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Post-Coup Myanmar’s Political and Humanitarian Crises

Anthony Ware

Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Australia

Monique Skidmore

Professor, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Australia

Abstract

Myanmar’s coup on 1 February 2021 abruptly ended a decade of (limited) economic and political liberalisations and plunged the country into civil war and a deep humanitarian crisis. This introductory chapter to the volume tracks the key events of the coup, and subsequently, to lay a foundation of facts and details for the analysis offered in the following chapters. It highlights the brutality of the military as they have tried to consolidate power, as well as documenting the emergence of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, National Unity Government, Civil Disobedience Movement and People’s Defence Force. It documents the current situation regarding numbers of civilian deaths, arbitrary arrests, death sentences, houses destroyed, and people displaced internally and across borders. The chapter concludes that the strength and organisation of resistance clearly took the military leadership by surprise, but this has only increased their brutality. The military face a high rate of defections and are increasingly spread very thinly, but the resistance does not look like it can take control of the country either, leading us to conclude that the conflict is almost certainly destined for a prolonged, bloody stalemate. The chapter then provides a summary of the key contributions of each of the other chapters in the volume, as an outline of the book.

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The Myanmar military¹ executed a coup d’état in the early hours of Monday morning, 1 February 2021, abruptly ending a decade-long flirtation with (limited) economic and political liberalisation. In a series of pre-dawn raids, the military arrested State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other senior members of the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government (Pietromarchi & Gadzo 2021), and declared a one-year state of emergency, later extended to 18 months, then two years, with further extensions likely. They imposed a national curfew and moved to take control of the key institutions of state. Phone and internet connections were disrupted in Naypyidaw and Yangon (expanding to other centres as resistance spread), state television was taken off air, and financial and banking services were interrupted. In Naypyidaw, military trucks blockaded the parliamentary residential quarter, effectively quarantining hundreds of other elected members of parliament from communications, the media and their constituents. The moves on that first day were swift, decisive, well planned and tightly executed. They were effective in cutting elected representatives and the NLD off from control over any part of the state apparatus.

The coup came just hours before the new parliament had been due to sit for the first time after the 8 November 2020 election. The NLD had won that election with a landslide. It had been widely viewed as a referendum on Aung San Suu Kyi’s first five years in office, and the voice of the people was decisive. The NLD won 396 elected seats (83 per cent) in the Union Parliament, an increase from the 370 seats they won in the 2015 election, and well over the 67 per cent super-majority needed to outvote the combined pro-military bloc (once the military-appointed 25 per cent of seats [160 seats] is factored in). The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won just 33 out of the possible 476 seats in the election, down from 42 seats in 2015, a serious snub by voters that served to further reduce the military’s influence in the national parliament to under 200 seats across the two houses. Addressing that, together with NLD campaigning for changes to the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, were critical motivations behind the coup, because the military would have definitely seen a challenge to its military bloc voting rights in the constitution occur during the next parliamentary term. (That said, it is worth noting that, even then, constitutional change would have required a super-majority of over 75 per cent of parliament voting in favour, and with the military appointing 25 per cent of seats under their 2008 Constitution, so long as the military appointees voted as a bloc, they already had effective power of veto).

The military justified the coup by alleging widespread election fraud, and immediately pledged to clean up politics and run free and fair elections one year after their intervention. These elections have now been deferred until August 2023, and, if they proceed at all, it is clear they will do so without Aung San Suu Kyi or the NLD, in defiance of the will of the people. At best, if they do occur, it seems clear they will be stage-managed and engineered to elect only military-backed parties and candidates to a puppet government. Regardless, to consolidate control, the day after the coup the generals set up the junta-controlled State Administration Council (SAC) to replace the elected government. Chaired by Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and comprising, initially, 11 loyal military personnel, it was expanded to include military-aligned civilian party leaders. In August 2021, it was named as the provisional government, with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing serving as both head of the armed forces and prime minister.

Meanwhile, President Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi were permanently sidelined by being charged with a series of trumped-up offences. Win Myint was charged with breaching campaign guidelines and COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, while Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with importing walkie-talkies for her security team (which are restricted in Myanmar and need clearance from military) as well as breaching emergency COVID-19 laws (Myat Thura & Min Wathan 2021). Further charges have been added, with Aung San Suu Kyi facing at least 18 charges including corruption, violating the Official Secrets Act and intent to incite public unrest (Frontier Myanmar 2021a). Combined, these charges carry a maximum jail terms of nearly 190 years! By mid-October 2022, the 77-year-old Suu Kyi has already been sentenced to 26 years in jail, some sentences including hard labour, with most charges still to come to court (Mogul & Kwon 2022). The arrogant display of raw power, in the marginalisation of the people’s clearly expressed will, is obscene.

