(iPoster) From Opium to Avocados: Rebel Groups’ Financing Options as Capital Endowments

• In Event: Poster Session: Conflict Processes 1

Abstract

To what extent are rebel groups free to engage in various financing activities? If rebel groups were rational, profit-maximising actors, why don’t they engage in all possible financing options available to them? In this paper, I argue that rebel groups leverage their endowed capital for financing activities to generate necessary revenues for insurgency operations. Rebel capital endowments, such as access to external business elites, arable land, or abundant labour force shape the menu of possible financing options for rebel groups. While market fluctuations and external political risks may rule out different revenue sources, rebel groups can identify and re-develop a different set of financing activities that rely on the same set of rebel-controlled capital as previous activities.

This paper zones in on the political development of the RCSS, an active rebel group in Myanmar, to examine the dynamism in their financing activities and the stable features that underpin these activities. Comparing the RCSS to the MTA, their predecessor group, I find that the narcotics industry and agribusiness, the two business sectors that the MTA and the RCSS respectively rely on for funding, share a common capital endowment in that they exploit the labour structure of their local constituents and the two groups’ access to external business elites for product export. This paper draws from semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with rebel group elites who served in both the RCSS and the MTA collected during research visits to Loi Tai Leng, the RCSS Headquarters.

Author

• Jae Hyun Park, Sogang University