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On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels through his native Shan State, in eastern Myanmar, documenting the impact of war.

A video journalist with the online news outlet Shwe Phee Myay, he travels to remote towns and villages, collecting footage and conducting interviews on stories ranging from battle updates to the situation for local civilians living in a war zone.

His job is fraught with risks. Roads are strewn with landmines and there are times when he has taken cover from aerial bombing and artillery shelling.

“I have witnessed countless people being injured and civilians dying in front of me,” Mai Rupa said.

“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he told Al Jazeera, “at times, leading to serious emotional distress.”

Mai Rupa is one of a small number of brave, independent journalists still reporting on the ground in Myanmar, where a 2021 military coup shattered the country’s fragile transition to democracy and obliterated media freedoms.

Like his colleagues at Shwe Phee Myay – a name which refers to Shan State’s rich history of tea cultivation – Mai Rupa prefers to go by a pen name due to the risks of publicly identifying as a reporter with one of the last remaining independent media outlets still operating inside the country.

Most journalists fled Myanmar in the aftermath of the military’s takeover and the expanding civil war. Some continue their coverage by making cross-border trips from work bases in neighbouring Thailand and India.

But staff at Shwe Phee Myay – a Burmese-language outlet, with roots in Shan State’s ethnic Ta’ang community – continue reporting from on the ground, covering a region of Myanmar where several ethnic armed groups have for decades fought against the military and at times clashed with each other.

Fighting to keep the public informed

After Myanmar’s military launched a coup in February 2021, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists faced new risks.

In March that year, two reporters with the outlet narrowly escaped arrest while covering pro-democracy protests. When soldiers and police raided their office in the Shan State capital of Lashio two months later, the entire team had already gone into hiding.

That September, the military arrested the organisation’s video reporter, Lway M Phuong, for alleged incitement and dissemination of “false news”. She served nearly two years in prison. The rest of the 10-person Shwe Phee Myay team scattered following her arrest, which came amid the Myanmar military’s wider crackdown on the media.

Spread out across northern Shan State in the east of the country, the news team initially struggled to continue their work. They chose to avoid urban areas where they might encounter the military. Every day was a struggle to continue reporting.

“We couldn’t travel on main roads, only back roads,” recounted Hlar Nyiem, an assistant editor with Shwe Phee Myay.

“Sometimes, we lost four or five work days in a week,” she said.

Despite the dangers, Shwe Phee Myay’s reporters continued with their clandestine work to keep the public informed.

When a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on March 28, killing more than 3,800 people, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists were among the few able to document the aftermath from inside the country.

The military blocked most international media outlets from accessing earthquake-affected areas, citing difficulties with travel and accommodation, and the few local reporters still working secretly in the country took great risks to get information to the outside world.

“These journalists continue to reveal truths and make people’s voices heard that the military regime is desperate to silence,” said Thu Thu Aung, a public policy scholar at the University of Oxford who has conducted research on Myanmar’s post-coup media landscape.

On top of the civil war and threats posed by Myanmar’s military regime, Myanmar’s journalists have encountered a new threat.

In January, the administration of US President Donald Trump and his billionaire confidante Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID had allocated more than $268m towards supporting independent media and the free flow of information in more than 30 countries around the world – from Ukraine to Myanmar, according to journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

In February, The Guardian reported on the freezing of USAID funds, creating an “existential crisis” for exiled Myanmar journalists operating from the town of Mae Sot, on the country’s border with Thailand.

The situation worsened further in mid-March, when the White House declared plans for the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to reduce operations to the bare minimum. USAGM oversees – among others – the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which were both leading providers of news on Myanmar.

Last week, RFA announced it was laying off 90 percent of its staff and ceasing to produce news in the Tibetan, Burmese, Uighur and Lao languages. VOA has faced a similar situation.

Tin Tin Nyo, managing director of Burma News International, a network of 16 local, independent media organisations based inside and outside Myanmar, said the loss of the Burmese-language services provided by VOA and RFA created a “troubling information vacuum”.

Myanmar’s independent media sector also relied heavily on international assistance, which had already been dwindling, Tin Tin Nyo said.

Many local Myanmar news outlets were already “struggling to continue producing reliable information”, as a result of the USAID funding cuts brought in by Trump and executed by Musk’s DOGE, she said.

Some had laid off staff, reduced their programming or suspended operations.

“The downsizing of independent media has decreased the capacity to monitor [false] narratives, provide early warnings, and counter propaganda, ultimately weakening the pro-democracy movement,” Tin Tin Nyo said.

“When independent media fail to produce news, policymakers around the world will be unaware of the actual situation in Myanmar,” she added.

‘Constant fear of arrest or even death’

Currently, 35 journalists remain imprisoned in Myanmar, making it the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists after China and Israel, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The country is ranked 169th out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.

“Journalists on the ground must work under the constant fear of arrest or even death,” Tin Tin Nyo said.

“The military junta treats the media and journalists as criminals, specifically targeting them to silence access to information.”

Despite the dangers, Shwe Phee Myay continues to publish news on events inside Myanmar.

