Key Takeaways:
- Five years after the coup. The Tatmadaw seized power on 1 February 2021; by early 2026 monitors put junta control below 40% of townships. The Arakan Army holds about 70% of Rakhine (14 of 17 townships) and is pushing on Sittwe. Estimates in the piece: more than 100,000 dead.
- A vote under fire. Phased elections ran 28 Dec 2025–25 Jan 2026 and were widely called neither free nor fair. Min Aung Hlaing took the presidency in April 2026. Open-source counts: 408 air attacks in the voting window (at least 170 civilians dead); a 22 Jan Bhamo strike said to kill up to 50. Arrests under an election law: 324 men and 80 women. Also cited: paramotor and cluster-munition use.
- Economy and aid collapse. About $100 billion in output lost since the coup; World Bank growth ~2% in FY2026/27; inflation 24% then 16%. Poverty estimates: 31% (2024, pre-quake) to ~46% (2025). In 2026: 16.2 million need aid, 3.6 million displaced; March 2025 M7.7 quake killed over 3,600. Amnesty and UN investigators: terror as strategy has failed; they want access and accountability.
On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, seized power in a coup, arresting State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government. General Min Aung Hlaing justified the takeover by alleging fraud in the November 2020 election, in which the NLD had won a landslide victory. What began as a political power grab quickly triggered mass civil disobedience, as millions of citizens, including doctors, teachers, and civil servants, walked off their jobs in protest.
The military responded with brutal force, gunning down peaceful demonstrators in the streets. As the crackdown intensified, the resistance movement transformed. Ordinary citizens took up arms, forming People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and aligning with a parallel National Unity Government (NUG) in exile. These new fighters joined forces with Myanmar’s long-established ethnic armed organizations, such as the Arakan Army, the Kachin Independence Army, and the Karen National Union, groups that had been resisting central rule for decades. What started as scattered protests had, within a year, hardened into a full-scale, multi-front civil war spanning nearly all of Myanmar’s 14 states and regions.
Five Years On: A Country Fractured
Five years since the coup, Myanmar remains locked in one of the world’s most complex and underreported conflicts. The military’s grip on the country has visibly weakened. By early 2026, credible monitoring organizations estimated that the junta controlled fewer than 40% of Myanmar’s townships, a dramatic collapse from near-total control immediately after the coup. On the other hand, resistance forces have made striking territorial gains. The Arakan Army now controls nearly 70% of Rakhine State, having captured 14 of the state’s 17 townships, and is now pushing to seize the state capital, Sittwe.
Yet military dominance on the map has not translated into peace. According to the estimates, more than 1,00,000 people have lost their lives over the past five years. In an attempt to project legitimacy, the junta organized national elections. These were held in three heavily controlled phases between December 28, 2025, and January 25, 2026, and have been widely dismissed as fraudulent, engineered to secure a military-backed party’s victory. Foreign governments, including Australia, noted that the elections were held amid ongoing violence and repression, without meaningful participation from opposition parties, and did not meet conditions for being free, fair, or inclusive. Following the vote, Min Aung Hlaing assumed the presidency in April 2026 and has tried to project himself as a leader committed to peace, using state visits to India and China to build some diplomatic legitimacy.
The election period itself was marked by extreme violence rather than calm. Open-source monitoring documented 408 military air attacks during the voting period alone, which killed at least 170 civilians. On January 22, a military airstrike on a populated area in Bhamo Township, Kachin State, reportedly killed up to 50 civilians with no combatants reported present. The junta also used the election to justify a fresh wave of political repression and 324 men and 80 women were arrested under a unilaterally adopted election protection law, including for minor online activity, with one person sentenced to 49 years in prison for posting anti-election material.
Rights groups describe an escalating pattern of attacks on civilians using increasingly indiscriminate methods. In the lead-up to the elections, the junta ramped up airstrikes on schools, hospitals, religious sites and displacement camps, and expanded its use of armed drones, paramotors and gyrocopters, creating new threats to civilians. On October 6, 2025, a military paramotor attack on a Buddhist festival in Sagaing Region killed at least 24 people, including three children, and more than 135 such paramotor attacks have been recorded since December 2024. Myanmar’s military also continues to rely on weapons banned under international law. The country remains one of the four countries in the world that still use internationally prohibited cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines.
