Author: pstaniland

Lee Bey is a prolific author and photographer of Chicago’s architecture, particularly its South Side (for instance, his book Southern Exposure). He just hosted an interesting WTTW show on the architecture of the South Side that is free to stream here.

At Museum of Contemporary Art.

A thoughtful post on the Nellie massacre 40 years later:

“I was born in Assam and grew up there. Yet, no one in my family or friends told me about Nellie. I read about it much later in my life. It was just not a part of collective memory or dinner table discourse in caste Hindu families in the state. But, I’m sure everyone who lived through the 1980s – our parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts or elder siblings – knew about it. They must have also known who the killers were or who incited them. But, most of them had either crafted a subconscious mental story to rationalise their ignorance or simply dismissed it as a stray local clash.

Everyone was responsible for Nellie, so no one was responsible for Nellie.

But, Nellie didn’t happen in a vacuum”

Coincidence I am sure (especially given the BJP’s take on things):

“The tax department’s action comes weeks after the British broadcaster released a documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots titled “India: The Modi Question”. On January 20, the Central government ordered YouTube and Twitter to take down links sharing the documentary, with officials saying it was found to be “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India” and had “the potential to adversely impact” the country’s “friendly relations with foreign states” and “public order within the country”.”

I was lucky enough to work on a fascinating project about variation in Indian support for insurgent groups in its neighborhood with Avinash Paliwal. The manuscript has just been published in International Studies Quarterly. The abstract is here:

“States support transnational insurgents in an important variety of ways, from highly public efforts to transform the status quo to covert backing with limited ambitions. In this paper, we introduce a new theory to help explain variation in these strategies of external support. We argue that the offensive or defensive goals of state sponsors interact with their fears of escalation to shape how they support armed groups. Four strategies of state sponsorship emerge from different combinations of sponsor goals and escalation fears. We empirically investigate this argument with a unique medium-N study of Indian support and nonsupport for insurgents in South Asia. Based on fieldwork, primary sources, and specialized secondary literature, we uncover a rich landscape of links between India and armed groups in its neighborhood. We show a systematic connection between the strategies of support that India chooses with its aims in supporting rebels and its fears of escalation from doing so. However, there are mispredictions between our theory and empirical reality that we use in the conclusion to suggest new directions for research.”

A grim recent NY Times overview of Sri Lanka’s grinding economic disaster:

“The part of the economic crisis that they have felt deepest was self-inflicted by the government. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president toppled by the protests, banned chemical fertilizers on a whim in the spring of 2021 to push the country into organic farming.

The effect was catastrophic, with the United Nations estimating a 50 percent drop in agricultural production. By the time the government reversed its ban in the face of protests, it had run out of foreign reserves to import fertilizer.”

1. Frontier Myanmar on the Northern Alliance, China, and the broad political-military contours of the war:

“the regime’s overtures appear to have caused a bit of a schism within the FPNCC. The UWSA, NDAA and SSPP have become increasingly open to negotiations with the junta, meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing twice in 2022. The UWSA and NDAA demanded greater autonomy and political recognition of the territories they control, while the SSPP made the slightly stranger request to consolidate all Bamar-majority regions into one state, to put it on an even playing field with the ethnic minority states.

The KIA, which is the second largest force in the FPNCC, has been the main outlier in the other direction. The KIA has openly aligned itself with the National Unity Government, a cabinet appointed by elected lawmakers in defiance of the 2021 coup, and fought alongside People’s Defence Forces against the military.

The KIA has also defied China and the UWSA, declining to attend an FPNCC meeting in Wa State in September last year, citing COVID-19 and heavy fighting”

2. Human Rights Watch on the state of human rights and political repression two years after the coup:

“During expanded military operations, junta forces have been responsible for attacks on civilians that amount to war crimes against ethnic minority populations in Kachin, Karen, Karenni, and Shan States. The military has used “scorched earth” tactics, burning villages in Magway and Sagaing Regions.

The junta has blocked humanitarian aid from reaching millions of displaced people and others at risk in conflict areas. In Rakhine State – where Rohingya have long faced systematic abuse and discrimination that amount to crimes against humanity, including persecution and apartheid – security forces have imposed new restrictions on movement and aid. The restrictions have worsened food and water shortages and increased the risk of preventable diseases and severe malnutrition.”

3. Emily Fishbein in Foreign Policy on how armed groups are pursuing local state-building projects:

“Thantlang’s trajectory reflects a transformation across much of Myanmar, as resistance forces manage to drive the military out of rural areas—despite weapons and funding shortages—and replace its administration with their own. In a paper published last June, independent researchers Naw Show Ei Ei Tun and Kim Jolliffe found that the military had “lost effective control of most of the country” and that resistance groups were able to take responsibility for critical governance functions even in areas where they hadn’t achieved decisive battlefield victory.

In some cases, ethnic armed organizations are expanding public services they already offered in their territories. In others, resistance groups are establishing services from the ground up, with varying degrees of support from the anti-coup National Unity Government, made up of ousted lawmakers, other leaders, and activists. These resistance-led administrations often function in areas of mass displacement and humanitarian need amid ongoing risks of military attacks. Their locally led design carries political significance: Replacing Myanmar’s centralized governance system with a federal model has become a rallying cry for the pro-democracy movement.”

4. Frontier Myanmar (again) on the Arakan Army’s bid to control swathes of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border:

“Seizing Myanmar’s borders with Bangladesh and India has become central to the Arakan Army’s dream of autonomy and has driven its strategy during times of war and peace.”