Five years after beginning its long transition away from military rule, Myanmar is still coping with its inherent geopolitical challenges. In the country's upland border regions, government troops continue to fight sporadically with ethnic Kokang, Shan and Kachin rebels. Protests in the nation's core continue to break out over government resource, land and education policies. However, the most visible of Myanmar's internal conflicts have been the periodic riots carried out by Buddhists against Muslims, particularly the ethnic minority Rohingya.
Since 2010, Myanmar's western state of Rakhine has been the foremost hotbed of Buddhist communal violence against ethnic minority Muslims. The state is divided between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and ethnic Kaman and Rohingya Muslims. Muslims make up around 4 percent of Myanmar's population, but Rakhine state's proximity to Bangladesh, along with population movements under the British Empire, gave it a higher concentration; estimates put the local Rohingya locally at 1 million out of 3 million people.
In Myanmar, politics and power correlate with ethnicity. The population is divided between a number of ethnic groups, with eight officially recognized "national ethnic races" split further into 135 ethnic groups. The Rakhine are officially recognized, but the Rohingya are not. The ethnic Rakhine fear that their political power would slip if the Rohingya minority were granted full rights. Within Myanmar, the ethnic Rakhine thus benefit most from anti-Muslim sentiment.
Putting Buddhism at the root of national identity comes at a cost for the government, as shown by the involvement of Buddhist monks in the 1988 anti-government protests and, especially, the 2007 "Saffron Revolution." The Rohingya issue has also strained Naypyidaw's relations with several Southeast Asian states, particularly Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, as thousands of Rohingya refugees continue to show up on their shores. Moreover, sectarian tension heightens the risk of sparking an Islamist militant backlash. Nonetheless, as Myanmar continues consolidating as a nation, Buddhist nationalism will remain a force to be reckoned with in national politics.
