ABSTRACT
This chapter is a detailed study of negotiations held between humanitarians and the KIA from the resumption of fighting in mid-2011 to the present. It also draws on events throughout the armed group’s half-century-long history. This chapter outlines the underlying causes, drivers, and dynamics of the conflict, emphasizing the critical geopolitical and national significance of armed resistance in Kachin State. It then describes the structure of humanitarian negotiations with the KIA and introduces the complex and symbiotic relationship of fear and trust between the ethnic armed group and their constituents. This chapter then examines the particular form of ethnic identity that the KIA leverages and reproduces and details the group’s complex and contradictory relationship with international norms. It also explores how the geopolitical context of the conflict factors into humanitarian negotiations – particularly its significance for both Chinese and Western interests. Finally, this chapter details the complex process of negotiating with the KIA that was interwoven with access negotiations with national authorities, thereby compromising the outcomes of each. It outlines the successes and limitations of the highly coordinated and centralized access strategy adopted by international organizations that sought permission from both parties for a series of aid convoys across frontlines and explores the repeated failure by international humanitarian negotiators to raise protection concerns with the Kachin rebels and the inability of international organizations to develop viable alternatives to negotiation.
