Joshua Kurlantzick
With the sudden collapse of the al-Assad regime in Syria, after thirteen years of civil war and the seeming triumph of government forces, analysts and fighters in other long running civil wars are wondering whether their country could be next. Some have suggested that Myanmar, which has been at war essentially since the junta’s 2021 coup and where the military has steadily lost ground (it controls around twenty percent of the country's towns and townships now) could have its army and junta government collapse in a sudden rebel wave towards the capital.
Indeed, some of the conditions for a complete junta collapse seem to exist. Most of the Myanmar population already hates the military, which has ruled the country on and off since the early 1960s, and generally has driven the economy into the ground. The military is struggling with high numbers of defections (defections were actually fairly rare in prior military battles with its own population), getting food, money and other basic items to its soldiers.
As in Syria, too, there appears to be a degree of chaos and lack of information among the top junta commanders in Myanmar, other than a small circle around junta leader Min Aung Hlaing. Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly fired and changed large numbers of senior officers, leaving many in the dark about the military’s future plans.
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