With a million followers on Facebook – the digital platform where most people in Myanmar get their news – Shwe Phee Myay’s coverage has become even more critical since the military coup in 2021 and the widening civil war.

Established in 2019 in Lashio, Shwe Phee Myay was one of dozens of independent media outlets which emerged in Myanmar during a decade-long political opening, which began in 2011 with the country’s emergence from a half-century of relative international isolation under authoritarian military rule.

Pre-publication censorship ended in 2012 amid a wider set of policy reforms as the military agreed to allow greater political freedom. Journalists who had lived and worked in exile for media outlets such as the Democratic Voice of Burma, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima News began cautiously returning home.

However, the country’s nascent press freedoms came under strain during the term of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy government, which came to power in 2016 as a result of the military’s political reforms.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s government jailed journalists and blocked independent media access to politically sensitive areas including Rakhine State, where the military committed a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya community and for which it now faces international charges of genocide.

But the situation for independent journalists dramatically worsened following the 2021 coup. As the military violently cracked down on peaceful protests against the generals seizing power, it restricted the internet, revoked media licences and arrested dozens of journalists. That violence triggered an armed uprising across Myanmar.

‘If we stop, who will continue addressing these issues?’

Shwe Phee Myay briefly considered relocating to Thailand as the situation deteriorated after the coup, but those running the news site decided to remain in the country.

“Our will was to stay on our own land,” said Mai Naw Dang, who until recently served as the editor of Burmese-to-English translations.

“Our perspective was that to gather the news and collect footage, we needed to be here.”

Their work then took on new intensity in October 2023, when an alliance of ethnic armed organisations launched a surprise attack on military outposts in Shan State near the border with China.

The offensive marked a major escalation in the Myanmar conflict; the military, which lost significant territory as a result, retaliated with air strikes, cluster munitions and shelling. Within two months, more than 500,000 people had been displaced due to the fighting.

With few outside journalists able to access northern Shan State, Shwe Phee Myay was uniquely positioned to cover the crisis.

Then in January this year, Shwe Phee Myay also received notice that USAID funds approved in November were no longer coming and it has since reduced field reporting, cancelled training and scaled back video news production.

“We’re taking risks to report on how people are impacted by the war, yet our efforts seem unrecognised,” editor-in-chief Mai Rukaw said.

“Even though we have a strong human resource base on the ground, we’re facing significant challenges in securing funding to continue our work.”

During staff meetings, Mai Rukaw has raised the possibility of shutting down Shwe Phee Myay with his colleagues.

Their response, he said, was to keep going even if the money dries up.

“We always ask ourselves: if we stop, who will continue addressing these issues?” he said.

“That question keeps us moving forward.”

Pakistan said it struck multiple Indian military bases in the early hours of Saturday, May 10, after claiming that India had launched missiles against three Pakistani bases, marking a sharp escalation in their already soaring tensions, as the neighbours edge closer to an all-out war.

Long-simmering hostilities, mostly over the disputed region of Kashmir, erupted into renewed fighting after the deadly April 22 Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that saw 25 tourists and a local guide killed in an armed group attack. India blamed Pakistan for the attack; Islamabad denied any role.

Since then, the nations have engaged in a series of tit-for-tat moves that began with diplomatic steps but have rapidly turned into aerial military confrontation.

As both sides escalate shelling and missile attacks and seem on the road to a full-scale battle, an unprecedented reality stares not just at the 1.6 billion people of India and Pakistan but at the world: An all-out war between them would be the first ever between two nuclear-armed nations.

“It would be stupid for either side to launch a nuclear attack on the other … It is way short of probable that nuclear weapons are used, but that does not mean it’s impossible,” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told Al Jazeera.

So, how did we get here? What are the nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan like? And when – according to them – might they use nuclear weapons?

How tensions have spiralled since April 22

India has long accused The Resistance Front (TRF) – the armed group that initially claimed credit for the Pahalgam attack, before then distancing itself from the killings – of being a proxy for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based armed group that has repeatedly targeted India, including in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left more than 160 people dead.

New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the Pahalgam attack. Pakistan denied any role.

India withdrew from a bilateral pact on water sharing, and both sides scaled back diplomatic missions and expelled each other’s citizens. Pakistan also threatened to walk out of other bilateral pacts, including the 1972 Simla Agreement that bound the neighbours to a ceasefire line in disputed Kashmir, known as the Line of Control (LoC).

But on May 7, India launched a wave of missile attacks against sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It claimed it hit “terrorist infrastructure”, but Pakistan says at least 31 civilians, including two children, were killed.

On May 8, India launched drones into Pakistani airspace, reaching the country’s major cities. India claimed it was retaliating, and that Pakistan had fired missiles and drones at it. Then, for two nights in a row, cities in India and Indian-administered Kashmir reported explosions that New Delhi claimed were the result of attempted Pakistani attacks that were thwarted.

