Why Burma’s Democratic Forces Are Winning

Burma’s democratic resistance has made impressive gains against the country’s corrupt junta. But they need help from the world’s democracies if they are to succeed and create an enduring peace.

By Damon Wilson

December 2024

Last November, I argued that Burma’s prodemocracy forces could win against the country’s embattled military regime. A coordinated offensive has since liberated territory across the nation, confining the military regime to administering less than 40 percent of the country. As I recently saw on a visit to the Thailand-Burma border, the resolve of the country’s democratic resistance has only grown stronger since the war began more than three years ago.

Sitting not far from the Moei River separating Thai and Burmese towns, a woman in her late twenties explained that she had been serving as a new police officer when the coup occurred. She soon defected to the democratic opposition. “I had stayed out of politics,” she explained, “but then I saw I was being used to repress my own people.” Her eyes flashed determination to never accept life under the junta. It was a sentiment common to every activist I met.

These activists know there will be no peace in Burma until the military is sufficiently weakened that it is forced to concede its role in politics at the negotiating table. The democratic alliance’s aspiration to establish a new federal democracy offers the only pathway to enduring stability and unity. Their vision offers a place in the nation for a professional Burmese military, without the brutal, kleptocratic leadership of Min Aung Hlaing.

The country’s junta, which Min Aung Hlaing leads, is in a vulnerable position, even as it retains the ability to wreak havoc on civilians. However, a hangover from Burma’s last democratic experiment and a few persistent myths mean that many policymakers remain cautious about getting engaged in what seems to be another messy civil war.

In this case, increased support for the democratic forces and stepped-up pressure on the junta can create conditions favorable to a just, negotiated outcome. While wariness is understandable in a complex conflict, failure to engage more purposefully would strengthen the hand of China, which sees a weak, divided, and dependent Burma as the best way to protect its interests and investments — and to block U.S. influence and investment in the nation of 55 million people and more broadly in Southeast Asia.

Burma is a diverse country which has experienced decades of conflict as a consequence of a military that has repressed the democratic aspirations of the people and the longstanding demands of Burma’s ethnic groups. In 2015, there were hopes that the electoral victory of the then recently freed democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would give way to a transition to democracy. While the transition was fragile, it came with freedoms for the people and ended the country’s international isolation.

But it was a false dawn. Reform was consistently undermined by the military and a constitution that enshrined its supremacy. The failure to bring the military to account for decades of atrocities, particularly those against the ethnic nationalities and Rohingya people, is what emboldened the generals to stage a coup in 2021.

That coup sparked a brutal war in which the military has been terrorizing the population and targeting the civil-disobedience movement, democratic resistance, and organized ethnic minorities. As a result, the junta has displaced more than 3 million people and detained more than 20,000 political prisoners. Over the past year, however, the military has suffered severe territorial and political setbacks at the hands of a coordinated offensive. Facing more desperate circumstances, the regime is forcibly conscripting the country’s youth.

In such a complex situation, remaining on the sidelines can sound attractive.

It’s a sentiment that Burma’s military is only too happy to encourage. It advances the myth that it’s the only entity that can provide stability — despite being consigned to little more than isolated control of urban centers. The reality is that a destructive war of terror will continue as long as the military tries to govern.

The military no longer controls a majority of Burma’s territory. Even in the cities, courageous acts of civil disobedience underscore the instability of military rule. The only means for the junta to regain control is to gain significantly more support from Russia and China, enabling the junta to wage warfare and undertake atrocities similar to what Bashar-al Assad has been doing in Syria. Yet such an approach will only fuel further resistance, devastate the country, produce more atrocities and refugees, and result in several more years of conflict.

The resistance forces have momentum, having liberated much of the country, and many are filling the void by instituting democratic local-governance structures to meet the needs of their constituents. The democracy movement is now building and running schools, hospitals, and administrative offices across much of Burma. These experiments in local democracy are born of more than necessity. They are testing grounds for the movement’s common vision for the future of the country: an end to all forms of dictatorship and a unique, bottom-up, pan-ethnic form of federalism custom-made for Burma. I met many involved in this grassroots movement focused on localized democracy on my recent visit.

These experiments in democratic federalism are showing how the democratic movement is ready to govern while directly taking on another of the military’s favorite myths: that recognizing the country’s diversity would lead to chaos and fragmentation. Rather, allied anti-junta forces offer the only path to stability, peace, and unity.

Democracies around the world can strengthen Burma’s democratic forces further by engaging with these local administrative structures and stepping up assistance. At Congressional urging, USAID has been providing aid such as food and medicine directly to them, which helps bolster the democrats’ governing credibility. It also ensures that Burma’s military cannot use the aid to coerce its people.

The junta may be in a weak state, but it’s dug in — and it’s rearming, with help from Russia and China. Burma’s military leaders believe that if they can rearm and divide the ethnic resistance, they can wage war to regain lost territories and defeat democratic forces. The military does not yet offer the prospect of a ceasefire, negotiations, compromise, or any exit from the crisis through elections. The only realistic way to induce the military to seek a political settlement and engage in serious negotiations is by undermining the supply chain for its war machine: cutting off access to things like cash, weapons, jet fuel, and technology. The best way to ensure that future negotiations bear fruit is to pressure the military to engage with the opposition as an equal and to abstain from future political activity. The United States and its Asian allies can and should support this approach, which is the most effective means to end the war, induce a political settlement, and restore stability.

There is no reason for the United States to do the heavy lifting alone, however. A multilateral negotiation, led by a third party — such as Malaysia, which will chair ASEAN in 2025, together with the UN special envoy to Myanmar, former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop — would have a greater chance of success. But the right conditions are needed first. Rushing to the negotiating table won’t solve anything. Nor will holding sham elections on a third of the territory while the rest of the country remains at war.

But strong and careful leadership can create the conditions to get this right — to avoid the mistakes that doomed Burma’s last democratic experiment, and help the country put itself firmly on a path to peace through federal democracy. This is the path that is locally driven by legitimate domestic political forces — democratic and ethnic — which enjoy the support and consent of the people.

This is not just the best way to support Burma’s determined democracy activists, like the former policewoman I met, or to counter Chinese influence — it is also the best way to ensure that Burma’s people can break the cycle of violence and recrimination that has plagued their postindependence history. And this is the best way to prevent years more of devastating war and fragmentation.

Damon Wilson is president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.

Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy

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