Five years after Myanmar’s military seized power and plunged the country into civil war, the human toll has crossed a grim threshold: more than 100,000 people have been killed across all sides, according to a leading conflict monitor.
Since the February 2021 putsch, there have been 100,114 “conflict-related fatalities”, said Sun Mon Thant, a senior analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), which tracks violence through media reports.
Myanmar has issued no official death toll, and outside estimates differ sharply. Even so, analysts broadly view the conflict, now in its fifth year, as Asia’s deadliest active war.
In February 2021, the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, detained the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and brought Myanmar’s brief, decade-long democratic opening to an abrupt end.
“The pain is just endless,” said 49-year-old Thein Aye Nu, whose husband was killed in an air strike in the western state of Rakhine last month.
“I am so deeply resentful and very angry. But I don’t even know who to be angry at anymore. I just have to console myself by accepting it as fate.”
Whole-country conflict
In the years after the coup, Myanmar was governed by decree under military chief Min Aung Hlaing.
He stepped down from the armed forces to become civilian president in April, following tightly controlled elections that rebels prevented from taking place in their territory and that left Ms Suu Kyi’s party sidelined.
Democracy watchdogs derided the vote as a sham designed to recast Min Aung Hlaing’s rule, while rebel groups dismissed his appeal for new peace talks as a hollow attempt to burnish his image overseas.
“If there was no coup, children would be studying at schools,” said one man in Myit Chay town in central Magway region, whose teenage son was recently killed.
He said the boy died in combat after fleeing home to join pro-democracy rebels.
“We didn’t even get a chance to properly chant Buddhist funeral rites. Heavy artillery was being fired,” he said.
“He left so many memories – I am not satisfied to do have done so little for him.”
More than 3.7 million people have been displaced inside Myanmar, according to the United Nations, while more than one in five are facing acute food insecurity as the country sinks deeper into poverty.
In Yangon, the commercial capital, violence sometimes arrives in the form of targeted assassinations.
Elsewhere, communities are trapped in entrenched fighting or hammered by near-daily air strikes from the military’s Russian- and Chinese-supplied jets.
Last year, ACLED ranked Myanmar as the world’s second most conflict-affected country, behind only the Palestinian territories.
The monitor has recorded more than 1,200 distinct armed groups involved in the war, describing it as “the most fragmented conflict in the world”.
“It’s deadly, it’s dangerous to civilians, the conflict has spread across the whole country,” said Sun Mon Thant.
Momentum in the war has swung at different moments toward both the military and its opponents.
A joint rebel offensive launched by some groups in late 2023 produced startling gains, pushing toward the country’s second largest city, Mandalay, and fuelling speculation that they might even seize the ancient royal capital.
But analysts say the balance has since shifted back toward the military after China moved to support it and Beijing-backed truces were reached with two of the most powerful ethnic minority armies.
‘Sent to die’
A destruction ceremony of seized illegal drugs to mark the United Nations’ International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Yangon last week
In February 2024, the military put conscription laws into effect, seeking to shore up its depleted ranks by forcibly recruiting 50,000 citizens.
“These conscripts can’t do anything. It’s like they are just being sent to die,” said one former military conscript who deserted after serving on front-line deployments.
“If you don’t die in one place, they send you to another,” said the 20-year-old, who spoke anonymously for security reasons.
The conflict has also spilled far beyond Myanmar’s borders, driving refugees into camps in neighbouring Thailand and Bangladesh and creating ideal conditions for transnational criminal networks to thrive.
Monitors say armed groups on all sides are financing their campaigns with proceeds from the expanding production of narcotics including heroin and methamphetamine.
At the same time, Myanmar’s weakly governed border regions have turned into a hub for online scam centres, many of them operating from fortified compounds protected by militants.
