Many of the PDF units cooperate or coordinate their positions with the EAOs. A sizeable portion of the PDF is either recognized by or under the command of the NUG. At the local level, especially in rural areas where the military junta’s control is weak, the PDF enjoys substantial control of the territory and has been launching attacks against military barracks, police stations, and government administrative offices.Īlthough the resistance is still fragmented, it somewhat improved in 2022. Even though different militias and units under the PDF framework do not share the same commander or commanding structure, they share the common aspiration of driving the military out of power.
By 2022, the PDF was estimated to have expanded to more than 250 units with more than 65,000 troops. It is these conditions that have allowed the National Unity Government (NUG) - the shadow civilian government formed by members of the parliament elected during the 2020 general elections - and its armed wing, the People’s Defense Force (PDF), to thrive throughout the country. The opposition to the coup and the rejection of military rule have been the most powerful factors uniting the rest of the country and, crucially, driving divergent resistance forces together. They simply refuse to return to more decades of military rule, no matter that the Burmese military sees military rule as its natural prerogative and a normal state for the country.
Before the coup, the Burmese people had tasted democracy and freedom and had been exposed to the outside world and the free flow of ideas, information, people, and economic opportunities under a democratic government. However, the modality of Burmese politics after the 2021 coup has been entirely different. And the landslide victory by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) in the 1990 elections was also denied by the military, which held onto power for another 25 years until the NLD won again in the 2015 general elections. The 1962 coup led by General Ne Win replaced the country’s representative democracy with 26 years of military rule.
The country is no stranger to military coups either. The fighting between the central government dominated by the Bamar majority and the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in seven ethnic states has never completely ceased since the country’s independence decades before the 2021 coup. Strictly speaking, the civil war in Myanmar has been ongoing since 1948.
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