The conflict in Myanmar, now in its fourth year, has claimed thousands of civilian lives and displaced more than three million people. Since toppling the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, the military junta under General Min Aung Hlaing has failed to consolidate its authority. Over the last seven months, the military has suffered a succession of humiliating defeats at the hands of opposition forces.
Myanmar is undergoing fragmentation: large parts of the country, including most of Myanmar’s international borders, are now under the dominion of various ethnic armed groups. These groups are expanding control of their ethnic homelands and building autonomous statelets. But this does not necessarily mean the country is headed for a catastrophic collapse with the kind of chaotic intergroup violence that has played out in other fractured states, such as Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
At the same time, fragmentation has greatly diminished the prospects for building a federal union in Myanmar. Doing so would require regional rulers to cede partial authority to a central government and nonstate forces to disarm, both of which are extremely unlikely. Rather than trying to forge a grand political solution to the current conflict, outside actors should accept the messy reality. Given the most probable alternatives—a protracted war, a consolidation of military rule, or both—decentralized control of disparate parts of the country may be the least ruinous outcome.
UNCONSOLIDATED PUTSCH
In the immediate aftermath of the 2021 coup, the military’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protests pushed people across the country to form armed resistance groups. Many of these groups joined forces with ethnic armies that have been fighting the Myanmar state for decades. Violence has now engulfed much of the country, pitting regime forces against hundreds of resistance groups, from small units to organized militias equipped with modern light arms.
The newly formed rebel groups lacked the numbers, coordination, and heavy weaponry necessary to attack military bases or other well-defended positions. Still, they conducted effective ambushes on military convoys and hundreds of other targets, such as checkpoints, administrative offices, and military-linked businesses; they also carried out extrajudicial killings of alleged informants.
Initially, many of the country’s ethnic armed groups remained on the sidelines, waiting to see how events would unfold before taking any action. The picture changed dramatically in late October, when a coalition of three of the country’s most powerful ethnic armies went on the offensive. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Arakan Army launched a blitzkrieg on towns and military bases in northern Shan State, on the border with China. Armed and experienced, they delivered a rapid series of humiliating defeats to the Myanmar military, expelling it from large swaths of territory. The capture of border towns and transport routes has disrupted trade with China, stemming an important stream of revenue for the junta. By laying bare the military’s weakness, these victories inspired other ethnic armed groups and allied resistance forces to join the offensive across the country’s periphery.
In the west, the Arakan Army has taken control of most of Rakhine State, including the border with Bangladesh. Soon, it may capture the state capital, Sittwe, as well as the deep-sea port at Kyaukpyu and the military’s regional command headquarters in nearby Ann. In the far northern Kachin State, the Kachin Independence Army has seized strategic bases and an important border trading post, further curtailing trade with China, and is now within striking distance of Kachin’s capital, Myitkyina. In the southeast, on the Thai border, the Karen National Union has significantly expanded its territory and cut off much of the overland trade with Thailand. In April, it temporarily ousted the military from the border town of Myawaddy before regime forces reoccupied it with the help of a rival Karen faction. Elsewhere, the junta has failed to recoup most of its lost territory. It is also struggling to replenish its troops, as thousands have surrendered to rebel groups or fled. The regime’s decision in February to enforce a conscription law reveals its desperation.
CENTRIFUGAL FORCES
The military’s failures on the battlefield, along with the country’s deepening economic crisis, have led to widespread elite discontent with Min Aung Hlaing. His days as leader of the junta may be numbered, although it remains unclear who will replace him, or when. The military itself is not yet on the verge of collapse. Its most powerful opponents are ethnic armies that operate on the country’s periphery, and they are unlikely to try to bring the war to the capital, Naypyitaw, or the Yangon-Mandalay corridor, where a majority of Myanmar’s population resides. Rather than trying to topple the junta, the major ethnic armed groups are focused on consolidating control over their newly expanded territories.
What they seek is the establishment of permanent ethnic homelands, in some cases explicitly modeled on Wa State, a self-ruling enclave on the Chinese border. Wa leaders accept that their territory is part of Myanmar, but they govern autonomously, maintaining an army strong enough to deter any attempt to bring the region under state control. The desire among other groups to emulate the Wa model stems in part from their historical experience of living under successive imperious governments dominated by the Burman majority. In part, too, these groups simply want to insulate themselves from the post-coup chaos in central Myanmar. Some observers hope that the weakening of central military control and the establishment of decentralized power structures could begin a process of “bottom-up federalism” that ends in stable national governance. Others see it as a worrying slide toward Balkanization, in which multiple statelets become locked in cycles of competitive violence. Both perspectives miss something crucial.
The process of state building at the regional level makes progress toward federalism at the national level more challenging. Any federal solution—the aspiration of many in Myanmar after decades of unresolved minority grievances and civil war—would require ethnic minority administrations to cede partial power to a national government. Armed groups that have gained control over their ethnic homelands at a tremendous cost in lives and resources are unlikely to make such compromises. They will be reluctant to trade the authority they now enjoy, including control of their own armed forces, for a turbulent experiment in federal democracy.
