Fire From the Sky: Inside Myanmar's Devastating Air War

Back in the fall of 2022, the whole globe watched transfixed as devastating airstrikes pummeled Ukraine. Using a combination of drones and missiles, Russian forces pounded cities, seemingly intent on causing a humanitarian catastrophe. At the time, the Russian air campaign was rightly condemned by the civilized world. Yet the Kremlin wasn’t the only one waging a brutal air war against civilians. Thousands of kilometers east, the generals in charge of Myanmar were also using planes and helicopters to massacre civilians. But while the Russian air campaign eventually tailed off, the one in Myanmar — also known as Burma — has only grown in intensity. Since taking power in a coup in early 2021, the Burmese junta has launched something in the region of 660 air attacks against their own people. Targeting schools, churches, hospitals, and villages, the strikes seem designed to sow panic, to terrorize the population into silent obedience, no matter the human cost.

Key Takeaways

• The Burmese junta has launched approximately 660 airstrikes since March 2021, overwhelmingly targeting civilian infrastructure including schools, churches, and hospitals.
• The April 11, 2023 attack on Pazigyi village killed 165 civilians attending a Buddhist new year celebration and the opening of a local administration office.
• The People’s Defense Force numbers roughly 60,000 fighters, mostly former Bamar protestors from Sagaing region now allied with ethnic armed groups including the KNU, Chin National Front, Karenni Army, and Kachin Independence Organisation.
• As of September 2022, analysts estimated the Tatmadaw controlled only 17 percent of Myanmar, with half the country held by pro-democracy rebels.
• Russia has supplied 28 combat aircraft, 41 combat helicopters, and 18 training aircraft to the junta, while China has sold 7 combat and 18 training aircraft including the FTC-2000G.
• ACLED estimates nearly 34,000 people killed since the February 2021 coup, with 1.5 million internally displaced and 17.6 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Pazigyi Massacre: April 2023

Even by the lamentable standards of the Burmese junta, it was a savage act. On the morning of April 11, 2023, helicopters appeared on the horizon — buzzing their way across the sweltering heartlands of Sagaing towards the settlement of Pazigyi. It was 8am. A dual ceremony was taking place in the center of the village: one to inaugurate the opening of an administration office; another to celebrate the Buddhist new year festival of Thingyan. Tea and food were being served as part of the celebrations. Schoolchildren were performing dances before a crowd, drawn from the surrounding countryside. Witnesses said maybe 300 people were present. Just after 8, the first bombs hit the crowd. As people ran, the junta’s attack helicopters circled Pazigyi, firing machine guns into the panicked mass. By the time the attack ended, 53 civilians lay dead. Within 48 hours, that toll had climbed to 165, as victims succumbed to their injuries. As news traveled around the world, officials stepped forward to express their disgust. The UN’s human rights chief said he was “horrified.” The US State Department and the EU foreign affairs spokesperson issued sharp condemnations. Yet the outcry didn’t make any difference. A spokesman for Myanmar’s junta didn’t even try to hide their role in the massacre, saying: “We had launched the attack on them. We were informed that PDF were killed at that event under the attack. They are opposing our government.” The PDF referred to is the People’s Defense Force — a series of armed groups that oppose the military. They were the ones opening the new administration building in Pazigyi, taking up the burden of local government as Myanmar’s junta loses control over rural regions. But it wasn’t PDF fighters who made up the majority of the victims, but civilians.

