''Myanmar won its independence from British colonial rule in 1948. Sadly its history since then has been massively unhappy. From being the best educated (apart from Japan) country in East Asia, it spiraled down over the ensuing 65 years to being possibly the worst educated as well as one of the poorest. The primary cause of this decline was the world’s longest continuing civil war in which the ethnic Bamar Buddhist majority in the central valley has sought to dominate dozens of non-Buddhist ethnic minorities inhabiting the mountainous borderlands. A remarkably free and fair election in 2015 was won in a landslide by the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who had spent most of the previous 25 years under house arrest by the country’s military rulers. Her government took office in April 2016 with control of parliament, but she was barred from the presidency by a provision in the country’s military-drafted constitution of 2008. The president, U Htin Kyaw, is an NLD leader and close associate of Daw Suu. She governs in the newly created position of state counsellor and as the foreign minister...''