While most commentators did not believe the military would institute a coup after the 2020 election, there were many warnings from the military and indications they were considering doing so. On 14 August 2020, three months before the election, 34 pro-military parties including the USDP met with Min Aung Hlaing, seeking to have the military intervene in the event of ‘electoral integrity issues’ (San Yasmin Aung 2021). Critics were alarmed that the commander-in-chief came out of that meeting bragging, ‘I am brave enough to do anything’ (San Yasmin Aung 2021), fearing it was a clear threat to institute a coup if they did not win at the ballot box. Then, six days prior to the election, the military issued a statement asserting that the Union Election Commission (UEC) was mishandling preparations for the election (Irrawaddy 2021a). Clearly, they were setting up a narrative to support a potential coup. Nonetheless, on election day, 8 November 2020, Min Aung Hlaing did make the comment that, ‘I’ll have to accept the people’s wish and the results that come with it’ (Sithu Aung Myint 2021). Observers relaxed, hoping he was committed to respecting the electoral outcome. Immediately after the election, however, he announced the military would review the electoral process—a power it does not constitutionally have—then went on a campaign to discredit the election results, repeatedly alleging irregularities throughout December 2020 and January 2021 (San Yasmin Aung 2021). The coup was thus a surprise, yet not really a surprise.

A week after the coup, 70 UEC officials were taken into custody (ANFREL 2021), replaced by junta appointees who quickly called for the NLD to be disbanded and party leaders to be prosecuted as ‘traitors’, echoing the senior general’s pretext for the coup. That has not (yet) formally occurred, but de facto, through military power and arrests, the NLD has been sidelined from power. If the junta does eventually run new elections, it seems clear that the NLD and other democratic parties will be prevented from contesting. In July 2022, three of the senior UEC officials who administrated the 2020 election were sentenced to prison terms, including the UEC chair Hla Thein (Ko Cho 2022).

Coercive force and civilian resistance

Opposition to the coup was rapidly mobilised. The NLD published a statement on the party’s official Facebook account shortly after the coup began unfolding on 1 February, purportedly written by Aung San Suu Kyi before she was detained, urging people to resist the coup (BBC News 2021). Whether this came from her, or the NLD media team, elected politicians countered quickly and strategically. Four days after the coup, on 5 February, elected representatives who were not in detention held an emergency parliamentary session, releasing a public claim to be the only legitimate government of Myanmar and appointing a Cabinet. They formed the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) to serve as the legitimate parliament, a body that quickly included over 300 elected representatives from a spectrum of political parties spanning the two houses of parliament (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw 2021; CRPH 2021; Irrawaddy 2021b). On 31 March, the CRPH declared the country’s 2008 Constitution void and put forward an interim replacement, the Federal Democracy Charter, hoping to woo an alliance with the armed organisations² of the country’s many borderland minority groups (AP News 2021). On 16 April, the CRPH appointed a National Unity Government (NUG), with representatives from parties beyond the NLD, to form government under the CRPH. The NUG appointed a full Cabinet with ministers and departments (see www.nugmyanmar.org/en/), as well as representatives in several countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Czech Republic, Australia and South Korea as they quickly sought international recognition.

The broader public initially resisted the coup by banging pots and pans at 8pm, as the curfew came into effect, which has been a traditional way to ward off evil spirits for centuries (Vossion 1891, 109; Lovett 2021). While minimal, it did signal to the military on the streets how little popular support they had. Two days after the coup, healthcare workers went on strike, quickly followed by civil servants in other sectors across Myanmar (ANFREL 2021). This was the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), in which civil servants, workers in government health and education sectors, and others connected to government (and beyond), simply refused to work for the regime, striking until the junta reversed the coup and freed their elected leaders. At its peak, the CDM boasted more than 360,000 members, most of whom chose to walk away from state jobs, and was nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize (Lipes 2022a). The CDM also became a force online, widely sharing creative forms of resistance and photos of groups supporting the CDM to promote solidarity. By the end of the first week after the coup, tens of thousands of civilians were flooding the streets daily in peaceful protests (Al Jazeera 2021a), with up to 90 per cent of the staff in some government ministries on strike (Frontier Myanmar 2021b). Initially, the security forces showed some restraint, for example by sending the police rather than the military to control protests. As the police stood in formation, not advancing, protesters attempted to use moral shame to win them over; however, this only resulted in the military being deployed in many locations. Within weeks, demonstrators were widely beaten, arrested and fired upon. Police and soldiers responded in Mandalay, Bago and Naypyidaw with water cannons, tear gas and both live and rubber bullets (ANFREL 2021). Fortify Rights and Yale Law School’s Schell Center claim the junta created a special command a day after the coup, responsible for the operation of troops in urban areas, and authorised lethal attacks on unarmed civilians (Fortify Rights 2022). They claim the junta primarily deployed snipers to kill protesters to instil fear, while soldiers were instructed to arbitrarily arrest protesters and activists.

