Twelve months after the November 2020 elections, and some ten months on from the February 2021 coup, an overview of developments in Myanmar delivered a sobering assessment. Despite some upbeat predictions, mainly on the part of the opposition movement and its foreign supporters, there was in fact little to cheer about. Indeed, looked at carefully and objectively, the forecast for the country was rather gloomy.

It has been just over a year since Myanmar emphatically re-elected Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy as the dominant partner in the country's quasi-civilian government. Next February, it will be a year since the armed forces, or Tatmadaw, ignored that result and seized power.

Over the past ten months, the scope and intensity of political violence in Myanmar has grown dramatically. The bitter civil wars that have long blighted the border areas now encompass the entire country, as groups from the majority Bamar population in the central regions have joined ethnic minority armed organisations in their struggles against military domination.

At first, the nationwide civil disobedience movement (CDM) against the coup was characterised by boycotts, resignations, demonstrations, street barricades and symbolic gestures like the coordinated beating of pots and pans at night. The new regime responded with conventional crowd control measures, usually conducted by the national police force.

However, within weeks the police were largely replaced by the armed forces and the level of violence rapidly escalated. The soldiers resorted to lethal force, prompting the resistance movement to manufacture defensive shields, body armour and weapons of their own. Armed with sling-shots, petrol bombs, bows and arrows and improvised airguns, however, they had little chance against the well-armed troops sent against them. The number of civilian casualties quickly mounted.

A number of ethnic minority armed organisations based around the country's periphery expressed solidarity with the protesters. They began to offer rudimentary military training and (in a few cases) weapons and explosives to some of those who had fled the cities. These ethnic minority armed organisations also took advantage of the regime's preoccupation with the civil unrest in central Myanmar to expand their territories and commercial interests.