Ka Kwe Ye to Border Guard Force : Proxy of Violence in Myanmar

Militia has been playing a crucial role in supporting the Tatmadaw in doing its duty, particularly domestic security role.Burmese authority formed the Ka Kwe Ye (KKY) in the 1960s to combat the ethnic insurgents and later the communist rebels in the country.In 2009, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) of Myanmar formulated the Border Guard Force (BGF) programme to include formally former ethnic insurgents into Tatmadaws structure.Study on government-sponsored militia in Myanmar is mainly still underdeveloped, though previous discussion on the internal armed conflicts in the country occasionally included a brief discussion on the role of the militia in conflicts.Furthermore, existing literature provided little discussion on government-sponsored militia utility in the postdemocratization period, though studies on civil war and postconflict circumstance have been extensively done.This article elaborates KKY and BGF in order to identify the use of government-sponsored militia in Myanmar.The paper argues that Myanmar political liberalization and incorporation of government-sponsored militia into the official structure of military failed to diminish the use of the auxiliary force as proxy of violence.