Myanmar’s Civil War—and What Comes Next, Explained

The end may not be near, but the end is clear—according to those who have kept a close eye on Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, since a military coup toppled its civilian government in 2021. While the fighting between the junta and armed resistance groups was locked in a stalemate for the first two years of the conflict, observers note that the third year has seen the military on the back foot.

The protracted conflict has been estimated to have killed over 50,000 people and displaced around three million. But while much of the violence since the 2021 coup has been marked by a sense of intractability, and global attention has been overshadowed by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, a series of resistance victories in the past year have rattled the Myanmar junta’s once ironclad grip on power, marking what seems to be a turning point.

“The end of the war is clear-cut. The only thing that is not clear is the means by which it’s achieved and the timing,” Chris Sidoti, an international human rights consultant and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), tells TIME. “One way or another, at some point the military will collapse.”

TIME spoke to eight experts, all of whom painted a similar picture of where the conflict stands—and where it may go from here. Here’s what to know:

Feb. 2021

The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, stages a coup to overthrow the civilian government—on the same day the parliament is set to swear in the winners of the 2020 election, in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won by a landslide. As the military accuses the party of election fraud and promises to hold new elections, power…