For weeks, the military crackdown only spurred on the peaceful protest movement. Demonstrations grew to hundreds of thousands of people on the streets across the country (Al Jazeera 2021b; Guardian 2021)—this despite expanded curfews, internet cuts, Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter being completely blocked for days, the deployment of armoured vehicles in city streets (Safi 2021) and security forces firing on protesters (Hallam 2021; Paddock 2021). However, the mass demonstrations finally dissipated as the weeks of mass arrests and the overwhelming use of military force against the civilians took its toll. Eventually, soldiers took to mowing down demonstrators with machine guns and destroying barricades with rocket propelled grenades—for example, in Bago on 9 April 2021 where at least 82 were killed and corpses piled high in the grounds of a local Buddhist temple (Gerin 2021; Strangio 2021).

As this coercive force against the civilians mounted, and numbers protesting peacefully on the streets dwindled, the resistance movement split into those that continued to pursue non-violent civil disobedience and those who wished to use violent means to resist the coup (Lovett & Safi 2021). Armed resistance groups self-organised, attempting to ambush junta forces and fight back with homemade weapons (Strangio 2021). By early April, for example, activists in Sagaing Region, in northern Myanmar, had armed themselves with rudimentary rifles and adopted the name ‘Kalay Civil Army’. With the multiplication of such militias increasing, the NUG announced the formation of a nationwide ‘People’s Defence Force’ (PDF) on 5 May 2021, declaring it a forerunner of a truly federal armed forces institution that would include soldiers from all anti-regime armed groups (Irrawaddy 2021c). Their aim was to militarily depose those who took power by force, in cooperation with minority group armies who would work with them. The NUG suggested that ‘preparations for this army were made a long time ago’ and announced both military training for new recruits and a weapons acquisition department under the NUG’s Ministry of Defence (Whong 2021). Unsurprisingly, the military immediately labelled the PDFs as ‘terrorist’ organisations. But they grew. By 7 September 2021, the NUG’s Ministry of Defence announced the launch of a ‘defensive war’ and called for a ‘nationwide revolution’ against the military. By October 2021, it had formed a central military command to coordinate resistance operations across the country (Al Jazeera 2021c; Reuters 2021).

Fast forward to the situation as this book is being compiled in late 2022, a year and three-quarters after the coup, and the situation remains highly contested. What started as civil disobedience has now turned into a civil war, taking a horrific toll on the people as the junta rolls out a military campaign across the country to eliminate all opposition to its rule. The financial and human toll, on both sides, means both sides now appear to be losing steam, and the situation risks becoming a grinding stalemate in which neither side can be completely victorious.

The PDF, for their part, claim to be stronger than ever (Lipes 2022b), with new recruits drawn from all walks of life: deposed members of parliament, artists, celebrities, students, farmers and defected soldiers. In May 2022, the NUG Ministry of Defence claimed the PDF had 257 units based in 250 townships across Myanmar, with strong links with more than 400 other local resistance militias. By November 2022, the Irrawaddy (Banyar Aung 2022) assessed their operational capacity at over 300 PDF battalions of 200–500 members each, right across the country, 221 of them under the direct command of the NUG, with a further 63 battalions waiting for recognition by the NUG. Combined PDF membership, according to this report, is now over 65,000, excluding the 400 or more Local Defence Force militias not formally affiliated with either the NUG or the established armies of minority groups. Certainly, reports suggest the regime now controls barely half of the country (Min Min 2022a). Over 12,900 soldiers and police have defected to the PDF (MPM 2022; Min Min 2022a). The NUG has raised and spent over USD55 million on military equipment, arms and training for the PDF, and commenced payments to PDF soldiers (Banyar Aung 2022)—in part through innovative fundraising for a government-in-exile, such as selling shares in coup leader Min Aung Hlaing’s mansion in Yangon (Irrawaddy 2022c) and selling NUG ‘treasury bonds’—that latter of which had raised USD38 million by June 2022 (PTV 2022). They also claim to have set up production of single-shot firearms, automatic submachine guns, land mines and bombs to be dropped by drones, outside of factory settings across Myanmar (Lipes 2022c).

