Over the Borderline
Insight Myanmar10 Kesä 2025

Over the Borderline

Episode #353: Professor Lahra Smith, a political science professor specializing in East Africa at Georgetown University, argues that Myanmar’s current struggles must be seen within a global framework of colonial legacies, using Sudan as a comparative case. While acknowledging contextual differences, Smith shows how both countries were shaped by British colonial rule that hardened ethnic divisions, created infrastructure disparities, and entrenched political inequalities.

Sudan lies within Africa’s so-called "coup belt," illustrating a broader dissatisfaction with post-colonial governance and foreign interference. Like Myanmar, Sudan has suffered from military coups that initially promised reform but quickly descended into new forms of repression. Smith discusses how colonial policies divided Sudanese society along racial and religious lines, just as British colonialism in Myanmar entrenched ethnic and religious hierarchies that still drive conflict today.

Colonialism’s infrastructural and missionary legacies further marginalized Sudan’s peripheries, fostering grievances that exploded into civil wars and the eventual, troubled independence of South Sudan. Similarly, Myanmar’s marginalized ethnic regions remain flashpoints for conflict. Smith stresses the need to move beyond thinking in terms of static land borders and recognize the deeper regional and cultural continuities that colonial boundaries disrupted.

Ultimately, Smith emphasizes that identities and nations are constantly evolving, and that just drawing new lines on maps to replace the old, artificial, colonial ones will not solve the problems caused by the colonial experience. She stresses that genuine understanding requires recognizing this fluidity.

Jaksot(511)

Cracking the Code

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Silent No More

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The Longyi Revolution and Beyond

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Breaking Ranks

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Caught in the Crossfire

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Episode #273: The 4th International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies (ICBMS), hosted by Chiang Mai University in August 2024, brought together over 800 scholars, activists, and experts to discuss M...

4 Loka 20241h 2min

Hello from the Other Side

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Episode #272: “I didn't want to be in a world where we have to keep watching people struggling for freedom and then getting suppressed and getting their dreams crushed. [In Burma,] it was mostly women...

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