Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Solving the conflict in Myanmar
News, Published on 15/09/2025
» The Myanmar military has recently launched a new offensive in different parts of the country, determined to claw back territory it has steadily lost since the coup of Feb 1, 2021. These operations, though at times tactically successful, are being carried out through brute force: airstrikes, mortar attacks, and the increasing use of drones. Entire areas are being destroyed. What will follow is not liberation, but military occupation. But how viable and effective will be the administrative structures that the generals will impose to govern these shattered spaces?
Local community key to delivering Myanmar aid
Oped, Published on 11/05/2023
» Last month, I undertook a 10-day trip along the Thai-Myanmar border. In part its purpose was to explore further the nature and workings of the local governance structures which Scott Guggenheim and I had argued needed to be supported by the international community in our piece entitled "Taking risk and supporting local governance", published in the Bangkok Post on March 24.
Taking risks and supporting local governance
Oped, Published on 24/03/2023
» A recent paper, prepared jointly by Chatham House and the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, estimated that close to 50% of the populations living in fragile and conflict-affected states were in contexts "where relations between a significant number of international actors and national authorities are estranged". Rather than being an outlier, Myanmar is tragically part of a new normal.
Confronting tragic fragmentation
Oped, Published on 06/12/2022
» As much as Russia's invasion of Ukraine created a "before and after" reality in western politics, the Feb 1, 2021, coup has also created such a new reality for Myanmar. The coup was a massive miscalculation by the senior general of Myanmar. Almost two years into the conflict, it is clear that the military has lost control of much of the country, and it has lost much, if not all, of the international credibility it had the day before the coup was launched. The coup also triggered the emergence of new forms of resistance with the People's Defence Forces. But new forms of violence have also come to the fore, with retaliatory killings of individuals introducing new levels of fear.
A false new world of empty promises
Oped, Published on 23/09/2022
» The setting is a house on stilts located in a Myanmar military base in the middle of what until then had been known as the civil war's black area. The time was April 2012. The scene was Kyauk Kyi in Myanmar's Bago Region which is basically a free-fire zone for the Myanmar military.
World must step in to help
Oped, Published on 24/04/2021
» Today, Asean is to deliberate on possible courses of action regarding Myanmar. Across the country, brave people, many of them children, are being murdered daily; health services are ceasing to function in the middle of a pandemic; the economy is collapsing and every well-informed analyst predicts only a future of deepening civil war, chaos and further outflows of refugees.
UN admits Sri Lanka civil war failure
AFP, Published on 14/11/2012
» The United Nations failed to protect thousands of civilians caught in Sri Lanka's civil war, UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday warning of "profound implications" for the global body.