A Pattern of Atrocity: Targeting Schools, Churches, and Hospitals

The callous indifference of the junta’s spokesman to the civilian toll at Pazigyi should give some clue as to just how chilling Myanmar’s air war has become. Since the strikes began on March 11, 2021, monitoring groups have reported nearly 660 such attacks — a number that’s likely grown. Although some of the targets have been military assets of the PDF or other armed groups, the vast majority have been civilian. Things like schools, churches, or hospitals. Last October, for example, the junta bombed a benefit concert for KIA insurgents in Kachin State, killing sixty people. In another incident documented by the BBC, attack helicopters strafed an elementary school in a remote village. Three children aged between seven and twelve died, while 12 more suffered life-changing injuries. These aren’t cherry-picked examples. They’re absolutely representative of the atrocities inflicted by most of the junta’s air attacks. Air attacks that have been growing in intensity. Of the 660 strikes, the majority occurred in the last months of 2022 and early months of 2023 — suggesting a tempo that’s increasing. And while the Burmese government has a history of using airpower against ethnic rebels — beginning with a 2012 gunship attack in Kachin State — the nature of the current targets is unique in Myanmar’s history. Rather than coming from the minority groups on the nation’s borders, most of the recent victims live in Sagaing region. Home to the Buddhist-Bamar majority, Sagaing was once the regime’s heartland. The area that it treated lightly, where ordinary people often supported its genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. But not anymore. Sagaing is where regime forces burn villages and shoot civilians. Where bombs fall and missiles streak through the skies. Where, as the Guardian recently reported, some villages have been destroyed so often that survivors now live in temporary shelters made of palm leaves — lest the junta return to burn anything they rebuild.

Ghosts of History: From Independence to Coup

Even among post-colonial nations, Myanmar’s transition to independence was spectacularly bumpy. From the moment Burma was freed from British rule, in 1948, a series of armed ethnic insurgencies broke out, as seven separate states fought for more autonomy from the Bamar majority. Technically, some of these insurgencies have been going on ever since — albeit broken up by ceasefires of various length. But it’s what came in 1962 that has the biggest bearing on the present crisis. That was the year the Burmese military — also known as the Tatmadaw — took power in a coup. Unlike many other military juntas, the Tatmadaw turned out to be excellent not just at grasping power, but holding onto it. It was only in 2011 that they slowly began to release their vice-like grip on the nation’s neck. Not that people weren’t trying to loosen the generals’ fingers. Aside from the multiple ethnic insurgencies, a non-violent pro-democracy movement sprang up among the majority Bamar. Pro-democracy uprisings in 1988 and 2007 were forcefully put down by the junta, which killed unarmed protestors to cow the rest of the populace. The public face of the pro-democracy movement — Aung San Suu Kyi — was arrested in 1989 and spent most of the next 21 years imprisoned. On November 11, 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was unexpectedly released by the junta. Following a 2015 election, she was elevated to the nation’s civilian leader. The key word there, though, is “civilian.” While the Tatmadaw had loosened its iron grip, it hadn’t surrendered power. The junta still controlled the army, appointed key cabinet ministers, and held reserved seats in parliament. This, in part, is why Myanmar under Aung San Suu Kyi remained such a brutal place. It was during this period that the Rohingya genocide was carried out. Still, the generals seemed committed to at least the pretense of democracy. When the November 2020 deadline for a new election rolled around, they allowed voting to proceed. But then the results came in, and the Tatmadaw had a collective heart attack. Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy movement had won a landslide — 83 percent of available parliamentary seats had swung her way. The generals claimed the results were fake, the result of massive, widespread election fraud. They presented no evidence to back up their claims. In fact, the case was so fact-free that the Burmese supreme court refused to annul the results.

