Could the Myanmar Junta Rapidly Collapse Like al-Assad?

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.

And after losing control of most border gates on the Chinese border to the rebels, which could impact supply lines and severely restrict trade, in recent weeks the military has all but lost the battle for Mindat. Mindat is a strategic town that, if taken, could allow rebels freer movement and possibly set the stage for a drive south toward the capital. (The military is still bombing Mindat every day, but has a dearth of soldiers to fight for the town.)  

But the Myanmar military is, in many ways, a different situation than al-Assad and his forces.  Although there were/are several prominent rebel groups in Syria, in Myanmar there are many more, some of which have in the past fought battles against each other. They are now technically aligned and focused on their goal, toppling the junta. But an offensive on the capital would require better coordination, and there also is no guarantee  that if the junta falls the large number of armed groups in Myanmar would avoid war with each other. The country lacks any one figure who could step in and help avoid such a prospect – Aung San Suu Kyi lost a lot of credibility when she was president during the brief democratic era and she is now seventy nine, in jail, and supposedly ailing.

In addition, the international community is far less focused now on Myanmar than it was on Syria. As Mizzima Weekly, a leading exile Myanmar publication notes in a recent issue, “the global response to Myanmar’s resistance has been far weaker than the opposition in Syria. Sanctions and condemnations have been issued against the Myanmar regime, but there is limited coordinated military or financial support for the [exile] National Unity Government or Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs fighting the junta]  compared to the Syrian opposition groups. The most important regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has totally failed to create the conditions for the military to listen to it and possibly discuss a future compromise.

Meanwhile, the United States government, previously a strong supporter of democracy in Myanmar, having given its pro-democracy groups over $1.5 billion in a decade, seems increasingly uninterested, especially when there are so many conflicts in areas like Europe and the Middle East, which are higher strategic priorities for Washington than Myanmar. Even when Congress did pass the 2023 BURMA Act, it did not really change that policy of disinterest. The act was watered down from many of its initial tougher provisions, which including naming a special coordinator for Burma who would oversee the whole U.S. government  response. Such an individual, empowered by having all the levers at his or her control and by the U.S. ability to provide aid to a country that settled its war and moved back toward democracy, could have been an aggressive player in altering the state of the war.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s neighbors, including Thailand, India, and certainly China, want to keep the junta in power, fearing that if it falls, Myanmar will turn into a bloodbath of armed groups battling each other, a la Somalia in the early 1990s. They also fear a total collapse will lead to a massive refugee outflux. When Myanmar armed groups attacked ethnic Rohingya in western Myanmar in 2017 to 2018, they drove at least 750,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. Ill-equipped to handle this influx, Bangladesh housed them in makeshift camps which became rife with disease and natural disasters and crime, and repeatedly tried to push them back into Myanmar.  

India, for one, has sold arms and given other aid to the junta, although it recently has given out feelers to the opposition. Thailand has provided financial lifelines to the junta, and has defended it in various diplomatic forums. Russia, while not Myanmar’s neighbor, has until recently sold the junta weapons (including planes  the junta uses to carpet bomb civilians), helped it escape diplomatic isolation by including it in multilateral forums led by Moscow and Beijing, and provided it with critical oil and offered plans to rebuild Myanmar’s energy infrastructure.

And then  there is China, by far the most powerful actor in general in Southeast Asia and the dominant external force in Myanmar. China recognizes that despite the junta’s losses, it still controls most of  the areas of Myanmar most critical to growth and trade, while the rebels control less productive areas. China wants its sizable investments in Myanmar – it is the biggest trading partner by far and has multiple large infrastructure and extractive projects in Myanmar – to be safe. So it has defended the junta diplomatically and, initially after the coup, allowed Chinese state-owned enterprises to continue making deals in Myanmar, although the level of instability has halted those deals.

As the junta military loses ground, leading to several concerning developments for Beijing, include the loss of border posts, poor security for its investments, and the proliferation of cyberscam centers in Myanmar that target Chinese, Beijing has slightly altered its stance. It has promised Myanmar a sizable aid package – over $1 billion – if the junta can move toward elections in 2025. How such elections would take place in a country where so many different groups hold territory, and whether the election could be fairly held, are major questions. But China seems to just want to get an election. And a poorly-held, not credible election would only prolong the war – and keep the country in a quagmire with no clear breakthroughs like the one that toppled al-Assad.