On 28 March this year, a massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit the south-east Asian nation of Myanmar, causing a death toll of an estimated 3500 people and levelling buildings across the country, including the capital Naypyidaw. Hindering international aid efforts, however, is an ongoing civil conflict which, as it enters its fifth deadly year, continues to fragment the country into warring pieces. Even before the earthquake, the civil war had displaced more than 3 million people and left nearly 20 million in need. Landmines litter the earth, and jet strikes carried out by the ruling military junta continue to hit impoverished farming villages, including in the days following the disastrous quake. Myriad armed ethnic groups jostle for power not only against the ruling junta, but increasingly, against each other, with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) reporting more than 2600 non-state armed groups operating across the country.
This instability has opened the doors for increasing criminal activity, including online scam centres, human trafficking and drug production: Myanmar has once again become the world’s largest producer of heroin and a major source for methamphetamine production. Cited as the third-deadliest conflict behind Ukraine and Gaza, the Myanmar crisis continues unabated, largely forgotten by the international community. Meanwhile, the casualties mount: ACLED further reports more than 50,000 deaths since the nation was plunged into chaos following the military coup on 1 February 2021. This nation of 54 million people is no stranger to civil conflict, with borderland fighting a constant since the former British colony known as Burma gained independence in 1948. The military, dominated by the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group, seized power in 1962. Since then, it has resisted the transition to democracy, instead engaging in constant fighting against borderland ethnic groups who wish to secede. Inter-ethnic rivalry and fighting against the ruling military junta have since been constant. 2017 ushered in a new wave of junta repression, as nearly a million Rohingya were forcibly displaced from the western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, in what has commonly been referred to as genocide.
Yet the 2021 coup—which deposed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi—was unprecedented, and what began as largely peaceful street demonstrations in response soon turned to violent conflict. Many fled into the surrounding mountains and jungles to take up arms against the junta in either one of the long-established ethnic armed groups—such as the Karen National Army—or the newly formed People’s Defence Force. The same general who led the 2017 genocide also led the 2021 coup: Min Aung Hlaing. Touted in 2023 by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people, Min Aung Hlaing is now wanted by the International Criminal Court for his role in leading the 2017 genocide against the Rohingya. Nevertheless, while global attention remains on Trump, Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, Min Aung Hlaing continues to fly under the radar. A week after the earthquake, he was welcomed by Thai officials in Bangkok, where he attended a summit of regional nations, demonstrating a level of immunity despite the ICC’s warrant. This despite the fact that he continued to oversee airstrikes on Myanmar’s civilian populations even as they were struggling with the aftermath of the massive quake.
Ongoing Airstrikes
After the February 2021 coup, Min Aung Hlaing drew the nation’s ire. Artist Maung Phoe expressed his outrage by painting three giant murals on the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, each depicting Min Aung Hlaing holding a gun to his own head. Maung Phoe told this author his sentiment–like that of many people in Myanmar at the time–was that the general should pull the trigger and shoot himself in the head, thereby ridding the country of its despot. The artist produced the murals at night and in secret, under the risk of imprisonment or even execution. In July 2022, hip-hop artist and pro-democracy activist Phyo Zeya Thaw was executed, along with three other activists for their outspoken resistance to the dictatorship, demonstrating a return to savage political repression not seen in the country since a previous uprising in 1988.
The 54-year-old Maung Phoe would eventually be arrested, but not for the murals; instead, for banging pots and pans, a common display of dissidence used across the country. Maung Phoe would spend 6 months in the notorious Insein Prison, where he would continue to sketch with a pen and scraps of paper; life in the prison, other inmates, and even a prison guard’s family member. He has since been released and now lives in relative safety inside the Thai border. Maung Phoe’s latest project depicts the impacts of jet air strikes by the military junta on civilian villages. He collaborated with three other Myanmar artists in exile: Tamalar, Saw Tun and Edo Vader. This collaboration saw members of disparate ethnic groups bonding together to produce a painting depicting the shared suffering of civilians attacked by junta air strikes. Titled When We See the Planes, the artwork was part of a recent New Burma exhibition in Chiang Mai, Thailand, of the same name, in which art, photos and installations depict the daily reality of the constant air attacks. According to a report by the Blood Money Campaign, the Myanmar military conducted 4,022 airstrikes on civilian targets between February 2021 and November 2024. Following the earthquake, the military continued its airstrike campaign, with Myanmar Witness documenting 80 attacks, resulting in over 200 civilian deaths, including children. The exhibition also highlighted calls for the international community to place sanctions on Myanmar’s military regime, in particular the supply of aviation fuel. In late 2024, the EU, UK and Canada placed sanctions on six companies supplying aviation fuel to the junta.
However, Amnesty International reports that the Myanmar military is using diverted supply routes and other means to continue accessing aviation fuel, a precious commodity that underpins the one key advantage the junta has over the armed resistance organisations: air power.
