After a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28. 2025, the nation’s army and the myriad resistance teams combating a yearslong civil battle confronted worldwide requires an instantaneous ceasefire. A pause within the combating would allow important help to enter the key quake zones and permit rescuers to help victims in a catastrophe that has already killed greater than 3,000 individuals.
The primary to heed the decision was the opposition Nationwide Unity Authorities, which unilaterally introduced a two-week pause on assaults by its armed wing, the Individuals’s Protection Power, on March 29. The Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of three ethnic resistance teams: the Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military, the Ta’ang Nationwide Liberation Military and the Arakan Military – likewise agreed to a brief truce.
However Myanmar’s army demurred. Simply hours after the quake, as rescuers continued to dig via rubble looking for survivors, the generals ordered airstrikes on enemy positions in Shan state and Karen state within the nation’s east – a choice that United Nations particular rapporteur Tom Andrews described as “nothing short of incredible.”
The generals ultimately yielded to strain late on April 2 – some 5 days after the earthquake hit – saying that they might halt combating till April 22. However the assertion gave the impression to be hole, with studies only a day later that the army’s bombing marketing campaign and floor offensive had been persevering with unabated in Kachin state in Myanmar’s north.
Mandalay buildings, like Myanmar’s democracy, lie in ruins.
STR/AFP through Getty Photographs
As an professional on the political historical past of Myanmar, I consider the conduct of the nation’s army is of no shock. The generals who’ve had a grip on the nation for a lot of the previous six a long time have a monitor file of exploiting disasters for political acquire. Weakened by years of entrenched civil battle, they’re now looking for a possibility within the earthquake to rehabilitate their picture abroad, whereas consolidating energy at house.
From disasters to elections
Myanmar’s ruling junta has tried this tactic earlier than. In 2008, every week after the lethal cyclone Nargis killed greater than 100,000 individuals in Myanmar, the army proceeded to carry a constitutional referendum that might assure the army’s management of presidency by reserving 25% of all parliamentary seats for officers whereas requiring 75% of votes for any future constitutional reform. It additionally allowed for the army to take over the nation “in the event of an emergency.”
The referendum came about whereas a lot of Myanmar was nonetheless reeling from catastrophe, but the junta introduced a 98.12% turnout, of which 92.48% voted in favor of the brand new pro-military structure.
It paved the way in which to elections in 2010, which the army’s Union Solidarity and Improvement Celebration gained. Although that vote was boycotted by the opposition Nationwide League for Democracy, or NLD, Washington had by then signaled a shift in coverage towards “pragmatic engagement” with the then-ruling junta. This U.S. shift compelled the recalcitrant NLD to cooperate in subsequent elections, giving legitimacy to a course of that was stacked in favor of the generals.
Utilizing a fig leaf of legitimacy
The most recent catastrophe comes because the junta is once more trying to push for elections. Only a day earlier than the earthquake, Myanmar’s army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, confirmed plans for a December nationwide vote and known as on opposition events to take part.
However the proposed election in Myanmar is broadly seen as a face-saving technique for each the Myanmar army and, I’d argue, a world neighborhood that has finished little of any significance to finish the civil battle. On this context, elections would permit the generals to cowl their 2021 energy seize with a fig leaf of legitimacy.
The entrenched civil battle that was sparked by that army takeover – a coup that ended a 10-year experiment with restricted democracy – derailed the army’s preliminary plan to return to full management of the nation.
Anti-military troopers sit in a long-tailed boat on the Salween River.
Thierry Falise/LightRocket through Getty Photographs
4 years of combating a broad-based opposition that features ethnic minority teams just like the Karen Nationwide Union, Kachin Independence Military, Arakan Military, Ta’ang Nationwide Liberation Military, Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military, Individuals’s Protection Power and Bamar Individuals’s Liberation Military has taken its toll on the army.
It has misplaced territorial management in lots of areas to the myriad resistance teams. Internationally, it has turn out to be extra remoted via sanctions, and its largest buying and selling companion, China, involved over instability on its border, has slowed investments because it tries to play all sides of the battle.
In desperation, the generals have resorted to compelled conscription for foot troopers, whereas seeking to Russia for arms and funding.
The failure of the generals
What the army desperately wants now’s a lifeline and a civil battle exit plan. The earthquake might present each, with a ceasefire – regardless of how badly noticed – offering a canopy for permitting for a nationwide vote.
However as has been evident within the days surrounding the announcement of a truce, the army is prone to exploit the catastrophe to weaken the resistance alongside the way in which. It has stated that it’ll take “necessary” measures in opposition to any resistance group discovered to be regrouping or attacking the state through the ceasefire. But it has reportedly continued its personal offensive.
The earthquake has revealed the failures and brutalities of the army in different methods, too. Within the aftermath of the catastrophe, the army shut down non-public clinics and hospitals in badly hit Mandalay for allegedly using insurgent medical doctors and nurses who had been treating members of the resistance. Because it was, many well being care staff have been in hiding because the coup, and younger individuals who might have been on the entrance strains of reduction efforts have both joined the resistance teams or fled the nation.
The earthquake will even additional damage a Myanmar enterprise neighborhood already affected by the pullout of worldwide companies after the 2021 coup.
On unsecure foundations
But, the army could also be hoping that it could use the catastrophe to rebuild its model abroad. The shock announcement of a ceasefire by the generals is a part of that course of. So, too, is the choice to permit in worldwide rescue groups, after initially blocking reduction staff from coming into the nation. It’s the army’s manner of exhibiting willingness to cooperate with the broader world.
Briefly, catastrophe diplomacy has kicked in for Myanmar’s army, because it did after 2008’s Cyclone Nagris. That earlier cyclone offered a possibility for the junta to current a unique face to the worldwide neighborhood. Elections had been held, not as soon as, however twice – inspired by the U.S. and others – and investments rushed into Myanmar because the nation was touted as “Asia’s next Tiger.”
However the foundations of military-backed reform in Myanmar had been constructed on fault strains that cracked and crumbled amid the 2021 coup. The army’s exploitation of the 2025 earthquake will, I worry, lead to comparable ends.
