One of the Deadliest Conflicts in the World: Myanmar

It was Monday, February 1, 2021. Fitness instructor Khing Hnin Wai was on a mission…to prepare for a dance competition by doing exercises in front of a street in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar’s capital. But what was supposed to be an ordinary exercise video turned out to be something quite extraordinary- she might’ve been performing the ‘warrior’ pose, but armored vehicles full of real warriors were just a few hundred meters behind her. Her video, which accidentally captured the first moments of Myanmar’s military coup in 2021, went viral after she posted it on Facebook- and for good reason. 

Since that fateful day, Myanmar’s citizens have been plunged into a regime of terror and authoritarianism. When Myanmar’s military-aligned party, the USDP, lost a majority of seats in the 2020 democratic elections, they launched a coup against Aung San Suu Kyi [aw-ng sahn soo chee], Myanmar’s main opposition leader, who was scheduled to take office. But we’ll get to that in a second. First, we need to understand the scope of one of Myanmar’s deadliest conflicts to date. 

Myanmar’s civil war has already killed 50,000 people, including nearly 8,000 civilians. Over 26,500 people- mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and everyone in between- have been detained for opposing the military regime, known as the junta [huhn-tah]. Out of 55 million people living in the country, 2.6 million people have been displaced- often repeatedly, as the military has made it a disturbing habit to bomb and raid refugee camps- and 18 million are in need of humanitarian assistance. Countless others are under the grip of conflict between ethnic militias and the junta or under direct control of the authoritarian military itself. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks over 50 of the most intense conflicts across the world, says that Myanmar is the most violent of all of them. 

This conflict may not be as well known or as well covered by international media as the wars in Ukraine, Israel, or even in Sudan. But, that doesn’t mean we should neglect them altogether- rather, it means reading this article could, and should, shed some much-needed light on a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. 

A History of Failure

We’ll begin at the dawn of British imperialism in Burma. Like nearly all other colonies, this colony was carved up without any regard to the original ethnic boundaries that existed far before the British came. That already created huge potential for conflict, as ethnic minorities were at risk of persecution. And indeed, that is precisely what happened. Besides the ethnic majority, the Bamar, for whom the country Burma is named, there are 134 other ethnic groups that are officially recognized. 

Burma was ruled similarly to any other British colony, exploited for its labor and natural resources and ruled over by British governors until it was captured by Japan during the Second World War. 

Eventually, with help from conscripted men from other British colonies, the Allies were able to retake Burma from the Japanese. But the war took its toll on Burma, and in the wake of the war, with British resources stretched thin and facing rebuilding Southeast Asia, the British decided to grant Burma, Malaysia, and Singapore independence.

As was the case with Malaysia, a democracy was founded in Burma with a parliamentary system of government based off of the United Kingdom. Unlike Malaysia, which had remained somewhat untouched by the war, Burma and Singapore both remained devastated by the fight between the Japanese and the British. This made both regions much more unstable, and led to both taking nearly opposite paths.

Myanmar has many ethnic groups, most of which are indigenous, the largest being the Bamar group. In order to reconcile tensions of minority groups in Singapore with the majority Chinese population, Lee made public housing subsidized and intentionally made different races live together. This largely led to the formation of a Singaporean identity which included people of all three groups.

Ne Win took a very contrary approach when compared to Singapore. Before the coup, which happened in about as clean a way as a coup possibly can, ethnic groups often formed militias which advocated for their cause. Declaring a socialist regime in Burma based on the Soviet model, Ne Win had little time for minorities, whether ethnic or otherwise, and put down protests to his newfound rule with an iron fist.

This is an extremely important difference between the histories of Myanmar and Singapore: Singapore worked to reduce racial differences, Burma worked to suppress them. The Communist regime in Burma nationalized all major industries, and put them to work for the interests of the majority Bamar people. Almost immediately, ethnic Chinese began to leave the country, as they were no longer free to pursue what they wanted under the Communist regime.

What Ne Win quite possibly forgot here was that China was his main ally. Relations with China, which had been strong before (at least ostensibly) began to crumble. Economic security also suffered due both to Chinese support drying up and Ne Win’s lack of sensible economic policy. Ne Win, along with many other Communist leaders throughout the 20th century, pushed Myanmar towards a policy of self sufficiency, attempting to isolate itself from the entire world.

