Could Myanmar Come Apart?

Since a military coup in 2021 toppled Myanmar’s democratic government, the country’s army has found itself contending with a tenacious and committed rebel insurgency. The military junta’s opponents are varied and various, including armed organizations representing Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities and militias loyal to the ousted government. Many observers had written off such resistance groups as too fractious and weak to present a genuine challenge to the junta. But that all has changed in recent months. Rebels have been strikingly successful in an offensive against the junta in the northern Shan State—which borders China—called Operation 1027, named for the day it started, October 27, 2023. The offensive has been led by a coalition of ethnic armies called the Three Brotherhood Alliance, made up of the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army.

Thanks to their efforts, the junta is rocking on its heels. The Three Brotherhood Alliance now controls Laukkai, the capital of the Kokang region, and many other towns in Shan State. Trade routes with China and other key arteries remain under rebel control. Critically, Operation 1027 has spurred into action other resistance groups, some independent and some led by the National Unity Government, a shadow administration that includes many supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader who was overthrown by the coup. The junta has lost control of its border crossing with India near Mizoram and is struggling to dominate the heartland region of Mandalay. In Kayah State, the junta is under pressure from the Karenni Army, whereas the People’s Defence Force—an assortment of groups that emerged to resist the junta, which are nominally under the control of the National Unity Government—and the Karen National Liberation Army are harassing the junta in the south Tanintharyi region and the eastern regions bordering Thailand. In the sensitive Rakhine State—ground zero of the genocide against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority between 2016 and 2018—the Arakan Army broke a tenuous two-year cease-fire that it had signed with Myanmar’s army and struck at their positions. 

The junta is on the back foot in most parts of the country. These rebel offensives have proved so effective that Myanmar’s president warned in November that the country risks “breaking apart.” Out of desperation, Myanmar’s army has become increasingly violent. Beijing’s struggle to broker a fresh cease-fire between the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the junta led an irate Naypyidaw to launch punitive aerial strikes against civilians and insurgents alike. Even after a cease-fire agreement was signed in January 2024, the junta continued to breach it, according to the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. Such collective punishment, though par for the course for the junta, continues to cement Naypyidaw’s territorial and political losses. Morale in the army appears low, and unsurprisingly, the violence has triggered a fierce debate among Myanmar watchers about the country’s future. 

From Naypyidaw’s view, Myanmar’s odds of breaking into ethnic statelets is real. Such a scenario could play out regardless of the junta’s survival. But the defeat and ouster of the junta altogether cannot be discounted either. From the perspective of the motley resistance, Myanmar could be on the cusp of rewriting its social contract along federal lines. The resilience, coordination, tactical innovation, and strategic gains of the resistance are unprecedented. The offensive took months of planning, and the coordination among disparate groups inspires hope that the country could reach a model of interethnic unity framed by federalism. Myanmar’s future will be determined as much by the success of the resistance as by the underlying social and economic realities that broke the union in the first place. 

DRUGS AND SCAMS

The 2021 coup ended a decade-long experiment with democracy. In ousting Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, the coup’s architect, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, miscalculated on two counts. He underestimated the deep sense of attachment that Myanmar’s youth had to the freedoms they experienced between 2011 and 2021. During those years, majoritarianism marred the country’s incipient democracy and the military largely dominated the parliament, but most people viewed democratization as a work in progress and wanted it to continue. By launching a coup, Min Aung Hlaing stripped an entire generation of a dream and drove away the very social base he needed to preserve power. For decades, ethnic militias had been fighting the Burmese government, which has been dominated by the majority Bamar group. But after the 2021 coup, even people from the Bamar heartland joined ethnic militias or launched their own armed organizations, resistance groups that are at the forefront of the current offensive.

When the junta toppled Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 and plunged the country into chaos, it assumed that the ethnic armed organizations would quickly sue for peace. Myanmar’s army believed it could compel them into submission because it was stronger and willing to use indiscriminate force, while the ethnic armies were fractured and had little foreign support. The junta still uses artillery and aerial bombardment to soften resistance strongholds without regard for civilian casualties and displacement of whole communities. In regions where it is stretched thin, the junta hires private militias and border guard forces to attack resistance fighters and terrorize civilians. Such proxies are paid using cash generated from the regional drug trade and by turning a blind eye to vast illicit enterprises, such as centers for online gambling and Internet scams that target people in China. The excesses of one such scam center at the Chinese border in Kokang helped trigger Operation 1027. These scam centers keep Chinese nationals hostage for forced labor—including cleaning, cooking, and sex work—and drain billions of dollars from the Chinese economy. On October 20, guards shot at dozens of hostages trying to escape, killing several, some of whom were undercover Chinese agents. The Three Brotherhood Alliance took this event as an opportunity to launch Operation 1027, promising to “clean up” all such scam centers in Kokang.   

The junta was wrong to assume that ethnic armies would crumble under pressure. In fact, the 2021 coup exacerbated ethnic minority anxieties and pushed even signatories of the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement—signed by Naypyidaw and nearly ten different rebel groups—to the jungles. The coup birthed a rare consensus in the resistance that the only way to liberate Myanmar from the military was to rid the country of the junta by force, as opposed to a nonviolent approach previously embraced by some groups, including the Karen National Union and the Chin National Front. And such a defeat seems plausible for the first time since 1949, when the Burmese army lost control of the major city of Mandalay and the town of Pyin Oo Lwin to the military arm of the Karen National Union. This is because, in addition to uniting the resistance, the coup has also debilitated Myanmar’s army.  

