[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Kawthoolei and teak: Karen forest m



WATERSHED
Vol 3, No. 1 July ? October 1997

feature
Kawthoolei and teak: Karen forest management on the Thai-Burmese border

By Raymond Bryant

The Karen state of Kawthoolei has been heavily dependent on teak extraction
to fund the Karen National Union struggle against the Burmese military
junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Raymond Bryant
explores the social and economic structure of Kawthoolei, and the way in
which resource extraction was more than simply a source of revenue?it was
also an integral part of the assertion of Karen sovereignty.

In late January 1995 the Karen National Union (KNU) suffered a major
military defeat when Mannerplaw?its headquarters near the Thai-Burmese
border since 1974?was captured by the Burmese army. In subsequent days, KNU
leaders fled to Thailand in a move that appeared to mark the end of the
KNU's 47-year struggle against the Burmese state. As Mannerplaw (which means
"Field of Victory") was reduced to ashes, so too were the hopes of those who
believed in Kawthoolei?the Karen Free State proclaimed by KNU President Saw
Baw U Gyi in June 1949. The world's longest running insurgency had seemingly
run its course.

Notwithstanding media coverage of Mannerplaw's capture, the KNU's struggle
to establish Kawthoolei has gone largely unreported in the west. Writers
have documented the political conflict, and recent work highlights the human
rights abuses perpetrated by an advancing Burmese army. In contrast, little
is known about the socio-economic characteristics of Kawthoolei?the ways in
which a Karen state independent of the Burmese political economy for nearly
50 years was structured socially and economically.

Historical background

In order to understand the link between Karen forestry and sovereignty, the
history of Karen forest use and management prior to 1949 needs to be
reviewed. To appreciate this history in turn necessitates that the Karen's
relationship with the region's ethnically predominant Burmese and Thai
peoples also be understood.

Karen history is often portrayed as an ancient struggle between the Karen
and the more powerful Burmese and Thai peoples. Yet the political and
cultural significance attached to ethnicity is of comparatively recent
origin. The construction of a Karen identity in Burma, for example, has been
linked to the policies and practices of colonial officials and missionaries.
Under British rule, a distinctive Karen identity developed as expressed
through a separate language, education system and culture. Such was this
"national awakening" that as colonial rule neared its end Karen leaders
spoke of a Karen "nation" in search of its own state?as early as 1928 the
Karen leader San C. Po had formulated such a demand. The British encouraged
the development of a Karen identity, notably through preferential employment
in the colonial state, but pointedly refused to entertain the idea of a
separate Karen state.

On the contrary, colonial rule clarified the territorial limits of a Burma-
dominated Burmese state. Hitherto fuzzy frontiers were replaced with precise
borders that spatially defined "Burma"?a political entity sanctioned by
international law. This mapping of Burma was repeated elsewhere in the
region. Thus, in neighbouring Thailand, the Bangkok-based monarchy was able
to similarly delineate its borders in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As
the new political contours of the region were mapped, the Karen found
themselves under the jurisdiction of states over which they had no control.

The result has almost inevitably been conflict. Following the Second World
War and the departure of the colonial powers, the Burmese and Thai states
have sought to create national identities within their respective
territories, but these "imagined communities" have been based on the
preeminence of the cultures of the Burmese and Thai peoples. Confronted with
this process, the Karen sought refuge in their own state of Kawthoolei, a
remote territory on the Thai-Burmese border traditionally not subject to
either Thai or Burmese control.

