Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has experienced near-constant internal conflict since gaining independence from Britain in 1948, driven by long-running ethnic insurgencies among the country’s many minority groups and decades of direct or indirect military rule. Successive governments have justified their grip on power partly by pointing to the risk that the country could fracture along ethnic lines.
Hopes for change rose in 1990, when the National League for Democracy won a landslide election, only for the ruling generals to refuse to recognize the results, placing the party’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for much of the following two decades. A gradual political opening in the 2010s eventually allowed her party to take power through the ballot box, and the country began cautiously re-engaging with the international community after years of isolation.
That progress was abruptly reversed in February 2021, when the military seized power in a coup, arresting civilian leaders and triggering nationwide protests met with a violent crackdown. The country has since been engulfed in a widening civil conflict involving the military, newly formed resistance forces, and long-established ethnic armed organizations, alongside a humanitarian crisis, including the displacement of the Rohingya minority, that has drawn sustained international concern.