A weakening Myanmar junta lashed out brutally in 2024, with civilians bearing much of the brunt as the regime targeted villagers and civilian infrastructure with relentless airstrikes across the expanding areas over which it has lost control. Continued bold offensives by ethnic armies and their People’s Defense Force allies saw almost the whole of northern Shan State as well as Rakhine State seized from the junta, which resorted to refilling its increasingly depleted ranks with barely trained conscripts drafted under its newly enforced mandatory military service law.
Min Aung Hlaing’s regime was able to take some consolation from the fact that Beijing finally dropped its pretense of noninterference and openly embraced the junta, inviting the globally shunned State Administration Council boss to a meeting in China for the first time since the coup and exerting pressure on ethnic armies near its border to stop fighting. Emboldened by this support—and with the collaboration of a number of opportunistic domestic political parties apparently still eager to gain the dictator’s favor, despite his weakening grip on the country—the junta pressed ahead with its plans to hold an election in 2025, embarking on a population census rendered largely meaningless due to the total lack of security in much of the country. Outside the small circle of the junta’s international backers, the planned poll has widely been dismissed as a sham designed to legitimize the military’s grip on power.
The following is The Irrawaddy’s roundup of noteworthy players who shaped—for better or for worse—Myanmar’s unfolding crisis in 2024.
Key Resistance Armies
2024 marked another pivotal year for the armed resistance against the Myanmar military junta with coordination among existing ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and their resistance allies resulting in the seizure of almost the whole of northern Shan State. Their collaborations significantly undermined the junta’s ability to control the country, with captured locations including Lashio, the capital of northern Shan State and the first capital to be liberated—and along with it the junta military’s Northeastern Command, the first regional command to be conquered. In the final weeks of the year the military also lost its Western Command in Rakhine State’s Ann Township. Of course, their victories boosted morale among resistance groups and the civilian population alike.
The major players in the popular armed resistance in 2024 were the Brotherhood Alliance—comprising the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Rakhine State-based Arakan Army (AA)—as well as the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Mandalay People’s Defense Force (PDF). They not only inflicted humiliating defeats on the regime, but also weakened its grip on power.
The Brotherhood Alliance launched the highly successful anti-regime Operation 1027 in October 2023, targeting northern Shan State. Though temporarily halted in January 2024 due to a China-brokered ceasefire, the operation resumed in June after the junta violated the deal. Amid constant Chinese pressure to stop fighting the regime, the ethnic alliance captured nearly the whole of northern Shan State, seizing some 25 towns and townships including the capital Lashio and the regional command.
Moreover, the TNLA and its allies including Mandalay PDF seized some four towns, including the ruby hub Mogoke, in northern Mandalay Region while threatening Myanmar’s second-largest city Mandalay.
In Myanmar’s north, the KIA gained key victories in Kachin State as well as in northern Sagaing Region and northern Shan State. The ethnic army also captured almost the whole of Kachin State Special Region 1 from junta-friendly warlord Zahkung Tin Ying. The region is a rare earth mining hub and strategically important location on the Chinese border. In collaboration with several resistance groups including PDF groups under the civilian National Unity Government, the KIA has seized around 10 towns in Kachin and six in northern Sagaing and northern Shan.
In Rakhine, the AA kept fighting the junta to consolidate its gains in the state while coordinating with other resistance groups in Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin State. It managed to take complete control of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border after completing its capture of Maungdaw Township on Dec. 8. So far it has seized 13 of Rakhine’s 17 townships as well as neighboring Chin State’s Paletwa Township, which borders both Bangladesh and India. The EAO also captured the Myanmar military’s Western Command in Rakhine’s Ann Township, which became the second regional command lost by the regime.
By Nayt Thit
Women at War
An unconquerable force in Myanmar’s struggle for democracy, the women of Myanmar deserve to be collectively honored as a Person of the Year for driving the resistance against the military dictatorship with courage, resilience and unwavering determination.
Since the coup in 2021, women from all walks of life—students, mothers, professionals and activists—have taken on critical roles in the revolution to topple the regime that ousted the country’s female elected leader and commands a male chauvinist army that has killed more than 6,000 people and arrested over 27,000 dissidents.
These women have assumed roles as resistance fighters, commandos, guerrilla soldiers, snipers, medics, anti-regime protesters, activists, fundraisers and more.
