Over the Borderline
Insight Myanmar10 Jun 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.

Episoder(518)

Navigating Rough Waters

Navigating Rough Waters

At a time when corporations, countries, and individuals are speaking out, taking a moral stand, and considering action to support the Burmese people as state-sponsored terror grips their nation, what ...

10 Mar 20211h 6min

Feeding Freedom, Not Fear

Feeding Freedom, Not Fear

A world-renowned expert on Burmese cuisine and author of the best-selling book Mandalay: Recipes and Tales from a Burmese Kitchen, Mi Mi Aye never imagined that one day she might become an activist. B...

7 Mar 20211h 36min

Active Days, Restless Nights

Active Days, Restless Nights

Exhausted from the daily protests and sleeping at a different monastery roof with fellow protesters every night for safety, his face darkened from being out under the hot sun all day, his voice hoarse...

2 Mar 20212h 15min

The Power of Mettā in Action

The Power of Mettā in Action

In looking back at the turbulent recent history of her country, Sayalay Chandadhika, a Burmese Buddhist nun based in Germany, sees a never-ending spiral of destructive patterns that continue to produc...

22 Feb 20211h 34min

Facing Darkness with Light

Facing Darkness with Light

“We are already in the danger. So we don’t care anymore. The dawn won’t be that much darker than the midnight. And we are already in the midnight, so the darkness can’t be much worse. We are at the pe...

16 Feb 202152min

Finding Inner Stability in Troubling Times

Finding Inner Stability in Troubling Times

“The Dhamma is so central to this culture, and [yet] not understood by the people who write about this place in the media from overseas. So all those sorts of things get reported from a vacuum of unde...

6 Feb 20211h 19min

The Mystery of U Lokanatha, Part 1

The Mystery of U Lokanatha, Part 1

Antonio Costanzo and his team may never solve all the mysteries of the life of the great Italian monk U Lokanatha, but they are certainly trying!Even the little we know of U Lokanatha’s spiritual resu...

2 Feb 20211h 8min

From the River Bank of Consciousness

From the River Bank of Consciousness

“And then there was a particular moment in the meditation where it was almost as if awareness separated out from the rest of the objects of consciousness.” So begins David Sudar on sharing about one o...

24 Jan 20211h 21min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
forklart
i-retten
popradet
stopp-verden
aftenpodden-usa
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
rss-gukild-johaug
det-store-bildet
fotballpodden-2
dine-penger-pengeradet
nokon-ma-ga
rss-ness
hanna-de-heldige
aftenbla-bla
frokostshowet-pa-p5
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
e24-podden
rss-utenrikskomiteen-med-bogen-og-grasvik