Since 1949 the Thai and Burmese states have exerted greater control over
their respective territories, progressively eliminating Karen territory. The
Thais have accomplished this process more rapidly than the Burmese. There
are various reasons for this difference. First the Thai state enjoys
relatively easy access to the border from central areas, and this has
facilitated the imposition of central authority. In contrast, the Burmese
have had to impose control over a larger and more inaccessible territory.
Second, whereas colonial rule in Burma encouraged the development of a Karen
identity, a comparable process was lacking in Thailand. As the Thais
asserted control over Karen areas, they encountered fragmented rather than
coordinated resistance from local Karen villagers. Such resistance was
relatively easy to overcome. In contrast, the more organized resistance of
the Burmese Karen to the Burmese state formed the basis of the world's
longest running insurgency. Finally, the vast majority of the Karen
originate in Burma?there are only about 300,000 Karen in Thailand compared
with up to four million Karen in Burma. Once again, this makes the task of
assimilating Karen in Burma more difficult than in Thailand.

Karen identity has been forged in the context of the development of the
Burmese and Thai political economies, but it has also been based on a close
affiliation with the forests that once covered most of Kawthoolei. Forest
use and management has long been an important part of Karen livelihoods. As
most Karen were traditionally rural dwellers, forest use and management was
inevitably an important part of their life and identity. Since the Karen are
an ethnic group of great internal heterogeneity, their use of the forests
varied from place to place depending on local social and ecological
conditions. In areas where shifting cultivation was practiced, forest was
burned to provide fertilizer for agricultural crops, and then allowed to
grow back for 10 or more years until conditions were again right for
agricultural production. The forests were also managed so as to provide
timber, fuelwood, fruit, nuts, medicinal products and game.

Such forest management was oriented largely, but not exclusively, towards
subsistence. Yet as the British discovered upon the conquest of Tenassarim
in 1826, Karen were important in the teak trade, especially in the teak
forests of the Salween watershed. [See Map: The Karen homeland of
Kawthoolei.] During much of the 1 9th century, these forests were a major
source of teak (used primarily in the construction of naval ships), and the
timber was sent to India and Europe from the lumber town of Moulmein.
Although various ethnic groups participated in this trade, the Karen were
especially prominent. In some cases, Karen were in charge of teak extraction
and marketing. The success in Tenassarim of the Karen merchants Saw Po Nyein
and Saw Tha Dwe around the turn of the century is but one example of the
Karen presence in this sector of the economy. However, Karen were primarily
involved in teak extraction as elephant riders (mahouts). Teak extraction in
the Salween River watershed for ests required the use of trained elephants
which dragged felled logs from stump to nearby stream, then pushed and
prodded the logs (a process known as aunging) until they were swept
downstream. It was local Karen who captured, trained and owned many of these
elephants. Such was their reputation in the business that when the British
acquired the Pegu teak forests in 1852, their first task was to persuade
Karen mahouts to move with their elephants from Tenassarim to Pegu.

In colonial times, the link between the Karen and commercial forestry
management was further strengthened. Thus, Karen were prominent in the
colonial forest service created in 1856. This was especially so in areas
such as Tenassarim where the Karen population was large. Barred, as were
Burmese, from the senior forest service, Karen youth nevertheless served in
the subordinate service as guards and rangers.

The Karen were also central to plantation forestry in Burma from the mid
19th century. Under the taungya forestry system, colonial foresters employed
Karen shifting cultivators to plant teak in their hill clearings, or
taungya. As the cultivators moved to a new area after a couple of years, the
process was repeated. In this manner, timber plantations were left in their
wake.
The historical links between the Karen and forest use and management were
thus well developed at the time of Burmese independence in 1948. It was not
surprising, therefore, that those links would be an integral part of Karen
attempts to establish an independent Karen state along the Thai-Burmese
border. In the process, forest use and management was associated with
security, livelihood and identity issues.

Forests as a source of refuge

>From the start, the forests have been crucial to Karen political and
military efforts insofar as they have served as a source of refuge from the
Burmese army. Except during the first years of the insurgency, the Karen
have been involved in an unequal struggle with a much larger and better
equipped military adversary. The trend in the fighting between the Burmese
army (tatmadaw) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA, previously the
Karen National Defence Organization) has been a gradual retreat of the KNLA
from central Burma to the remote border area. Confronted by the superior
fire-power of the tatmadaw, the KNLA have used the forests strategically as
a source of refuge in which to regroup and replenish supplies. In doing so,
the KNLA have relied on local Karen for food, directions, recruits and
intelligence about the tatmadaw. In the early 1950s, Karen forces took
refuge in the Pegu Yoma forests, but subsequently shifted east into the more
inaccessible hills along the Burmese- Thai border.

