, and those peas-ants who did cultivate such lands would be able to do so with government subsidy(Sibwayay hnint Lumuyay Apwe, 1954: 47). By May of 1955, 244 835 ha, or between3 and 4 per cent of the land being cultivated was nationalized and redistributed(Hagen, 1956: 36).

Interestingly, during this period of land ‘reclamation’, we can notice a parallelincrease in the strength of the Burma Army. From what was once a straggling and tinyarmy at independence, by 1955, General Ne Win could count over 40 000 soldiers,equipped with modern weaponry imported from Britain and India (Lintner, 1994: 125).By 1958, the army was strong enough to force Prime Minister U Nu to hand control ofthe Union over to Ne Win, who would head a two-year military caretaker government,only later to be replaced by U Nu again in a landslide victory in the February 1960

300 Jane M. Ferguson

general elections (Seekins, 2006: 337). By 1962, the Tatmadaw boasted 57 infantrybattalions, 5 regional commands, and a total of more than 100 000 soldiers (Callahan,1996: 444). In March 1962, Ne Win orchestrated a coup in Yangon, replacing thedemocratically elected government with his Revolutionary Council. This new regimehas gone down in history as having made Burma ‘xenophobic and isolated’ (MaungMaung Gyi, 1981), ‘one of the most . . . hermetically sealed countries in the world’(Smith, 1999: 200) or even a ‘hermit state’6 (Houtman, 1999: 2). The Burmese govern-ment took great care to maintain this stance, while it was surrounded by nations onboth sides of the iron curtain.7

In the months following the coup, the Revolutionary Council issued its ‘BurmeseWay to Socialism’. Although Ne Win once declared that the role of the Tatmadaw wasto ‘defend our socialist economy’, the Burmese Way to Socialism was a mechanismthrough which the army could control the machinations of the state (Houtman, 1999:2). Their plan included nationalization of all major industries and a foreign policy whichhas been described as one of ‘negative neutralism’: isolationist and self-serving (MaungMaung Gyi, 1981: 10). Throughout the first decade of the new regime, the yearlyamount of foreign support hovered around USD 26 million, which was quite modestgiven the size of the country (Steinberg, 1981: 47).

Figure 1. Pie chart diagram from the book, Toward a Modern Myanmar.

Burma/Myanmar Waste Lands 301

As part of this, in 1963 the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) instituted theEnterprises Nationalization Law, and in the following year, the Socialist EconomyProtection law. Together, these new laws effectively took commerce out of the hands ofprivate business owners, particularly non-Burmese nationals. This most severelyaffected Indian business owners, who controlled 60 per cent of the trade and commercein Burma (Maung Maung Gyi, 1981: 15). Foreigners—even third-generation residentsof Burma—left en masse, and the BSPP government set about purging the country ofevidence of foreign symbolic influence. Cinema magazines listed the names of cinemahalls that became pyi-thu-baing (citizen-owned) along with their new Burmese names:Palladium became Ba Ba Win, Excelsior became Weiksa, and Galton became Yuzana(Takkatho Khin Maung Zaw, 2012: 32).

Although this nationalization of the economy claimed to oust foreign domi-nance and eliminate farmer tenancy (Steinberg, 2001: 140; U Mya Thein, 2012: 47),it allowed for a hitherto unseen expansion of the black market economy. Whilethe World Bank has estimated that the black market constitutes 40 per cent of thevalue in Burma, others have put that estimate as high as 80 per cent (Chang, 2004:487).

Part of the rhetoric through which the Revolutionary Council garnered initialpopular support was that the strong military would end the ongoing civil war once andfor all. But the nationalization of the Burmese economy had the opposite effect: theblack market and its lucrative border trades fuelled the insurgent forces on Burma’speriphery. This trade-off to the black market not only fuelled the insurgency, but alsoallowed the Tatmadaw to survive with little central support. Furthermore, the govern-ment’s artificially low procurement prices for rice were not aimed to generate a surplusrather than to make food available (Fenichel & Khan, 1981: 819), iterating the inwardfocus of the political system. This follows the established trend of the Tatmadaw’sinvolvement in agriculture and economic development as well; while the army osten-sibly was protecting the country from insurgent rebels, it also presented itself as activelyinvolved in agricultural production. The People’s Military Magazine, starting in 1964featured numerous images of soldiers engaged in agricultural production (Nakanishi,2013: 235).