However, the NUG/PDF are struggling. Another USD100 million would be required to properly arm the PDF (Irrawaddy 2022d), with only 25 per cent of PDF forces fully armed, and another 40 per cent carrying homemade weapons (Banyar Aung 2022). This prompts the uncomfortable question of whether external powers should be more active in arming and training the opposition movement. At present, PDF forces can only employ guerrilla tactics and are unable to face the military head-on (Lipes 2022b). In addition, the CDM is losing steam amid junta crackdowns that have made peaceful opposition too dangerous. The NUG President’s Office has conceded that more than a third of people who walked away from state jobs to take part in peaceful anti-junta CDM action have since returned to those jobs, buckling under personal and financial insecurity (Lipes 2022a).

At the same time, though, the Myanmar military are also struggling. In March 2022, Min Aung Hlaing said the military would ‘annihilate [its opponents] until the end’ (Al Jazeera 2022). They have made extensive new weapons purchases, including jet fighters, armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles and mobile defence systems from Russia (Ohmar 2022), as well as other weapons from China (Lipes 2022c). However, weapons alone cannot win against the people, and morale is low and defections high. Prior to the coup, the military was estimated to have around 400,000 troops; it is likely now that they are down to only half that (Min Min 2022a). One contributing factor is the failure of the military company Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) to distribute dividends. MEHL is a massive conglomerate, with 56 subsidiary companies operating across 14 industries. Its revenue is a primary means by which the military has self-financed and remained in power for decades. It has been mandatory for more than 20 years for all ranks to buy MEHL shares, and the share dividends are effectively seen as a salary component, becoming a pension after retirement. However, while MEHL’s financial losses are not public, as recently as mid-2022 it was clear that the dividend payment due in September 2021 remained unpaid (Min Min 2022b; Zaw Ye Thwe 2022), meaning the regime had not been able to pay current and former soldiers their full salary since the coup. It is not clear in late 2022 whether they have yet been paid, but while MEHL and other military companies are struggling financially, the military will continue to be cash-starved and morale is likely to decline.

The outcome is a terrible, ongoing conflict that has devastated the country and, in our estimation, seems destined for stalemate. The NUG and military would disagree, but we do not see the tide turning any time soon. The result is an acute political and humanitarian crisis affecting the entire population, destroying lives and livelihoods. As of 23 November 2022, according to data from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP 2022a), 2,533 civilians have been verified as killed by the junta, including well over 400 children, with 16,403 arrests for participating in anti-coup activities including the CDM. At that time, some 12,976 remained detained by the military, despite just 1,608 having been charged and sentenced. This figure may be less now, after the junta released 5,774 prisoners in an amnesty on 17 November 2022 for National Day, but the AAPP had only been able to verify that 402 of the political prisoners on their list had been released by 23 November (AAPP 2022b, 2022c). Meanwhile, a total of 128 civilians have now been sentenced to death, the first four of whom were executed on 25 July amid global outcry.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar record at least 2,299 civilians shot by the military while protesting and another 701 who died in the process of being arrested by the SAC (ISP 2022a). They confirm that at least 36,000 houses and buildings were destroyed in military raids since the coup (ISP 2022b), resulting in more than 1.6 million people now internally displaced (ISP 2022c)—taking the combined total of internally displaced people plus refugees from Myanmar to almost 3 million people (ISP 2022d; Al Jazeera 2022). The NUG allege around 2,800 separate war crimes have been committed by the military, including arbitrary killings, extrajudicial executions, rape, the use of torture, using civilians as human shields, air and artillery strikes on civilian targets, and the looting and burning of houses (Irrawaddy 2022e). On the other side, however, the SAC allege over 3,542 civilians have been killed by resistance forces in targeted assassinations as alleged military informants (ISP 2022a). This has not been independently verified, but, if true, it would take the total civilians killed in violence since the coup to over 7,000 people. Evidence of atrocities on both sides is mounting (Pedroletti 2022).

What is clear is that the strength and organisation of resistance clearly took the military leadership by surprise, and its effectiveness and longevity has surprised most international commentators. The CDM, NUG and PDF have prevented the military from consolidating control. By any analysis, the coup has been only partially successful, at best, in delivering control of the country to the generals, who still have only limited control over the bureaucracy, health and education systems, international relations and, indeed, territory across Myanmar. Their ongoing campaign has not only highlighted their brutality and bloody-mindedness, but also the incompetence of the military. Its need to resort to brutal tactics and overwhelming force, and still be unable to succeed, underscores its total ineptitude. The high rate of defections of soldiers and police to the PDFs have become an increasing concern for the military and have helped to sustain and grow the PDF resistance (Esther J & Min Min 2022). The military are increasingly spread very thin, fighting insurgents on a multitude of fronts, to the point that they have needed to draft police to serve on the frontlines against PDF forces (Irrawaddy 2022b) and form armed pro-military civilian militias (Irrawaddy 2022a). Reports suggest they have had to resort to airstrikes because ground troops are reluctant to fight (BNI 2022).

