By Kay Young Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s civil war has escalated into its most violent phase in decades, the scale of the conflict is bewildering. Between 60-200 armed groups are now active, with members in total numbering between 150,000 to 300,000 individuals engaged in the world’s most prolonged revolution. These insurgents range from small ideologically aligned bands, such as the communist People’s Liberation Army , baptist christian fundamentalists like The Free Burma Rangers, to ethno-nationalist narco-armies like the United Wa State Army. Popular maps depict a neat divide between regime-held territory and rebel zones, but reality is far messier. Power shifts by the hour: overlapping factions tax, administer, and fight over the same villages, fields and hilltops creating a fractured landscape of competing authority, a duopoly of violence.