Acknowledging their inability to control vast insurgent territories, the Burmesemilitary instituted the Ka Kway Yay (KKY) or the Home Guard Militias. These groupsserved as counterinsurgents for the Burmese government, and in exchange for theirservices, would be allowed trafficking concessions, which included one of the mostlucrative commodities: opium/heroin. KKY units would usually make two trips annu-ally and earn anywhere from 10 to 50 per cent profit of the value of the goods theycarried (Chao Tzang, 1987: 128). The extent to which KKY units were loyal to theTatmadaw, however, was another story. Notoriously, Khun Sa of US Drugs EnforcementAgency’s ‘Heroin King’ fame got his start in 1960 as the leader of the Loi Maw KKY inthe Shan State (Khun Loi Laeng, 1991: 166).

Part of the reason this strategy was (relatively) successful for the Tatmadaw was notjust that it was cheap, but also that they were dealing with difficult terrain, and onewhich was sparsely populated. Counterguerrilla warfare in Burma was not based onholding ground or taking ground (at the time), but rather in ‘lightning raids, sneakattacks and ambushes’ (Hilsman, 1962: 12). This resonated with precolonial strategies,where the sparsely populated cellular kingdoms presented a challenge to direct rule. Butcounterguerrilla warfare did directly make the Tatmadaw stronger, and was officiallyabandoned 10 years after it was instituted.

302 Jane M. Ferguson

Much scholarly work on internal conflicts has tended to focus on nonstate groupinterest in natural resources, while paying less attention to the ways in which the state’sinterests and incentives can incite and perpetuate warfare (Theis, 2009: 475). In Burma,as the Tatmadaw gathered political strength, so did its ability to manipulate and enforcecertain laws to its own advantage, but this did not benefit rank-and-file soldiers at theground level; instead it served to preserve the institution. Although it may be a tacitassumption that the state’s soldiers are funded by the state, and corruption and rent-seeking are merely ‘bonus’ money for greedy and corrupt individuals, in fact, animpoverished army might very well find itself competing with local insurgents over localresources. As such, the authorities in Yangon provided little logistical support to itsarmy, largely expecting the Tatmadaw to ‘live off the land’ (Jannuzi, 1998: 203).

Counterinsurgency in the so-called Waste Lands

In addition to the home guard militias, a specific territorial strategy came into thepicture. From the mid-1960s onward, the Burmese central government effected aterritorial strategy in and around so-called insurgent areas, called the Four Cuts cam-paign, which sought to eliminate separatist armies’ sources of food, funds, intelligenceand recruits (Smith, 1999: 259). Along with the strategy came relocation of villages intonew ‘strategic villages’, food confiscation, crop destruction, forced recruitment of portersand human ‘mine-sweepers’ for areas potentially laden with antipersonnel landmines(Rajah, 2002: 532). As described by the member of one armed opposition group, thearmy’s strategy was derived from the idea that ‘the best way to destroy these rebelgroups is to destroy the ability of the civilians to support them’ (Callahan, 2003: 210).The strategy, as described in a Burmese proverb was, ‘to drain the sea, in order to kill thefish’ (South & Katsabanis, 2007: 57).

To carry out this strategy, territory was mapped into three zones: white areascontrolled by the government armies; brown areas which were contested spaces; andblack areas, controlled by insurgents. Black areas would be cordoned off, usually around40–50 square miles, and were the targets of concentrated military operation. Anyvillagers in fields around them would forcibly be moved to new pyu hla ywa, or strategicvillages, in the more direct purview of the Tatmadaw (Smith, 1999: 259). The idea wasthat the key insurgent areas, the black areas, would be isolated from necessary logisticalsupport from surrounding villages, the brown areas. Now here is where thecounterinsurgent strategy draws back to colonial land reclamation tactics: the Tatmadawwas never well-funded enough to be an effective counterinsurgent operation as articu-lated in the tactical strategies for counterguerrilla warfare, and so by actively charac-terizing useful agricultural lands as ‘derelict’, they could rent seek in those so-mappedinsurgent areas.

