As Myanmar’s civil war enters its fifth year next month, the conflict has claimed more than 50,000 lives, including several thousand civilians. The fighting has displaced some 3.3 million of Myanmar’s 54 million people. Worsening their plight, a massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the country on March 28, killing more than 3,600 people and leaving a wave of destruction.
Where is the troubled, multiethnic Southeast Asian state, once known as Burma, headed now?
What are the origins of the war, and what is the situation now?
Why We Wrote This
Last month’s earthquake in Myanmar drew rare attention to the troubled Southeast Asian nation, where a brutal military junta is fighting a broad range of ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy. Peace does not appear to be around the corner.
A former British colony, Myanmar won its independence in 1948. The military seized power in a 1962 coup and has mostly ruled the country since then, while battling ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy.
In 1990, the first democratic elections since the coup saw a landslide win for the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of a prominent independence leader.
Threatened by the NLD’s popularity, the junta placed Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest before the vote and refused to recognize its results. In the next competitive national election, 25 years later in 2015, the NLD and Ms. Suu Kyi won again, forming a power-sharing arrangement with the junta.
But in February 2021, not long after the NLD’s November 2020 election victory, the junta staged a coup, arresting Ms. Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders and declaring a state of emergency.
Massive popular protests erupted, which the junta, led by Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, brutally suppressed. According to the United Nations, the junta has arrested more than 26,000 people since the coup and more than 1,800 have died in military jails, where torture is pervasive.
Despite the crackdown, opposition to the junta mounted. In April 2021, pro-democracy protesters joined former government officials and ethnic minority groups to form the shadow National Unity Government. To fight the junta, the NUG formed an armed wing, the People’s Defense Force, in May 2021 – marking the start of the civil war.
Over the years, the PDF, together with several ethnic armies, has made gains against the junta on the ground. At the end of last year, the military controlled an estimated 21% of Myanmar’s territory, while the rebel forces and ethnic armies held 42%, according to a BBC investigation.
“Since October of 2023, you have seen the pace of the junta’s decline speed up pretty dramatically,” says Jason Tower, a researcher at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Short of troops, the junta activated mandatory conscription last year, even forcibly recruiting hundreds of Rohingya Muslims – an ethnic group whose members have long been persecuted, killed, and denied citizenship by the junta.
The military still controls national airspace and conducts frequent bombing raids, which has allowed the government to keep rebel forces at bay.
How has the civil war affected relief efforts after the March 28 earthquake?
Both resistance forces and the government announced unilateral ceasefires in response to the earthquake, although reports indicate the junta has continued bombing strikes, hampering relief work. The government has also sought to control where aid workers can go to distribute relief supplies.
“The military is preoccupied with saving itself and fighting its opponents and the wider population,” says Morgan Michaels, a research fellow for Southeast Asian security and defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “It’s extremely limited in terms of resources.”
Indeed, the junta’s rapid call for international help after the earthquake, which shut down the capital of Naypyitaw, is a further indication of its weakened state. “It shows just how vulnerable it is and how little capacity it has to respond,” says Mr. Michaels.
The United Nations and several countries – including China, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the United States – have provided financial assistance or sent rescue teams, pulling several hundred survivors from the rubble. Search-and-rescue efforts ended in mid-April.
The earthquake exacerbated the humanitarian disaster in Myanmar, a country already in economic ruin due to poor government by the military and the civil war. Over 18 million of Myanmar’s people needed humanitarian aid, and 15 million lacked secure sources of food when the earthquake struck, according to U.N. data. Half lived below the poverty line, a sharp increase since 2021.
Is there any hope for peace on the horizon?
The best prospect for peace, experts say, would require Myanmar’s military junta to weaken so badly as to be ready to strike a deal with the armed ethnic groups and resistance forces arrayed against it.
“Some form of a political resolution is most likely,” says Mr. Tower, an expert in Southeast Asian security issues. “When do you reach the point where the military is going to make some concessions, and when the leader is feeling enough pressure to look for an exit?”
Another key question is what role China will play. “This is a test of China’s ability to influence the outcome of the conflict,” Mr. Tower says.
Beijing has attempted repeatedly to negotiate ceasefires, in part because it wants to avoid regime collapse in Myanmar, which shares a 1,300-mile border with China.
“If there is a viable alternative to central authority that could assume power – whether it comes in after the center is toppled or by a negotiated settlement – I think China can live with that,” Mr. Michaels says.
