Myanmar's Enemy Within summary

What triggered the violence in 2012? There are two explanations. 

The first has often been cited by participants. In May 2012, a Buddhist seamstress was raped and murdered in Rakhine State. Three men described as “Bengali Muslim” were arrested, tried, and found guilty. Days later, 300 Buddhists beat ten Muslim men to death in a “revenge” attack. The victims of this attack had nothing to do with the seamstress’s murder, so why were they targeted? 

Clashes between Rohingya and Buddhists became increasingly common after June 2012. The violence was tit for tat; attacks by one side were answered with reprisals by the other. 

The media, however, applied a double standard in reporting the conflict. Buddhists were portrayed as only ever acting in self-defense. The Rohingya, by contrast, were “terrorists” who were always on the offensive. 

The first Muslims to settle in Myanmar arrived over 1,000 years ago. They came from Persia and India and set up trading posts along the Bay of Bengal. Eventually, they intermarried with the local population and became an established presence in places like Arakan – today’s Rakhine State.

Wars were a constant feature of Myanmar’s history during this time, but religion rarely played much of a role in them. In fact, such conflict was typically driven by rival kingdoms’ claims to territory. When kings needed soldiers, they recruited from the communities they happened to govern, whatever their creed or ethnicity. 

For many years, visitors to Myanmar’s immigration offices were confronted with a large red sign bearing a bold and alarming message. “The Earth,” the sign warned, “will not swallow a race to extinction, but another race will.” 

Such messages were typical of Myanmar’s military dictatorship. After independence in 1948, Myanmar – then still known as Burma – was rocked by instability. In 1962, the military was asked to restore order, which it did, and then hand power back to a civilian government. This it refused to do. 

Just before Myanmar gained its independence in 1948, minorities living in the country’s border regions were promised the right to secede from the future nation state. Other groups were assured that they’d be given the same rights as Myanmar’s largest ethnic group, the Bamar. 

Both pledges were withdrawn after independence. When the army seized power in 1962, many groups – like the Kachin in north Myanmar – took up arms. These insurgencies were easily defeated. In the process, however, the military became the country’s best-resourced institution. 

When the regime created its index of 135 “national races,” it applied a simple rule: if there was evidence of a group living in the country before 1824 – the year Britain annexed Arakan – they also belonged in the modern nation. 

The Rohingya met this standard. In the late eighteenth century, for example, a Scottish physician called Francis Buchanan wrote a study of languages in Arakan. In it, he noted that one of the tongues used in the area was of Indian origin and was spoken by Muslims known as “Rooinga.” Other European texts supported Buchanan’s observations. 

In the mid-1990s, wardens in Myanmar’s prisons approached criminals belonging to Buddhist ethnic groups and made them a compelling offer. They could either continue to languish in jail, or they could be released early. The catch? They would have to move to Rakhine State. 

Those who agreed boarded a ship in Yangon, Myanmar’s capital until 2006. After a four-day journey, they disembarked in Sittwe. From there, they traveled over land to remote villages in the north. When they arrived, they were given newly built houses, a monthly stipend, food rations, cows, and paddy fields.

It wasn’t just the violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims that shocked observers like the author. The public’s reaction to that violence was equally startling. 

When refugees carried their few remaining possessions from scorched villages, crowds of Buddhists lined the roads to jeer and mock them. Meanwhile, violence in Rakhine State was quickly spreading to other areas of the country, propelled by a popular wave of anti-Muslim resentment.