The New Kyoto Review of South East Asia Website

ENGLISH
THAI
INDONESIAN
JAPANESE
FILIPINO

by Willem Van Schendel

Willem Van Schendel teaches at the University of Amsterdam and the International Institute of Social History. He can be reached at h.w.vanschendel@uva.nl.

page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4

FEATURE
Guns and Gas in Southeast Asia:
Transnational Flows in the Burma-Bangladesh Borderland

The Burma-Bangladesh borderland? At first sight, this seems to be one of the world’s most marginal places. In the current global power scheme, neither Burma (Myanmar) nor Bangladesh is of much concern. The margins of these societies, and what happens there, have little world media appeal. In the national media in Burma and Bangladesh, the borderland that joins them is rarely put in the spotlight, even in writings about border issues. For example, when we read about the border of Burma, usually it is the long border joining Burma and Thailand; when we read about the border of Bangladesh, usually it is the long border joining Bangladesh and India.

So why focus on a region that seems to be of little concern to anyone except those who live there? Well, there are many reasons. First, what popular or politicians’ perceptions marginalize need not be so marginal in reality. Second, looking at the world from border regions provides us with an outlook that challenges “lazy assumptions” that state and society, state and nation, or state and governance are synonymous or territorially coterminous (Anderson and Dowd 1999:602-603). Third, the discourse on transnationalism suggests a different way of conceptualizing social space in which not just global diasporas and financial markets but also communities that “live across borders, survive despite them, routinely cross them and constantly network around them” become indispensable objects of study (Rabinowitz 1998:142).

A closer look at the seemingly remote Burma-Bangladesh borderland (see Map 1) reveals a hive of activities with unexpected transnational importance. In this note, which builds on a broader study, I explore some of the linkages between border communities and transnational flows (Van Schendel 2005).

Map 1: The Burma-Bangladesh border.

Plate 1: Buoy in the mouth of the river Naf, the southernmost marker of the
Burma-Bangladesh boundary. The mountains of Arakan can be seen in the distance. Photograph: Willem van Schendel, 2001.

A Buoy in the River

The Naf River struggles through the mountains of Burma and Bangladesh before it spreads out into a wide expanse of water and flows into the Bay of Bengal. Plate 1 shows the view from the sea. In the background are the mountains of Arakan (Burma) and in the forefront a buoy whose significance is not apparent to the casual observer.

This buoy demarcates the boundary between two worlds. It is the southernmost marker of the border between the states of Bangladesh (to the left) and Burma. It shows the exact territorial location of the jurisdictions of two neighbouring states. For many politicians it also marks the boundary between two global political regions. Here the world of ASEAN meets the world of SAARC. ASEAN stands for “Association of Southeast Asian Nations,” a collaboration of states who present themselves as “ten nations, one community.” Burma joined this group in 1997. Bangladesh, on the other hand, is the easternmost member of another club of seven states, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). The buoy thus separates two world regions, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Both of these are relatively new: they were constructed by politicians in the post-World War II period. Academics have followed suit: creating “area studies,” they have produced knowledge that has tended to follow the political contours and assumed that Burma is best understood as part of a group of societies known as Southeast Asia and Bangladesh as part of South Asia (Van Schendel 2002). As a result, for 60 years most students of Burma and of Bangladesh have been standing with their backs to each other.

Before that time things were very different. The territories of both Burma and Bangladesh were administered by one state, British India. As an international border, the line separating Burma and Bangladesh is relatively young. It came into being as a humble boundary line between districts of British India. When this huge colony was split into British Burma and British India in 1937, the border took on a semi-international status for the first time. It became fully international when the British relinquished power in India/Pakistan (1947) and Burma (1948). Independent Burma now shared
a border with the two independent states that resulted from the Partition of British India, India, and Pakistan. This note deals with the Burma-Pakistan segment only. In 1971 a revolt in Pakistan led to a war of secession in which a new state, Bangladesh, emerged. The border between Burma and Pakistan then became the border between Burma and Bangladesh (Map 1).

Remarkably, after all these permutations, there is still no agreement on where the border actually is. Or indeed how long it is. The Bangladesh government and the CIA think that its length is 193 km but according to Burmese sources it is 272 km (“Resist” 1999; CIA 2000; Basic Facts 1996). It is a border that remains almost completely undemarcated despite land boundary agreements in 1966, 1980, and 1998 (Haque 1980:218; “Border Tense” 2001). Not surprisingly, territorial uncertainty has given rise to continual frictions and border incidents. Only in the mouth of the river Naf have buoys

been placed to separate Burmese waters from Bangladeshi ones and to guide ships coming in from the Bay of Bengal. Upstream the border is less clear, as the authorities found out right after it was created. When some previously uninhabited islands in the Naf river were occupied by people from Burma shortly after Partition, the Pakistan authorities went on a wild goose chase in offices in Dhaka, Chittagong, and Cox’s Bazar for documents and maps which could establish their right over these islands. Eventually they had to concede that “the boundary between Chittagong and Arakan districts along with the Naf river do not seem to have been formally demarcated after the separation of Burma [in 1937]. The latest Record in this point is the Revenue Settlement map, prepared in 1929” (Bangladesh 1950).

In the early 1990s the Tumburu watercourse, linked to the Naf River, moved north, causing great friction between Burmese border guards (Nasaka or Na Sa Ka), who continued to use it, and their counterparts in Bangladesh, who claimed that it was now in Bangladesh. In April 2000, Burma finally conceded that the watercourse had moved out of reach (“Nasaka” 2000).

Further east the border runs over land and here the territorial uncertainty can have lethal consequences (Map 2). Burma’s armed forces have been caught up in endless skirmishes with various rebel groups fighting for independence. In the early 1990s the authorities began laying anti-personnel mines in the borderland. The mines do not discriminate when it comes to taking lives. Among the victims were BDR Jawans [Bangladesh border guards], Myanmar’s Nasaka security forces personnel, Myanmar regular army troopers, Rohingya infiltrators and Bangladeshi woodcutters. A total of 35 Bangladeshis have been killed and 22 wild elephants perished due to landmine blasts at the border areas during the six-year period (Islam 1999).

Burmese border guards and separatists such as the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) often clashed over control of the border. On one occasion, RSO rebels killed 11 guards who were laying anti-personnel mines along the border with Bangladesh. Another encounter left one border guard and two RSO fighters dead and 32 others, from both sides, wounded (“Three” 1998; “Tension” 2000).

Map 2: The Burma-Bangladesh borderland

To reduce the resulting friction, the neighbouring states decided on a meeting between their survey departments in Rangoon (Yangon) in September 1998 (“Bangladesh, Myanmar” 1999). A land boundary treaty was signed in November 1998 and demarcation began right away. The two states failed to make any progress, however, because as soon as demarcation was undertaken a powerful anti-personnel mine exploded at the border near Lemochhari and the work was immediately suspended. The lack of demarcation could easily lead to disagreements, as in 2001, when Bangladesh and Burma came to blows over the construction of a dam in the Naf River (“Flag Meet” 2001). After these new border clashes a Joint Survey Commission was set up once again but no progress was made.

Being a Borderlander

For two generations now, inhabitants of this region have been adapting to life in an international border landscape. Their adaptations have been manifold: learning one or both of the national languages (although certainly not everybody speaks Burmese or Bengali today), using two currencies that cannot officially be traded, making a living off unauthorized cross-border trade, keeping in touch with relatives on the other side, seeking refuge across the border and, whenever necessary, appeasing the armed men who are stationed there. Becoming a borderlander has turned into a never-ending project. It is shaped by local forces as much as by national and transnational ones. The following examples show different combinations of these.