In addition, he made policies which were largely unpopular with the Burmese people; as a continuation of his goal to stifle ethnic resistance, he ordered that certain denominations of Burmese currency cease to be legal tender. On the advice of an astrologer who told him that the number nine was unlucky, he made a similar decree with currency which had a value divisible by nine. 

This did two things to Burma’s economy: it made it extremely unstable, as entire portions of the currency in circulation being declared insolvent at random times tends to do, and caused wide-scale unrest. Both, along with the policy of isolationism he pursued, contributed to the Burmese economy crashing in the late 1960s.

Burmese people were upset with the failure of their government, and protested numerous times throughout the 1970s and 80s. In what became known as the 8888 Uprising, the protests in 1988 posed a serious threat to the Burmese government. In an action which was almost certainly orchestrated by Ne Win himself, the head of the military, Saw Maung, managed to put down the uprisings.

This created a power dynamic new to Burma, one similar to the one experienced by Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan, the dynamic perfected by Hannibal and later described by Machiavelli: a dynamic where keeping the military happy is the sole factor in the failure or success of a leader. The Burmese military, more commonly known as the junta, was the key to maintaining the system first established by Ne Win. In that system, the way to power is to suppress the minority groups who will always hate the government.

Despite the junta remaining in power after the uprising, the end of Communist rule in 1988 meant that Burma was now, at least technically, a democracy. The 1990 elections saw the National League for Democracy, a political party formed after the 8888 Uprising, win the majority of seats in Parliament and therefore the right to form a government. However, the junta refused to let them do so, and a number of officials in the NLD were imprisoned or placed under house arrest. Some, however, escaped arrest, forming the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma in exile. Based in a small town in Maryland, the NCGUB claimed to be the legitimate government of Burma.

The military continued to rule with an iron fist for around two decades before changes were made. 

In 2011, Burma underwent unprecedented reforms: Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and NLD politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, was freed from prison, government salaries were raised in order to reduce workers’ dependence on bribes, and a civilian government which shared power with the military was finally formed.

As a result, many countries began to lift sanctions on Myanmar. US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even visited Yangon. 2015 saw the nation’s first free and fair elections, in which the NLD won a supermajority, and thus Aung San Suu Kyi became the first State Counsellor of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (a position equivalent to a Prime Minister). Thus, the transition of Myanmar to democracy was widely considered to be successful.

Unfortunately, however, the lack of control over the military remained even under civilian government. Since 1982, the minority Rohingya ethnic group has been denied Burmese citizenship, making many of them stateless. In 2017, the junta tried to eliminate the group from Myanmar entirely, burning down villages and indiscriminately killing people of the Muslim-majority ethnic group.

Many Rohingya fled Myanmar to Bangladesh, where they were put in camps by the overwhelmed Bangladeshi government. Thus, the world was able to see exactly what the junta had done, and how ineffective the government of Suu Kyi was in keeping the military in check. Worse, she even defended the military when the International Court of Justice accused it of genocide, showing just how much the military could control her actions. She was playing a dangerous balancing act, effectively walking across a tightrope by balancing democratic reform with the Machiavellian nature of Burmese politics.

Her wrong step came when she didn’t rig an election. In the 2020 elections, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a proxy for the junta, suffered a huge loss. In response, the junta launched a coup by detaining Suu Kyi and accusing her of corruption and violating COVID lockdown. The junta was now, once again, in control.

Myanmar Under the Junta

Today, that same military junta rules Myanmar with an unyielding hand. Min Aung Hlaing, an army general who orchestrated the coup, has been in power ever since. While little is known about their actual intentions, it’s assumed that the military carried out the coup to reassert their longstanding power over the country after their overwhelming loss in the 2020 elections. Basically, they got jealous that someone else got a turn in politics. Another theory by some political analysts subscribes to the more personal notion that the general, Min Aung Hlaing, would’ve been forced by Aung San Suu Kyi to retire earlier than he intended (because of the country’s mandatory retirement age and her refusal to raise it). 

The resistance against this coup is widespread, and growing stronger by the day. First, and foremost, Aung San Suu Kyi and her associates have formed the National Unity Government, a sort of shadow government that most of the world recognizes as the legitimate leaders of Myanmar. They’ve raised, as of only last year, over $100 million to fund its fight for democracy against the military junta. But they’re not fighting alone. To give them military support, over 20 ethnic militias have reformed across the nation, some with as many as 30,000 reservists. Together, they’ve recently formed three main militia coalitions that have reclaimed more land than since the coup first broke out. 