There are a range of deeply concerning factors in the events since the coup. These include the military’s use of battlefield tactics against civilians in urban areas, particularly the coercive violent repression of unarmed, peaceful civilians in the first months after the coup; renewed warfare between the military and several of the minority group armies, including the use of aerial bombardment for the first time in two decades; increasing strategic engagement of Russia and China; decline, outlawing or suborning of the institutions that previously supported civil society and democratisation, specifically the Buddhist monkhood (Sangha), the NLD and the media; and the rapid breakdown of institutional capacity and increase in state fragility, with a decimation of the economy and rapid impoverishment of the country. The interlinked political, economic and humanitarian crises are severe and deeply intertwined.

Origins and outline of the book

This brief overview of events since the coup sets the stage for the chapters that follow. The contributions in the volume further analyse key aspects of the political and humanitarian crises precipitated by the coup. They explore the implications of various aspects of the coup and its potential responses.

This volume emerged from a two-day research roundtable symposium hosted online and in person by Deakin University on 1–2 February 2022, to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup. A call for chapters was circulated internationally in August 2021, but, with closed borders for COVID-19, most interest came from within Australia and similar time zones. The chapter submissions were selected for relevance and coherence. From there, contributors were required to submit a first draft of their paper prior to the roundtable, and to attend the full two days. Papers were then presented and discussed in-depth by participants on 1–2 February 2022 at the roundtable symposium, which was also open to other selected academics, policymakers and aid sector representatives. Based on the discussions during the roundtable about each paper and the debates about some of the key challenges and issues, authors revised their contributions through several rounds of editorial review—and then the manuscript underwent double peer review by the publisher. All papers are up to date with events as of November 2022, but their focus is not so much on current events as much as on the implications of key aspects of the coup, and the sorts of policy and practical responses international actors have, could and perhaps should make. This analysis is likely to be relevant for years to come.

The remainder of the volume consists of 13 chapter contributions from various scholars, experts and practitioners on topics ranging from the role of social media and disruptive technologies, multinational enterprise behaviour, justice and accountability mechanisms being pursued in international courts, relations with China and ASEAN, whether the Federal Democracy Charter offers a potential path to peace in a post-coup Myanmar, the changing situation in Rakhine State, weaponisation of the pandemic response, appropriate aid approaches and the political resistance dimensions being embraced by local actors, and Myanmar’s higher education sector. There are, of course, many more aspects of the political and humanitarian crises precipitated by the coup that need analysis. It is clear that the bloody reintroduction of absolute military rule means that all previous policy settings towards Myanmar are no longer valid—whether in retrospect they ever really were. There is now an urgent need for new policy settings, and for practical engagement based on revised understandings, new goals, new modes and different sorts of partnerships with local actors and/or recipient groups. This volume has a very practical policy focus, exploring the issues presented here in detail, to arrive at policy implications and responses. These are presented by each contributor, within their chapters, but are also then summarised in our final chapter, ‘The Aftermath: Policy Responses to Myanmar’s Political and Humanitarian Crises’.

There is, of course, a deep tension between our conclusion that the most likely scenario is a drawn-out stalemate in the civil war, most likely until something changes within military itself, and the very idea of policy recommendations premised on the notion that outsiders can have some influence. Nonetheless, we do believe there are ways international actors can show solidarity with and aid the Myanmar people, even if the extent of impact is limited. Perhaps, even, this support may even contribute, in some tiny way, to precipitating internal changes and ending this horrendous predicament.