Locals would be pressed into joining People’s Militias which has been argued to beone of the ‘most effective’ parts of the Four Cuts strategy (Cline, 2009: 583). Theintended result of the strategy is for surrounding villages to cease being support systemsfor the insurgent armies, but note the key difference in this strategy: rather than beingturned into ideological support systems for the government, the state, etc., the strategicvillages are turned into a direct material support system for the army in Burma. LeBillon, for example, has observed that the end of the Cold War meant that foreign aidto government and rebel groups declined significantly, thus groups had to seek theirfunding privately (Le Billon, 2001: 562). The fact that the Burmese government wasdecidedly nonaligned (and not even aligned with the nonaligned movement) meant

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that it could tap into neither NATO nor Soviet aid for its military. The Tatmadaw couldnot survive, let alone expand, if it did not fund itself locally.

In examining how the Four Cuts strategy was conceptualized and deployed, inaddition to its links with British colonial predecessor strategies and particularly the ‘newvillage’ tactics developed by the British in the so-called Malayan Emergency (Smith,1999: 259), there is a compelling continuity between the Four Cuts strategy and formerland reclamation acts. In the characterization of space, it is indeed territorial, and theultimate goal of the strategy is to convert insurgent controlled ‘black’ areas to govern-ment controlled ‘white’ areas. The problem, from the state’s point of view, is not justthat it is not in control of these areas, but also that the areas are not generating revenuefor the state. The government Economic and Social Board claimed that warfare hadtaken 1 million ha of land from active cultivation and it was deteriorating into ‘derelict’lands. Chances are, a significant portion of that land was being used, but in areas thatthe Burmese State was not completely sovereign, or so they would argue. Furthermore,in 1963, the government’s passage of the Tenancy Law empowered the state to specifywhat crops agriculturalists could grow. Failure to comply—even in cases where peasantscould not afford the seed variety specified by the government, or knew from experiencethat the government-specified crop could not grow in their soil—provided yet anotherbasis on which the government could confiscate land (South & Katsabanis, 2007: 48). Inthe Burmese context, ‘law is conceived of not as a protection of rights, but as a meansof control . . . old, even colonial, laws used for early control purposes were employedselectively to enforce the state’s demands’ (Steinberg, 2001: 82).

A key change occurred in the early 1970s: partially in recognition of the economicshortcomings of the previous decade’s policies, the Burmese government sought foreignaid and instituted a number of state development plans and administrative reforms.These included the drafting of a new constitution in 1974, which would essentiallyinstitutionalize the BSPP as the sole leader of the country. What resulted, though, wasa system of moving military officers into bureaucratic positions (Nakanishi, 2013: 167).Thus, the regime changed from being one in which the country was directly ruled by theRevolutionary Council to a one-party state commanded by Ne Win’s BSPP (Bünte,2011: 6).

In tracing a legacy of counterinsurgent tactics back to colonialism, I am not suggest-ing a singular, direct and exclusively causative relationship between the various uses ofthe law, nor seeking to overdetermine a historical continuity. Similarly, the institutionand adaptation of a colonial-era law is also subject to the political, social and ideologicalbearings of that postcolonial state and its respective encounters as well, which shiftsignificantly. Whereas the laws and their administration under British colonialism wereintended to limit local autonomy, the Tatmadaw’s adoption of locally-focused guerrillaand counterinsurgency techniques, in tandem with the BSPP land laws, created asituation through which the Tatmadaw could seek material support from the peasantry.During these years, the Tatmadaw has been characterized as a ‘lightly armed infantryforce’ designed to protect the regime and to carry out counterinsurgency (Selth, 2009:286). The army was chronically underfunded and lacked sophisticated weaponry.

Courting international investment

By the end of the 1980s, the military regime underwent a number key changes: thedissolution of the BSPP and the August 1988 coup re-established direct military rule;and the military government, specifically Khin Nyunt, began a series of ceasefire

304 Jane M. Ferguson

agreements with peripheral insurgent groups which included attractive market conces-sions. The government saw the windfall potential of international investment, jointventures and large-scale exportation of the country’s natural resources. The subsequentregime, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) later renameditself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The government passed aForeign Investment Law in 1988 with the intention to exact greater profit from naturalresource extraction (South & Katsabanis, 2007: 71). Beginning in the same year,on-shore oil exploration concessions were given to 10 international companies, partiallybecause the extraction technologies used previously failed to meet BSPP goals(Steinberg, 2005: 8). Major products for export include gas, oil, teak, gemstones,beans/pulses, rice and narcotics. Multinational corporations such as Halliburton,UNOCAL, Caterpillar and United Technologies teamed up with the Myanmar govern-ment to do business. These corporations have received condemnation from interna-tional activist groups for being complicit in the violation of the UN Universal Declarationof Human Rights as the government was involved in forced labour in some of theseeconomic ventures (White, 2004: 48). It is not just at the sites of joint venture projectsthat civilians are pressed to work for the army; those living in conflict areas are targetedfor this work in particular (Karen Human Rights Group, 2011: 7).

