For Myanmar’s people, year four under military junta rule has only brought more death, displacement and despair, as their troubled homeland is torn further apart by a seemingly intractable civil war.
In capital Naypyidaw, the military – or Tatmadaw – calls all the shots, but after a series of chastening battlefield defeats, the generals increasingly find themselves boxed-in to the country’s central heartlands. Still, few among the anti-junta resistance forces harbour any illusions about an imminent collapse of Min Aung Hlaing’s brutal regime.
“The Tatmadaw is still very strong, it is an old institution, they have money … they hold the power,” said Maung Saungkha, a 32-year-old rebel commander in Kayin state. “But I believe we will win. I just can’t say when.”
Hope persists among those fighting for a freer Myanmar. The conflict, sparked by the military’s coup on February 1, 2021, has pitted the junta against a mosaic of armed ethnic groups and young pro-democracy fighters. Many of those fighters – students, clerks and factory workers – have been thrust into a war they never sought but now cannot abandon.
But in the dense forests of the Irrawaddy River basin, Maung Saungkha leads around 1,000 fighters under the banner of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA), armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns and M16 rifles seized from Tatmadaw bases.
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