Risking their lives in the armed struggle, female resistance fighters engage in combat on the front lines alongside their male comrades.
Many young women have joined resistance forces across the country, taking up arms to protect their people and communities. In the jungles and makeshift camps, they undergo harsh military training and learn military skills to root out the military dictatorship.
Women have stepped into leading roles in revolutionary groups from commanders and administrators to training instructors, and serve in drone and medical units.
On the battlefield, women medics provide life-saving care to the wounded, enduring airstrikes and resource shortages and risking capture. Their compassion to save the wounded under dire circumstances is as vital as their courage.
Beyond the front lines, women are part of the backbone of the revolution, tirelessly supporting it as fundraisers and organizers. By managing supplies for resistance groups and securing funds and arranging shelter for displaced civilians, they are a critical pillar of the resistance.
In the cities and villages, women continue to defiantly engage in protest. Women were among the first to take to the streets after the coup, waving banners and banging pots and pans to condemn the junta. Despite the threat of arrest, torture and persecution, they continue to take to the streets and protest the ruthless regime.
Mothers, too, are at the heart of this revolution. Many have been forcibly separated from their children, or lost them to the junta’s bullets. Yet, these grieving mothers have turned their sorrow into strength, becoming some of the revolution’s bravest voices in the fight for freedom.
In 2024, as the junta’s brutality escalated, women’s participation in the revolution only grew. Their sacrifices are immense—many have been imprisoned, tortured, or forced to flee their homes. Yet their determination to topple the regime remains steadfast.
Whether as resistance fighters, medics, organizers, or grieving mothers, the women of Myanmar stand at the forefront of the revolution. They have proven, time and again, that women are not only part of the struggle—they are its heart and driving force.
By Khin Nadi
The Junta’s Partner in Crime
In Chinese culture, the Dragon is widely regarded as an auspicious creature, unparalleled in ability and excellence, so 2024—the Year of the Dragon—should have been a time of power, nobility and honor for China.
But Beijing’s approach to Myanmar, its southern neighbor, in 2024 was far from noble or honorable, as it openly embraced the country’s bloody dictator Min Aung Hlaing and provided various forms of support aimed at ensuring his regime’s survival.
When it comes to its relations with Myanmar, “non-interference” and fostering “paukphaw” (fraternal) ties are China’s mantras. Beijing has always said that what happens in its southern neighbor is a domestic issue and that it always maintains close ties with the people of Myanmar.
But the way China acted towards Myanmar in 2024 was at odds with these mantras. Rather, it behaved more like an aggressive, powerful neighbor and exploitative investor—one that sought to help the country’s ruling junta. In a significant shift in its policy towards the regime, the Chinese government welcomed junta boss Min Aung Hlaing to China for the first time since the coup in 2021.
In early 2024, after seeing the junta’s military crumble in the face of an offensive by an alliance of EAOs and their allied resistance forces in northern Shan State, China began aggressively pressuring the alliance—with which it has ties—to stop fighting the military. It said the Myanmar military is the most important political force in the country’s political structure and the guarantor of stability. The intervention not only threw a lifeline to the junta, but also significantly hindered the progress of the anti-regime resistance movement.
Beijing’s augmentation of its support for Min Aung Hlaing through its official invitation in November not only lent him international legitimacy—something he had been deprived of since the coup—but also emboldened him to further brutalize civilians for the sake of “stability” in Myanmar. In return, China pushed Min Aung Hlaing to resume Belt and Road Initiative-related projects and provide for the safety of the projects and Chinese nationals in Myanmar.
China’s opposition to the collapse of the regime may stem from its fears that instability in Myanmar would jeopardize its investments and trade. Protecting the junta for its own interests, however, means Beijing has let an old rogue, Min Aung Hlaing, commit more war crimes against Myanmar civilians. While serving as the guardian of the junta, China has made itself complicit in its crimes. Beijing has only itself to blame for rising anti-China sentiment in the country, which is the result of its blatant interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs.
By Hpone Myat
Junta Collaborators
Were it not for junta collaborators like Saw Chit Thu of the Border Guard Force (BGF) in Karen State and Aung Kham Hti of the Pa-O National Organization (PNO) in southern Shan State, the map of resistance-controlled areas in Myanmar would be drastically different today. Myawaddy, a major trade hub on the Myanmar-Thai border in Karen State, would now be under the control of the anti-regime Karen National Union (KNU). Myanmar’s southeastern Karenni State would already have been liberated from the junta, and nearby Naypyitaw, the regime’s nerve center, would be under threat.
