“It’s going to be an incredibly complicated security patchwork in the future because you’re going to have existing armed organizations … you’re going to have the interim federal army under the national unity government, and then you’re going to have all of these forces.” localized civil defense, ”he said.

“Then you have a very complicated resistance network that could cooperate at times and compete at other times, and the military will probably follow by developing their own paramilitary network, so you have the bad days in Belfast in the 1970s, but in all the countries. over a larger country.

Independence from British colonial rule in 1948 left a complex mix of cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups in Myanmar, and it is estimated that one-third of the country’s territory is already controlled by around 20 armed rebel groups, some of whom are have been fighting for autonomy for decades. .

But the recent crisis has now attracted the urban population and the big cities.

“What is new is the extent of the armed conflict. In particular, it united the Burmese majority and in particular the younger generation, ”said Hunter Marston, a Southeast Asian specialist based in Canberra.

“At this point, the real momentum to be sought is in the mobilization of the People’s Defense Forces and local militias to fight the Burmese military, and sadly that points to the more ominous direction in which the country is heading – an action much broader civil. war, ”he said.