Opposition forces are trying to overthrow the military, which has been in power for decades, and it looks like they may have the edge.

All kinds of people have joined the fight, from established armed groups, to students and activists who want democracy.

The military, if you like, is on the rise.

It is losing significant land, civilian territories.

Myanmar is now at the verge of state failure.

Millions of people have already been displaced.

There are now warnings of famine and reports of all sorts of atrocities being committed.

So what's behind the fighting?

And could the military regime really be about to fall?

Myanmar, which used to be called Burma, is in Southeast Asia, sandwiched between all these countries.

And to understand what's going on there now, we need a quick backstory.

For decades, a repressive military regime has been in charge, ruling over a very diverse country made up of more than 100 ethnic groups.

Myanmar was heavily sanctioned and isolated from the world.

It was seen as a kind of pariah state.

But from about 2011, things started shifting and led to a period that some people call Myanmar's experiment with democracy.

The ruling generals agreed to share power with a civilian government.

There were elections in 2015, and a party called the National League for Democracy, or NLD, won.

It was led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who'd been the face of the opposition for decades and had spent almost 15 years under house arrest.

In 2020, the NLD won again, by a landslide.

But the military disputed the result.

They staged a coup to take back power.

Aung San Suu Kyi was detained and then sent to prison, although it's not clear where she's being held right now.

What came next led to a full-scale civil war that is still going on.

Myanmar! Myanmar!

Myanmar's 10-year journey to democracy appears to be over.

The military takeover has sparked the biggest demonstrations seen in Myanmar in more than a decade.

A stark warning from the UN Special Envoy on Myanmar: "a bloodbath is imminent."

Security forces shot more than 100 people dead.

Peaceful demonstrations were responded to with massive violence by the military.

This violence made them even more determined to get the military out of politics.

The people of Myanmar were not prepared to turn back the clock.

Since then, the people have built up their armed resistance to the military, and the situation now in Myanmar is unprecedented.

After four years of fighting, the map of Myanmar now looks like this.

The military regime has lost a lot of territory, especially in the last year.

It now only has full control of 21% of the country, according to a BBC investigation.

But that includes the capital, Naypyidaw, and other big cities.

The rest is controlled by a range of different anti-military groups.

You can see there are lots of them, but they roughly fall into two main categories.

We've got the ethnic armed organizations.

These are groups that represent different ethnic minorities, and they've been fighting against the military for more rights, autonomy, even independence, for a long time.

These wars go back 60 years.

It's nothing new.

There have been periods of greater or lesser violence in these wars, but they have been continuous since the military became the dominant power in Myanmar in 1962.

Every minority in Burma has their own stories to tell you how much they have suffered.

So that is the main driving force for these minorities.

They feel that we must protect ourselves.

As well as the ethnic armed groups, the other main category on the anti-military side are the resistance groups that emerged in response to the 2021 coup, when many of the protesters decided to pick up weapons with the goal of ending military rule and restoring democracy.

You had all sorts of volunteers joining the fight.

Students, lawyers, medics, and a lot of them have been trained by those ethnic armed groups in secret jungle camps.

And over time, they've become a more effective and better equipped fighting force.

A lot of Myanmar citizens, they've been donating money to the resistance movement.

Eventually, they grow exponentially.

One of the things that's made a huge difference in the last six months is weapons.

The pro-democracy forces have seized from military bases they've overrun.

The main resistance group are the People's Defense Forces, or PDF.

These are the areas they control.

The PDF are essentially the boots on the ground for a rival opposition government that was set up after the coup, called the National Unity Government.

Now, while the PDF have been pretty effective, it's really the ethnic groups that have been making the difference.

Much as the NUG would like to claim this military success of the resistance of its own, what's happening on the battlefield in Myanmar is primarily being driven by the ethnic armed groups.

For example, one group, known as the Arakan Army, is now in full control of the border with Bangladesh after pushing the military out.

In this video, you can see soldiers waving white flags and surrendering.

There are lots of reports of how the military have been struggling to get enough people to fight for them.

There is a massive number of surrenders to the People's Revolution side.

We know that morale is very low.

They have introduced conscription and are literally kidnapping young men to fight in the military.

Sending them to the front lines, using them as a human shield.

This is the biggest crime going on in Burma.

So you've got this situation where the military, which used to be all-powerful, is really under pressure.

Could the regime actually fall, though?

Well, plenty of people are predicting that it's only a matter of time.

This illegal coup attacked by the military, now we can say for sure it has failed.

One of the very reasons is because of the very unwavering determination and resistance, resilience of the Myanmar people.

Especially the young generations are absolutely resolute in their fight to end this military oppression once and for all.

We should not be surprised if sudden and dramatic change comes to Myanmar.

Maybe I wouldn't predict it, but we shouldn't be surprised when it happens or if it happens.

A lot would still need to happen for the regime to finally go.

One big advantage the military has is air power.

And it uses these weapons brutally and basically adopts a scorched earth policy to seek to obliterate the villages, towns and even cities that it has lost in the fighting on the ground.

The military also still controls the major cities.

The PDF and ethnic groups would have to stage a pretty major offensive to take those cities.

But there are big questions about whether they're all united enough to make that happen.

Keep in mind, the ethnic armed groups are more focused on achieving autonomy in their own regions.

Some are even fighting each other.

The ethnic armed groups do understand that if this current military is left in power, in the center, they will never be at peace.

But whether that translates into a willingness to expend enormous resources and lose a huge number of lives by marching on the central cities, that's another question in time.

So what about pressure from other countries that could shift the balance of power?

Well, just as Myanmar isn't really in the news much, there's not a great deal of diplomatic attention focused on it either.

The main player here is China.

But Beijing seems to be hedging its bets.

China is the only country that has been putting significant effort to address the issue.

But on the other hand, that was mainly for protecting its own interests rather than resolving the issue in Myanmar.

China traditionally has tried to play all sides.

It has been a supporter and armor of the military, but it's also armed most of the ethnic groups, directly and indirectly.

I think China's major concern is to ensure that whoever wins the war in Myanmar, China is on their side.

And while the world's attention is elsewhere, the people of Myanmar are suffering a desperate humanitarian and human rights crisis.

It's getting worse.

Parts of Myanmar are cut off with no internet, so it's hard to get information out.

But there are reports of atrocities being committed by both the military and some of the armed groups.

In Rakhine State, for example, civilians from an ethnic minority called the Rohingya are reportedly being killed and displaced by the military and the Arakan army, which is the main ethnic armed group there.

You've probably heard of the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority who've been persecuted for years. 750,000 fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape what the UN have called genocidal violence by the military.

Aside from the reports of attacks on the Rohingya, the broader humanitarian situation in Rakhine is particularly bad.

The UN is warning of famine there.

The people all across Myanmar need help. 20 million, according to the UN, and nowhere near enough aid is getting in. 15 million people don't have enough to eat, while cyclones and floods have destroyed huge areas of farmland.

And that's really impacted, heavily impacted food security.

Now that the resistance controls so much of the country, including all of the major crossing points to Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand, there is no excuse not to provide massive humanitarian relief by land across those land borders.

And this is a failure of the international system and of Myanmar's neighbours not to be undertaking this kind of humanitarian relief.

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