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Myanmar looks more like ASEAN’s Syria than a democracy-in-waiting
Over the past three years since the Myanmar military seized power, the armed conflicts raging in the country have morphed into a civil war that is both horizontal and vertical, with anti-junta groups fighting for their own interests without a single, unifying vision, and the Rohyinga people still caught in the decades-long genocide perpetrated against them.
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War-torn: A building is left deserted on Sept. 24, 2024 in Lashio in Myanmar's northern Shan State following a bombardment carried out by the junta government’s army. (AFP/Stringer)
A
lmost four years after anti-coup protests engulfed my birthplace, Myanmar under Min Aung Hlaing’s military junta looks more and more like Assad’s Syria in the wake oft he United States’ failed color revolution. The escalating conflict in the ASEAN country has morphed into a brutal civil war.
Over the past year, anti-junta ethic armies have made significant military gains against the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s China- and Russia-backed military junta that seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.
Myanmar’s armed conflicts are, tragically, no longer a simple, binary morality tale of good versus evil. Yes, the Tatmadaw remains the country’s largest armed organization and regularly commits atrocities. On their part, the anti-junta adversaries fighting “the common enemy” also perpetrate their fair share of atrocities against localized “enemy” ethnic populations.
Not all of these groups share an inclusive, democratic vision for the country of 55 million.
In October, Nicholas Koumjian, head of the United Nations Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), wrote that war crimes and crimes against humanity were “being committed with impunity across the country.”
Today, the violence in Myanmar is both vertical (the central state versus the rest of society) and horizontal (internecine ethno-communal conflicts), with different parties spouting political bromides like “democracy” and “revolution” to justify their violent actions.
Take Rakhine state. Civilians from all ethnicities in Rakhine have suffered, but especially vulnerable are the now stateless Rohingya people, who have been directly targeted in a slow genocide for over four decades.
