The Grimshaw Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 1 Bangladesh in 2023 – a form of secondary displacement – reflect the absence of meaningful solutions in the regions of initial refuge (MMC, 2024). In present-day Myanmar, the distribution of power has departed increasingly from the centralised, military-dominated governance of the past. While the 2008 Constitution still structurally mandates Tatmadaw control – guaranteeing 25% of parliamentary seats and command over key ministries – the military’s monopoly on political authority is being actively dismantled by an expanding and increasingly effective armed resistance (Than, 2016, p. 249; Middleton & Win, 2021, p. 47). Since the 2021 coup, resistance actors such as the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and various ethnic resistance organisations (EROs) have steadily gained ground, “liberating” townships and asserting alternative centres of power (Martin, 2024). These are not merely military gains but rather foundations for new governance. As local SAC officials are displaced, the resistance is constructing its own local governance frameworks in the political vacuum left behind; from the Chinland Council to the Chin People’s Administrative Committee, emergent state structures now challenge the junta’s presence (Martin, 2024). Yet even within the opposition, power is diffused. Competing visions of political legitimacy – some even rejecting the Federal Democracy Charter and the National Unity Government (NUG) – reveal the highly fragmented nature of authority in what has become a fragile landscape of competing visions of sovereignty (Martin, 2024). What emerges is not a clear successor state, but a phase of contested rule, where hybrid governance and zones of limited statehood reflect both opportunity and volatility (South, 2018; Middleton & Win, 2021, p. 48). Indeed, this deep-seated fragmentation in Myanmar’s political architecture is a product of the 2008 Constitution, which was designed by the military to safeguard its tutelary role in governance, even during nominal democratic transitions (Pedersen, 2018; Middleton & Win, 2021, p. 47). The political opening was not a genuine move toward democracy but rather an “imposed transition” aimed at entrenching military authority under a reformist façade (Stokke & Aung, 2019). In this context, the persecution of the Rohingya can be understood as a politically expedient strategy. Faced with growing domestic dissatisfaction and economic 7