Looking at the contributions of each of the chapters in turn, Chapter 2, by Professor Nicholas Farrelly, lays out four possible future scenarios for post-coup Myanmar, and thus various potential political and humanitarian conditions in the country over the years ahead. Each of Farrelly’s four possible scenarios—coup success, coup failure, centrifugal unravelling and implosion—has long-term implications about the sorts of crises, plausible humanitarian conditions and, thus, international policy and aid responses that may be necessary to support the Myanmar people. The analysis draws on the erratic imbalance of forces, ideas, politics and strategies that have energised Myanmar’s turbulence since the recent coup and that, in many respects, influence the range of potential responses. The scenarios are examined separately, and yet, in practice, aspects of each of the potential futures are part of a complex set of trajectories. The analysis highlights the intense challenges any future Myanmar government will face, and those faced by international partners seeking to influence developments in a more positive direction in the meantime. The advantage of looking at the scenarios as distinct future possibilities is that they imply medium-term outcomes that have significant, perhaps permanent, implications for Myanmar, for its immediate neighbours and indeed for the wider Asian region. These scenarios should be kept in mind as each of the subsequent chapters are read.

Chapter 3, by Jadyn (pseudonym), Professor Monique Skidmore and Dr Cecile Medail, explores the role of social media and disruptive technologies in the post-coup conflict. Since the coup, the junta has attempted to expand its authoritarian control over cyberspace, deploying the latest encryption and cybersecurity surveillance technologies to extend its existing physical and psychological warfare battlefields online. In response, anti-coup forces have adapted and innovatively used digital technologies to support the revolution, making the digital space a new, key frontline in the battle between the military and the people of Myanmar. In this chapter, Jayden, Skidmore and Medail analyse the deployment and implications of these new technologies by a military state with techno-totalitarian ambitions, and the ways the resistance movement, civil and armed, has countered with the adoption of disruptive technologies to organise, share real-time information, finance revolution and counter the regime’s fearmongering through propaganda.

Multinational enterprises have come under sustained pressure since the coup to review their operations in Myanmar and exit any relationships they have with military-controlled entities. In Chapter 4, former Australian ambassador to Myanmar Associate Professor Nicholas Coppel examines this pressure, the extent and significance of corporate relationships with the military, their responses to the coup and the impact this has had on the junta. Coppel finds that very few foreign firms were in joint venture or had other commercial relations with military-owned or controlled entities, and that companies that left Myanmar mostly did so for security, commercial or reputational reasons. Moreover, leaving was not always easy or helpful to Myanmar’s citizens and, in some instances, even benefited the military. Overestimation of the extent and significance of such relationships has distracted policymakers and activists from considering policies focused on the role the business community could play to strengthen human rights in Myanmar. Taken together, targeted sanctions and activist pressure run the risk of stigmatising all business with Myanmar, including legitimate, non-sanctioned activity.

Three separate international justice processes commenced prior to the 2020 coup to hold the Myanmar military accountable for the atrocities committed against the Rohingya. Chapter 5, by Dr Adam Simpson and Juliette McIntyre, considers the implications of Myanmar’s 2021 coup for these mechanisms of international justice, and whether the military (or any other groups in Myanmar) could be prosecuted for crimes committed during and since the February 2021 coup using any of these mechanisms. Simpson and McIntyre find that while the influence and authority of international courts are important, their ability to respond to Myanmar’s many crises is limited. At best, the chapter argues, one can anticipate that the joint pressures of the ICC investigation, the ICJ proceedings and work of fact-finding missions and other human rights agencies will lead to an international consensus to refuse the junta recognition.

Chapters 6 and 7 explore China–Myanmar relations and ASEAN’s response to the coup. Chapter 6, by Dr Kristina Kironska and Diya Jiang, examines China’s shifting response to the coup. China has significant interests in Myanmar and is perhaps the most powerful external actor in relationship with Myanmar; it is thus interesting that Beijing has remained more cautious than other countries in its response to the coup. Kironska and Jiang examine the detailed exchanges between China and Myanmar since the coup, and analyse the two countries’ strategic interaction, offering an explanation for why China has gradually changed from a (seemingly) neutral stance immediately after the coup to one more in favour of the military regime. The chapter argues that, initially, ambiguity was logical and beneficial, but, as time went by, appearing neutral became costly to China’s strategic interests. China’s initial hesitation stemmed largely from the perceived risk of a negative impact on its global economic and political interests, and the risk of security issues surrounding its interests within Myanmar. However, as international attention on Myanmar has lessened, China has once again been motivated primarily by its geostrategic interests in Myanmar, and priority to advance its Belt and Road Initiative projects and further its long-term, two-ocean strategy.