Myawaddy nearly fell to the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and its allies in April. However, Saw Chit Thu intervened, citing the risk to civilian safety from potential regime airstrikes, forcing the resistance to retreat. As a result, Myawaddy, with its US$1 billion annual border trade, remains under junta control.
In Karenni State, progress by local resistance forces was largely derailed by joint operations between the junta’s forces and the Pa-O National Army (PNA), the armed wing of the PNO led by Aung Kham Hti. The PNA, largely manned by soldiers drafted from Pa-O areas, has severed supply routes critical for Karenni resistance forces importing arms from northern Shan State, dealing a blow to their campaigns. This blockade contributed to the junta retaking Loikaw, the Karenni State capital, over which the resistance previously had significant control. Since November, regime forces, aided by the PNA, have been aggressively attempting to recapture major towns in Karenni State.
Both Saw Chit Thu and Aung Kham Hti have kowtowed to successive Myanmar military regimes to further their own interests. After founding the BGF, on the orders of the previous junta, Saw Chit Thu was awarded business concessions, becoming the powerful leader of the well-funded militia on the Myanmar-Thai border. His involvement in online scam operations on the border has earned him international sanctions, but—protected by the generals in Naypyitaw—he is largely unfazed by them. In 2022, junta boss Min Aung Hlaing honored him with the Thiri Pyanchi title for his “excellent performance for the country’s greatness”.
Aung Kham Hti has led the PNO since 1976 and signed a ceasefire with the previous junta in 1991, earning the PNO a number of lucrative gem mining concessions in Shan and Kachin states.
He has been close to the military leadership of different generations—from Than Shwe to Min Aung Hlaing. In January 2023, Min Aung Hlaing awarded the Pa-O leader an honorary title. In March 2024, as his depleted army struggled to combat nationwide armed resistance, he met Aung Kham Hti. After the meeting, the PNO released a statement asking young Pa-O men to enlist in the PNA, while condemning those who do not as unpatriotic. What it didn’t mention in the statement was that the drafted soldiers would fight to protect Naypyitaw and help the junta regain control of Karenni State.
By Hpone Myat
The General and His Accomplices
For Min Aung Hlaing’s military regime, 2024 was nothing short of a nightmare. Hit by accelerating troop casualties and surrenders, and the unprecedented loss of two regional military command headquarters to ethnic armed groups and their resistance allies, the junta’s army was battered and humiliated like never before. To its shame, nearly four years on from the 2021 coup, the regime ended the year in control of just 21 percent of Myanmar’s territory.
Socially and economically, Myanmar continued to decline in 2024. Despite its historic defeats and failures, the regime stubbornly clung to power as junta boss Min Aung Hlaing and his accomplices fought for their survival politically, militarily and diplomatically—at devastating cost to the country, much of which has been reduced to ashes.
No one has terrorized Myanmar’s 14 million young people and their families more than General Tin Aung San, who served as defense minister until his replacement in a reshuffle just before year’s end. In an effort to make up for the army’s heavy casualties and desertions, he supervised the implementation of Myanmar’s first forced military conscription operation, which has prompted an exodus of young people desperate to dodge the draft.
Loyally doing his bit to keep his boss in power, the chief of the junta’s Air Force, General Tun Aung, managed to improve on his already diabolical record of killing civilians from the air. As of August, he had ordered 1,639 airstrikes (versus 902 in the same period in 2023), killing at least 814 people (versus 687 in 2023). The attacks are ongoing.
Diplomatically, Foreign Minister Than Swe was at the forefront of the regime’s international relations effort, cementing ties with existing allies while forging new relations with a few faraway countries including Iran. His chief task was to lobby for the regime’s legitimacy—something it has been denied by Western countries—by promoting its election planned for next year, mostly to China, India and neighboring countries.
Immigration and Population Minister Myint Kyaing also played a pivotal role in the regime’s survival in 2024.
Tightening emigration procedures and imposing heavy scrutiny on government staff who have boycotted the regime, he took steps to prevent young people from evading the mandatory conscription law and to keep officials from leaving the country. He also supervised the population census, a requirement for developing voter lists for the election, which has been widely criticized as a sham designed to entrench military rule under the guise of democracy.
