Reading the bones in a fractured Myanmar

In a tribal village in the Demoso region of Myanmar, an area now largely controlled by rebel groups, men gather around a ritual marking the Kay Htoe Boe festival. A celebration of renewal, Kay Htoe Boe is an annual attempt to restore balance. Taken on 8 April 2025, the photograph captures the bitter irony of hope, as people across the country have been living in a fog of uncertainty and fear for over four years. The nation is trapped between democratic aspirations, ethnic rebel forces controlling vast territories and a military junta determined to cling to power.

At the centre, a man in a red tracksuit top, marked with a white star, the emblem of the pro-democracy People’s Defence Force fighting the ruling junta, studies a chicken bone. It has been excised from the sacrificial rooster lying among scattered feathers. Men of all generations peer at the bone with concentrated, solemn attention and expectation. Wearing sweatshirts and sports or military caps, most of them are dressed in longyi, the traditional Burmese garment. Here, animist divination and ancestral clothing combine in a search for meaning and a sense of direction in a moment when the conflict is deeply fragmented, with hundreds of armed groups scattered across the country, and shaped by foreign interference.

While China, one of the junta’s only remaining allies, pushes for parliamentary elections in Myanmar between December and January to polish the regime’s image and to secure China’s own strategic interests, entire regions continue to live to the rhythm of local resistance. Between Chinese Belt and Road projects, the exploitation of Myanmar’s rare-earth deposits and persistent political instability, these communities find themselves on the front line, pulled away from their own destiny. The upcoming vote will be the first national election since the military coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021. For now, only the sacrificial chicken bone can be relied on to predict what, if anything, might pull Myanmar out of civil war.