Moe Thuzar, a former head of the Human Development Unit at the ASEAN Secretariat, examines ASEAN’s response to the coup in Chapter 7. Myanmar has posed a dilemma for ASEAN ever since its admission into the grouping in 1997, even during its decade of democratisation (2011–21). The February 2021 coup presents the most serious crisis for ASEAN since Myanmar joined the association. Thuzar reviews two historical crises to illustrate ASEAN’s Myanmar dilemma: the response to Cyclone Nargis in 2007 dealing with an earlier military regime, and the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017, which erupted during the democratically elected NLD government’s tenure. Using these to frame analysis of ASEAN’s responses to date towards the 2021 Myanmar coup, Thuzar argues that new precedents may be emerging that offer some insights into the opportunities and limitations of ASEAN’s engagement with recalcitrant members. Myanmar’s value to and in ASEAN, and Myanmar’s capacity to meet its commitments/obligations as an ASEAN member, present a dilemma for the regional bloc. The chapter concludes with a number of clear policy recommendations for ASEAN based on this analysis.

As noted in the summary of events above, less than two months after the coup, the CRPH (i.e. the representatives elected in the November 2020 election but denied power by the coup) declared the country’s 2008 Constitution void and put forward an interim replacement, the Federal Democracy Charter. A key aim of the charter was to woo an alliance with the armed organisations of the country’s many borderland minority groups. Chapter 8, by Associate Professor Costas Laoutides, explores this charter, and, in particular, whether it holds the potential to end decades of intergroup conflict and unify the minorities in a common effort to oust the brutal military regime. Laoutides examines the charter in light of international experiences in power sharing agreements designed to mediate the potential harm of majoritarian democracy, and finds that its continued framing around ethnicity as the basis for political identity problematic. In particular, issues emerge around the right to self-determination granted to federal states, and collective rights granted to ethnic groups who may be more geographically dispersed. Laoutides concludes that the charter has not offered a compelling vision to unite minorities, and, despite appearing progressive, its semi-consociational approach around ideas of ethnic identity remains locked in the problematic past rather than paving the way for a future that unites the people.

In Chapter 9, Associate Professor Anthony Ware and Associate Professor Costas Laoutides explore the surprisingly rapid expansion of control over large parts of Rakhine State by the Arakan Army as they take advantage of an informal ceasefire. Ware and Laoutides document the expansion of de facto state institutional functionings by the Arakan Army since the coup, having implemented new judicial, taxation, conflict resolution and security functions, taken a leading role in the COVID-19 response and overturned major aspects of Rohingya policy at the local level. The chapter argues that this is a significant power shift, likely to reshape Rakhine State and (perhaps) politics for decades to come. This chapter explore the likely trajectory of these changes, and the implications for both domestic politics and international aid/peace-building. These developments will have significant implications for the Rohingya, but the nature of these implications is not yet clear or resolved, given that the underlying issues for the Rohingya remain unaltered.

Chapters 9 and 10 consider the impact of the coup on Rakhine State; on intercommunal relations with the Rohingya; and on the emergence of parallel, de facto, state-like institutions under the Arakan Army. Chapter 10, by Ye Min Zaw and Tay Zar Myo Win, examines how the national crisis impacted communal tensions between Arakanese and Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, and the changes in social tension given both the expansion of territorial control by the Arakan Army and the resurgence of Rohingya identity. It explores how the political crisis has impacted communal tensions in Rakhine State and how the communities have responded. Noting significantly improved intercommunal relations, Ye Min Zaw and Tay Zar Myo Win argue that, under the surface of the seemingly stable situation, an atmosphere of fear remains—principally, the fear that violence may resume at any time, as the underlying issues remain unresolved.

Chapter 11 considers the COVID-19 pandemic response and non-state welfare before and after the coup, and how this has impacted Myanmar’s vibrant non-state charitable sector. Dr Gerard McCarthy and Saw Moo (pseudonym) draw on a national survey conducted in January 2021, with follow-up work since the coup, to trace the ways in which both the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and then then military regime since February 2021 have exploited the COVID-19 response to benefit their political allies and entrench their social dominance. They find that despite issues with the NLD government response, they did encourage and support non-state social responses during 2020. However, after seizing power in February 2021, the SAC weaponised the COVID-19 response to brutally suppress political opposition in ways that have disrupted the non-state pandemic response: suppressing perceived dissenters, empowering loyalists and disciplining charitable actors. As a result, the nascent state–societal cooperation of the NLD-era came to a dramatic end in the wake of the coup, deepening the reliance of ordinary people on private and non-state providers who receive no government or official support. In this sense, the weaponisation of COVID-19 by the junta has compounded the process of social outsourcing that has been ongoing for decades, entrenching societal reliance on non-state social actors both to survive and resist dictatorship. McCarthy and Saw Moo thus urge greater international support to non-state welfare provision in the short term.

