Guest contributor
Salai Za Uk Ling
Anyone looking only at the recent headlines from Chin State’s Falam could be forgiven for thinking that the junta is finally turning a corner.
State-controlled newspapers are filled with images of civil servants returning to work, trucks carrying construction materials into town, and officials speaking confidently about rehabilitation, reconstruction, and the restoration of government services.
Since the installation of the junta’s post-sham election administration, authorities have also encouraged former civil servants to return to government service, reinforcing the image of a state gradually regaining its footing after years of conflict.
The impression being created is one of a society emerging from war and returning to normal life. Yet that impression begins to unravel the moment one looks beyond Falam.
For many people in Chin State, the past several weeks have not been defined by reconstruction but by the familiar sounds of fighter jets, explosions, and displacement.
While the junta showcases rehabilitation in one township, military operations have intensified across others, suggesting that what is being presented as recovery may in fact be the beginning of a new phase of conflict.
In southern Chin’s Mindat and Kanpetlet have come under sustained aerial attack. On June 10, military aircraft reportedly dropped more than a dozen bombs on Mindat in multiple sorties.
These attacks followed earlier bombardments that killed civilians, damaged homes and public buildings, and raised fears of a broader offensive.
According to local sources, thousands of junta troops are now engaged in operations targeting Mindat and Kanpetlet, with air power playing an increasingly central role in supporting ground advances.
Further north, events in Thantlang point in a similar direction.
On June 3, approximately 250 junta troops reportedly departed the state capital Hakha with combat drones, ammunition, supplies, and military vehicles.
After regrouping in the Timit plains area, the column advanced toward Thantlang under the cover of repeated airstrikes around Auto Peak, a strategically important position overlooking the Hakha–Thantlang corridor and home to a communications tower.
According to information gathered by local monitoring networks, junta forces subsequently captured key positions along the route before elements of the column entered Thantlang town on June 9 and established positions inside the urban area.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the recapture of Falam in April was not the conclusion of a military campaign but part of a broader effort to regain territory across the state.
The contrast is difficult to ignore.
While state media highlights construction materials arriving in Falam and the return of administrative personnel, military aircraft continue to strike communities elsewhere in the state.
While officials speak of rehabilitation and recovery, families in Mindat, Kanpetlet, and Thantlang are once again weighing what to carry, where to flee, and whether it is safe to remain where they are.
This contradiction lies at the heart of the current moment.
The junta seeks to showcase visible signs of governance while continuing military operations that generate further displacement and insecurity.
Roads can be repaired, offices can reopen, and government employees can return to work. None of these developments, however, change the reality facing civilians living under the threat of airstrikes.
For more than five years, ordinary people in Chin State have borne the heaviest burden of a conflict they neither started nor controlled.
The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) has documented that more than three out of every five people in Chin have been displaced since the 2021 military coup.
Yet numbers alone rarely convey what prolonged displacement does to a community. After years of conflict, people begin measuring time differently, not by seasons or holidays, but by offensives, airstrikes, and the places they were forced to flee.
Children grow up knowing evacuation routes better than playgrounds. Families keep essential belongings packed because experience has taught them that home can become unsafe overnight.
The military’s growing reliance on air power has deepened this crisis.
CHRO has documented nearly 2,000 airstrikes in Chin since the coup. Communities far removed from active fighting have repeatedly found themselves under attack.
In Khawpuichhip village, seven civilians, including six children, were killed when an airstrike struck a football ground. There were no active clashes nearby and no military targets in the vicinity.
It was the kind of place where children should have felt safest. Instead, it became another reminder that nowhere is truly secure when civilians themselves become part of the battlefield.
Such incidents are no longer unusual. That may be the most disturbing reality of all. Against this backdrop, the junta’s narrative of rehabilitation rings hollow.
The international community should be cautious about judging progress through carefully curated images and official announcements. The real measure of peace is not whether government offices reopen in Falam or whether construction materials reach a town under military control.
The real measure of peace is whether people can live without fear, whether displaced families can return home voluntarily and safely, and whether children can go to school without wondering if an aircraft overhead will change their lives forever.
By those measures, Chin State remains far from normal.
Those of us who have watched this conflict unfold over many years have seen this pattern before. Military gains are presented as stability. Administrative control is presented as governance. Reconstruction projects are presented as evidence of peace.
Yet for communities living beneath the flight path of military aircraft or sheltering in displacement camps, these distinctions matter little. They know that the reopening of an office building does not make a family safe, just as a truckload of construction materials cannot erase the fear created by the sound of an approaching jet.
The question facing the international community is not whether buildings can be rebuilt in Falam. Given enough time and resources, they can.
The more important question is whether the people of Chin State are safer today than they were months ago.
The evidence suggests they are not.
While reconstruction is being showcased in one township, military offensives are expanding in others. While officials speak of rehabilitation, families continue to flee airstrikes, sleep in temporary shelters, and wonder where the next attack will come from.
Peace is not measured by the reopening of offices or the delivery of construction materials. It is measured by whether people can live without fear.
Until that becomes possible, what is unfolding in Chin State should not be mistaken for recovery. It is the construction of a narrative of normalcy behind which war continues.
Salai Za Uk Ling is the Executive Director of Chin Human Rights Organization.
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