Catastrophic Earthquakes Test Myanmar Junta's Grip on Power Amid Civil War

Regime has been weakened by a long civil war; now millions are counting on it to allow aid

- Feliz Solomon

The wave of violent earthquakes that tore through central Myanmar has brought the biggest challenges yet to a military junta already strained by years of rebellion and economic isolation.

How the generals handle the emerging catastrophe could make or break their grip on power. The quakes struck Myanmar's central heartlands near the city of Mandalay, a centuries-old center of Buddhist learning and home to some 1.2 million people. They crumbled temples, bridges and roads in the capital Naypyitaw and trapped countless people under the rubble.

The hardest-hit regions are important power centers for the junta, which, according to independent monitoring groups, controls less than half of Myanmar's territory. Pro-democracy fighters and decades-old ethnic militias have waged a grinding rebellion against the military since a 2021 coup that plunged the Southeast Asian country into the latest in a series of humanitarian and political crises.

The junta said at least 1,644 people had been confirmed dead and 3,408 injured. Early modeling from the U.S. Geological Survey suggested that the number of earthquake deaths in central Myanmar could rise to tens of thousands and that economic losses might surpass the value of the country's gross domestic product.

For some of Myanmar's 55 million people, the quake's destruction and loss of life awakened memories of an earlier natural disaster that struck in 2008 and ushered in an exceptional, if short-lived, chapter of political change.