Since the February 2021 coup, the Myanmar junta, known as the State Administrative Council (SAC), has tried to embed its government and exert control over the population through administration, organised violence, and warfare (Callahan 2004). In response, a revolutionary movement has emerged contesting the military's legitimacy at national levels and resisting their authority at sub-national levels using violent and non-violent tactics.

This paper provides a contemporary snapshot of contested military rule in Myanmar more than a year after the coup d’etat, using evidence up to August 2022. First, it charts Myanmar's reordered political context. Second, it analyses overlapping realms of national contest over who has the legitimacy to govern between the junta and parallel National Unity Government (NUG), and the historically contested structure of the Myanmar state with new movements for democratic federalism. Third, it analyses the mix of new and old conflict dynamics, including waves of guerrilla warfare across once-peaceful areas in the Bamar heartland. Fourth, it introduces new evidence to examine changes to subnational contests for authority, including new practices of local governance by resistance forces, the post-coup expansion of territory for ethnic resistance organisations (EROs), and contested administration by the junta.

In this disrupted era, resistance to military rule and coercion has a new cast of characters and multi-ethnic alliances. While the military has consolidated and restructured control over the central state apparatus, this paper argues that subnational and local authority has become more complex and contested than ever before, including in the Bamar heartland. The post-coup political landscape is one of altered power struggles, revolutionary contests, civil disobedience, and increased conflict intensity which shows no signs of abating.

METHODOLOGY

The new realities of Myanmar's post-coup environment provide unique security challenges for international and local researchers. This paper draws on new qualitative research conducted in Yangon Region, Sagaing Region, Rakhine State, Mon State, and Northern Shan State by Myanmar researchers between November 2021 and February 2022. A template of case study questions was prepared and shared with researchers who conducted semi-structured key informant interviews in Myanmar language with known contacts in different sites. Much of the research was done through safe electronic practices to avoid meeting in public places. For their safety, the researchers are anonymous.

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic. Neighbouring the world's two most populous countries, many feared the potential impacts to people in Myanmar with its limited public resources, health infrastructure and hospitals. Initially, there was some cautious optimism, as the country was able to avoid the high case-positive loads seen in nearby India, Indonesia and the Philippines. However, with its high levels of poverty and associated inequality, concerns about the economic repercussions of the global pandemic, as well as the impact of lockdown restrictions on ordinary people's livelihoods, soon became a more paramount concern.

Amidst the global health and economic crisis, Myanmar's people were gearing up for a general election, the second held since 2011 when the military junta begun to make space for a period of social and political change (Cheesman et al. 2014; Egreteau & Robinne 2015). While the country's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi campaigned on her unique ability to see the country through the pandemic as the ‘mother of the nation’, many people did not view the election or the government as playing a significant role in influencing their survival of the pandemic. The government's COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan (CERP) was widely criticised for its inability to reach the most vulnerable households, especially those in rural areas and the large number of people who work in the informal sector (see Mi Chan 2020). And yet, despite these criticisms and ongoing concerns about the difficulties of holding an election in the midst of a global pandemic, more than seventy per cent of the population came out to vote. While more than ninety parties competed in the election, people overwhelmingly endorsed Suu Kyi and the NLD in a landslide victory that was even greater than 2015 (Lidauer & Saphy 2021).

Less than three months later, on the day that Suu Kyi and other parliamentarians were to take their seats for a second term of government, Myanmar's democratic process and era of reform was brought to an abrupt end by a military coup d’etat.

At the turn of the new decade, Myanmar was on a pathway towards a more robust economy with prospects for sustained aggregate growth, increased employment opportunities in labour-intensive sectors such as manufacturing, and further economic policy and institutional reforms under an elected civilian government. In 2020 and 2021, this trajectory was disrupted by two profoundly destabilising crises that caused immense economic damage and human misery. First, in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard, with workers and the poor especially hurt by lockdowns, enterprise closures and job losses. Then, in February 2021, the misery caused by the pandemic was compounded and intensified by a coup staged by the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw), which has profoundly destabilised both politics and economic life.

The political implications of these events are explored elsewhere in this volume, whereas in this chapter, we will provide a summation and perspective on the economic damage done. Nonetheless, the military's brutal and violent suppression of pro-democracy protests, persistent violations of fundamental human rights, and disruption of Myanmar's incomplete journey towards democratic governance demonstrate that politics cannot be separated from economics because damage to the latter has clearly flowed from the destabilisation of politics after the coup.