The Burmese army has long sought to undermine the role of the forests as a
source of refuge for the KNLA. A primary goal has been to cut the KNLA off
from villagers through the Four Cuts (pya ley pya) campaign. Under this
counter-insurgency campaign (which aims to cut links to local food, funds,
intelligence and recruits), local Karen were forcibly removed from their
villages and resettled in army-controlled settlements. Initially focused on
the Pegu Yoma forests, the campaign was continued by the tatmadaw in the
border region. In addition to forced resettlement, the Burmese army has
press-ganged Karen into service on the front line as porters. Between 1989
and 1993, the State Law and order Restoration Council (SLORC)? the military
junta ruling Burma since 1988?also supported clear-cut logging along the
border. Other than providing the junta with revenue (and denying revenue to
the KNU, as discussed below), such logging also removed forest in contested
areas, thereby eliminating strategic military cover for the KNLA.

Forests as a source of livelihood

The forests have also provided an important source of revenue to the KNU,
making an essential contribution to Kawthoolei state finances.

The role of the forests as a central part of the livelihood strategies of
individual Karen farmers has persisted in the post-colonial era. Just as in
pre-colonial and colonial times, Karen farmers since 1948 have pursued
forest-based agrarian practices, at least in the more remote regions of
Kawthoolei. Nevertheless, the ability of individual farmers to earn a
livelihood from the forests has been progressively eroded in recent decades.
To some extent, this may be linked to population growth among the Karen.

However, it is the growing intrusion on the lives of Karen farmers of the
Burmese civil war that is the main cause of declining forest livelihoods. To
begin with, the war has resulted in the displacement of thousands of Karen
formerly living in the Irrawaddy and Sittang River deltas or adjacent hills.
There are over 70,000 Karen refugees from Burma living in Thai refugee camps
along the border alone, with many more displaced within Burma. Some
internally displaced Karen have cleared forest for agriculture, thereby
putting added pressure on residual forests. Further the war itself has
shifted over the years, such that by the 1980s it was largely centred on the
border area, disrupting local farming practices and forcing many Karen
farmers to flee or face an advancing Burmese army infamous for perpetrating
human rights abuses on the Karen. Karen farmers have thus been unable to
avoid being caught up in the fighting between the tatmadaw and the KNU.

The significance of the forests as a source of livelihood has often been as
great to the KNU as it has traditionally been to individual Karen farmers.
Significantly, a Kawthoolei Forestry Ministry was created in 1950?only one
year after the start of the insurgency. Using Karen foresters trained under
the British, the ministry was established on colonial lines with a hierarchy
of posts ranging from guards and rangers in the field, through district and
headquarters conservators, and on up to the minister. The forests of
Kawthoolei were divided into districts, within which reserved forests were
created?notably where teak was abundant.

The forests were a significant but not a crucial source of revenue to the
KNU in the 1950s. The reasons for this reside in the political and economic
context of the early years of the insurgency. The need for revenue to buy
arms was then limited, as arms were still plentiful after the Second World
War. During the early 1950s, the KNLA was one of the most powerful insurgent
armies in Burma?in 1949 it controlled much of the Irrawaddy and Sittang
River delta areas, including the outskirts of Rangoon. The revenue base of
Kawthoolei was also wider at this stage than in later years.

Considerable revenue was obtained from agriculture and mining as well as
from forestry throughout the extensive territory then controlled by the KNU.
Finally, in terms of forestry itself, there was little work that was
initially required as the KNU was able to seize logs left in the forest or
at timber depots by the departing British in 1948.