Pakistan denied sending missiles and drones into India on May 8 and May 9 – but that changed in the early hours of May 10, when Pakistan first claimed that India targeted three of its bases with missiles. Soon after, Pakistan claimed it struck at least seven Indian bases. India has not yet responded either to Pakistan’s claims that Indian bases were hit or to Islamabad’s allegation that New Delhi launched missiles at its military installations.

How many nuclear warheads do India and Pakistan have?

India first conducted nuclear tests in May 1974 before subsequent tests in May 1998, after which it declared itself a nuclear weapons state. Within days, Pakistan launched a series of six nuclear tests and officially became a nuclear-armed state, too.

Each side has since raced to build arms and nuclear stockpiles bigger than the other, a project that has cost them billions of dollars.

India is currently estimated to have more than 180 nuclear warheads. It has developed longer-range missiles and mobile land-based missiles capable of delivering them, and is working with Russia to build ship and submarine missiles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Pakistan’s arsenal, meanwhile, consists of more than 170 warheads. The country enjoys technological support from its regional ally, China, and its stockpile includes primarily mobile short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, with enough range to hit just inside India.

What’s India’s nuclear policy?

India’s interest in nuclear power was initially sparked and expanded under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was eager to use it to boost energy generation. However, in recent decades, the country has solidified its nuclear power status to deter its neighbours, China and Pakistan, over territorial disputes.

New Delhi’s first and only nuclear doctrine was published in 2003 and has not been formally revised. The architect of that doctrine, the late strategic analyst K Subrahmanyam, was the father of India’s current foreign minister, S Jaishankar.

Only the prime minister, as head of the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority, can authorise a nuclear strike. India’s nuclear doctrine is built around four principles:

• No First Use (NFU): This principle means that India will not be the first to launch nuclear attacks on its enemies. It will only retaliate with nuclear weapons if it is first hit in a nuclear attack. India’s doctrine says it can launch retaliation against attacks committed on Indian soil or if nuclear weapons are used against its forces on foreign territory. India also commits to not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
• Credible Minimum Deterrence: India’s nuclear posture is centred around deterrence – that is, its nuclear arsenal is meant primarily to discourage other countries from launching a nuclear attack on the country. India maintains that its nuclear arsenal is insurance against such attacks. It’s one of the reasons why New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as it maintains that all countries uniformly disarm before it does the same.
• Massive Retaliation: India’s retaliation to a first-strike from an aggressor will be calculated to inflict such destruction and damage that the enemy’s military capabilities will be annihilated.
• Exceptions for biological or chemical weapons: As an exception to NFU, India will use nuclear weapons against any state that targets the country or its military forces abroad with biological or chemical weapons, according to the doctrine.

What is Pakistan’s nuclear policy?

• Strategic Ambiguity: Pakistan has never officially released a comprehensive policy statement on its nuclear weapons use, giving it the flexibility to potentially deploy nuclear weapons at any stage of a conflict, as it has threatened to do in the past. Experts widely believe that from the outset, Islamabad’s non-transparency was strategic and meant to act as a deterrence to India’s superior conventional military strength, rather than to India’s nuclear power alone.
• The Four Triggers: However, in 2001, Lieutenant General (Retd) Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, regarded as a pivotal strategist involved in Pakistan’s nuclear policy, and an adviser to the nuclear command agency, laid out four broad “red lines” or triggers that could result in a nuclear weapon deployment. They are:

Spatial threshold – Any loss of large parts of Pakistani territory could warrant a response. This also forms the root of its conflict with India.

Military threshold – Destruction or targeting of a large number of its air or land forces could be a trigger.

Economic threshold – Actions by aggressors that might have a choking effect on Pakistan’s economy.

Political threshold – Actions that lead to political destabilisation or large-scale internal disharmony.

However, Pakistan has never spelled out just how large the loss of territory of its armed forces needs to be for these triggers to be set off.

Has India’s nuclear posture changed?

Although India’s official doctrine has remained the same, Indian politicians have in recent years implied that a more ambiguous posture regarding the No First Use policy might be in the works, presumably to match Pakistan’s stance.

In 2016, India’s then-Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar questioned if India needed to continue binding itself to NFU. In 2019, the present Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that India had so far strictly adhered to the NFU policy, but that changing situations could affect that.

“What happens in the future depends on the circumstances,” Singh had said.

India adopting this strategy might be seen as proportional, but some experts note that strategic ambiguity is a double-edged sword.

“The lack of knowledge of an adversary’s red lines could lead to lines inadvertently being crossed, but it could also restrain a country from engaging in actions that may trigger a nuclear response,” expert Lora Saalman notes in a commentary for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Has Pakistan’s nuclear posture changed?

Pakistan has moved from an ambiguous policy of not spelling out a doctrine to a more vocal “No NFU” policy in recent years.

In May 2024, Kidwai, the nuclear command agency adviser, said during a seminar that Islamabad “does not have a No First Use policy”.

As significantly, Pakistan has, since 2011, developed a series of so-called tactical nuclear weapons. TNWs are short-range nuclear weapons designed for more contained strikes and are meant to be used on the battlefield against an opposing army without causing widespread destruction.

In 2015, then-Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry confirmed that TNWs could be used in a potential future conflict with India.