Rebel Governance in Myanmar: Earthquake Relief and the Struggle for Legitimacy
When the Sagaing earthquake struck Myanmar in March 2025, much of the international spotlight fell on the military government’s limited relief efforts and continued bombing campaigns. But in a country where half the territory is estimated to be under rebel control, a crucial story remained overlooked: how rebel groups provided aid and assisted local relief efforts in territories under their control. This research examines how these relief efforts challenged state narratives, serving as a claim to legitimacy that presents the governance of rebel groups as a viable alternative to military government.
Earthquake and Civil War
On March 28th 2025, the Sagaing earthquake devasted central Myanmar, killing an estimated 4,900 people, displacing over 3 million, and causing widespread destruction to infrastructure and livelihoods. In a country already mired in a multitude of crises – including an ongoing civil war that has claimed at least 80,000 lives, economic collapse, and multiple humanitarian emergencies – the earthquake added yet another layer of vulnerability.
The disaster’s aftermath revealed many of the deep fault lines underlying the conflict. With central authority contested and fragmented, relief efforts in many areas were hampered by a lack of official coordination, funding, and equipment. The absence of young people in the country, many of whom are fleeing the military’s recruitment drive, left a deep shortage of able-bodied youth to assist with relief efforts. The military government, meanwhile, was criticized by analysts and humanitarian workers of leveraging the disaster for strategic gain, securing international support while deliberately withholding aid from rebel-held areas and violating its own post-earthquake ceasefire to reinforce its territorial control.
The Missing Picture: The Role of Rebel Groups
Missing from many analyses was the role of rebel groups in the earthquake response – a striking omission, given estimations that half the country is currently under rebel control, including many of the areas hit hardest by the earthquake. The oversight is all the more significant considering that, in contexts of contested statehood, rebel groups often operate as functioning alternatives to the state. In areas under their control, rebel groups often fill governance gaps, build essential institutions, provide services, and offer dispute resolution mechanisms – albeit with significant variation in form, scope and capacity. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, for example, provided extensive welfare services. In the Middle East, Syrian rebel groups distributed subsidized bread and built judicial and administrative structures, while Hezbollah operates schools.
Rebel Governance in Myanmar
In Myanmar, rebel governance has deep roots. Many of the country’s Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) have been engaged in armed conflict with successive central governments since the 1960s, accounting for some of the world’s longest running civil wars. Following the 2021 military coup, fighting has once again escalated, with several of these EAOs renewing their armed resistance against the new military government. They now fight alongside hundreds of newly formed People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) variedly aligned or allied with the National Unity Government (NUG), the opposition government in exile. While not all EAOs are currently engaged in active armed struggle, prominent groups such as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Arakan Army (AA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which make up the Three Brotherhood Alliance, have played a significant role in the evolving conflict.
With decades of armed insurgency behind them, many of these EAOs have long established quasi-state structures in their territories in Myanmar’s Borderlands, complete with governance and service provision systems and, in some cases, disaster preparedness mechanisms. Although their capacities and level of institutionalization vary, these groups have long functioned as alternative authorities. The TNLA for instance regularly showcases its involvement in governance via its Telegram channels, where it posts on drug seizures and correctional camps, school graduations, community efforts including garbage collection, and decisions on electricity tariff rates. Rather than being merely opportunistic propaganda, these efforts serve to assert an alternative legitimate authority, showcasing the capacity to govern and function to domestic and international audiences.
Rebel efforts at gaining legitimacy are especially evident in the context of environmental disasters such as earthquakes, which create critical junctures that expose both rebel and state weakness. Researchers have explored how and under which configurations disasters might influence conflict dynamic, by escalating or de-escalating fighting, shaping recruitment, or redirecting resources. Yet beyond the expansion of capacity and influence, such events also open spaces for political actors to renegotiate authority and legitimacy. It is therefore important that we examine how rebels frame their roles and responsibilities in disaster response as a means of legitimizing their political projects.
Disaster Response as a Claim to Authority
The recent earthquake in Myanmar has made the contest over representations of legitimacy starkly visible. In one instance, the military – widely regarded as deeply superstitious – renamed the earthquake from “Sagaing Earthquake” to “Mandalay Earthquake”. The move has been seen as an attempt to avoid the phonetic similarity of the phrase Sit Gaing, roughly translated as “military bend”, lest it be interpreted as a sign of the military’s impending collapse.
On the rebel side, claims to legitimacy were evident in both the relief efforts themselves and in how these efforts were framed in communications. Following the earthquake, the TNLA, set up committees and donation centers to organize and support relief efforts, while the AA distributed medical supplies. Similarly, the MNDAA opened its clinics to the public and took charge of local reconstruction coordination. These post-disaster relief efforts functioned as more than humanitarian gestures. They were performances of authority that aim to construct an image of resistance groups as being capable of filling governance vacuums in situations of crisis, lending them legitimacy in the eyes of affected populations and beyond.
Rhetorical Positioning: Rebel Relief vs. State Neglect
Importantly, these actions were accompanied by a deliberate positioning vis-à-vis the military’s response to the earthquake. Here, rebel groups belonging to the Three Brotherhood Alliance highlighted their own unilateral ceasefire taken to protect civilians and alleviate suffering, while pointing to the military’s continued aerial assaults and offensives after the earthquake. For instance, in a Telegram post on April 22, the TNLA explicitly referenced the alliance’s ceasefire – declared out of concern for the earthquake-affected population – while reporting on the military’s continued violation of their ceasefire through airstrikes. Similarly, in a May 14 post, the AA highlighted its use of the alliance’s ceasefire extension to deliver critical humanitarian aid while simultaneously condemning the “fascist military” for bombing civilian areas during the same period and accusing the military of exploiting the disaster to continue its offensive operations. Through such messaging, both groups cast themselves not merely as actors providing relief, but as capable authorities and protectors, while the contrasting portrayal of the military as aggressors during a humanitarian crisis reinforced a narrative of state brutality and civilian abandonment.
While not a rebel group but rather the opposition government-in-exile, the NUG also contributed to this broader narrative. On its website, the NUG emphasized its capacity to rapidly mobilize search and rescue operations within the areas under rebel control. In the same announcement, however, it expressed regret over its inability to directly intervene in regions held by the military. In doing so, the NUG showcased not only its own administrative effectiveness but highlighted the governance vacuum in military-controlled areas, reinforcing the opposition’s broader claim to legitimate authority. Competing claims to legitimacy were thus made visible, not only through humanitarian relief efforts but through contrasting narratives of care versus neglect.
Conclusion
The Sagaing earthquake not only exposed Myanmar’s physical fault lines, it laid bare the deep fractures in its political landscape. As rebel groups stepped in to fill the void left by the current military government, they did more than assist relief efforts; they made a claim to legitimate rule. Their responses highlight how rebel groups frame their roles and responsibility in disaster response, and how these narratives serve to legitimize their political projects, by positioning rebel groups as credible and legitimate alternatives to the state. However, with Myanmar still engulfed in protracted conflict, the question remains whether these competing claims to legitimacy will endure.