Forgotten conflicts – Myanmar: Military junta in the Golden Triangle

In December last year, at polling stations in towns under military control, one resident told CNN journalists that she had previously been able to submit a blank ballot, but that electronic vote-counting machines now accepted nothing except a vote for one of the parties approved by the junta's commission. Voting took place from 12/28/2025 to 01/25/2026, in a third of the country's 330 constituencies, in areas where the military had at least some degree of control. Vast parts of Myanmar, either under rebel control or engulfed by fighting, did not take part in the vote at all.

It was a prelude to what followed on 04/10/2026: Min Aung Hlaing, the general who overthrew the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 (although she was not formally prime minister), was sworn in as president of Myanmar. The military bloc holds almost 90% of the seats in the bicameral parliament, and 28 of the 30 new ministers in his government are former or current generals and officials from the military administration.

The National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi's party, which won a sweeping majority in 2020, was dissolved as early as 2023 and boycotted the vote. Most of the 57 registered parties that took part are loyal to the ruling paramilitary Union Solidarity and Development Party.

According to United Nations (UN) data, 324 men and 80 women were arrested under laws on “protecting the electionâ€, including for ordinary online posts. One man was sentenced to 49 years in prison for a post on social media.

The US think tank the Council on Foreign Relations said the elections were neither free nor fair. Opposition parties were banned, tens of thousands of political prisoners remain behind bars, and freedom of assembly and speech is virtually non-existent. The former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, called on the international community to reject the election results as illegitimate. Nine countries nevertheless sent observers, including Japan and India, the region's two largest democracies, giving the junta an opportunity to present the electoral process as normal.

Fifth year of war

Behind the electoral façade, the civil war that began with the coup is still ongoing and claiming ever more lives. In early July 2026, the analytical organisation Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) said the death toll since the February 2021 coup had exceeded 100,000, making Myanmar the deadliest active conflict in Asia. That figure includes only direct victims of fighting, torture and executions, not those who died from hunger, disease or the consequences of displacement.

More than 15,000 people were killed in 2025 alone, and in the first six months of 2026 dozens of mass executions of civilians were recorded, with more than 450 victims. According to NBC News, attacks on civilians have intensified sharply since Ye Win Oo took office as the new commander-in-chief in late March 2026.

Territorially, according to the Global Conflict Tracker, the junta controls only about 21% of the country, meaning that as much as four-fifths of Myanmar lies outside its rule. Of that, resistance forces and ethnic armies control 42%, while the remaining roughly 37% is an area of active fighting or no man's land. This larger, non-junta part of the country is not without administration: the Kachin Independence Organisation in the north, the Karen National Union in the east, the Karenni Executive Council in the south-east, the Chin National Front in the west, and the Arakan Army in Rakhine, together with the People's Defence Forces, local militias nominally under the command of the exiled National Unity Government, run their own administrations and courts and collect taxes in the territories they control.

The war is taking lives, but it is also deadlocked, with neither side holding a decisive advantage, while China is playing an increasingly active mediating role, primarily to shield the junta from total collapse.

All officials and ministers of the government in exile are in hiding or abroad, often changing location for security reasons. This government is trying, with little success, to unite all rebel militias, some of which had also fought against it while it was in power.

The humanitarian consequences are drastic, according to UN data: nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 55 million people are facing acute hunger, while another third are in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

With inflation above 30% and economic output falling for a fifth consecutive year, the junta is systematically obstructing all forms of humanitarian assistance from abroad, for fear of losing power.

The generals in civilian suits, despite having no authority over most of Myanmar's territory — and exercising brutal repression where they do rule — are gradually finding allies, above all in countries interested in natural resources and the cheapest labour force in Asia.

Since becoming president, Min Aung Hlaing has visited India, China, Laos, and in early August, Thailand. In doing so, Bangkok is pursuing a broader regional effort to bring Myanmar back within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), although analysts warn that this could lend legitimacy to the authorities without any progress in implementing the peace plan adopted by the same bloc four years ago.

In mid-August, Myanmar's president was also received in Moscow by Vladimir Putin, when an agreement on “comprehensive cooperation†was signed. Despite all these visits, as agencies note, Min Aung Hlaing remains under Western sanctions and is still largely internationally isolated. Diplomatic normalisation is proceeding slowly, mainly through countries that themselves have little reason to ask questions about legitimacy.

ASEAN is deeply divided

The rebranded junta leaders are offering the appearance of constitutional order and a return to the international community, while the war at home continues. Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group described it to CNN as a cynical exercise aimed solely at prolonging military rule, warning that the most important thing is for states not to grant legitimacy to such a process.

ASEAN itself, however, remains deeply divided. Countries more removed from the crisis — Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines — continue to call for an end to the violence and the restoration of democracy, while countries closer to Myanmar — Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam — mostly shelter behind the principle of non-interference.

At an informal meeting in Bangkok on 07/12/2026, the first direct contact between regional diplomats and the junta's new foreign minister, the government in Naypyidaw refused to halt military operations, open dialogue with the government in exile, allow envoys access to former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, and offered only minimal technical concessions, such as a limited expansion of the humanitarian mission.

Five years after the coup, Myanmar is a country in which the military has learned to stage a transition convincingly enough for part of the world to stop asking uncomfortable questions. Elections without an opposition, a president in uniform without a uniform, and a tour of capitals that do not demand explanations change none of the facts: the war goes on, a quarter of the population is hungry, and the repressive apparatus is still arresting people over online posts. For as long as the international community is not prepared to confront a level of repression without precedent in Asia, the junta will have every reason to believe that time is on its side.