Banned Landmines
While jet strikes may be a one-sided threat in Myanmar’s civil conflict, the damaging and indiscriminate use of landmines has become another deadly feature, used by many sides. Banned internationally, landmines are being manufactured internally both by the junta—in their own arms factories—and by armed ethnic groups, often repurposing undetonated junta devices. They are causing severe injuries to both civilians and soldiers, as the devices are planted indiscriminately in both civilian villages and as part of defensive positions. With few medical resources in the country, land mine victims are often provided with rudimentary treatment and little support for recovery. Just inside the Thai border, resistance soldiers impacted by landmines recover in a makeshift care centre. Staffed by volunteers, those in recovery lie side by side on cots underneath a wooden house, with a makeshift gym providing a source of therapeutic exercise. Once strong enough, amputees are fitted with a prosthetic, with many wishing to return to the battlefield. Along with landmine amputees, resistance soldiers with serious head and spinal injuries from rocket-propelled grenade rounds and snipers’ bullets are also in recovery; however, such serious injuries may mean they will never walk again or have fully functional brain capacity. The majority of these volunteers—whether resistance soldiers or nurses—come from civilian backgrounds; chefs, welders and students thrust into a wartime situation post-coup in 2021. Myanmar is no stranger to repression and protest, with large-scale pro-democracy movements violently squashed in 1988 and 2007. Yet after the first democratic elections in decades were held in 2010, resulting in the softening of the military’s grip on power, the new Generation Z had cause to be hopeful.
The 2021 coup, however, crushed that hope, resulting in a generation of Myanmar’s young people scattering like debris into the jungles and mountains, forced into combat roles reserved for trained military specialists. Compounding the trauma is the inability of many to return home. While some gains have been made to secure territory by resistance forces, much of the towns and cities—including Yangon—remain in the military’s grip. Any ties to resistance movements may cause reprisals on family members, and as such, their identities must be kept secret. To return home with an amputated leg is a sure sign of active resistance and will lead to grave consequences. As such, many of those engaged in borderland conflict or forced to flee into Thailand are often unable to obtain a valid visa; as such, they continue to live in limbo, unable to return home and constantly on the lookout for the Thai authorities. Many in this situation told this author they had at first anticipated the civil war would not have dragged on for so long. Yet after more than four years of war, and with mounting casualties, a fractured sense of purpose, and dearly missing their homes and families, a deep depression has set in for some.
Fragmenting Alliances and Criminal Interests
While the overarching aim of the myriad ethnic groups may be to overthrow the junta, as the conflict has laboured on, increasing fragmentation appears to be occurring. Immediately post-coup, the National Unity Government was formed in the ashes of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected National League for Democracy, operating from undisclosed locations within Myanmar and abroad. However, while the National Unity Government of Myanmar has attempted to operate as a legitimate state actor—petitioning the United Nations for a place at the General Assembly, for example—their influence has appeared to wane over time.
Nowhere more so is this evident than in Myanmar itself, where armed ethnic groups have risen to power in their local regions, forming alliances and even challenging rival armed groups from the same ethnicity. In early 2024, a combined operation between the Three Brotherhood Alliance—made up of the Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA)—managed to overrun military forces in Shan and Rakhine states, capturing key towns. Nevertheless, despite such instances of inter-ethnic collaboration–whether in the art world or on the battlefield–Myanmar’s deadly conflict has largely shattered the nation’s myriad groups into ever-changing alliances and power-plays. The Arakan Army, for example, are no friend to the half-million Rohingya who remained within Rakhine State after the genocide, with reports of attacks by the AA on Rohingya civilians. This has led to instances where the Myanmar military—responsible for the 2017 genocide—has reportedly recruited Rohingya to fight against the Arakan Army in response. This internal chaos of Myanmar has seen a sharp increase in criminal activity. In the northern Wa and Shan states, heroin and methamphetamine production has flourished under the oversight of armed ethnic groups, most notably the United Wa State Army, who ‘lease’ land to Chinese criminal groups to run meth labs. Some of Myanmar’s methamphetamine is destined for the Australian market, while yaba pills—meth mixed with caffeine—are smuggled into Thailand and further abroad. Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Myanmar has resumed its pre-1990s position as the world’s biggest source of heroin, produced in Shan state, in the notorious ‘Golden Triangle’. In Karen state in the east, some armed ethnic groups are reportedly engaged with Chinese criminals in human trafficking into compounds constructed along the Thai border, where they are forced into online scamming.
People are trafficked from as far away as Ghana and Ethiopia and are held in shocking conditions of abuse and torture. Profits from online scams are reportedly more than drug production and exportation, with new technologies, AI and cryptocurrencies evolving too fast, staying out of reach of international law and order. In the northern states, such as Kachin, valuable jade mines and teak forests are being plundered by whoever happens to control them, while the lack of a stable workforce has seen qualified doctors turn to prostitution. As such, Myanmar appears to be fast morphing into an elaborate patchwork of criminal enterprises intertwined with legitimate resistance against a cruel military regime fronted by Min Aung Hlaing and largely backed by Russia and China. Whether the unified goal of overthrowing the junta can still be attained under such profitable competing interests may prove to be the greatest test for the myriad armed ethnic groups. For those profiting from the chaos, the more forgotten Myanmar remains to the rest of the world, the better.
Author’s Note: Information used in this article is based on both secondary research and interviews conducted with Myanmar nationals from diverse ethnic groups in Myanmar, Australia, the UK and Thailand. Some details have been obscured for security reasons.