This relatively favourable situation had ended by the mid 1950s. As the
Burmese army advanced, the Karen were cut off from revenue, first in the
Irrawaddy and Sittang deltas and subsequently in the adjoining hills. In
November 1953, for example, the Burmese army captured the mines at Mawchi?a
significant source of revenue to the Karen at that time. Following the coup
d'etat of March 1962 which brought General Ne Win to power, the advance of
the tatmadaw into hitherto KNU-controlled areas continued, and by the 1970s
Karen forces were largely confined to the Thai-Burmese border. As the
territory controlled by the KNU contracted so to did the range of
opportunities available to Karen leaders for earning a livelihood.

An illicit border trade in natural resources and consumer goods partly
concealed the growing financial plight of the Kawthoolei state. This trade
linking Burma and Thailand via KNU-controlled areas developed during the
1960s and 1970s as a response to the catastrophic economic policies of Ne
Win's Burmese Way to Socialism, which drove much of the Burmese economy
underground. Teak, cattle, rice, rubber, gems and even archaeological
artifacts were transported from Burma to Thailand while televisions, videos,
cosmetics and other con sumer goods were dispatched in the other direction.
The KNU served as an intermediary in this trade, imposing a five per cent
tax on all goods passing through Kawthoolei.

For many years, the KNU thus had easy access to funds with which to buy
military equipment.  However, there were evident dangers associated with
dependency on the border trade. The adoption of a pro-market economic policy
in Rangoon could undermine the trade. A change in policy by the Thai
authorities?for example, as a result of a desire for closer links with
Burma?would also jeopardize the KNU controlled trade. Finally, the
development of alternative trade routes?notably along the Burma-Chinese
border? might result in a drying up of the trade through KNU territories.

To the misfortune of the Karen state, since 1988 all three of these
possibilities have become realities. It is in the context of such
uncertainty that the importance of the forests as a source of revenue to the
KNU becomes apparent. Of the revenue available to the Kawthoolei state,
forest revenue (mainly derived from teak extraction) was one of the
important sources over which it had some control. Another, tin mining, was
significant in the 1970s but collapsed with the price of tin in the early
1980s. Not surprisingly, therefore, the forest sector assumed growing
political and economic importance to the KNU from the 1960s.

The importance of the forests was reflected in the growing power of the
Forestry Ministry. From only a handful of foresters in the 1950s and early
1960s, the ministry had become a key pert of the Karen state by the 1980s.
In 1994, there were 463 forest officials at work in Kawthoolei's forest
districts, with additional staff at Mannerplaw. Field offcials were
responsible for reforestation and wildlife protection, but their main task
was to monitor teak extraction. Just under two-thirds of the 5,000 teak logs
annually extracted in the early 1990s came from Pazpu district.

The importance of the teak industry is reflected in the power of the
Forestry Minister Saw Aung San, who was appointed to the post in 1980, and
who was second only to General Bo Mya and Prime Minister Saw Ba Thinn in
terms of political power within the KNU in the early 1990s. Although the KNU
has never published revenue data, forest earnings were understood to
constitute most of total state revenue in 1994.

Given the importance of the forests to the KNU, the SLORC's decision to
grant logging concessions all along the border to Thai firms in early 1989
was a serious blow to the KNU. As much as 18,800 square kilometres were
alienated by the SLORC to Thai loggers who invariably enjoyed close links to
senior Thai military officers. Many of the Thai logging concessions were
located in KNU- controlled territory. However, as the loggers were supported
by the Thai military, there was little that the KNU could do to stop their
advance into Karen forests without risking completely alienating the Thai
state?something that a KNU weakened by military setbacks was scarcely in a
position to do.

