The 1 February 2021 coup marks the biggest shakeup of Myanmar’s conflict landscape since August 2011, when then-President Thein Sein launched a new peace process.¹ Prior to the military takeover, the country had around two dozen ethnic armed groups, as well as hundreds of militias of varying sizes mostly aligned with the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw. After decades of fighting for greater autonomy, most of these ethnic armed groups had either signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), enabling them to participate in political talks with the central government, or negotiated bilateral ceasefires with the military; clashes with the Tatmadaw were...

Over the past nine months, Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts have entered a new era that is both more complex and more fluid. Ethnic armed groups have been forced to make difficult strategic decisions, sometimes under strong pressure from their grassroots supporters to escalate the fight with the military. Some have played a key role in training and supplying newly formed militias, or even fought the Tatmadaw alongside them. Ethnic armed groups also tend to have close ties to new militias formed in ethnic minority areas, particularly in and on the periphery of Chin, Kayah, Karen and Kachin States. The key questions...

The CRPH and NUG recognised quickly that their success would depend in part on their ability to build partnerships with ethnic leaders, and to some degree that they would be dependent on ethnic armed groups for their own survival. For Myanmar’s military, a “united front” composed of the newly created PDFs and traditional ethnic armed groups is a nightmare scenario. Over the decades, the Tatmadaw has managed to avoid alliances between the country’s many ethnic armed groups through a combination of divide-and-conquer tactics, benefiting as well from its opponents’ inability to cement firm military alliances. Many of the familiar obstacles...

In the wake of its coup, the Tatmadaw has fallen back on familiar tactics in dealing with ethnic armed groups. Its decade of collective peace negotiations with nearly two dozen ethnic armed groups, ostensibly toward a settlement that could permanently end Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts, was historically anomalous. Since 1 February 2021, the Tatmadaw has instead sought to entice, persuade or coerce ethnic armed groups to refrain from siding with the NUG, strengthened existing alliances and even forged relationships with new partners. It will likely try to weaken the NUG by reaching bilateral agreements, either formal or informal, with those ethnic...

Outside actors seeking to mitigate conflict in Myanmar need to contend with an entirely transformed political and conflict landscape. The decades-old peace process is dead, at least four ethnic armies have returned to active conflict and hundreds of new militias have formed. Fighting has erupted in areas that have not seen clashes for many years, including the majority-Burman centre of the country, and conflict drivers are now often quite specific to localities. The military’s power grab and brutal tactics to crush dissent have created significant levels of support for armed struggle against the military regime. The coup has also forced...

The 1 February 2021 coup has ended a decade of negotiations over a peace settlement between the majority-Burman state and the country’s ethnic armed groups, leaving a much more complex and fast-changing conflict environment. Ethnic armed groups can no longer be easily divided into those who signed or did not sign the National Ceasefire Agreement, and even within long established alliances of armed groups, a range of positions has emerged. The lines between the anti-coup resistance and long-established ethnic armed groups are also increasingly blurred: some newly formed militias in majority-Burman areas have no links to ethnic armed groups, but...