by SYED TASHFIN CHOWDHURY and CHRIS STEWSRT
A camp for internally displaced people from the earlier wave of violence that shook Myanmar’s Rakhine state. PHOTO/UN News Centre
The ethnic conflict that ravaged much of Rakhine State in western Myanmar last month was an opportunity for more than settling old and new scores between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhines and co-religionist new arrivals from elsewhere in the country.
Those involved were also clearing land in a densely populated area that is set to be among the country’s prime bits of real estate as energy-related projects start transforming the impoverished state.
More than 100 people (some reports indicate many times that number) were killed last month, untold others were wounded, and an estimated 28,000 fled or were driven from their homes in clashes between the stateless Rohingya and Buddhist citizens in a recurrence of violence last June. They are the latest incidents involving evicted ethnic groups around the country weeks before US President Obama visits Myanmar later this month.
“The government has taken the opportunity to create more violence allowing a destabilized and vulnerable state which they can then take the natural resources from. This is believed to be the main reason to why so many villages [in Rakhine State] were razed to the ground,” the representative of one non-government organization (NGO) told Asia Times Online, citing the source as a Rakhine resident. The NGO cannot be named for safety reasons.
Identifying specific land-grabbing in the midst of mass upheaval and historic xenophobia such as the state witnessed in October is no easy task, but as Michael Brown, in his book The International Dimension of Internal Conflict points out, “since internal, elite level forces are usually the catalysts of internal conflict, those interested in conflict prevention should direct their attention accordingly”.
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