The KNU was forced to acquiesce in this deal between the SLORC and the Thai
state.  The end result was that logging restrictions originally imposed by
Kawthoolei's Forestry Ministry to ensure sustainable forestry were waived.
Indeed, between 1989 and 1993 (when the SLORC terminated the Thai logging
deal) the KNU permitted over cutting as part of a desperate attempt to
maintain forest-based revenues in the face of SLORC's efforts to cut the
KNU's income of US$40-80 per cubic metre (m3) of teak timber. At the same
time these companies were also paying the SLORC US$80 per m3 on the same
timber. Unable to cut the KNU off from this trade, the SLORC cancelled the
Thai logging concessions in 1993.

Yet the KNU were badly weakened by this teak war. Teak over cutting resulted
in widespread deforestation in the logging concessions as Thai loggers
extracted more timber than was allowed under the terms of their contracts.
Further, logging outside designated areas was ubiquitous as loggers took
advantage of the political turmoil along the border to extract extra timber
free of charge.  Illegal logging has persisted despite the SLORC's
termination of border logging in December 1993, aided by the network of
logging roads built in 1989-93. As a result, the border forests upon which
the KNU relied have been largely depleted, undermining a key element of an
already declining Karen resource base. Even before the fall of Mannerplaw in
early 1995, therefore, Kawthoolei's finances were in difficulty..

The teak war also weakened the legitimacy of the Kawthoolei state in as much
as the KNU had long based part of its local and international appeal on
sustainable forest management. As the next section highlights, forests have
always been at the heart of Karen identity. Yet here was a state purporting
to represent the Karen people that had sanctioned the destruction of wide
areas of Kawthoolei's forest. It is a measure of the sheer desperation of
Karen leaders that, in order to maintain forest revenue, they were prepared
to destroy the forest resource on which Karen culture itself was based.

Forests as a source of identity

In addition to its political and economic rationale, the SLORC-engineered
assault on the border forest also resonates with cultural meaning. An
attempt to undermine the military and financial advantages derived by the
KNU from the forests, this assault simultaneously attacked the foundations
of Karen national identity. As the forests have always been an integral part
of Karen identity, their large-scale elimination after 1988 has had cultural
as well as political and economic significance.

Traditionally, lowland Burmese and Thais viewed the Karen as an integral
part of the forests?the former called them "the wild cattle of the hills,"
whereas the latter classified the Karen as "wild animals." The British held
similar views. Colonial missionaries, for example, considered the Karen to
be a primitive people ("noble savages") at home in their forest habitat.
Colonial foresters, meanwhile, acknowledged the Karen's detailed forest
knowledge (at the same time as they decried their allegedly destructive
methods of shifting cultivation). Indeed, the introduction of the taungya
forestry system noted earlier reflected a British desire to harness that
knowledge to the teak-centred forestry management then being introduced in
Burma's forests.

Certainly, Karen refugees from the Irrawaddy and Sittang deltas do not fit
the popular image of the Karen as a forest people. Karen from the deltas
often differ from their hill brethren in terms of religion, education and
forest knowledge. Yet, even for the delta Karen, the forests resonate with
meaning. Thus, the forests in which they took refuge are a reminder of the
historical origins of the Karen people, symbolized most vividly in the many
Karen myths and prophecies that are set in the forests. Even among the
Christian Karen from the deltas, the notion of the Karen as a lost tribe of
Israel wandering in the forests (first suggested by colonial missionaries)
serves as a powerful symbolic reinforcement of the link between the forests
and Karen identity.

The insurgency reinforced the role of the forests in Karen culture. As
noted, they have served as a source both of refuge and of livelihood for the
KNU throughout the struggle. Many senior political and military leaders have
lived in the forests for more than 30 years, and a new generation has been
born in Mannerplaw and other forest strongholds. In as much as these Karen
have made the forests their home in exile they have become forest dwellers.
Karen refugees have kept alive memories of their previous urban existence
(reinforced by sat ellite TV as well as journeys to Bangkok by the elite).
However, as their fate has been linked to the forests now for nearly 50
years, these Karen have been de-urbanized?in other words, they have become a
"forest people."


