All Ears to the Ground associated with EAOs have (partial) control of large swathes of territory. 119 Rohingyas in Rakhine State have fallen under the partial control of Arakan Army’s administrative wing, the United League of Arakan. The Arakan Army includes factions that draw on exclusionary Buddhist and ethnic nationalist ideologies that exclude the Rohingya. For Rohingyas, this means continued and increasing taxation, labour extraction and movement restrictions without formal recognition of their citizenship or belonging.120 As such, where stateless communities lack representation and power within the autonomous administrations that govern them, they can find themselves doubly excluded. 5 Countering the conditionalities of IDs through strategic compliance and subversion Conditionalities are often imposed on those applying for citizenship or an improved legal status. ID systems and registration can be imposed in ways that require people to deny their own identity, assume a group identity by which they do not self-identify, or go against the collective strategies of resistance including document refusal. States can compel individuals to go through registration processes by imposing conditions of life on the targeted group that make functioning in society without registration almost impossible. For example, states can curtail movement within or outside of the country for people without IDs, or make access to work, markets and banking contingent on the possession of IDs. In such cases, individual pragmatism comes into conflict with group loyalties. In the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar, accepting an NVC was at times deeply controversial within the Rohingya community, as the scheme was seen as a way to split the community and weaponise the ID system through the denial of recognition of Rohingya group belonging. Nonetheless, the conditions imposed on those without NVCs had become increasingly draconian, meaning that for those Rohingyas who wished to remain within Myanmar and continue to promote the Rohingya cause, NVCs became a necessity.121 Activists in Myanmar sometimes accepted NVCs for the expressed reason that it enabled them to continue their activism, for example, to document and report abuses against Rohingya communities including citizenship violence, or in order to provide vital humanitarian support to members of the community within the country. All the while, they maintained their own Rohingya identity, language and cultural practices as a form of resistance. 122 Likewise, Haqqi Bahram’s work provides examples of how Kurdish people in Syria subverted the meaning of the registration documents that categorised them as ajanib and maktoumeen. Instead of focusing on the systems of discrimination that they held in place, they began to use these documents as a symbol of Kurdish pride and identity.123 He also shows how those who were forced to assume Arab names in order gain the benefits of 119 The extent to which ethnic armed organisations in Myanmar negotiate control over the territory changes daily. However, for more on the development of this ongoing situation, see, ‘Myanmar’s Ethnic Armies Consolidate Strongholds as Junta Weakens, Reports Say’, Reuters (online, 30 May 2024) <https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmarsethnic-armies-consolidate-strongholds-junta-weakens-reports-say-2024-05-30/>, archived at <perma.cc/7E66-H6C3>; David Brenner, ‘Rebel Politics after the Coup: Ethnic Armed Organisations and Myanmar’s Spring Revolution’ (2025) Journal of Contemporary Asia 1. 120 Win and Brinham (n 49). 121 Brinham, Citizenship and Genocide Cards (n 4). 122 ibid. 123 Bahram, Between Home and Exile (n 31) 105. 27