The relationship between laws and foreign investment came to internationalattention when a lawsuit was won against UNOCAL for its involvement in the con-struction of a gas pipeline from Myanmar to Thailand. In the government’s provisionof project security by dispatching the army for logistical support, the army committednumerous human rights violations. UNOCAL was held jointly liable by way of enter-prise liability in foreign jurisdictions (Dearborn, 2009: 196). This opening of theeconomy to international investment has further entrenched the interrelationbetween politics and the underground economy, resulting in an even greater level ofcorruption and cronyism (Chang, 2013: 312). The push to commercialize agricultureand further develop large areas of Waste Land is met with skepticism as it is projectedto enrich the state and big business rather than the peasantry (Steinberg, 2001: 140;Nyan Lin et al., 2012: 16). In the two years following the implementation of this landreclamation programme, 23 million out of a total of 45 million acres were undercultivation (Steinberg, 2001: 144).

However, consistent with colonial as well as post-independence law, the Myanmargovernment continued to make use of Waste Land. In 1991, the government establishedthe Central Committee for the Management of Cultivatable Land, Fallow Land andWaste Land. This committee was empowered to look after and allocate large landholdings for state enterprises and for joint ventures with international companies (South& Katsabanis, 2007: 50). These schemes have been used to evict peasants from land inorder to create new industrial zones (Ba Thun, 2012: 108). Although the townshipofficials of the SPDC did not have the technical expertise regarding land classification, orhow lands are determined to be ‘fallow and uncultivated’, they were the ones whocontrolled the decisions at the departmental level (Thawnghmung, 2003: 307). As in thecolonial period, the idea of the Waste Land has less to do with an intrinsic quality of theland itself, and more to do with the exercise of political and economic power.

Following ceasefire arrangements which began in 1989, but gathered momentum bythe mid-1990s (Pederson, 2011: 59), some groups received Special Economic Zones andprivileges, while other militant groups, as well as local peasants caught in areas forpotential projects, were forcibly moved. Since 1996, it has been estimated that 300 000people in the Shan State have been displaced from their homes and villages, with little

Burma/Myanmar Waste Lands 305

or no compensation, all in the anticipation for the construction of hydropowermegadams on the Salween River (Grundy-Warr & Wong, 2002: 102). One of thesehydro-electric dams in the Shan State, the Tasang Dam, is being built by a Thai company,MDX Limited, and the Burmese government has provisioned that 85 per cent of itsexpected output of over 7000 megawatts will be sold to Thailand (Centre on HousingRights and Evictions, 2007: 87).

Where the Myanmar government failed to reach ceasefire arrangements, often theyare not fighting separatist groups over political differences so much as they are overpotential revenue streams and points of extraction. As Ken MacLean, in his study ofextraction and governance in the Bago division of central Myanmar ultimately argues,‘counter-insurgency operations were not antithetical to the pursuit of profit; rather,they appear to have facilitated the expansion and intensification of the extractiveindustries’ (MacLean, 2007: 250). From an economic standpoint, the fact that largenumbers of battalions, underfunded and needing rent, are allowed to be key stakehold-ers in the economy is what compels them to extract from villagers (MacLean, 2007:259).

The two-decade period of direct military rule came to a close on 30 March 2011whereby the military dismantled the State Peace and Development Council, and handedpower to President Thein Sein. Although the new constitution guaranteed a largemilitary presence in parliament, international observers were pleased to see the relaxingof censorship laws, the freeing of hundreds of political prisoners and other genuine stepstoward democracy. On 30 March 2012, the parliament passed two new sets of land laws:a Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law and a Farmland Law (Maung TayOo, 2012: 89). The latter increased the ability for landholders to sell, pawn andexchange their lands. Advocates of the law say that it eases the process for farmers toacquire the capital they need to start planting (Nyan Lin et al., 2012: 14). Within thelaws are provisions regarding joint ventures as well as the Foreign Investment Law. Asillustrated by the political cartoon below, the new land laws are met with skepticism, ascritics foresee more lands usurped by the state for the purpose of large-scale extractionand other development projects for which local peasants are unlikely to see muchbenefit.