In 2023, this alliance (named the Three Brotherhood Alliance) of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, Ta’Ang National Liberation Army, and the Arakan Army launched coordinated assaults on military outposts in the outskirts of the country- an offensive codenamed ‘Operation 1027’. While this is only one subset of a larger coalition of 7 ethnic armed forces (we never said the rebel situation in Myanmar was simple!), together, they’ve forced coup generals back from 86% of the country’s territory and freed 67% of Myanmar’s population.

“Resistance to junta control remains strong, widespread, and deeply entrenched.”

• Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), 2024

The resistance is gaining power particularly around Myanmar’s international borders; out of the 51 townships that share a border with other countries, the SAC-M estimates only one was under stable junta control. Within junta territories, over 100,000 civil servants have refused to turn up for work, as a civil disobedience campaign mounts against the regime. Still, the only thing that defines non-junta controlled territories is, as the NYT writes in April, a “kaleidoscopic array of competing influences, fiefs, democratic havens, and drug-lord hideouts.” 

But all of these developments are easy to discover from a quick skim through Al-Jazeera or the NYT. Next, we’ll explain the hidden sides to this war- the illegal drug trade, the growing influence of cyber scams, some subtly sinister Chinese influence, and the drive for rare earth minerals (or REM’s). 

An Unusual Economy

Today, both the military junta and the ethnic militias still needs to make money, because if they are not able to pay their members, neither side can survive. Thus, they get most of their money from three sources: drugs, scams, and/or rare earth minerals.

Opium

Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s opium and heroin production and exports have skyrocketed, making Myanmar the #1 opium producer in the world, even more than Afghanistan. From 2022 to 2023, the amount of land used to grow opium increased 18%, to 47,100 hectares. That is a lot of opium. There are a few reasons for this; in general, opium production in Southeast Asia has tended to be linked to governance disruption that prevents law enforcement, and above all, the need for money for impoverished farmers. Some of the largest opium growers in the country are in northeastern Myanmar, where ethnic militia fighting has been historically the most concentrated and they’ve been exercising minimal government control. 

Worse, however, is the fact that some ethnic militias are so starved of funds that they’ve begun partnering with the drug trade to stay afloat. The cost of democracy is indeed steep.

Cybercrime

The utter lack of government and chaos in the country has also been the perfect breeding ground for cyber scam centers stretching across the region. Focused on scamming people around the world out of their life savings, crime groups have found a home in Myanmar after China and some Southeast Asian countries began cracking down on them. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated last year that over 200 thousand people have been illegally trafficked to and from Myanmar and Cambodia for online scams. 

Conditions in these cybercrime centers are downright life-threatening, with credible reports of threats of sexual violence or forced organ removal. These scam centers are often run by sub-branches of the Myanmar military, including the Border Guard Forces, or BGFs. However, these regions of confusing authority structures make enforcing the rule of law nearly impossible, allowing scam centers to thrive in their midst. 

With continued political instability, China is finally getting involved. While it initially described its neighbor’s military coup as ‘a major cabinet reshuffle’ and has continued to sell their military government weapons, China’s ultimate goal is still to have a stable Myanmar state. China is growing increasingly impatient with the military’s failure to ensure that stability, so it’s taking matters into its own hands. The silliest way they’ve done so is authorize a massive PR campaign, and greenlight movies that depict the dangers of Southeast Asian scams. They’ve also issued arrest warrants for government-linked militia officials that they believe are involved in scams, arresting 11 officials in one sweep in October. With these measures, Beijing is sending Myanmar a message that their acceptance of cyber scams will not be tolerated. 

In response, the junta did…nothing! Even as China has upped the stakes in this standoff, the junta has promoted public protests. Finally, China used its massive influence over the Wa and Mong La regions in Northern Shan State to expel over a 1000 people linked to scams. After they arrested top Wa officials and their relatives, the Wa raided 40 scam compounds. Still, the central junta has failed to act, continuing to stand by as the BGFs scam innocent people out of their money. This is yet another reason ethnic militias are using to justify their fight against the junta, targeting scams with Operation 1027. 

Rare Earth Minerals

But Myanmar has proven to have hidden economic gems. Especially for a nation like China, rare earth minerals (REMs) are a key resource. Myanmar is the largest producer of REMs on the face of the Earth, and many of these minerals are needed in green technologies, particularly in electric cars.