As for junta chief Min Aung Hlaing himself, there was still no sign that he has come to his senses after nearly four years of inflicting devastation on Myanmar—including the killing of more than 6,000 people by forces under his command. Doubling down on his track record of total failure on all fronts, he continued to issue frantic orders to his generals to fend off the nationwide offensives mounted by resistance forces. Time and again, however, the result was the same: junta soldiers competing with one another to surrender, emerging from their defeated bases with white flags raised. Voices of dissent, even from the staunchest military supporters, became more frequent against him over the course of the year.
Outwardly, at least, he didn’t seem fazed. Instead, emboldened by support from Russia, China and neighboring countries, he continued to gear up for an election in 2025, in which the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party is strongly tipped to be the winner, as most major opposition figures have been jailed or killed, or are in exile.
With the junta-controlled territory shrinking daily, his electoral fantasy is now in question, and the rapid advance of resistance groups across the country must be alarming to him. But he has shown no sign of yielding so far. When the time comes that his regime finally collapses, he will find himself with few options: flee the country and become Myanmar’s version of the recently toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, or face prosecution and pay with his life for his crimes against the people of Myanmar.
By Hpone Myat
Sunshine for Injured Resistance Fighters
As the Myanmar people’s war against the military regime rages on, it has left few unscathed, but no one has suffered more than the resistance fighters who have been wounded in combat. Medics at basic jungle hospitals run by ethnic armed groups and resistance troops try their best to save their injured comrades. If needed, and where possible, patients with life-threatening injuries are taken to hospitals on the Thai border. But resistance fighters who continue to need in-patient nursing, rehabilitation and wound care after being discharged face a huge challenge, as most of them are from far away cities and towns in Myanmar.
For these wounded fighters, the Sun Shine Care Center (SCC) in the Thai border town of Mae Sot has become a new home. It is the only charity so far to provide nursing and rehabilitation to resistance fighters who are recovering from serious injuries—including lost limbs—sustained during battles with the Myanmar military.
Established in December 2021, most of the SCC’s patients are resistance fighters from Karen and Karenni states, as they are close to the Thai border.
Founder Saw John Elkhu drives wounded resistance fighters across the border to the center while his wife Nay Chi Lin works on accommodation, food, and in-patient nursing, but also rehabilitation for fighters with head and other serious injuries. During their time at the center, patients are provided with vocational, artistic, mental and other training by the center’s rehabilitation team. They are assisted by 20 volunteers who are themselves former injured fighters.
Since the beginning of 2022, the SCC has taken care of more than 600 people, including female resistance fighters who were injured or gave birth. Currently it has about 140 patients.
By Yuzana
Junta-Aligned Political Parties
Despite the growing popular resistance against the junta, certain political parties in Myanmar have aligned themselves with the regime, not only backing its planned election but also amplifying the junta’s propaganda against the resistance movement.
While the election plan has been locally and internationally dismissed as a ploy designed to prolong junta boss Min Aung Hlaing’s grip on power, the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is at the forefront, pushing hard to enable the polls, even enlisting party members to take up arms to help provide security for the election.
Other election-promoters include the People’s Party led by former 88 Generation leader U Ko Ko Gyi, and a few ethnic parties like the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party of Sai Ai Pao and the Arakan Front Party of ethnic Rakhine politician Dr. Aye Maung. Despite the illegitimacy of the junta, these parties have decided to participate in its poll by registering with the regime-controlled election body, offering the junta some of the political credibility it desperately seeks.
They have furthered the junta’s narratives of “stability” and framing the resistance forces as “threats to peace and security”, while turning a blind eye to the junta’s brutal killing, detention and torture of their countrymen and women.
Furthermore, their actions extend beyond the domestic sphere; their representatives have traveled to China and India this year, lobbying for international recognition of the junta’s election.
In return for the parties’ promotion of its planned election, the junta has left them unscathed. For example, probably to create the false impression that Myanmar under military rule still has space for free political activity, the regime this year allowed U Ko Ko Gyi’s People’s Party to open a headquarters and branches—in contrast to the regime’s repression of pro-democracy parties, especially the National League for Democracy (NLD), whose members have been targeted with arrests and killings and whose offices have been raided and seized.