The Tatmadaw continues grabbing land and resources for its own purposes. Forexample, in 2002, in Möng Hsat township in the Shan State, a Shan farmer reportedthat Unit 554 confiscated his rice field, on the grounds that the land was in a strategicarea (Amnesty International, 2002: 17). A report by the Karen Human Rights Group(2013) detailed the ongoing theft of villagers’ livestock between May and August 2013by Tatmadaw Light Infantry Division #231, Dooplaya District. The parliamentary com-mittee received complaints that the military took over 100 000 ha of farmers’ land (TheIrrawaddy, 2013).

Conclusion

While some international headlines laud the emergence of a ‘new Myanmar’, andbusiness and political elites vie for new international economic opportunities, peasantsstill struggle to survive. The lower echelons of the army, as evidenced by the enterprisingteashop booksellers mentioned at the beginning of this paper, still supplement theirincome as they can. When a private’s monthly salary is a mere 16 000 kyat (USD 14)some soldiers have even resorted to selling army-issued equipment to support theirfamilies (The Irrawaddy, 2009). As for the ‘Waste Land’, we can see that throughout their

306 Jane M. Ferguson

history, they have rarely been ‘wastes’ in the literal sense of the word. Often, the landsthemselves are anything but useless or wasted to local people who used them forherding and for their homes, or intermittently as part of crop rotations. Simply thoselands have often become labelled as Waste Lands for two main reasons: they were notgenerating revenue for the state and were being used by people considered to beenemies of the state. Labelling them as Waste Lands was a handy ruse to change theformer dynamics. As we can see from the colonial period, through the Cold War to thepresent, political circumstances created new challenges and adjustment for Waste Land(Figure 2). Where the British Empire sought to territorialize the land and make itprofitable for the colonial apparatus, the independent Burmese government endeav-oured not just to wrest the control of capital away from foreigners, but also to feed itsown army. Once the Burmese government established its economic and territorialsovereignty (albeit incompletely) and began more explicitly to open its economy to jointventures and international export, foreign investors, no longer considered the threatthey were decades ago, were courted, and Waste Lands led to investment opportunityand profit. Rather than just feeding the local battalions of the army, appropriating theWaste Lands for large-scale international investment can create profits on an unprec-edented scale. The problem of the ongoing land grabs has been discussed on the floor ofevery parliamentary session since 2011 (The Irrawaddy, 2014), but will parliament takethe side of the peasantry? The Army might no longer go to the trouble of stealingpeasants’ garlic crops in the middle of the night; the stakes have gotten much higher,and massive profit is potentially to be made via international investment. PresidentThein Sein and MP Aung San Suu Kyi are not the New Myanmar; the Waste Lands arethe New Myanmar.

Figure 2. Cartoon by Harn Lay, 2013.

Burma/Myanmar Waste Lands 307

Endnotes

1 This culture clash of sorts is exemplified by how the Siamese and British reacted to each other

as territorial neighbors: whereas the British sent troops to patrol the borders, the Northern Thai

stayed within their towns (Thongchai, 1994: 72).

2 Some of the world’s largest teak reserves are present in the forests of the Shan States, and the

working relationship with the Shan saopha was something that the British colonial authorities

sought to maintain.

3 Significantly, all lands not deemed to be under the direct authority of any saopha in the Frontier

Areas were automatically classified as myay lap or ‘Vacant Land’.

4 Consider a quotation from the Bible, Isaiah 61.4: ‘And they shall build the old wastes, they shall

raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many

generations.’

5 In Burmese: Shay yakhin ka saik phyo loub kaing ke bu thaw myay ayeka 2.5 than mya hma le a tut

ha pyint thaung chan su hmu mya chaung ma saik phyo ma loub kaing hnaing taw be pun soe myay mya

a pyit tho yauk shi ywek kay cha ya lay bi.

6 Houtman uses the term ‘hermit state’ in reference to the regime’s political isolation in the latter

decades of the twentieth century. James Russell Andrus called Burma a ‘hermit nation’ for its

traditional lack of sea traffic (Andrus, 1947: xxiii). The descriptors of Burma’s relative isolation

are used at different historical junctures and in reference to a withdrawal from engagement

with different political and economic influences, such as U Nu’s government eschewing Soviet

influence, and Ne Win’s regime turning its back on the West. Thanks to the anonymous

reviewer who pointed out this important difference to me.

7 This is in spite of US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles berating all neutral nations as being

immoral. (Steinberg, 2001: 26)

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