3 June 2024

How Myanmar’s civil war is rippling into the U.S. and around the world

Mithil Aggarwal

More than three years after overthrowing a democratically elected government, the Myanmar military is battling to hold on to power as a protracted civil war in the Southeast Asian country draws in neighbors such as China and India and fuels a rise in cybercrime and drug trafficking that reaches around the world.

Ethnic militias have been fighting the Myanmar junta since February 2021, when the military ousted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s leader. But a coordinated offensive by an alliance of armed groups has made stunning advances since last fall, with resistance forces claiming the junta controls less than half of the Texas-sized country.

“This is a people’s revolution,” Kyaw Zaw, a spokesperson for the National Unity Government, Myanmar’s government-in-exile, told NBC News in a phone interview.

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