The February 2021 Coup and the Birth of Armed Resistance

One of the darkest days in Myanmar’s modern history was February 1, 2021. The parliament had gathered to confirm the election results and form a new government. Instead of certifying the will of the people, most were arrested when soldiers surrounded the building. The president, several cabinet ministers, the heads of various ethnic states, and Aung San Suu Kyi all vanished into a twilight world of secret courts, tiny cells, and long prison sentences. In their place came a brand-new military junta. The leader was Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, a chief perpetrator of the Rohingya genocide, infamous for bullying subordinates. The junta immediately declared a state of emergency, took over radio and television stations, shut off internet access, and barred international flights from entering the country. At first, people tried to protest. Across Burma, unarmed citizens took to the streets, demanding a return to democracy. Pro-democracy rallies played loud music people could dance to. There were costumes, songs, a feeling of coming together. But the junta’s response was lethal. On February 20, 2021, police opened fire on unarmed protestors in the city of Mandalay, killing two. By mid-March, the sight of men in body armor firing into crowds was a common one. Although protestors fought back with slingshots and stones, the security forces had the upper hand. In a single 24-hour period that month, 140 demonstrators were murdered. Come December, the number of dead civilians would be in the low thousands. Tens of thousands more had been imprisoned and tortured. But rather than scare the population into submission, the wave of violence unleashed by the junta seems to have only invited backlash. In response to the mass killings, civil society organizations called a general strike. Key professions like teachers and healthcare workers stopped reporting for duty. As the strike dragged on, many began opening their own schools and clinics outside of government control. With these institutions now run by local communities, the junta claims they must therefore be in the hands of terrorists — hence the rationale for bombing schools and hospitals.

The People’s Defense Force and the Fight for Myanmar’s Countryside

The key months in the post-coup era are April and May 2021. April saw the emergence of the National Unity Government — a multi-ethnic, pro-democracy group of leaders and defectors determined to overthrow the Tatmadaw in a revolutionary war. May, meanwhile, saw them finally get some muscle, in the form of the People’s Defense Force. Thought to number about 60,000, the PDF is mostly made up of former protestors and strikers so outraged by the crackdown they felt they had no choice but to take up arms. What is unusual is that the PDF is made up mostly of members of the Bamar majority, mostly from the heartlands of Sagaing region. Even more unusual, elements of the PDF are now being trained and supplied by some of those armed ethnic groups that have been battling the Burmese state for decades. According to the Economist, “the KNU, Chin National Front, Karenni Army and Kachin Independence Organisation” are either helping equip — or actively fighting with — the PDF. For many of these organizations, the Bamar are the people they fought to be autonomous from. That they’re now making common cause against the junta is remarkable. Back in September of 2022, analysts estimated that the Tatmadaw controlled a mere 17 percent of the country. A full half was in the hands of pro-democracy rebels. Mostly made up of ordinary people — teachers, farmers, students — the PDF began the conflict fighting with slingshots. Their weapons remain modest: homemade rifles and bombs, partnered with commercial tech like consumer drones. Yet they’ve still managed to chase government forces from swathes of the countryside, using tactics like destroying remote police stations, ambushing convoys, and assassinating military officers before melting away into the local population — a population that overwhelmingly supports them. While the generals still hold the large towns and cities, their reach doesn’t extend much further. If you combine the areas controlled by the PDF with those controlled by armed ethnic groups and place them on a map, they create a cauldron — seemingly trapping the Tatmadaw in the few regions they still control. Data monitoring group ACLED currently puts the total number of people killed since the 2021 coup at nearly 34,000 — almost certainly a massive undercount. The UN assesses there are now 1.5 million internally displaced people in Myanmar. Overall, some 17.6 million are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Junta’s Asymmetric Advantage: Airpower and the ‘Four Cuts’ Strategy

The generals have a capability the PDF does not: an air force. Consisting of about 70 aircraft plus helicopters, the Burmese air force has become the hidden ace up the Tatmadaw’s sleeve. The combat planes and attack helicopters give the junta an asymmetrical advantage. The PDF simply doesn’t have anything that can counter an Mi-35 helicopter gunship. The Syrian precedent looms large. By 2015, the Syrian opposition was on the cusp of winning, when Russia intervened on Assad’s side. Because the rebels had little that could fight back against an air strike, the Kremlin used its fighter jets to inflict massive casualties — destroying not just rebel forces, but also deliberately bombing hospitals, schools, markets, and playgrounds in areas that supported the rebels. Assad was eventually able to eke out a victory. Now the Burmese junta seems to be copying the Kremlin playbook. Under air force chief General Tun Aung, the Tatmadaw has been pursuing what it calls its “four cuts” strategy. The idea is to eliminate the PDF’s home ground advantage by eliminating the local communities that supply them with food, shelter, and intelligence. Kill, wound, and traumatize those who support the PDF and the armed ethnic groups — the thinking goes — and the rebels’ ability to wage war will evaporate. This is why there are events like the strike on Pazigyi village in April. It’s why the air force deliberately bombs churches and lead mines in Karen State. It’s why, in November of 2022, the Sagaing region registered near-daily air strikes — strikes backed up by military convoys that tore down villages and burned crops.

