tributed) immigration of the Rohing

tributed) immigration of the Rohingyas from the Indian region. The Rohingya conflict, similarly to
the conflict between the Karen and the government and the dispute between the KNA and the
DKBA, also has an explicit religious dimension.
And although it is mainly language and also religion that are central criteria dividing the different
ethnic groups, language is hardly relevant in the conflicts and religion plays a role only infrequently.
Although the linguistic/religious differences primarily serve to define the participants from the ethnic
groups and although the linguistic/religious centralization policies of the Burmese government represent
an important original factor in the genesis of the ethno-nationalist conflict scenario,
alongside political exclusion and economic deprivation of the minorities, in this conflict scenario
language and religion are not generally considered direct and independent subjects of conflict. The
long history of conflict in Burma rooted in the pre-modern era (Taylor 2007) and shaped in the colonial
days by Great Britain's policy of "divide et impera“ (Smith 2007), has thus become, with its
different facets, an independents subject of conflict and a focal point for collective identities. The
length and intensity of the history of conflict thus serves to superimpose a historicist dimension on
the original reasons behind the conflict.
This had finally gone so far that in Myanmar – and here parallels can be drawn, for example with
Sri Lanka – the conflict history is no longer only a matter of debate but also a self-perpetuating
reason for the conflicts. The original reasons for the conflict have faded – the conflict scenario has
become a self-referential, "autopoeitic" structure, as it were.
5.3 Counterexamples: conflict management at the regional level and the
mediation of cultural conflicts in Malaysia and Singapore
Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia illustrate the profound identity-related conflicts in Southeast Asia
that are often extremely resistant to de-escalation efforts. They are representative of the central
importance of language, religion and/or historicity for inter-cultural conflicts in the region. They represent
the deviant constellations caught up in the conflict over culture and identity.
That said, there are also counterexamples. We encounter some of them in the societies mentioned
– for example, the successful accommodation of cultural differences between members of central
Thai culture and the Khmer- or Lao-speaking cultural groups in Eastern and Northern Isaan
(Brown, 1994).
There are also examples at the interstate level, yet, as indicated above, conflicts in the region are
primarily domestic disputes: 74 percent of all conflicts and even 94 percent of all cultural conflicts
in Southeast Asia are conducted within states. This is a first indication that the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations – originally conceived as a security association of several Southeast
Asian nations and founded in 1967 at the height of the second Indochina conflict – has proven to
be extraordinarily successful in conflict prevention and resolving conflicts between the members of
the Association.
This is all the more remarkable given that in this culturally diverse region there is diverse potential
for inter-state or transnational conflicts including conflicts over identity. Over four decades after the
founding of ASEAN there are unresolved conflicts between the member states: On the whole, they
revolve around issues regarding the correct demarcation of borders (e.g., along the land and sea