Earlier this week, bombs fell on a market in the Ponnagyun township in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, killing a score of people in what has become a grim rhythm of never-ending war.

Homes were flattened, and roads were strewn with scattered body parts amidst shattered concrete.

The strike came just days after Myanmar’s military authorities announced the results of national elections held over December and January, a showpiece exercise that returned the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party to formal power.

Official tallies gave the party 231 seats in the Lower House and 108 in the Upper House, totalling a commanding 339 of 420 seats in the Myanmar legislature.

On paper, the generals have restored a constitutional façade. On the ground, the largely Buddhist nation remains more fragmented than at any point in its modern history.

Fragmented state, fractured control

In Rakhine state, the military has lost control of 14 of 17 townships to the Arakan Army, whose growing administrative apparatus has begun to resemble a parallel state.

Unable to reverse its battlefield setbacks, the junta has taken to using air power, bombing markets, schools, hospitals and homes in what appears to be a strategy of collective punishment and an effort to make governance by insurgents unbearably costly.

The same pattern has unfolded in the northern Shan state, where towns under the sway of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army have been struck from the sky.

Rather than confronting rebel forces head-on, the military has targeted civilian life, hollowing out urban centres and sending waves of displaced families towards borders........

© Free Press Journal