Erin Murphy is senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. She is author of "Burmese Haze: U.S. Policy and Myanmar's Opening -- and Closing."
Feb. 1 marks the second anniversary of the brutal military takeover in Myanmar. Since then, the State Administration Council, as the army regime calls itself, has imprisoned more than 16,000, strafed ethnic minority communities and urban areas, burned hundreds of villages and killed thousands, including many children.