The Economic Collapse
Myanmar’s economy has been devastated by five years of conflict, compounding earlier damage from the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy has lost nearly $100 billion since the coup, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) not expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels for years. Independent trackers put the scale of the contraction even more starkly, estimating an economy contracted by over 9% since 2021, reversing the economic progress of the previous decade.
World Bank data illustrates a country limping along rather than recovering. Myanmar’s nominal GDP for 2026 is projected at roughly $65-75 billion, with growth of around 2 to 4%. That modest rebound masks deep structural weakness. The World Bank notes growth is projected at just 2% for FY2026/27, and describes the economic outlook as remaining subdued. This stands in sharp contrast to the pre-coup era as from 2011 to 2019, Myanmar experienced high economic growth, averaging 6% a year, alongside significant poverty reduction driven by reforms and the lifting of international sanctions
Inflation has eaten away at household purchasing power. Inflation was 24% in FY2025/26 and expected to be 16% in FY2026/27, driven by ongoing supply and demand-side constraints including power outages, labor shortages, and trade and exchange rate restrictions. There has been some recent relief on the currency front, though as food inflation eased to 16.2% and non-food inflation to 20.8%, reflecting a stronger Kyat, stricter food price controls, and improved supply conditions, with the Kyat appreciating by about 15% against the U.S. dollar by January 2026
Energy shortages have crippled productivity nationwide. In January 2025, daily electricity demand of 4,400 megawatts far exceeded daily generation of just 1,701 megawatts, a major constraint on manufacturing and services, worsened by conflict-related and earthquake damage to power infrastructure. Satellite data corroborates the scale of economic contraction as night-time luminosity fell by 15.1% over five months to May 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.
The human cost of this collapse is measured in rising poverty. In 2024, before the earthquake, the poverty rate was estimated at 31% and simulations suggested poverty could rise a further 2.8% points due to the earthquake’s impact. Other estimates put the number of people below the poverty line even higher. Approximately 46% of the population was estimated to be below the national poverty line in 2025 and changes in poverty across states show a strong positive correlation with the intensity of local conflict.
A Deepening Humanitarian Emergency
The human toll of Myanmar’s war is staggering and still growing. In 2026, an estimated 16.2 million people require lifesaving humanitarian assistance, including 4.9 million children. Also nearly 3.6 million people are now internally displaced in Myanmar amid escalating airstrikes, acute food insecurity and worsening humanitarian conditions. Food security has become a critical concern. Nearly one quarter of Myanmar’s population now faces high levels of acute food insecurity, while more than one third are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Nature has compounded the man-made disaster. In March 2025, a devastating magnitude 7.7 earthquake killed over 3,600 people and injured over 5,000. The earthquake caused extensive damage, layering on top of an already dire crisis.
Accountability efforts remain limited even as evidence of atrocities mounts. Investigators, including the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar said that there is evidence that civilians across the country have endured atrocities that may amount to serious international crimes. Rights organizations argue the military’s approach has fundamentally failed on its own terms. Amnesty International has described the past five years as illustrating the Myanmar military’s failed strategy of asserting control by killing and terrorizing civilians.
Conclusion
Five years after a single coup shattered a fragile democratic experiment, Myanmar stands as a stark warning about how quickly progress can unravel and how long recovery can take once it does. The country’s economy has been set back by nearly a decade, its people face one of the world’s most severe and least-resourced humanitarian emergencies, and its political future remains as uncertain as ever, with a military that has entrenched its power through violence rather than restored the democratic transition it destroyed. As the conflict enters its sixth year, rights groups and U.N. officials alike are calling for renewed international attention, sustained humanitarian access and genuine accountability, without which, they warn, Myanmar’s people will continue to bear the cost of a war with no end in sight.
