Myanmar marks four years of a bloody civil war on Saturday with anti-regime forces holding the upper hand on battlefields across the country amid growing hopes that the junta led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing will buckle and be defeated, perhaps by the end of the year.
But in the meantime, the latest casualty figures make for a grim read. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), at least 73,069 people have died in this conflict with almost 20,000 deaths added to the list in 2024.
That makes Myanmar the third deadliest war behind Ukraine and Palestine – in first and second place, respectively – out of 20 conflicts monitored by the U.S.-based ACLED, which collates statistics and maps and analyses conflict data.
Of the dead, the United Nations says at least 6,000 were civilians with “countless more” wounded, including the many who have lost limbs to landmines and unexploded ordnance, and a further 3.5 million people are internally displaced.
The U.N. has estimated about 20 million people – or a third of the population – will require assistance this year, including 6.3 million children and 7.1 million women. Donor fatigue has also set in. Only 34 percent of the $1 billion required by the U.N. for 2024 was received.
And the statistics keep piling up. Less than a month into the current year, the U.N. counted 56 dead and 97 wounded from airstrikes and clashes in Myanmar’s southeast during January 15-17 and airstrikes in Rakhine state on January 18, as well as in the northwest over the same period.
On January 26, airstrikes, including two 500-pound bombs, killed 18 people and wounded four, the National Unity Government (NUG) in exile added, many in the greater Mandalay region where rebels have laid siege to the old royal capital.
Massacres have also become the tragic norm.
That’s an indictment of the military’s failed onslaught designed to subjugate its own people since ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021.
Since then, 20-odd Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and associated units with the People’s Defense Force (PDF) have fought a brutal war but since launching a major offensive in late 2023, they have made it clear this is a fight the military can not win.
Estimates over who now controls what vary.
Despite the fall of most of Rakhine State to the Arakan Army (AA) over recent months, claims by the NUG that the resistance now controls 70 percent of the country are overly optimistic, even if it includes areas under their partial control.
The NUG likes to see itself as the legitimate government in waiting and that victories by the militias on the battlefield simply translates as liberated areas under its political sphere of influence. It was a point made clear by acting NUG president Duwa Lashi La in a letter dated January 7.
Sent to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, as he took over the annual rotating chair of ASEAN, Lashi La reiterated the NUG’s “status as the legitimate government of Myanmar, both legally and through ground realities.”
However, the EAOs in particular are fighting for control of their respective ethnic states and not the restoration of a federated Myanmar with the NUG in power, or the return of Aung San Suu Kyi – and there are potential political rivals to the NUG emerging.
They include the much lesser known Revolutionary Government of Federal Burma – a mix of political wings from the EAOs including AA, ethnic Karen and Chin, and resurrected communists – who sources in Myanmar say are vying with the NUG for political attention in liberated zones.
“They’re causing a lot of confusion,” a PDF source said. “The revolutionary government and the NUG are competing voices for control in a war where people are fighting for the defense of their homelands. They’re in everyone’s ear and create a lot of noise. It’s irritating.”
The revolutionary government was quick to congratulate U.S. President Donald Trump on his election victory, indicating it will also vie for influence in Washington, where the NUG has struggled to make itself heard. But the war is not over yet.
Paul Greening, an independent analyst based in Mae Sot on the Thai border, keeps an up-to-date tally of the carnage and says the junta now controls just 15 percent of Myanmar while the EAOs and the PDFs hold about 45 percent, with the balance of 40 percent still being fought over.
“Revolution started with the youth, under the cry: ‘You have f***** with the wrong generation’ – and they have continued to be one of the main driving forces,” he told The Diplomat.
“This is a horrible and unnecessary war, being fought by young men and women who deserve to be heard. Their courage and commitment and sacrifice is incredible and politicians need to understand that before they start claiming victory,” he said.