The coup, as we will explore in a later section of this chapter, may have a profound and long-term impact on Myanmar's international investment environment and economic integration, inclusive of the effects of international sanctions. However, the most significant and immediate economic impacts were driven by internal rather than external factors. Widespread protests and the civil disobedience movement (CDM) impacted both public and private sector industries, with government, healthcare, finance, banking, and transport workers participating in great numbers to push for a restoration of democracy. They rejected the legitimacy of the military junta to govern and effectively shut down most sections of the domestic economy in the early phase of resistance. The military junta, largely via coercion, pushed for a resumption of economic and industrial activity over the course of 2021. Still, most sectors have continued to be impacted by ongoing CDM activity, protest actions, financial crisis, and later by armed resistance and conflict.

The attempted coup of February 2021 by the State Administration Council (SAC) has catalysed dramatic shifts in Myanmar's political and security landscapes. As the SAC has failed to assert its political authority, new governance systems have emerged under the National Unity Government (NUG) and a range of local level revolutionary coalitions. Meanwhile, ethnic resistance organisations (EROs) both aligned and non-aligned to the NUG, have been able to expand their areas of control.

This chapter examines the ways that political authority is established by competing actors in the context of Myanmar's post-2021 civil war and explores the implications of emerging governance dynamics for the country's future. I draw on a range of concepts from the international literature to highlight the importance of political authority and governance for the resistance movement's immediate struggle to take down the military junta and for its long-term agenda of establishing a lasting, peaceful, federal democratic union of Myanmar.

The governance systems of Myanmar's many resistance organisations have not gained significant academic attention until recent years, despite large areas of the country having been governed by them for many decades. The political authority and governance systems of resistance organisations are only mentioned in passing in the most influential studies on armed conflict and ethnic politics in Myanmar (Yawnghwhe 1987; Gravers 1999; Lintner 1999; Smith 1999; Thawnghmung 2007; Callahan 2007; South 2008; Sakhong 2010; Woods 2011; Sadan 2013). But recent years have seen increased interest in these themes, with Brenner (2017; 2019) exploring the politics and governance of so-called “rebels”, South (2017) discussing “hybrid governance” and Kyed et al. (2020) providing a seminal contribution on informal justice systems in both ERO and government-controlled areas (see also Decobert 2016; Paul 2018; Loong 2019; Ong 2020; and Kim 2021, among others). These recent works have demonstrated how large populations of the country have been subject to overlapping forms of localised authority completely independent from the central state. They have also demonstrated how the governance systems of EROs often demonstrate considerable legitimacy, especially in relation to the violent and invasive Myanmar Armed Forces, due to bottom-up collaboration between EROs and community-based actors.

In March 2020, the world was transformed in a matter of weeks as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across borders, forcing governments to implement restrictive measures to try and contain the spread of the highly contagious virus. During this time, people in Myanmar faced significant challenges as they were forced to adapt to new restrictions on movement, with many losing their primary source of income. In Kyauk Myaung, a fishing community of seven villages, the nationwide restrictions put in place significantly impacted livelihoods. Alongside various lockdown orders, fishing communities in Myanmar experienced prohibitions on fishing, stay-at-home restrictions, as well as a of series of other restrictions and new household expenditures concerning health, including masks, face shields, antiseptic handgel and additional personal protective equipment (PPE) (in some cases). In addition to these restrictions, markets and small businesses were closed, meaning fishermen had nowhere to sell their wares. While these measures were put in place to try and curb the spread of the virus, they had a significant impact on people's livelihoods. During 2020–2021, people in Kyauk Myaung who depend on fishing faced many difficulties as a result of stay-at-home orders and severe restrictions on fishing. Their main source of income was lost overnight and many households faced new challenges for their everyday survival.

This chapter examines the impacts of the restrictive measures put in place in Myanmar to try and combat the virus in Kyauk Myaung. This is a response to recent calls to provide detailed analysis about the impacts of COVID-19 on fishing communities across the globe. N.J. Bennett et al. (2020) and C.J. Knight et al. (2020) state that the impacts of COVID-19 on the social, economic and environmental sectors are yet to be quantified globally, although some efforts have already been made at the regional level. Research from Myanmar, highlights the devastating impacts of the pandemic on fishing communities and their livelihoods. This chapter is focused on Kyauk Myaung in Shwebo district, Sagaing region, which is famous for relying on freshwater fisheries. When I began research for this study in 2020, I found that there was an overwhelming crisis in the fisheries sector due to the restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the virus.

