Myanmar is now four years into a civil war that shows no sign of abating. Following an October 2023 offensive in the north-eastern state Shan, the military junta, known as the State Administrative Council (SAC), lost control over swathes of territory on the border with China.
In early April the border town Myawaddy, an important transit point for the flow of goods between Thailand and Myanmar, fell under the control of the Karen people, an ethnic minority group that has been battling the central government for decades. As of late April, Myawaddy was back under SAC control. The situation remains volatile.
On the other side of Myanmar, on the western border with Bangladesh, an armed ethnic group named the Arakan Army is giving the SAC military a hard time.
The governing junta is on the backfoot and under immense pressure in Myanmar's border regions, only able to launch retaliatory attacks from the air or with long-range artillery.
"The Civil War is going on and it won't stop any time soon," an expert from Yangon, who cannot be named for security reasons, told DW. The military isn't on the brink of defeat either, the source stressed.
The current situation, while dramatic, isn't totally new. Today's Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has never been a fully functioning nation state since gaining independence in 1948.
No central government has ever succeeded in ruling the entire country. And certainly no common national identity has ever emerged in this land of many ethnicities. The intensity of the conflict between them all has ebbed and flowed over the course of the past 76 years as has the extent of central government control.
Nonetheless the military coup against the government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 ushered in a whole new phase of fragmentation.
The main difference now is that these divisions are more obvious, according to the anonymous Yangon source. "The country used to be fragmented but it wasn't as visible. Today people can see it with their own eyes because of social media and interconnectedness," they said. Talk of the country's possible disintegration is on the rise, they added.
The already complicated landscape of Myanmar's conflict has only become more complex. Before the military coup in 2021, there were around 24 armed ethnic groups in Myanmar and hundreds of militias. The number of troops in each group varied from several hundred up to an estimated 30,000 fighters in, for example, the United Wa State Army (USWA) and the Arakan Army.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.