Book

The articles collected here were written between 2020 and 2023, a period in which Myanmar lived through a pandemic, a disputed election, a military coup, a nationwide uprising, and the return of war to my home state. They are arranged in seven parts. 

The first follows Rakhine State through war, a pandemic, and a canceled 2020 election. The second covers the February 2021 coup and the uprising that met it. The third turns to the people who carried that uprising: medics, LGBTQ+ activists, women, lawyers and ordinary citizens. The fourth is about my own profession, and what it meant to report from a place where the internet could be switched off, and journalists were hunted. The fifth follows a country coming apart, from diplomacy to jade mines to death squads.

The sixth traces the rise of the Arakan Army’s own administration in western Myanmar, and the seventh the return to open war and the question of what kind of union Myanmar might become. 

Each piece appears largely as it was first published, with its original byline and date, so that readers can see what was known, and what was feared, at the moment it was written. Some events have since moved in directions none of us could have predicted. I have not tried to correct the past with hindsight.

None of this work was mine alone, and I'm pleased to finally thank the people who made it possible. Above all, I thank Emily Fishbein. We reported and wrote many of these stories together, often across closed roads, curfews, and internet blackouts, and her care for accuracy and for the people we interviewed shaped how I understand this profession. I am also grateful to everyone else I was fortunate to write or report with during these years: Andrew Nachemson, David Pierson, Fuadi Pitsuwan, Hkun Lat, Thu Ra Kyaw, Nu Nu Lusan, Naing Lin, Laura Haigh, Verena Hölzl and Laetitia van den Assum. Each of you made the work sharper and braver than it would have been without you. I also owe a great deal to the editors who took a chance on a young reporter from Rakhine and pushed every one of these pieces to be clearer, fairer, and better sourced. My thanks go to the editors at Foreign Policy, TIME, Al Jazeera, VICE World News, The New Humanitarian, The Diplomat, Frontier Myanmar, the Los Angeles Times, the United States Institute of Peace, and every other publication that gave these stories space. Thank you also to the Pulitzer Center, whose support helped bring several of these stories to a wider audience