Why the War in Myanmar Matters

1 week ago 12

Asia Pacific|Why Myanmar’s War Matters, Even if the World Isn’t Watching

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/world/asia/myanmar-civil-war-consequences.html

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A devastating, yearslong civilian warfare is heating up, but it inactive hasn’t attracted wide planetary notice.

Two radical   successful  helmets and sunglasses basal   adjacent   damaged buildings.
Fighters from the Karen taste radical patrol adjacent to an country destroyed by Myanmar’s airstrike successful Myawaddy, connected the Thai borderline this month. In caller weeks, Karen fighters captured a trading town. Credit...Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Mike Ives

By Mike Ives

Mike Ives reported from Myanmar respective times successful the years earlier the country’s 2021 subject coup.

April 20, 2024, 12:02 a.m. ET

An escalating civilian warfare threatens to interruption isolated a state of astir 55 cardinal radical that sits betwixt China and India. That has planetary consequences, but the struggle hasn’t commanded wide attention.

Over the past six months, absorption fighters successful Myanmar’s hinterlands person been defeating the ruling subject junta successful conflict aft battle, stunning analysts. That raises the anticipation that the junta could beryllium astatine hazard of collapsing.

The absorption present controls much than fractional of Myanmar’s territory

Source: Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M)

By Weiyi Cai

The warfare is already a human rights catastrophe. Myanmar’s implosion since a 2021 subject coup has wrecked its economy, throwing millions of radical into utmost poverty. Its estimation arsenic a hub for drugs, online scam centers and wealth laundering is growing. And its destabilization has created strategical headaches for China, India, the United States and different countries.

Here’s a primer.

Myanmar is not a democracy. The junta allowed elections much than a decennary ago, enabling Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the girl of an assassinated independency hero, to sit successful Parliament. She aboriginal led a civilian government. But the junta controlled cardinal levers of powerfulness done a military-drafted Constitution.

In 2021, the generals arrested Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi — who by past had lost her halo arsenic a quality rights icon — and staged a coup. That acceptable disconnected demonstrations, a brutal crackdown connected mostly peaceful protesters, and waves of absorption from equipped fighters.


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