Aid, Faith, and Resistance: Friend of FBR Offers Insight and Analysis on Aid Work in Burma
Ashley South, a longtime friend of FBR and subject matter expert, writes as a guest, arguing that Burma urgently needs an ‘aid reset,’ highlighting the struggles for survival and lifesaving work of faith–based groups and communities operating across Burma today. His analysis is below.
Anti-junta forces in Burma are clearly on the side of justice. They need our prayers and our help. In addition to political recognition and humanitarian aid, there is an urgent need for spiritual support. Most – but not all – people in Burma are members of faith-based communities. Together with ethno-linguistic identities and networks, religious groups are key to resilience and survival amid the horrors of war. Faith-based approaches also introduce important principles and practices of care. However, the mainstream aid industry is notably secular, despite the range of activities undertaken by faith-based (not just Christian missionary) aid agencies across the world. This is not always unreasonable. Ethno-linguistic and faith-based networks can be divisive or potentially marginalize non-dominant groups, including religious minorities. Care is needed to include and respect all stakeholders.
Since seizing power on 1 February 2021, the Burma military has committed systematic and widespread human rights abuses, including repeated airstrikes and other massacres of civilians. Against this injustice, anti-junta forces are struggling for human rights, self-determination, and democracy. The cause of anti-junta forces is just, and they mostly fight in compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Anti-junta forces have justice on their side, both in terms of the cause of war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello).
According to the UN Charter, states may lawfully resort to armed force against another state if they are unlawfully and violently attacked. Anti-junta forces – Ethnic Resistance Organisations, and related state-based bodies and People’s Defence Forces – are legitimate political authorities. These groups are mostly fighting wars of protection against the invasive, violent, and predatory Myanmar military. Many are motivated by the defence of their nation or homeland, as well as by religion. Despite their sometimes bewildering variety, nearly all anti-junta forces are committed to the values and practice of human rights, self-determination, and democracy. These are just and admirable war aims, with widespread support across different ethnic and other stakeholder groups.
I have spoken to hundreds of Christian and Buddhist resistance fighters in the war zones of Burma, whose idealism is reinforced by their faith. They sometimes also suffer pangs of conscience, as a result of the things that are needful in wartime. Those who have taken life in a just cause do not necessarily sleep easily. Many urgently need spiritual support, through chaplaincy provided by pastors and priests, monks and imams.
Meanwhile, the Burma military frames conflict around the army’s self-appointed role of holding together a militarised, centralised and Bamar majority-dominated state, through a combination of repression, violence and criminality, and the occupation of ethnic homelands. For decades, the generals in Burma have used Buddhism (for example, gaudy donations to pagodas) as a veneer of legitimization. This fascist ideology and project has roots in the colonial era, and the Burma Army originates in the Japanese Imperial Army. The junta’s stated war aims are unjust and illegitimate, and violate the Dhamma and the precepts of the Buddha. The Burma Army and its proxies also fight dirty. Junta forces commit well-documented, widespread, and systematic violations of IHL, including regular massacres (often, but not only through airstrikes on civilians), rape and murder, destruction of schools, hospitals, religious structures, and civilian housing, extortion and looting, and environmental crimes. These are war crimes.
Based on the principle of humanity and recognition of the unique value of every person, IHL seeks to protect civilians and other non-combatants (e.g. prisoners of war) by limiting the extent and impacts of hostilities on civilians and non-combatants. The ‘law of war’ is derived from the Christian historical tradition, but resonates deeply with nearly all cultural and religious communities. It is based on and expressed in a number of treaties, in particular the Geneva Conventions (I-IV) of 1949, and Additional Protocols of 1977 (APs I and II) and 2005 (AP III). Although they usually apply to interstate conflicts, the Geneva Conventions also apply to internal conflicts or civil wars through Common Article III, which addresses military conflict within a state and explicitly seeks to prohibit violence against non-combatants.
Anti-junta forces do sometimes violate IHL. However, such incidents are much less prevalent than in junta-controlled areas, and show few signs of being systematic. While Myanmar military and proxy force violations are characterised by strategic intent and impunity, Ethnic Resistance Organisations, People’s Defence Forces, and the National Unity Government are making significant efforts to hold perpetrators to account in terms of domestic and international law, norms, and standards.
A key principle of the Geneva Conventions is reasonable treatment of prisoners of war. Captured anti-junta forces can expect death from the Burma Army, probably after much suffering. Things are different on the other side. From personal experience, I know that the Karen National Union – for example – makes serious efforts to treat prisoners of war with dignity, providing them with food and shelter in contexts where local communities are often struggling with basic survival.
Anti-junta forces do more than just protect civilians. In areas beyond junta control, amid the terror and disruptions of war, resistance groups have begun experimenting with novel forms of political organisation, based on locally owned and delivered governance and service delivery systems – the resilient building blocks of ‘bottom-up federalism.’ This inclusive approach avoided some of the pitfalls in previous attempts to achieve self-determination through narrowly defined ethno-nationalist states. The new federalism from below promises indigenous sovereignty and democratic rights.
Not all, or even most, assistance and protection or local governance in the conflict zones is provided through faith-based organisations. However, many members of secular aid and armed resistance groups are personally motivated by faith. Internally displaced people and other civilian victims of the conflict in Burma are also mostly people of faith. Villagers express great joy when Rangers or local church groups, for example, pray with them and provide necessary religious functions. Such fellowship and solidarity are as much valued as food and shelter – which, of course, are still needed. Local church, sangha or mosque-led initiatives demonstrate deep compassion and solidarity with the victims of injustice and violence. For example, on a recent visit with the Free Burma Rangers to Mon resistance areas, I was able to see the great care which Buddhist monks have for the local community, supporting many conflict-affected children to access schooling under the most difficult circumstances.
On many other occasions, I have seen how the Rangers’ great faith raises the spirits of all around. Relief work, resistance, and religion are deeply interconnected in Burma and historically in the West. While foreign aid regimes have deep roots in the socio-political and religious history of Europe, love for service to our fellow humans is a key message of all faiths (although religion can also be mobilised towards violence). Lived faith may be central to most community self-understandings and self-representations, but these realities are sometimes denied or obscured within the aid world.
Over the past several decades, international agencies have developed a set of principles for humanitarian action, based on the ‘humanitarian imperative,’ and principles of impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and independence. Among these operational principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, “neutrality” especially is often contested – particularly in situations where there is clear justice on one side of a conflict. As Hugo Slim has argued, in such contexts solidarity-based humanitarian resistance is more appropriate.
However, with the global rise of political populism and ‘anti-solidarity,’ we are likely living through the ‘end of aid,’ and are past the heyday of international humanitarian interventions in forgotten crises like Burma. Once the foreigners are gone, local actors will remain key to survival in a post-aid world. In Burma today, these groups and networks are the only ones with access to the most vulnerable populations.
To one degree or another, most anti-junta actors are motivated by religious faith, or at least by deep spiritual, ideological, and humanitarian values. War-ravaged communities and justified anti-junta forces in Burma urgently need basic physical protection, humanitarian assistance, psychological counselling, and comfort.
Beyond secular frameworks, there is an urgent need for better understanding of and support for those ministering to religious needs, and to the spiritually suffering, offering hope, recovery, and salvation. It would incorporate or complement, rather than supersede, other forms of solidarity and aid.
Please pray for the people of Burma – that resistance groups continue to fight for justice, democracy, and self-determination, and that millions of innocents caught in the crossfire receive much-needed aid and know the love of Jesus Christ.
Thanks and God bless,
Ashley South and the Free Burma Rangers