Chapters 12 and 13 explore humanitarian aid and responses to the crises in Myanmar: what is possible, what it would look like and how it would be delivered. Chapter 12, by Dr Anne Décobert, reassesses ongoing debates about international humanitarian engagement in Myanmar in light of the coup, arguing that responses to the humanitarian crises precipitated by the coup demonstrate the effectiveness of localised aid. Arguing that neutrality of aid is not possible or desirable in such a context, she focuses attention on humanitarian autonomy, rights and justice. Décobert sees not just ongoing resistance against the military regime in the response by local aid agencies, but also growing resistance towards unequal and unjust international aid systems. In this, Décobert calls for significantly more localisation of aid to Myanmar, supporting local organisations in planning and response, noting that the activist agenda of most localised humanitarian response demands a solidarity-based approach rather than insistence on aid neutrality. While recognising that there are no simple answers to difficult issues, Décobert argues that, in a context where normative neutrality can do harm, reframing ‘good humanitarianism’ as promoting local agency and autonomy provides a moral compass for international actors to navigate complex political and ethical dilemmas.

Dr Aung Naing (pseudonym) and Dr Tamas Wells follow this up in Chapter 13, examining the impacts of the February 2021 coup on local organisations delivering humanitarian aid in Myanmar. Exploring findings from a recent survey of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Myanmar, they explore ways in which CSOs use local relief to resist military rule—not through overt opposition, but, instead, through localised fulfilment of what should be state functions by non-state CSOs. In this sense, Aung Naing and Wells argue that, through welfare, CSOs demonstrate a particular form of resistance, embodying a viable, legitimate and internally sustainable alternative to the current military government’s claims and approach. This chapter urges a reorientation of humanitarian policy towards Myanmar that embraces the complexity, ambiguity and latent potential of emergent, volunteer welfare groups as not only a means of delivering aid in ways that avoid entanglement and dependency on coup-controlled processes, but also enable and promote active citizenship in local communities, which is itself a critical step towards re-establishing community life and institutional integrity in Myanmar.

The final contribution to the volume, Chapter 14 by Professor Charlotte Galloway, examines the impact of the coup on Myanmar’s higher education system and the likely implications for future foreign engagement. Galloway identifies how the coup has completely disrupted the progress made within the sector over the last decade, and this almost certainly applies to all levels of the education sector in Myanmar. But, unique to the tertiary sector, the military leaders’ lack of trust in engagement with foreign researchers and entities, and their inability to accept even the mildest criticism of their own policy positions, is crippling the higher education sector. The consequences of another lost generation on Myanmar’s future prosperity are dire. Without homegrown expertise there will, by necessity, be reliance on external actors to achieve any economic and social development, as the military brutality deters even international students from returning to Myanmar, further eroding Myanmar’s knowledge-based capacities. It is difficult to see how the higher education system can recover, and there is no expectation that higher education reform will be a military regime priority.

Thus, on most fronts, the situation in Myanmar is dire. The local response and resistance to the regime is impressive and has defied most predictions. There is an enormous amount for the international community to learn from the local civil disobedience, organising, active citizenship and humanitarian response. However, it is hard to move away from the conclusion that a grinding stalemate is becoming entrenched that only further impoverishes the country and destroys its people and institutions. Chapter 15 returns to the question of future trajectory and international policy and aid responses to the political and humanitarian crises in Myanmar. This final chapter summarises the major findings and implications from the previous chapters. There are no good options. There is no easy solution, no way to force the military to retreat from this brutal and destructive path. Nor is there any good way to change the circumstances of tens of millions of ordinary people who are suffering. Resolution of the complex crises in Myanmar can only come from within the country, and, most likely, from within the Myanmar military hierarchy. However unlikely, we implore them to change, to step back and hand over power to the people. Meanwhile, the research and solid analysis in this volume points to some of the possibilities that exist to improve our response, in coordination with and support of the locals at the frontlines of resistance, to perhaps make a small difference. That is our hope, as we complete this volume.

One final note: conducting any research in Myanmar at this time is very challenging. It is almost impossible, and probably very unwise, for Westerners (at least) to travel to the country for research. And the environment is not a lot easier for local researchers. Travel can be dangerous, asking questions can be potentially problematic, and carrying research data and notes is potentially risky. All contributors to this volume have worked closely with local informants and researchers, whether explicitly recognised in the authorship or subsumed to protect anonymity, and their analysis is based on years of collaboration and engagement. We truly thank these mostly unnamed colleagues for their partnership and seek to amplify their voices through this volume, even if we cannot name most of them at this time. For their sake, we hope this analysis resonates, and impacts policy and practice in ways that lead to change, to the extent any foreign engagement may be able to influence the dire situation in Myanmar.

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