Myanmar conflict: A Visual History

The Myanmar (Burma) conflict began at independence in 1948 when Karen, communist and other insurgencies challenged the new state; the army under Ne Win took power in 1962 and fought the Karen, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Mon, Arakanese and other ethnic armies and the Communist Party for decades in the border hills, funding itself partly through the Golden Triangle drug trade. Ceasefires in the 1990s and 2010s brought partial peace; the army's expulsion of 700,000 Rohingya in 2017 was called genocide. Since the coup of 1 February 2021 against Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government, a People's Defence Force allied with ethnic armies has fought the junta across the country; the 2023 Operation 1027 offensive took much of the north-east and Rakhine, and the junta has bombed towns and lost swathes of territory. Tens of thousands have died since 2021 alone.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Myanmar conflict. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Displaced people in Myanmar

Timeline of the Myanmar conflict

1. 1948
   Independence; communist and Karen risings
2. 1962
   Ne Win's coup
3. 1988
   8888 uprising crushed; SLORC
4. 1989
   Communist Party collapses; ceasefires
5. 2011
   Kachin ceasefire breaks; reforms begin
6. 2017
   Rohingya expulsion
7. 2021
   Coup; nationwide resistance1 February.
8. 2023
   Operation 1027
9. 2024
   Lashio falls to the MNDAA; junta conscription

Independence and Ne Win

Britain's Burma had ruled the ethnic hills separately; the Panglong agreement of 1947 promised the Shan, Kachin and Chin autonomy, but Aung San was assassinated and the Karen, promised nothing, rose in January 1949 and nearly took Rangoon. The Communist Party and Kuomintang remnants fought in the north; U Nu's democracy struggled; Ne Win's coup of 1962 imposed the 'Burmese Way to Socialism' and a 'four cuts' counter-insurgency of burning villages that displaced hundreds of thousands. The 1988 uprising was crushed and the SLORC junta took over; the CPB collapsed in 1989 into ethnic militias like the Wa, who signed ceasefires.

Ceasefires and the Rohingya

Ceasefires in the 1990s brought the Kachin and others uneasy peace while the Karen fought on; the 2008 constitution reserved a quarter of parliament for the army; Thein Sein's reforms and a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (2015) with some groups coincided with renewed Kachin war (2011). In August 2017 the army's 'clearance operations' in Rakhine drove 700,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh with mass killing and rape; the ICJ took up genocide charges. The Arakan Army's Buddhist Rakhine insurgency grew in the same state.

The 2021 coup and the Spring Revolution

Min Aung Hlaing seized power on 1 February 2021, arresting Suu Kyi after her party's landslide; protests were shot down and a National Unity Government formed a People's Defence Force. Ethnic armies trained the new fighters; the junta bombed schools, hospitals and monasteries, and conscripted youths. In October 2023 the Three Brotherhood Alliance's Operation 1027 overran junta positions in northern Shan and the Arakan Army took most of Rakhine; by 2025 the army had lost regional commands, border crossings and Lashio, and controlled perhaps half the country's territory. China brokered pauses; the junta scheduled elections widely dismissed as sham; the war continues.

The March 2025 earthquake near Mandalay killed thousands amid the fighting.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• Empire of Japan (1868 to 1947)

Wars of the same era and region

• Burmese-Siamese wars (1547 to 1855)
• World War II (1939 to 1945)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Chinese Civil War (1927 to 1949)
• Bangladesh Liberation War (1971)
• Papua conflict (1962 to present)

8 surprising things about the Myanmar conflict

1. The Karen insurgency, begun in 1949, is usually counted as the world's longest-running civil war.
2. The United Wa State Army, born from the Communist Party's collapse, has 30,000 troops, Chinese weapons and its own state.
3. Burma's Golden Triangle was the world's largest opium source in the 1970s and 1980s and is again a top producer.
4. The Rohingya exodus of 2017 created the world's largest refugee camp at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, with a million people.
5. The 2021 resistance saw doctors, teachers and civil servants strike en masse before taking up arms.
6. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and later defender of the army at the ICJ, was sentenced by the junta to 27 years.
7. The junta's conscription law of 2024 drove tens of thousands of young men to flee abroad or join the resistance.
8. Myanmar's army is called the Tatmadaw and its soldiers are widely known as 'sit-tat'; the resistance's PDF fights with 3D-printed guns.

Sources

• Myanmar conflict Wikipedia
• Myanmar: What is happening in the civil war BBC News
• Myanmar: Insurgency and military rule Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma (2019) Atlantic

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