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2 July 2024

Outrage is not a policy: Coming to terms with Myanmar’s fragmented state

Morten B. Pedersen

Introduction

The 2021 military coup in Myanmar ended a decade of liberal political and economic reforms but sparked a revolution that many hope will ultimately produce much needed, more radical change.

The Myanmar people are no strangers to military rule. However, the latest coup hit the country like an earthquake, shattering the hopes of millions of people who, after a decade of growing civil, political, and economic freedoms, had finally come to believe that tomorrow would be better than today. What the coup leaders had seemingly envisioned as a relatively simple “course correction” instead sparked a popular uprising, which soon evolved into an armed mass insurrection and civil war.

Three years after the coup, the new junta — the State Administration Council — is fighting a battle for survival against scores of new people’s militias and more established ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) demanding an end to the military’s role in politics and the establishment of a “genuine federal democracy”. Fresh elections originally scheduled for August 2023 have been repeatedly postponed, seemingly squashing any hope the coup-makers had of sneaking a new iteration of more tightly controlled “disciplined democracy” in through the backdoor.

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