Myanmar’s army views itself as the vanguard of Burman-Buddhist nationalism. In the aftermath of the coup, it witnessed a closing of ranks among its top brass, even including reformists who had supported political and economic liberalization during the prior decade. But as Myanmar’s civil war expanded, the army’s soldiers began losing faith in their commanders. The rank and file began defecting en masse, and 13,000 to 15,000 troops in Myanmar’s army were killed within two years of the coup (the figure is higher today). The junta remains unpopular, hindering its ability to recruit. In trying to please its senior ranks, the army has allowed officers to benefit from criminal enterprises—the army helps preside over Myanmar’s licit and illicit economies. But in turning a blind eye to corruption, the army has undermined its system of command and control, lowered morale, and caused high casualties. Although the military’s collapse is not imminent, the coup has significantly reduced its political, military, and economic power.  

REBELS WITH A CAUSE

The resistance groups say they want to do more than just defeat the junta—they have declared that they will also remake Myanmar as a federal democracy, bestowing equal rights to all communities regardless of their ethnic, religious, or racial configurations. Even though the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the National Unity Government are not formal allies, their willingness to coordinate military action can be seen as an example of the kind of cooperation necessary to build a federal republic. And there are signs that other militias are getting over internecine conflicts and aligning against the junta. In November, the Restoration Council of Shan State and the Shan State Progressive Party, two warring groups, signed a cease-fire. The Shan State Progressive Party had been resisting the junta since 2014, while the Restoration Council of Shan State had maintained channels with Naypyidaw. But the success of Operation 1027 left the Restoration Council isolated with little choice but to make peace with the resistance.  

Myanmar’s resistance has little regional diplomatic support and cannot expect meaningful help from outside the country. The only way to overpower the junta is to transcend divisions and exploit the junta’s own internal crises. Resistance groups have silently and effectively revamped coordination mechanisms. They have built bodies—the Central Command and Coordination Committee and Joint Command and Coordination Committee—to ensure that militias and ethnic armies can work together more closely and effectively. Through these organizations, different groups brainstorm tactics and coordinate military action. The National Unity Government has formed a committee to support coordination with the Three Brotherhood Alliance to plan attacks, train new recruits, and supply weapons and aid. To encourage defections from Myanmar’s army, the National Unity Government has built camps that help defectors transition to civilian life. In Kawlin, a town in the central district of Sagaing that recently fell to the National Unity Government, political prisoners have been freed, and food and medical deliveries have resumed. Similarly, the Arakan Army has established parallel governance systems in areas under its control. It has built courts, policing mechanisms, and medical clinics, and it allows aid agencies to operate on the ground, demonstrating an ability to govern. And it offers aid to both Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims, indicating a commitment to federal principles. 

The junta is the weakest it has ever been.

But this federal dream faces two challenges: the resurgence of interethnic tensions and the entrenchment of drugs and illicit trade in Myanmar. Take, for example, the unease most resistance groups feel when it comes to including the Rohingya. The Arakan Army, which has promised to rehabilitate the Rohingya community, many of whose members have fled the country, has not recruited a single Rohingya despite being avowedly secular. In fact, the Arakan Army occupies properties that previously belonged to the Rohingya. Similarly, there is suspicion among minority communities that the National Unity Government could return to the Buddhist-Bamar majoritarianism that characterized Aung San Suu Kyi’s rule. Such mistrust has prevented the Three Brotherhood Alliance from accepting the National Unity Government’s leadership, military coordination notwithstanding. These tensions could easily flare to unwind the partnership. 

Resource distribution is another point of tension. The desire for autonomy among minority communities is not just political, it is also economic. A functioning federal union would need to dole out limited resources equitably. Like the junta, the resistance is steeped in the drug trade and does not have means to generate mass employment. Fights over resources could propel different ethnic outfits to practice protectionism when the war ends, leading to second-order frictions and possibly breaking Myanmar into ethnic statelets akin to the situation that prevails in Wa State. Though the state is nominally part of Myanmar, the Wa have their own political structures, use the Chinese renminbi instead of the kyat, and have a separate armed force. Their quasi-sovereign existence is guaranteed by China and could serve as a model for future ethnic statelets that may emerge from Myanmar’s ruins. But such dependence on China will undermine the federal model. It is not in Beijing’s interest to have a coherent federal democracy in its backyard. China will likely play one group against another in order to maintain its leverage within Myanmar. 

The current moment is, arguably, the most sensitive in Myanmar’s modern history. The junta is the weakest it has ever been, and the resistance has made unprecedented territorial, political, and military gains. The various resistance groups will need to negotiate settlements among themselves to ensure that a potential post-junta Myanmar does not descend into a civil war, as happened in Afghanistan when its government collapsed in the 1990s. To avoid Afghanistan’s fate, Myanmar’s resistance should take a page from the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, which put a premium on national reconciliation over centralizing power. Only then will Myanmar have a fighting chance of emerging as a federal democracy.