Once a global icon of democracy, her plight now draws diminishing international outrage. Yet even as the West looks away, resistance forces in Myanmar are gaining ground. The junta’s grip is slipping, but Suu Kyi’s life remains in peril as the battle for Myanmar’s future intensifies

On June 19, 2025, Aung San Suu Kyi, will complete 80 years of her life and step into the 81st year. She remains in prison. The last one of her sham trials — all widely condemned the world over — which ended on December 30, 2022, sentenced her to seven years in prison. With this, the total number of years to which she was sentenced came to 33, which was subsequently reduced to 27 years. This suggests that Myanmar’s ruling junta, which calls itself State Administration Council, wants her to die in prison.

What is striking in this context is the waning interest of the Western democracies in her incarceration and the struggle for democracy in Myanmar. They, doubtless, continue treat the junta as an outcast and retain the sanctions imposed on it and its leaders. Yet expressions of outrage over her continued imprisonment and the junta’s savage military action against civilian populations in the areas controlled by the People’s Defence Force (PDF), the armed force of the opposition National Unity Government (NUG), and the ethnic armed organisations (EAOs), which are waging war against it in cooperation with one another, are now fewer and less strident.

This, of course, is a result of the emergence of new issues like the Ukraine war and Israel’s action in Gaza which now occupy centre stage in the general global discourse. Nevertheless, this diversion of global attention helps to reduce the pressure on the junta to restore democracy in the country and conduces to making sure that it will be ousted only if, and when, it is defeated in the civil war now raging in Myanmar.

The opposition forces include, besides the PDF, the Three Brotherhood Alliance (henceforth the Alliance) comprising the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), active in the Kokang Special Region of northern Shan State, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), also active in the Shan State and the Arakan Army (AA), based in the Rakhine State in the country’s western part, acting in close cooperation with the PDF and other ethnic armies. They are increasingly gaining the upper hand.

The Sit-Tat (as Myanmar’s army is called), has suffered a series of reverses since the Alliance launched its offensive, codenamed Operation 1027, on October 27, 2023. The AA had brought almost the entire Rakhine State under its control by April, 2024. The MNDAA claimed on July 31, 2024, that it had captured Sit-Tat’s military base in Lashio, a city in Shan State close to the border with China, and its airport. This was a major loss for the junta. As Vivek Shankar has pointed out in a piece in The New York Times datelined August 5, 2024, the “city of Lashio and its airport lie on a crucial trade corridor to Yunnan Province in China, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a high-speed rail link and other infrastructure projects on both sides of the border.”

The opposition forces now control large swathes of territory along Myanmar’s borders and mountainous regions; the military retains control over the major cities and lowlands in the central Irrawaddy Valley.

It is losing even the cities and towns. A report (datelined August 13, 2024) by-lined The Irrawaddy, in the website The Irrawaddy, and carried under the headline “Junta Controls Fewer Than 100 of Myanmar’s 350 Towns: NUG,” cited the latter’s defence minister, U Yee Mon, as saying that only 98 of Myanmar’s 350 townships remained under the junta’s control. According to the report, the NUG’s Defence Ministry divided Myanmar’s towns into four categories — 75 completely captured by anti-regime groups, 105 surrounded by anti-regime groups; 75 being fought over, and 98 towns remaining under the regime’s control.

According to an article (datelined June 4, 2025) by Banyar Aung, carried in The Irrawaddy, the ethnic Arakan Army (AA) has notched up major gains since launching its Rakhine offensive in November 2023, seizing control of 14 out of 17 townships in the western state. Of the three townships still under junta control, battles are raging in Sittwe and Kyaukphyu, while Manaung is the only township from where clashes have not been reported.

The AA has also secured the entire stretch bordering India and Bangladesh following its capture of territory along the Naf River including Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Chin State’s Paletwa Township. This has led to Bangladesh establishing direct contact with it and India maintaining ties through the Government of Mizoram.

The junta, doubtless, has sought to hit back. In an article (datelined March 19, 2025), appearing under the headline “Mapping the Myanmar Junta’s Gains, Losses and Stalemates Since 1027”, in The Irrawaddy, Moe Sett Nyen Chan, a military analyst, writes that in 2024, the Sit-Tat, as the junta’s army is called, switched to a more dynamic strategy, employing mobile and pro-active defensive tactics and launching counter-offensives across the country, relying heavily on war planes and drones. These tactics, however, have yet to produce meaningful or decisive victories. As stated in the article, the areas reclaimed by the junta collectively account for less than one per cent of the territory, towns, and camps previously seized by resistance forces. Besides, the regained areas remain under constant threat, encircled by resistance forces.

The article further states that the opposition forces have responded by intensifying guerrilla-style operations involving ambushes, the laying of mines, and repeated attacks on the Sit-Tat’s positions. They doubtless have to battle numerous odds. The junta, for example, recaptured most of Loikaw Township in 2024 after Karenni resistance forces withdrew, apparently because of ammunition shortage.

The Sit-Tat, however, is facing serious problems of its own, and is staring at almost certain defeat in the long run.  Its morale is very low.  Internal discord is growing. Several three-star generals have been removed. Many younger officers are unhappy as they recognise that almost the entire country is against them. According to a piece by Ye Myo Hein (datelined May 4, 2023) featured by the United States Institute of Peace, it was found that the Sit-Tat, whose “headcount,” showed a “strength of a total 300,000-400,000 before the coup,” currently “had a strength of about 150,000 personnel.”

Roughly 70,000 are combat soldiers. At least 21,000 service members have been lost through casualties, desertion and defection since the coup. The advantage the Sit-Tat has in its possessions of tanks and armoured vehicles, is, to a great extent, neutralised by the fact that these are very difficult to deploy in the densely-forested mountainous areas, marked by deep gorges and steep climbs, which are the strongholds of the opposition.

It has artillery and air-support. These, however, do not win wars even when supported by heavily-armed trained troops. Otherwise, the United States would have romped to a victory in Vietnam.

It is a matter of time before the junta is ousted. When that happens, it will be a great vindication of the prolonged struggle Aung San Suu Kyi has waged, at great cost to herself, for freedom and democracy in Myanmar. There is, however, a very serous danger that needs to be talked about. It is of the junta getting her murdered in prison and trying to pass it of as death caused by old age-related natural causes.

If this happens, one of the causes will be the junta’s belief that the West has lost interest in Myanmar and will do no more than expressing routine condemnation before passing on to subjects considered more pressing.

(The writer is a consulting editor with The Pioneer. Views expressed are personal)