Myanmar Spring Chronicle – Scenes from October 5
(MoeMaKa), October 6, 2026
Myanmar on the Brink of Becoming a Failed State and Its Future
When we read and listen to the news about what is happening in Myanmar day after day, and try to imagine the not-too-distant future based on the present situation, the picture that emerges is one of uncertainty and gloom.
From the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to bed at night, perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the news reports we see on social media, as well as the accounts shared by people who have personally experienced or heard about events, are distressing, frightening, horrifying, or deeply discouraging.
Murders; killings committed for gold, money, and other valuables; robberies, violent break-ins, assassinations and targeted killings; people being abducted and sold for money in connection with forced military recruitment that resembles a modern form of slavery; mass arrests and killings; civilians being killed and injured every day in airstrikes; and suicides and attempted suicides caused by soaring prices, unemployment, and the destruction of livelihoods—all have become part of the daily news. There are also people who, unable to maintain even a basic standard of dignity, have been forced to survive by begging.
In addition, fighting, military offensives, and armed clashes regularly produce reports of thousands or tens of thousands of people from villages, towns, and entire areas being forced to flee their homes. Civilian casualties, deaths caused by landmines, and deaths and injuries resulting from both natural disasters and armed conflict have all become routine news.
Reports of deaths, injuries, destruction of property, and crime now make up a large proportion of the daily news. Over the past five years or more, the areas affected by war have not contracted; instead, they have gradually expanded. Even though ceasefires have taken hold on some fronts, fighting has spread into other regions only within the past few years.
War, combined with blockades restricting the trade and transportation of food, fuel, medicine, and everyday consumer goods, has created severe hardship in Rakhine State, which is controlled by the Arakan Army. For people living there, even eating regular meals has become difficult, while access to healthcare and the basic means of survival has been squeezed to the point of suffocation.
A recent news article described young and older residents of Rakhine State trying to leave through what are referred to as “smuggling routes”—not ordinary roads, but routes that must be traveled on foot. Some reportedly ran out of food, while others were arrested before reaching their intended destinations and ended up in detention. These accounts illustrate how local residents in Rakhine State are risking their lives to escape war, hunger, and insecurity.
Meanwhile, even in major cities such as Yangon, violent crime is taking place. Just yesterday, a seller of construction materials was reportedly robbed and killed at his own home in North Dagon Township. Similar reports of robberies and killings are frequently heard from cities such as Mandalay and Naypyidaw.
As the armed revolution drags on, people in Myanmar are facing war, hunger, crime, unlawful detention, and even the trafficking and transfer of people in conditions resembling slavery. The situation has reached a point where one must ask whether the people of Myanmar can still maintain hope for the future.
At the beginning of the Spring Revolution—the armed resistance against the military dictatorship and the coup regime—the public participated with tremendous enthusiasm. But how strong today is their hope that the revolution will ultimately achieve victory?
Is hope in the Spring Revolution gradually fading?
Are the various revolutionary armed organizations still genuinely functioning as revolutionary forces? Have some of them concluded that they have already achieved a certain level of their own objectives and therefore shifted their primary focus toward preserving their own organizations and positions, moving away from cooperation and common goals?
Questions like these are increasingly being raised. Among supporters of the Spring Revolution, there are also growing doubts about whether the momentum and enthusiasm of the revolution as a whole are declining.
When people used the word “revolution,” did they ever share a common definition of what that revolution meant? Or did each group define the revolution according to its own understanding and objectives? This, too, has become a question that needs to be asked.
Is there still a single shared objective of establishing a federal democracy?
Or has maintaining control over territories already governed and held by individual armed organizations effectively become an objective in itself?
It may now be necessary to look back and critically assess whether some of the armed groups commonly described as revolutionary forces are actually pursuing the goal of federal democracy—or whether their objectives are moving instead toward models centered primarily on federalism or even confederation.
This is therefore a time to reassess how much the goals of the various revolutionary armed organizations truly overlap, where they differ, and whether those forces can be brought together again around common objectives.
Or have they already begun moving separately, with each organization advancing toward the goals it has defined for itself?
These are questions that now need serious reflection.