When Does A Dispute ‘Become Ethnic’?

I said I was going to look at a military perspective of the conflict given the bias of my last source, but I found this article along with a couple others, and I'm going to take a quick detour before returning to that.

This article, also written less than a week after the end of the Panglong Peace Conference (which I'll refer to as the PPC from now on) describes a firefight between members of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and those of the Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA). From what I read about the PPC, it seems like one of its primary objectives was to assuage tensions between Tatmadaw and various ethnic groups. But this makes it easy to overlook conflict, such as this one, which occurs without any military instigation or intervention. It also makes me wonder whether solving military--non-military conflicts is the first priority or the only priority of the PPC and ultimately how conflicts involving ethnic groups are going to change as the result of the PPC and related efforts.

One thing I learned about in my searching and reading is the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), which is a coalition of various ethnic groups in Myanmar that acts as a representative for its constituents in negotiations with the government. Some of these ethnic groups are armed and chose not to take part in a nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) made late last year, while others did consent to the NCA. Only those that consented were able to attend the PPC. It is concerning, as well as complicating, to note that both the KNLA and the MNLA are *ceasefire* members of the UNFC (or the political branch of their organizations are).

Lastly, it was very interesting to here the perspective of "an ethnic Karen Dawei resident close to the KNLA" quoted in the article, saying: "this is not ethnic conflict; it was just a land dispute". This brings up the complicated question of how it can be determined whether a dispute between two, armed ethnic groups is or is not an ethnic dispute. It also brings up the question of what the PPC and its proponents are going to focus on in terms of resolving this conflict, and how best to directly strike at the heart of the issue.