China is "staring at possible chaos, rising anti-China feelings, and little hope that its planned China-Myanmar Economic Corridor can be materialized anytime soon," Thant Myint-U, an award-winning
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Myanmar Fast Facts
About Myanmar
Area: 676,578 sq km (slightly smaller than Texas)
Population: 57,069,099 (July 2021 est.)
Median age: 29.2 years
Capital: Naypyidaw
Ethnic Groups: Burman 68%, Shan 9%, Karen 7%, Rakhine 4%, Chinese 3%, Indian 2%, Mon 2%, other 5%
Religion: Buddhist 87.9%, Christian 6.2%, Muslim 4.3%, Animist 0.8%, Hindu 0.5%, Other 0.2%, None 0.1% (2014 est.)
Unemployment: 4% (2017 est.)
The United States officially still calls the country Burma.
The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State thought to number about one million people at the beginning of 2017. Myanmar does not recognize them as citizens or one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups living in the country. According to Human Rights Watch, laws discriminate against the Rohingya, infringing on their freedom of movement, education and employment.
Rakhine State – Southeast Asia’s Next Marawi?
Myanmar’s political crisis has created the conditions for a possible widening of the jihadi theater in Southeast Asia.
By
April 15, 2021
In this June 29, 2018, file photo, a Myanmar border guard stands to provide security near a fence at a no-man’s land between Myanmar and Bangladesh, near Taungpyolatyar village, Maung Daw, northern Rakhine State, Myanmar.
Credit: AP Photo/Min Kyi Thein, File
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What has distinguished jihadist groups and their appeal from other anti-state non-state actors has been their ability to construct a paradigm and narrative that the “land” in which a struggle is taking place is the “Land of Allah” and, hence, that jihadists need to join them in the struggle for the cause of Allah and Islam. This was what drew thousands of jihadists to Afghanistan in the 1980s, to Iraq and Syria from 2003 to 2018, and in the Southeast Asian region, to Marawi in the Phili