Email: nwekay.khine@gmail.com

Affiliation: Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University

Nationality: Myanmar

Emerging rebel governance and agrarian reform in a shatter belt: the case of Karenni State in Myanmar

Abstract

In recent months, anti-junta revolutionary forces in Myanmar have significantly expanded liberated territory. As a result, they have come under increasing pressure and responsibility to govern both the land and the population under their control. The need to consolidate governance, establish law and order, provide basic services, and secure stable financial resources for these new obligations has become more urgent than the ongoing fight against the SAC, which continues to pursue counteroffensives.

Sustaining rebel governance depends on resources and income generated through trade with neighboring countries, including China and Thailand. Additionally, the agricultural sector in newly liberated areas requires a multifaceted approach to reform. However, many donor agencies are attempting to influence the state agenda by integrating farmers into the mainstream global supply chain through the borderland economy. Despite the ongoing war, as Vaddhanaphuti (2013) argues, the Thai-Burma borderland is often viewed solely as a zone of conflict, but it is also a zone of production, extraction, and trade. He highlights how the Burmese Karen and Karenni people have "essentially 'transformed' themselves socially and economically into cheap labor for the fluid borderland economy in recent decades" (Vaddhanaphuti 2013, p. 164).

The "corporate food regime" (McMichael 2009) has already penetrated conflict zones, where peasants are being pressured by various actors to participate in multinational agribusinesses. This shift affects everything from farming practices and food quality to environmental sustainability and, in the long run, the food sovereignty of Karenni State.

A "region of persistent political fragmentation due to devolution and centrifugal forces" is referred to as a shatterbelt (Kelly 1986). Political geographers have applied this term to several regions since the Second World War, including East Central Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Myanmar, surrounded by powerful neighbors, now fits this notion of a shatterbelt. Some might interpret this situation through the lens of world-systems theory, wherein dominant global powers extract resources—both human and natural—from this mismanaged and impoverished land, a trend that has persisted from the late 20th century to the present.

In contemporary Myanmar, as a shatterbelt, emerging boundaries remain fluid and are contested daily. Trapped between the agricultural expansion of Thailand and China, all ethnic political actors—each functioning as a state entity in its own right—are increasingly pressured to navigate shifting global geopolitics while maintaining their autonomy and ethno-centric interests.

This paper presents findings from participatory action research, co-organized by the researcher and the Karenni Agricultural Department between January and May 2025. The study involved meetings with farmer union representatives, land activists, farmers, and young local researchers. This paper analyzes how powerful neighboring states and territories can significantly shape the agrarian reforms of a smaller state, both positively and negatively.

Bio

Nwet Kay Khine, a Mon, is a research coordinator at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) of Chiang Mai University. She is also affiliated as a research associate with the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counterstrategies based in Berlin supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Nwet joined the master's program for International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University in 2006 and then continued her learning with the Erasmus Mundus master's in journalism, Media, and Globalization at the universities of Aarhus and Hamburg in 2010. She completed her doctoral studies at the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies at Mahidol University in 2019. Nwet conducted this research during her post-doctoral fellowship at the Passau International Centre for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (PICAIS) while she was hosted by the Chair of Development Politics of Passau University. She also writes both fiction and non-fiction literature in Burmese.