The junta-aligned parties’ claims to be engaged in “nonviolent politics” or “solving Myanmar’s political problems through political means” by taking part in the election have failed to impress the Myanmar people. They know the parties are helping the junta strengthen its grip on power, thereby prolonging civilians’ suffering and betraying the sacrifices of millions of people who continue to resist the regime’s oppression. In the people’s eyes, they are nothing but opportunists seeking to benefit from the junta’s survival plans at the cost of lives and the future of the Myanmar people.
By Maung Kavi
Silence Breaker
“I too kneel on the streets of Myanmar,” Pope Francis said in his heartfelt appeal for an end to the killing of protesters just one month after the military coup in 2021, as the junta brutally gunned down anti-coup demonstrators who had taken to the streets of Myanmar’s cities.
More than 1,400 days later, the people of Myanmar continue to endure the junta’s terror campaign of killings, arbitrary arrests, arson attacks and bombings across the country. It has left a devastating toll: over 6,000 lives lost, 3 million people displaced and more than 27,000 arrested.
Yet, the world’s attention has faded; world leaders rarely lift up their voices in solidarity with the Myanmar people and no effective global action has been taken to halt the junta’s escalating war crimes.
In this time when many feel abandoned by the international community, Pope Francis—one of the world’s most admired leaders—has emerged to break the silence on the world stage.
Using his global platform, the Pope made efforts to highlight Myanmar’s plight in 2024. He frequently called global attention to forgotten Myanmar and shed light on the suffering of its most vulnerable—children, the elderly, the sick, refugees, and the persecuted Rohingya community—through his prayers and public addresses.
“Let us not forget Myanmar,” Francis implored during an October prayer and again in November in Rome.
He has also called for an end to the violence, humanitarian relief for those in need, and the release of political prisoners, including jailed civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
In an unprecedented gesture, Pope Francis in September offered the Vatican as a place of refuge for the 79-year-old Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose health remains a growing concern.
In this dark time, his unwavering support has offered solace to the people of Myanmar. However, they desperately need more world leaders like Pope Francis to show solidarity with them, and to effect “an urgent course correction” by the international community, as urged by UN experts in December.
By Khin Nadi
Souls of the Year
They are all dead, but they deserve the great honor of “Person of the Year”. But as they are no longer alive, it is proper to call them “Souls of the Year”.
They are honored because what they did was extraordinary: They willingly gave their lives. Uncompromisingly, they sacrificed their lives for what they believed in—something no ordinary person could even imagine doing. Death was almost certain to be their fate, but they chose it willingly in order to restore democracy in their country, which has been downtrodden by a military junta since 2021.
In 2024 alone (as of Dec. 26) 1,789 people were killed in military-ruled Myanmar. While many of them were civilians killed in junta airstrikes and attacks, many gave their lives willingly—killed in prison or in battle while carrying out their deadly mission for their country.
The actual number must be higher as the figure above doesn’t include resistance fighters. Many young resistance fighters from ethnic armed groups and People’s Defense Forces, which have been fighting against the junta nationwide since the coup, have been killed in action. Their organizations chose not to publicly disclose lists of deaths (perhaps for political reasons) but buried them as “martyrs” or “heroes” with great honor. Though they are gone, the stories of their sacrifice to build a new federal democratic nation will be dearly remembered by Myanmar people, and their names will be immortalized in history books.
Whenever Myanmar is under an oppressive military dictatorship, prisons become another deadly “battlefield” for dissidents. They are death chambers for political prisoners. Even initially healthy inmates are in danger of succumbing to the terrible conditions and mistreatment in prison. Out of 28,000 dissidents imprisoned since the 2021 coup, at least 109 have died in prisons so far, 31 of them in 2024.
The latest victims of the cells in 2024 were Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, 73, who was the vice president of the ousted National League for Democracy government and the chief minister of Mandalay, and another 73-year-old ousted minister, U Win Khine. Both were arrested after the takeover. They suffered multiple health issues in prison only to be pardoned on their deathbeds. In other words, the junta deliberately let them die in jail.
Selflessly, they sacrificed their lives for their country. They are unquestionably entitled to be referred to as “martyrs”, “heroes”, “freedom fighters”, “resistance fighters”, “prisoners of conscience” or any of many other honored titles.
As they died for their country’s unfinished democratic struggle, they are the “Souls of the Year”.
By Kyaw Zwa Moe