To the extent that the Karen are today a forest people? dependent on the
forests for security, livelihood and cultural integrity?the fall of
Mannerplaw and other KNU strongholds to the Burmese army is a catastrophe
for the Karen. As many Karen have become refugees in Thailand, much of
Kawthoolei has been lost to the advancing Burmese.

The territory the Karen called the "Flower Land" has already been changed
beyond recognition. A hitherto forested landscape has been converted in many
areas into an environmentally degraded and treeless territory as a result of
indiscriminate logging. The SLORC's plans to build a series of dams on the
Salween River and its tributaries near and along the border (to meet Thai
electricity demands) will further alter the landscape. With this loss of the
forests, the Karen have been denied refuge, livelihood and even a cultural
referent.

In asserting a sovereign Kawthoolei, the KNU posed a challenge that the
Burmese state (indeed any state) could scarcely ignore. For Kawthoolei to be
born, the old Burma would have to die?something which Burmese politicians
(whatever their other differences) have always refused to countenance. As a
result, the Karen have been fighting a Burmese state which not only
possesses superior military capabilities, but which also enjoys the tacit
support of a world of nation states anxious to avoid any alteration of
political boundaries. Even western states which condemn the brutality of the
Burmese state have refrained from sanctioning the alteration of Burma's
boundaries. In this regard, the lack of international recognition for
Kawthoolei over the past 50 years is eloquent testimony to the futility of
Karen efforts to overcome the consensus over sovereignty issues among the
community of nations. That alternative solidarity has been shown outside
this community demonstrates the limits to internationalism among nation states.

Indeed, the fact that SLORC has been able to brutally suppress the Karen
insurgency without serious opposition from any outside power is a reminder
of the overwhelming priority that the international community continues to
attach?even in the New World Order?to political sovereignty. In the process,
Me community sanctions environmental degradation and the persecution of
ethnic minorities in the name of the right of nations to do as they please
within internationally recognized boundaries. More often than not, ethnic
minorities have been place in a now in situation. Denied human rights by the
rulers of nation states, ethnic minorities face impossible odds when they
try to establish a sovereign state of their own. Current international rules
established by nation states permit no way out of this vicious circle
confronting ethnic minorities.

Selected References (A version of this article appears in Howitt, R. with J.
Connell and P. Hirsch (eds) (1996) Resources, Nations and Indigenous
Peoples: Case Studies from Australia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia,
Melboume: Oxford University Press.)

Amnesty International (1988) Burma: Extrajudicial Execution and Torture of
Members of Ethnic Minorities, London: Amnesty International.

Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities, revised edn, London: Verso.

Bryant, R. L. (1994) Shifting the Cultivator: The Politics of Teak
Regeneration in Colonial Burma, Modern Asian Studies 28: 225-50.

Fink, C. (1995) Human Rights Across Borders: Karen Experiences in Thailand
and Burma, Burma Debate 1: 23-6.

Geary, K. (1994) The Role of Thailand in Forest Destruction Along the Thai-
Burma Border 1988-1993, Bangkok: Project for Ecological Recovery.

Lieberman, V. B. (1978) Ethnic Policies in Eighteenth-century Burma, Modem
Asian Studies, 12 (3): 455-82.

Perry, P. J. (1993) Military Rule in Burma: A Geographical Analysis, Crime,
Law and Social Change, 19: 17-32.

Smeaton, D. M. (1887) The Loyal Karens of Burma, London: Began, Paul and Trench.

Smith, M. (1991) Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity,  London:
Zed books.

Taylor, R. H. (1982) Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma,
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 10: 7-22.
Tinker, H. (1957) The Union of Burma, London: Oxford University Press.


Raymond Bryant is co editor of Environmental Change in Southeast Asia
published by Routledge (1996).

Watershed is published three times a year by TERRA 
409 Soi Rohitsuk, Pracharajbempen Rd.
Huay Khwang, Bangkok 10320
Thailand
E-mail <terraper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www2.gol.com/users/brelief/Index.htm