Electric cars are perhaps China’s most unusual economic and geopolitical tool, as failing markets in China and a workforce facing large-scale unemployment have meant that the government is subsidizing its EV market to the point that they are impossibly cheap in a free market, removing the ability for Western companies to compete.

Myanmar is a good source for China especially, because while open mines with literal slaves working in them is a bit of a problem for Western companies, it’s not for China. Thus, it uses Myanmar as the source for its REMs. Since the 2021 coup, exports of REMs to China have more than doubled, as mining operations have become virtually unregulated under the junta.

China doesn’t want the junta, because the drugs it produces and scams it operates hurt Chinese interests. However, they also don’t want to see a government such as that in Thailand, Malaysia, or especially Singapore, as a democratic, Western-friendly democracy will not allow dangerous mining practices just to make more money.

Thus, China is doing everything it can to intervene directly in Myanmar, not in the junta’s interests, but not in the opposition’s interests either. China is acting in its own interests, and is doing everything it can to get so much influence in Myanmar that it can effectively treat it as a colony, exploiting the Burmese people to serve its own interests.

The Uncertain Future

The junta is not very good at running a country. One in four Burmese faces starvation, and that number is likely to rise as conflict gets worse and climate change makes the environment more and more inhospitable. Even the junta itself is virtually falling apart; individual members are leaving the junta in droves, causing the junta to introduce conscription that could indeed prove counterproductive as new draftees often don’t have allegiance to the military. That problem pales in comparison to mutiny, which is more and more common on a larger scale than individuals. Ethnic armies which were formerly part of the junta are declaring their own intentions. Armies like the Wa state or the Karen National Liberation Army now control much of Myanmar.

China supports many of these groups and blackmails others, perhaps thinking that they will be able to promote their interests in the areas these groups conquer. It backmails others, particularly the Wa State, to do what it wants. It will likely continue to do so as much as it can, as these strategies actually do seem to be working.

The fighting cannot last forever, as neither the junta nor the armies it fights against has the resources to keep fighting much longer. The conflict is likely to end relatively soon for this reason; the question, therefore, is what Myanmar will look like when the fighting ends.

The future is particularly looking grim for the military junta. It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that they’ll be able to recapture lost land because as control slips of these regions, so does political power. They already are losing massive public support as is, and maintaining the fight against dozens of extra militias is draining them of money as well. 

The best case scenario is that Myanmar can somehow do what Singapore did in the 1960s: rebuild itself to become a strong, resilient country with a stable economy. The Singapore model shows this may be possible, and is probably Myanmar’s best hope for prosperity. A Burmese Lee Kuan Yew could potentially ease ethnic tensions while rooting out drugs and freeing up the economy, but this could be more difficult than it was even in Singapore.

As the war which has destroyed Myanmar has been fought along ethnic lines, the conflict between ethnic groups will be extremely hard to overcome. Since drugs are actually manufactured in Myanmar rather than being transported through it, the hangman’s noose might not be as effective. This is especially true given the corruption which any future government in Myanmar will inevitably face. REMs could also become a curse as they inspire both conflict and the opportunity for exploitation by actors both domestic and foreign.

While China stands the best chance of being able to end the war by eroding the factions that fight it, it also is far from benevolent, and prioritizes its own interests over anything else. China wants to see a regime in Myanmar that benefits it, and it will be hard to prevent them from setting one up. Chinese influence will be a force to be reckoned with; Beijing is already sowing the seeds of its influence, and once the war ends, fruit potentially poisonous to any anti-China Burmese government will blossom.

This all, of course, assumes a government will take power which will even attempt to help the Burmese people. It is not hard to imagine that whoever leads Myanmar next will care far less for human rights and democracy than for control and power.

Digging Myanmar out of poverty and despair will be extremely difficult no matter how one does it, but as the failure of the past government shows, a Singaporean model is likely their best hope. In the two countries where it has been tried since the days of Lee, El Salvador and Rwanda, the standard of living has grown immensely for most. As such, both have approval ratings north of 90%. Unfortunately, the checks and balances of democracy prevent progress from happening quickly. Myanmar will need these changes to happen quickly if the failures of the last government are to be avoided.

What is sure is that any government, whether it is based on the Western or Singaporean model, will need strong support from the international community in order to succeed. As a sovereign nation, Myanmar has a right to decide its own future, independent of other countries, and, most importantly, independent of China. It is essential that the world support them in that quest.