Russia and China: The Arms Pipeline Fueling the Air War

Where Myanmar gets its air force is a critical question. This is a country with a GDP lower than Costa Rica, widely shunned for its human rights abuses. The answer: Russia and China. In the aftermath of the 2021 coup, as Myanmar became a pariah on the world stage, the junta began a deliberate policy of moving ever-closer to Beijing and Moscow. That has meant parroting the Chinese line on Taiwan. In 2022, it meant vocally supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — although the junta stopped short of recognizing Russia’s annexation of four oblasts. Since the coup, Moscow has emerged as the biggest supporter of Myanmar’s generals. Even as the atrocities mount, the Kremlin has authorized the sale of Yak-130 ground attack jets to the junta. It’s likewise exported Mi-35 helicopter gunships, equipped with rapid fire cannons and multiple rocket launchers, that have become central to the air war. Overall, the BBC has tracked 28 combat aircraft sent from Russia to Myanmar, along with an additional 41 combat helicopters and 18 training aircraft. At least four more orders are in the pipeline. Moscow is also supplying training, teaching Tatmadaw pilots how to operate these machines — machines they use to kill civilians. Unlike Russia, China’s support for Burma’s generals seems more qualified. Beijing is known to have made contact with the National Unity Government, and seems to be hedging its bets over the outcome. However, the CCP also wants to invest in oil and gas pipelines across Myanmar, and profit from its stores of rare-earth metals. They’ve sold the junta 7 combat and 18 training aircraft, including the FTC-2000G — aircraft well-suited for ground attack. The role of Moscow and Beijing goes deeper than just arms sales. As veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, the two have jointly shielded Myanmar from international rebuke. Calls for a no-fly zone above the nation have gone nowhere, as have calls for an embargo on selling the generals jet fuel.

Sanctions, Stalemate, and the Prospect of Endless War

Individual states and entities have tried to choke off the junta’s ability to wage war on its people. The biggest steps so far have been actions by the US and UK to sanction anyone importing jet fuel into Burma. In America’s case, that includes sanctions on anyone conducting any commercial transaction with the Tatmadaw. The European Union has taken similar steps to ban the transfer of arms or monitoring equipment to the junta. Still, it’s doubtful that this is enough alone to end the junta’s air war. Monitoring groups reported an uptick in air strikes in April 2023, as the generals seek to recreate the Syrian regime’s victory. Sadly, they may yet succeed. With the international order breaking down, there seems to be nothing anyone can do to stop larger nations such as Russia and China supporting Myanmar’s junta. And it seems unlikely the generals will wind down the air war on their own. After decades of repression, the only thing the Tatmadaw knows how to do is kill, torture, and terrorize. If the PDF and ethnic rebels are unwilling to back down, it seems likely the junta will just keep on killing until Burma lies in ruins. This may be a preferable outcome for General Min Aung Hlaing than defeat. Writing for the United States Institute of Peace, Burmese scholar Ye Myo Hein recently opined that: “The generals are ready to embrace a pyrrhic victory if it assures their survival, no matter how illegitimate, gory and limited it turns out to be… Under the current conditions, the generals prefer endless war to negotiation.” That assessment implies that this brutal air war is only beginning. There will be many more massacres like Pazigyi before it’s over. Powerful men will commit any act of barbarity to stay in power, and the international community seems powerless to stop the actions of those who will sacrifice anyone to ensure their own survival. The suffering of Myanmar’s people may continue for a long time to come — unless the resistance can find a way to neutralize the junta’s last decisive advantage: its airpower.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Burma now called Myanmar?

