It is a bad cliché, of several decades’ vintage, to say that a given civil war is ‘complex’. Normally, this is a dodge on the foreign correspondent’s part. He either wishes to hide his lack of knowledge from you, or to pretend that without him holding the reader’s hand, they could never hope to understand the story.
Tutting over ‘complexity’ benefits the army most of all
I ask you to forgive me for making use of it. The civil conflict in Burma (Myanmar, according to the regime) really is complex.
Last week, the Burmese military, also called the Tatmadaw, excelled itself in savagery. It launched a very nasty attack at a place called Pa Zi Gyi. Awful photographs exist of the dozens of people – most of them civilian – who were killed, and of the weaponry used by the army to kill them.
The war has been characterised by attacks on schools, village meeting halls and markets. This is the pattern of a vicious war.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate, free for a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first month free.
UNLOCK ACCESS Try a month freeAlready a subscriber? Log in