These groups aim to maintain their armies to safeguard their autonomy and, in some cases, to preserve control over lucrative natural resources (such as jade, gems, and minerals) and illicit sources of income (such as drug production, casinos, and scam centers). This preference for a confederation of autonomous ethnic zones is not limited to ethnic minority areas. Even in some Burman-majority regions, the idea of de facto self-rule is gaining momentum, and local communities, organizations, and armed resistance groups are starting to put the administrative building blocks in place. All this threatens to leave Myanmar as a collection of statelets, with a rump state at the center.
ASCENDANT ANTIFEDERALISM
Although the emergence of “one country, many systems” may be incompatible with federalism, it need not lead to catastrophic Balkanization, either. Myanmar is not a well-functioning state that is suddenly breaking apart. It has been in a situation of partial collapse since it gained independence in 1948. Large areas of the uplands, which are home to ethnic minority groups, have never been under the control of any central government and have long managed disputes among themselves. In areas controlled by Karen National Union and Kachin Independence Organization armed groups, for example, sophisticated governance structures have evolved over the decades, along with a vibrant civil society. More nascent ethnic armed group administrations—such as those being developed by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army in Shan State, the Arakan Army in Rakhine State, and Karenni forces in Kayah State—are drawing lessons and inspiration from these models of self-government.
The emergence of quasi-independent statelets is likely the least bad outcome for Myanmar in the medium term. The most probable alternative, after all, is not peace under a federal democratic system, but brutal war. Any attempt to negotiate a grand solution to the country’s failed state-building process amid the current conflict and political crisis would likely result in more violence, not less. A settlement would create losers as well as winners, and the losers would certainly have the means to mount an armed response.
This is not to question the value of building consensus around the many divisive political issues in Myanmar. The work of civil society and opposition groups that have emerged since the coup can help facilitate state-building efforts in the future. But in the near term, it is important to recognize that bringing Myanmar’s disparate political actors into agreement on a federal structure, which was always going to be an intractable task, has become even more difficult as the country’s politics have fractured since the coup.
The emergence of quasi-independent statelets is likely the least bad outcome for Myanmar in the medium term.
Neighboring countries, Western donors, and multilateral institutions need to accept the reality of Myanmar as a fragmented state. They must be willing to engage with ethnic armed group administrations to deliver critical humanitarian and development assistance, taking care not to inflame conflict in the process. International donors also must carefully calibrate their engagement based on armed groups’ willingness to abide by fundamental human rights norms, such as respect for minorities in areas under their control. Convincing outside actors, particularly neighboring countries, to work with Myanmar’s nonstate authorities will not be easy. Apart from China, which has long engaged with armed groups along its shared border, Myanmar’s other neighbors are wary that developing deeper relationships with subnational administrations could draw the ire of the junta. They also worry about undermining the principle of state sovereignty—and the signal such diplomatic overtures may send to their own insurgent or separatist groups. This concern is most acute for India, but it echoes in Bangladesh, Laos, and Thailand, which have all experienced ethnic-based insurgencies.
As the junta looks increasingly fragile and loses control of most of the country’s borders, however, Myanmar’s neighbors have started to adjust their policies. Bangladesh understands that the million-plus Rohingya refugees it hosts cannot be repatriated without the agreement of the Arakan Army, which now oversees the areas from which the Rohingya were expelled and to which they would return. In February, India announced an end to a long-standing policy that had allowed residents of border communities to move freely between the two countries; it has also begun the construction of a costly 1,000-mile border fence. Both moves are signs that New Delhi’s close relationship with the junta in Naypyitaw is no longer proving useful in securing India’s northeastern border, where multiple Indian insurgent groups operate. And Thailand’s prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, has publicly said the Myanmar regime is “losing” its battle to consolidate control of the country. His government has stepped up engagement with the Karen National Union following the Myanmar military’s temporary defeat at the border town of Myawaddy in April.
Myanmar’s junta is unhappy that these countries are beginning to hedge their bets, but there is little it can do about the situation. It has few international allies other than Russia, which is distracted by its war in Ukraine and unable to offer much tangible support. Beijing, which dislikes Min Aung Hlaing and believes his regime to be incompetent, is in no mood to lend a helping hand, either. With the military thus isolated, other countries’ engagement with nonstate administrations is unlikely to tip the scale of the conflict one way or the other. These administrations are almost certainly here to stay. Working with them is therefore the only feasible way to help improve the lives of the people in the areas they control.
An international system built on the primacy of relationships between nation-states is too restrictive a framework for dealing with Myanmar today. Foreign governments and international institutions must engage with nonstate groups to address acute humanitarian needs and improve governance. Myanmar’s fragmentation may be unavoidable, but it does not have to be catastrophic for its people.
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