The official name of the country was changed from Burma to Myanmar in 1989 by the military government, reportedly to distinguish the country from the former British colony of Burma and to emphasize the country’s independence. The name change was made by the State Law and Order Restoration Council, which was led by Senior General Saw Maung, and has been recognized by the United Nations and many countries, including the United States, although some countries, including the United Kingdom, still refer to the country as Burma.

Does the US still recognize Myanmar as Burma?

The US government officially refers to the country as Burma, although it also uses the name Myanmar in some contexts. In 2011, the US Department of State announced that it would begin using the name Myanmar in official communications, in recognition of the country’s government and its desire to be known by that name. However, in 2021, following the military coup, the US Department of State reverted to using the name Burma in official statements, in a show of support for the country’s democratic opposition and in protest against the military regime.

What happened in 2006 in Myanmar?

In 2006, the military government of Myanmar, led by General Than Shwe, began a major crackdown on pro-democracy activists and ethnic minority groups, leading to widespread human rights abuses and the arrest of thousands of people. The government also announced plans to move the capital city from Yangon to Naypyidaw, a newly built city in the center of the country, which was officially inaugurated in 2006. The move was seen as an attempt by the government to consolidate its power and to distance itself from the population and the international community.

What country invaded Myanmar?

Myanmar has not been invaded by another country in recent history. However, the country has experienced a series of internal conflicts and insurgencies, including a civil war between the military government and various ethnic minority groups, as well as a conflict between the military and the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State. In 2021, the military seized power in a coup, leading to widespread protests and violence, and a growing insurgency by the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and other armed groups.

Does Myanmar have an air defense system?

Myanmar’s air defense system is limited, and the country has been vulnerable to air attacks by its own military, which has been using aircraft and helicopters to bomb and strafe civilian targets, including villages, schools, and hospitals. According to reports, the military has imported at least $1 billion in arms and other material since the 2021 coup, including aircraft and air defense systems, but the effectiveness of these systems is unclear. The lack of a robust air defense system has made it difficult for the country’s civilian population to protect itself against air attacks, which have been increasingly frequent and deadly in recent years.

What happened in February 1 2021 military coup d etat that seized power from Myanmar’s civilian government?

On February 1, 2021, the military of Myanmar, led by Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in a coup, detaining civilian leaders, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, and declaring a state of emergency. The military claimed that the coup was necessary due to alleged irregularities in the 2020 general election, which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party had won in a landslide. The coup was widely condemned by the international community, and it led to widespread protests and violence, as well as the formation of a shadow government, the National Unity Government (NUG), which is recognized by many countries as the legitimate government of Myanmar.

What happened to aung san suu kyi in 2021?

In 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor of Myanmar and the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was detained by the military during the February 1 coup, along with other civilian leaders. She was subsequently put on trial on charges of corruption, incitement, and violating the official secrets act, and was sentenced to four years in prison. Her detention and trial were widely seen as a sham, and were condemned by the international community. Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, and her whereabouts and condition are not publicly known.

Did Myanmar junta continue air strikes after devastating earthquake?

There is no record of a devastating earthquake occurring in Myanmar in recent years. However, the military junta has continued to carry out air strikes against civilian targets, including villages, schools, and hospitals, as part of its campaign against the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and other armed groups. According to reports, the air strikes have been increasingly frequent and deadly, with over 660 attacks reported since the beginning of 2021, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties and widespread destruction. The air strikes have been widely condemned by the international community, and have been characterized as a form of collective punishment against the civilian population.

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