On April 7, 2025, Myanmar resistance forces raised their flags over two towns, Falam in Chin state and Indaw in Sagaing region. These were the latest in a string of hard-fought victories over a beleaguered junta that had blundered through a disastrous earthquake less than two weeks before. The battle of Falam in particular took the form of a grinding, multimonth siege. Yet this was overshadowed later that month when China’s special envoy to Myanmar openly drove into Lashio, a city seized in 2024 by resistance-aligned fighters, to oversee its return to junta control.
Myanmar’s resistance coalition of ousted parliamentarians, civil society, volunteer militias, and ethnic armed groups has wrested 50 percent of the country from its ruling junta. This success has generated optimism about the movement’s ability to eventually outlast and outfight the government. But time may not be on the rebels’ side, and the Chinese government certainly isn’t. This makes for a daunting combination. The slow pace of siege warfare allows Beijing time to divide the resistance and provide the junta a lifeline to political survival and victory.
The current round of fighting in Myanmar goes back to 2021, when the country’s military, called the Tatmadaw, overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After months of protests and junta retaliation, ousted parliamentarians, civil society, and representatives from some ethnic groups formed a pro-democracy National Unity Government to fight back. It was then clear that Myanmar’s on-again, off-again civil war would reignite as the resistance declared a “Spring Revolution.” The Tatmadaw then felt confident it would outlast any armed opposition, especially as Myanmar’s numerous long-standing ethnic armed groups were largely neutral. Although motivated, civilian protesters struggled to secure homemade weapons and organize. Eventually, these became the People’s Defense Forces, operating either independently or under National Unity Government command.
Now, in 2025, the situation is reversed. Half a dozen major ethnic armies have entered the war and seized the border regions. The Tatmadaw faces a diverse coalition of ethnic armed groups, the People’s Defense Forces, civil society actors, and the National Unity Government. The ethnic armed groups, some decades old, are critical to this coalition.