ABSTRACT
The armed conflicts in the Asia–Pacific region are discrete theatres with no significant connections, and remained so throughout 2018. The Tatmadaw continues to deal with one group at a time, committing major atrocities and creating mass displacement, while the civilian government remains unwilling or unable to appreciate the scale of the problem. The government will continue to struggle to eradicate the highly resilient and decentralised Maoist insurgency in the larger Philippines. In the short to medium term, armed violence will likely continue to decrease in southern Thailand and in the Philippines, even though political solutions are unlikely to materialise for some of the conflicts.
