Organized Crime Is Thriving in Myanmar’s Civil War—and It’s a Global Threat

While a year ago, it appeared that Myanmar’s civil war, pitting the junta and its armed forces against a wide range of anti-government forces around the country, was going to end ultimately with a rebel victory, the situation now seems much more unclear. The anti-government forces have made notable gains and won significant victories, but they have not made major inroads into Myanmar’s populous center. Meanwhile, China—seeking to protect its pipeline through the country—has more recently increased its support for the junta, while also forcing opposition groups operating near the Chinese border to give up important territory.

In this bloody, prolonged battle, which began a few months after the 2021 coup, the country—which also this year suffered a devastating earthquake—has been ruined. The monitoring organization ACLED ranks it as the second most violent place in the world, and Myanmar clearly now meets the definition of a failed state. The nominal junta government does not control large areas of the country, and provides almost nothing in the form of state services anymore. Poverty and hunger have skyrocketed in the past four years, and with few aid groups able to operate inside the country, in addition to a wrecked economy, it seems the country could continue to collapse.

While this is a tragedy and the result of the brutal junta, credibly accused of war crimes, it would be a local/regional disaster—except that in this failed state, non-state criminal actors have become so powerful they impact the region and the world. The lawless country has become a center of cyberscams targeting people in China and in Western states as well, despite some efforts by China to help close down the large cyberscam operations inside Myanmar. Both the junta forces and the rebel forces get funding by levying informal, at gunpoint, taxes on the cyberscam operations.

Some of the scams are financial hoaxes, while others are fake romances that ultimately push the person targeted into giving money to a fake online “girlfriend.” The scams also require hundreds of thousands of people to be trafficked into Myanmar and held in modern day slavery. And they reach around the planet. They have cost Southeast Asia over $75 billion in fraud over four years, and as they target the U.S. are already costing over $2 billion annually to Americans.

More broadly, Myanmar has become by some estimates, the current center for global organized crime, according to the Global Organized Crime Index. Not just cyberscams – Myanmar drug gangs have boosted their production of powerful synthetic drugs, selling them throughout the region and shipping them globally, making them some of the biggest international players in methamphetamines and synthetic drugs similar to meth as well as synthetic fentanyl, much of which eventually makes its way beyond the region and to North America. With the international actors who pushed villagers to grow crops other than opium gone, too, Myanmar’s poppy production has increased during the war, and the New York Times now estimates the country is the biggest provider of the key materials in heroin.

With most links to the outside world cut, and foreign actors (besides China) unable to impact internal activities in a failed state already hit by so many sanctions, other major criminal operations have put down roots in the country. Human trafficking has shot up – for the cyberscam centers but also to traffick people to the Middle East and Europe, essentially in bondage. Well-known criminals who had been wanted in China, Thailand or other parts of the region have fled to Myanmar, where they cannot be touched. These include people who allegedly trafficked in wild and protected animals, or who were involved in large, illegal casinos, or who headed up large loan sharking syndicates, among others.

With the war grinding on, and major donors showing little interest in the country, prospects are grim. And organized crime operations will only expand their presence in this failed state.