As of: February 2, 2024, 7:58 a.m
By: Sven Hauberg
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Resistance fighters in the north of Myanmar (archive photo): The rebels already control half of the country.
© STR/AFP
In 2021, the military seized power in Myanmar, and since then a civil war has been raging in the Asian country.
The world watches helplessly.
It was a coup with its own soundtrack.
In the early hours of February 1, 2021, an electropop song plays over a street corner in the center of Myanmar's test-tube capital Naypyidaw, fitness trainer Khing Hnin Wai performs her aerobics program to the pumping beats.
This goes on for a minute and a half, with a barrier in the background, the multi-lane road leading to the Asian country's parliament.
Then black armored vehicles roll into the picture from the right – the military coup, live and in color.
All of this can be seen in a video that the fitness trainer uploads to the Internet on the same day and which will be clicked millions of times.
The coup in Myanmar is suddenly no longer just a topic on the
Tagesschau
, but also on TikTok.
That was three years ago, and the question is how firmly the military junta is still in the saddle.
Richard Horsey, Myanmar expert at the US think tank Crisis Group, believes that the collapse of the regime is unlikely, but also says: "Based on the events of the last few months, this must now be considered as a possibility." Because in the last few months In the last few months, uprisings against the junta have broken out across the country, and Myanmar is in the midst of a civil war that, according to the United Nations, has left 2.6 million people displaced within their own country.
According to the UN, almost 19 million people are dependent on aid deliveries.
There is no reliable information about the number of dead and injured, but the human rights organization Human Rights Watch speaks of “mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as arbitrary arrests and detentions”.
“Operation 1027”: Insurgents celebrate success against Myanmar’s military rulers
There have been uprisings against the military in Myanmar since the generals abruptly brought an end to the decade-long democratic spring in the country in 2021.
The background: In 2015, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the parliamentary majority in the first free elections, and in the election at the end of 2020 it even achieved a landslide victory.
But the still powerful military, which has controlled Myanmar almost continuously since the country's independence from Britain, seized power just a few weeks later and put Aung San Suu Kyi and many other NLD politicians behind bars.
Until a few months ago, only isolated resistance against the military formed in Myanmar, but since October 27, 2023, three resistance groups that have joined together to form the so-called “Brotherly Alliance” have attacked the junta's positions on a large scale.
Especially in the northeast of the country, in Shan State on the border with China, the junta has lost control of dozens of cities and towns since the beginning of “Operation 1027”.
Rebel groups have also recently celebrated impressive successes in the west, in Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh.
According to a report by the Guardian,
around half of the country is
under the control of various resistance groups.
“The military is retreating in several parts of Myanmar”
“The military is in retreat in several parts of the country,” says analyst Richard Horsey to
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
“The armed groups in these areas have been preparing for their offensives for months, if not years, by exercising strategic patience and striking at a moment of military weakness.
They are well armed and have primarily used swarms of drones to attack army positions from the air – a new tactic to which the military has no good answer.”
Exile media like
The Irrawaddy
have been reporting every day these weeks about downed military helicopters, captured generals - and defectors who are turning their backs on the junta and joining the rebels.
Most of these reports cannot be independently verified, but the military itself has long been regularly admitting losses.
After the October offensive began, Myanmar's president, junta-appointed General Myint Swe, warned of the country's disintegration.
According to reports, even parts of the junta are distancing themselves from the army leadership.
And China, Myanmar's large and powerful neighbor and traditionally an ally of the military junta, has also broken away to some extent from the generals.
The military had failed to take action in the border area against illegal fraud centers in which thousands of Chinese citizens are forced against their will to take money out of their compatriots' pockets with cryptocurrency fraud - a billion-dollar business.
In any case, a ceasefire brokered by Beijing at the beginning of the year between the junta and the “Brotherly Alliance” could not end the fighting;
Previous attempts at mediation by the Chinese also came to nothing.
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Future of Myanmar open
Meanwhile, the West is watching the civil war helplessly and largely doing nothing.
The United Nations recently complained that last year the international community only paid out around a third of the aid money that was actually intended for Myanmar.
The Rohingya, Myanmar's Muslim minority, most of whose members have been expelled to neighboring Bangladesh, are also suffering.
What will happen next in Myanmar is largely unclear on the third anniversary of the military coup.
Crisis Group expert Horsey points out that the various resistance groups have the same enemy, namely the military.
Otherwise, they have “very different views on the future of Myanmar.”
Some resistance groups simply want to expand their own sphere of influence, as Yun Sun from the Brookings Institution think tank writes.
Myanmar is unlikely to become a united, democratic country any time soon.