What is happening in Myanmar?

By Kay Young

Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s civil war has escalated into its most violent phase in decades. The scale of the conflict is bewildering.

Some 60-200 armed groups are now active, with members in total numbering 150,000-300,000 individuals engaged in the world’s most prolonged revolution.

These insurgents range from small ideologically aligned bands, such as the communist People’s Liberation Army, Baptist Christian fundamentalists like the Free Burma Rangers, and ethno-nationalist narco-armies like the United Wa State Army.

Popular maps depict a neat divide between regime-held territory and rebel zones, but the reality is far messier. Power shifts by the hour: overlapping factions tax, administer, and fight over the same villages, fields and hilltops, creating a fractured landscape of competing authority, a duopoly of violence.

The Armed Forces of Myanmar, the Tatmadaw, does not just govern Myanmar, it owns it. This relationship was famously described by Burmese communist intellectual Thakin Soe as a military-bureaucratic capitalist system, the junta’s fusion of state power and monopoly capital.

Through conglomerates like Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, the military monopolises industries from timber to banking, turning soldiers into stakeholders and generals into corporate leaders.

This system, where profit depends on coercion rather than competition, has hollowed out the economy. Workers face collapsing wages and 300% inflation on basic goods, while the junta and its foreign partners, Singaporean banks, Thai gas traders and Russian arms dealers and so on, continue to extract wealth.

The 2016 election of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy government briefly suggested reform, but the Tatmadaw’s economic empire remained largely unchallenged. Violence against ethnic minorities – the Rohingya genocide, and military campaigns against the Kachin and Karen -continued unabated.

The NLD, completely unable to challenge the junta’s system, instead focused on drawing in foreign investment, while in 2019 Suu Kyi herself famously defended the military at The Hague.

It seems, however, that despite the NLD’s relative passivity, it was still too much for the Tatmadaw to bear, and a coup was launched in 2021, throwing the country into the chaos it finds itself in today.

The civil disobedience movement, launched after the coup, saw an unprecedented general strike led by trade unions, with strikes crippling the junta’s revenue streams.

Meanwhile, decades-old ethnic armed organisations, such as the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, and newer forces like the largely Bamar People’s Defence Forces have escalated offensives, seizing towns and border crossings across the country.

What makes this phase of the conflict distinct is the fragile convergence of urban resistance, coupled with rural and ethnic insurgencies.

In northern Shan state, the Brotherhood Alliance (Ta’ang National Liberation Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and Arakan Army) has routed junta forces, cutting critical trade networks.

In the central Dry Zone, largely ethnic Bamar People’s Defence Forces operate as decentralised militias, blending guerrilla tactics with local self-rule in moments when the Tatmadaw are not present.

Yet between these many groups there exists an uneasy alliance: the National Unity Government (NUG), dominated by Suu Kyi’s exiled NLD, has been completely unable to centralise command, while ethnic minority leaders remain distrustful, prioritising their autonomy over a unified revolutionary programme.

The same is true for many of the distinct Peoples Defence Forces militias, who receive little to no support from this supposed government in exile, instead resorting to crowdfunding and building homemade weapons.

Foreign powers adapt to the chaos. China hedges its bets, balancing ties with the junta and ethnic armed groups to protect infrastructure projects and its southern border. Russia and Pakistan supply the Tatmadaw with weaponsl Thailand profits from migrant labour and border trade; and Western sanctions fail to dent the junta’s financial lifelines. Singaporean banks still process military profits, and Indian firms buy junta-sourced gas.

Throughout the seven decades of this war, the Tatmadaw has repeatedly been described as on the verge of collapse. Its strategy of burning villages, bombing schools, and blocking aid has only deepened resistance.

Today, the Tatmadaw may indeed be weakening as desertions rise and the currency collapses, but it has survived crises before.

Meanwhile, the fractured opposition lacks a unified vision. The NUG clings to a return of pre-coup politics, while many ethnic minority factions demand federalism without an economic alternative.

As Thakin Soe argued, a system built on militarised extraction cannot reform. It must be broken.

And as a frontline Karenni National Defence Force soldier recently told us: “We lost everything bro, our house, job and dreams. Have to fight back (against the) Burma military.”

What unfolds next depends on whether Myanmar’s workers, peasants and ethnic fighters can transform localised resistance into a decisive challenge to the military-bureaucratic capitalist order – or whether fragmentation will prolong the war into its eighth decade. – Globetrotter

Kay Young is a writer and editor at DinDeng journal in Thailand. He has a forthcoming book on Thai revolutionary history with LeftWord Books of India.

The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.

AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama

1. Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
2. Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
3. Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
4. Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
5. Lawan rasuah dan kronisme

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