On the 1st of February, the Sit Tat1 staged a coup that overthrew the democratically elected government. After a brief period of stunned silence, the country erupted with anger and dismay. From eight o’clock that evening, Yangon and Mandalay were overtaken with the sound of mass pot-and-pan banging: long a traditional symbol of casting out demons, the pot-banging was repurposed as a symbol of mass protest, couched within the plausible deniability of the traditional act of exorcism. Within a few days, such nebulous and inchoate acts gave way to a mass social movement, started by nurses and doctors. Health sector workers exhorted their fellow public servants to refuse to work for the junta; knowing that this was in violation of civil service laws (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw 2013), they knew they would likely be arrested, and — citing Gandhi — released a statement on Facebook referring to their actions as “civil disobedience”. Myanmar's Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) was born. Teachers and other education sector staff were quick to follow health workers, joining demonstrations and releasing public statements; in a little over a week, the CDM had snowballed into a general anti-coup uprising. “CDMers,” or striking civil servants, were joined by labour unions, political activist networks, and a huge assortment of other groups and associations, forming the largest street demonstrations the country has witnessed since the mass demonstrations of 1988.

In the months that followed, “CDM” became a kind of shorthand for one's political allegiances. Striking government staff became known as “CDMers;” government staff who remained in their posts began to be called “non-CDM”. If someone is spoken about as “non-CDM,” the implication is that they are pro-junta. “Non-CDM” workers (and even their families) were identified online and recommended for a tactic that came to be known as “Social Punishment” (SP): the public (or online) harassment and ostracism of those non-CDM workers, particularly soldiers, and often their families as well, with particular focus on shutting down or boycotting militaryaligned businesses. As long-time Myanmar observer and anthropologist Courtney Wittekind puts it, “neutrality is no longer possible” (2021) in post-coup Myanmar. A side must be chosen.

What Myanmar1 is currently experiencing is often referred to as a ‘post-coup crisis’. Within the country, people call it the ‘Spring Revolution’, because it began in February, Myanmar's ‘Spring’. As significant parts of the country descended under armed conflict, political analysts and pundits began to start speaking of ‘civil war’ and the concept of a ‘failed state’. All these terms are accurate to some extent and reflect a certain kind of reality. And yet, they are inadequate and incomplete. In a world where unspeakable happenings occur almost daily, those who write pieces on Myanmar for the media will find the words ‘crisis’ and ‘tragedy’ a common feature of their news articles. In Myanmar we see and encounter such things with numbing regularity. And yet even we, ourselves, have not come up with a common term or phrase to label what we are faced with on a daily basis.

By calling it a ‘cataclysm’ one comes closer to the mark. Sifting through different descriptive terms of trauma goes together with plumbing the nature of the upheaval. An outsider may not comprehend the magnitude of the trauma and the depth of suffering that is being experienced — or indeed, that has been experienced collectively over the course of our history. That is one reason the remedies prescribed by external actors (like ‘dialogue’ for instance) fall flat on Myanmar ears. The United Nations and its various representatives have become the butt of jokes for their repeated expressions of ‘concern’. Because what is happening is unprecedented in living memory. While one can go back a number of decades to look at comparable circumstances, those cases simply don't do justice to the present. To the fear, uncertainty, exhaustion, sadness, anxiety, confusion and overall deep sense of utter devastation at what has and continues to take place on a daily basis.

One event that comes to mind is the fall of the Kingdom of Burma, etched into the history books by the deposition and exile of the last King, Thibaw, and annexation to the British Empire in 1886. Not many people are aware that the subsequent ‘pacification’ of the country took ten more years, and the deployment of 60,000 troops from the British Empire to quell various forms of resistance.

This chapter analyses the compounding effects of the COVID-19 health crisis and the political crisis of the February 2021 military coup in the context of Myanmar prisons. We want to start off this analysis by describing a particular photo. We suppose most fellow researchers and other people, who try to follow and understand both COVID-19 and the coup have been inundated with intense and disturbing photos and accounts of suffering in Myanmar. Unsurprisingly, we did so too in preparation for writing this chapter. One photo stood out for us. It is a photo of a young man by the name of Ko Manzar Myay Mon, an activist from Chang-U township in Sagaing region, who was arrested and detained on 8 June 2021. The photo, which was posted on Twitter, among others by the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar,2 shows Ko Manzar Myay Mon sitting crossed legged with his hands tied behind his back. One sees the boot and the camouflaged arm of a security officer next to him, who seems to pull his head back for the camera. The young man's face is bruised but expressionless, his t-shirt torn. Accounts of the injuries and torture that Ko Manzar Myay Mon was victim of after his arrest caused widespread condemnation3 and his trial is still pending as we write this chapter. Yet, in direct relation to the issue in focus here something else also stands out as particularly absurd and deeply disturbing. His captors have blindfolded him with a disposable facemask, which is lifted off his mouth to cover his eyes, strings around the ears still attached.

The photo documents as well as symbolizes — in a basic and brute way — how detention and COVID-19 collide in Myanmar today. The facemask over Ko Manzar Myay Mon's eyes shows how the agents of the junta menacingly distort and disregard the need to respond with minimal care and caution to the threat of COVID-19. Most apparently, placing the facemask over Ko Manzar Myay Mon's eyes shows a disregard for basic health safeguards. At a deeper level, this seemingly banal act changes a formally protective health technology into a tool of coercion and connotes the junta's readiness to distort the pandemic response and turn the threat of COVID-19 against the public.

The 1 February 2021 coup in Myanmar prompted a diverse range of responses from foreign governments and intergovernmental organisations, revealing considerable misunderstanding within Myanmar on the scope of feasible international responses. This chapter describes these responses and discusses the challenges in navigating tensions between contact and legitimation. It discusses the utility of condemnations, calls for accountability, the release of detainees and recognition of the National Unity Government, and the handling of competing claims to represent Myanmar in international organisations. In the context of calls on the international community to “save Myanmar”, this chapter also considers whether the United Nations Responsibility to Protect concept could be invoked and discusses attempts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to encourage dialogue between the parties.

I argue that while there is a performative dimension to the post-coup diplomatic response, it is also important for the international community to articulate its understanding of what constitutes acceptable conduct. Since the coup there has been a growing discourse and anxiety amongst people from Myanmar that, with the passage of time, nations, international organisations and businesses will increasingly become engaged with the military council. This anxiety is reflected in condemnation of contact, criticism of ASEAN efforts to find a pathway out of the political crisis and the calling out of all contact as “legitimising” the regime (Forum Asia 2021; Oo and Liu 2021). This tactic attempts to deny the military council any form of legitimacy. This chapter argues that some contact is necessary and useful and should not be stigmatised. To move on from the current situation to a restoration of democracy requires more than hope that the military council, on the basis of international opprobrium and a denial of international recognition, will eventually and voluntarily admit defeat and seek a return to parliamentary democracy.

The analysis in this chapter is based on observations of the first 18 months following the coup. Responses by advocacy groups — such as fundraising, lobbying for referral to the International Criminal Court, and other activities — and responses by the international donor and business communities, while important, are beyond the scope of this chapter.

We are in an era of both crisis and disappointment: the hopes and plans of millions have been ruined by the myriad political-economic problems caused by COVID-19, but mostly by the impact of Myanmar's military coup. However, within disappointment, there is generative potential. Amidst the chaos and despair caused by the coup, a revolutionary movement has grown, pointing towards new and innovative political possibilities for Myanmar. This revolutionary turn has been indexed by a radical decolonial turn in Myanmar-focused academia: even in the “ivory tower”, many desire a fundamental shift in the terms of engagement. We view this decolonising movement as part of a revolutionary zeitgeist in Myanmar right now, a historical conjuncture in which the terms of political engagement are being renegotiated across the board. In this contested historical moment, we see potential for disappointment and frustration to drive a kind of paradoxical optimism. Much of the work being done now, in politics as in academia, is being done under the assumption that the future will be better than the present, that there is something worth working toward both in the politics of Myanmar itself and in Myanmar-focused research. The purpose of this concluding chapter is to trace a line from disappointment to revolution, and to consider what directions Myanmar research might be able to take in the future.

We will begin with a meditation on disappointment and frustration, with a particular focus on people who grew up during the “transition” (people born between the late 1990s and the 2010s — so-called Generation Z), who came of age during the peak of Myanmar's recent international research engagement. Unlike older generations, who have seen cycles of liberalism and military authoritarianism, Generation Z has never really had to contend directly with military dictatorship in Myanmar. They are disappointed, and they are angry. From there, we will examine how this anger has produced not only a revolutionary political movement within Myanmar, but also a radical shift towards decolonial praxis in Myanmar studies (see for example, Chu May Paing and Than Toe Aung 2021; Tharaphi Than 2022) — a shift that is still somewhat nascent, but undeniably an important feature of contemporary Myanmar research.