It Is Too Early To Write Off Myanmar’s Junta by Andrew Seith
December 16, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurasia Review) In late October, an alliance of three ethnic armed organisations (EAO) launched a major offensive against Myanmar’s military regime in the north of the country. Soon afterwards, other EAOs and militia groups, including members of the opposition People’s Defence Force (PDF), took advantage of the regime’s troubles by opening new fronts in western, eastern and southern Myanmar.
To the surprise of many, the junta’s armed forces (or Tatmadaw) suffered a series of major defeats. According to unconfirmed news reports, at least four military bases, up to 300 smaller outposts and several major towns fell to the insurgents. Important trade and communications links to China and India were cut. Large quantities of arms and ammunition, including some heavy weapons, were captured.
As Richard Horsey has written, these victories constituted ‘the biggest battlefield challenge to the military since the February 2021 coup’. Indeed, they may be the most significant setbacks to a central government in Myanmar since independence in 1948. As a result, there has been a strategic shift in the civil war, and in the balance of power in the country.
Inevitably, perhaps, these developments prompted a rash of stories in the news media and online, trumpeting the insurgents’ successes. Myanmar was said to be ‘at a tipping point’. Pundits, journalists and activists claimed that the junta was ‘mortally wounded’, ‘in a death spiral’, even ‘on the brink of collapse’.
There were also some statements to the effect that the junta had lost control of the country, which was ‘on the verge of disintegration’. The Council on Foreign Relations called on the US government to prepare for the end of the Myanmar Army, which one analyst predicted would ‘collapse in waves across the country’.
Surpassing Afghanistan, War-wracked Myanmar Now the World’s Top Opium Producer December 12, 2023
Introduction:
(AP via Asahi Shimbun) BANGKOK--Myanmar, already wracked by a brutal civil war, has regained the unenviable title of the world’s biggest opium producer, according to a U.N. agency report released Tuesday.
The Southeast Asian country’s opium output has topped that of Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban imposed a ban on its production, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in its “Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023."
The Taliban’s ban has led to a 95% drop in the cultivation of opium poppies, UNODC said last month. Opium, the base from which morphine and heroin are produced, is harvested from poppy flowers.
From 2022 to 2023, Myanmar saw the estimated amount of land used to grow the illicit crop increase 18% to 47,100 hectares (116,400 acres), the new UNODC report said.
“Although the area under cultivation has not returned to historic peaks of nearly 58,000 ha (143,300 acres) cultivated in 2013, after three consecutive years of increases, poppy cultivation in Myanmar is expanding and becoming more productive,” it said.
Myanmar: Women and Children Suffer Amid Civil War by Khin Khin Ei and Khet Mar
January 1, 2024
Introduction:
(RFA via Eurasia Review) As Myanmar’s civil war approaches its third year, intensified fighting across the country this year between ruling junta forces and resistance fighters has destroyed villages and parts of towns, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of whom are women and children.
The number of internally displaced persons, or IDPs, reached more than 1 million this year, nearly 11,000 of whom fled to neighboring India and Thailand, according to a United Nations report.
“The lives and properties of our people were destroyed,” said Zin Mar Aung, foreign affairs minister under the parallel National Unity Government, noting the junta’s burning of villages, air strikes targeting civilians and mass killings.
At least 330 women died this year as a result of attacks by junta forces amid the escalation of armed conflict, said Tin Tin Nyo, general secretary of the Women’s League of Burma.
“The number of civilian casualties increased due to artillery attacks and air strikes,” she told Radio Free Asia. “Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.”
Myanmar: Ethnic Army Overruns Junta Command Center in Kokang Region January 8, 2024
Introduction:
(Radio Free Asia via Eurasia Review) Ethnic rebels have overrun a key military command center in northern Myanmar, taking control of the city of Laukkai and accepting the surrender of hundreds of soldiers, in what analysts called a stunning blow to the junta’s grasp on power in the region.
Fighters with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, stormed the junta’s Kokang regional command center, the largest base in northern Shan state near the Chinese border late on Thursday, prompting soldiers in the facility to lay down their arms, despite the military’s attempt to defend the facility from afar with artillery fire and airstrikes.
Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University who writes commentaries to Radio Free Asia, called the MNDAA’s occupation of the Laukkaing Regional Operation Command “a significant development” in the conflict between the military and anti-junta forces.
“This was the regional operational command headquarters, and that [the military] surrendered in the end without a shot being fired is both very significant and telling that the regime could not support them beyond airstrikes,” he said in comments emailed to RFA.
The MNDAA seized control of the facility in Kokang’s capital Laukkai despite military assets that included heavy weapons, armored vehicles and a vast stockpile of arms and ammunition, as well as soldiers from the junta’s 55th Division. The division was recently mobilized to contend with an ethnic offensive that has made significant gains in Shan state since its launch in late October.
What China Wants Out of Myanmar’s Civil War by Ellen Ioanes
January14, 2024
Introduction:
(Vox) In Myanmar, a brief ceasefire between a powerful alliance of ethnic armed groups and the ruling military junta appears to have been broken just hours after it was negotiated at China’s urging.
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, one of the factions fighting in a coordinated armed struggle against the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military junta), agreed to the ceasefire Friday in the Chinese provincial capital of Kunming, about 250 miles from Myanmar’s northeast border with China. The ceasefire provision was seemingly limited to Shan state, which borders China, and aimed at protecting Chinese interests and civilians in the region.
But by Friday, the military had broken the agreement, according to a statement from the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), one of the ethnic armed groups, along with the Arakan Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, in the Three Brotherhood Alliance. The junta attacked multiple positions in northern Shan State Friday and Saturday, the Irrawaddy and local Burmese outlets reported. Vox is unable to independently verify the claims.
The ceasefire came after multiple rounds of talks between the Tatmadaw and the Three Brotherhood Alliance. Both sides reportedly broke a previous ceasefire agreement negotiated last month, and some observers did not expect the current agreement to hold.
“The three parties, the three ethnic armed organizations up on the border actually had no intention in participating in these talks and did so really only because of very strong Chinese pressure,” Jason Tower, country director for the Burma program at the US Institute of Peace, told Vox. “And I think that the ceasefire was really doomed to fail from the outset, given that there was just no intention on the part of the different parties to seriously engage in any form of deeper dialogue about the situation.”
Arakan Army Resistance Force Says It Has Taken Control of a Strategic Township in Western Myanmar January 16, 2024
Introduction:
(Asahi Shimbun) BANGKOK--A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military that is based in the country’s western state of Rakhine has seized a township bordering India and Bangladesh, the group declared Monday, confirming accounts by local residents and media.
Paletwa is the first township reported to fall to the Arakan Army, which launched surprise attacks beginning in mid-November on military targets in Paletwa, which is in Chin state, and townships in Rakhine. Paletwa is just north of Rakhine and borders both Bangladesh and India.
Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press on Monday that the entire Paletwa region has become a “Military Council-free area,” referring to the ruling military government.
“The administrative mechanism and clutches of the military council have come to an end. The administration, security and the rule of law for Paletwa region will be implemented as needed,” Khaing Thukha said in text messages.
The military government made no immediate comment.
How Cyberscams are Drawing China into Myanmar’s Civil War by Joshua Keating
January 18, 2024
Extract:
(Vox) In addition to their long-term aim of overthrowing the military government, one they share with a variety of other groups throughout the country, the Three Brotherhood Alliance also vowed to “eradicate telecom fraud, scam dens and their patrons nationwide, including in areas along the China-Myanmar border.”
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If you’re reading this, you’re a person with access to the internet, which means that chances are, you’ve already been targeted by one of these scams. Here’s how it works: You get a conversational text or a message on a service like WhatsApp that appears to be a wrong number. The seemingly innocent texts may lead to a conversation that could involve the promise of an exciting love affair or a valuable business opportunity. But these messages are, in fact, written by people forced into service thousands of miles away, and they are actually the first step in a scam that can end with the victim wiring large amounts of money into the scammers’ accounts.
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Criminal groups began luring young, tech-savvy workers from around the world with the promise of tech jobs, then holding those workers against their will in tightly controlled compounds. “People really believe that they’re applying for legitimate jobs. The companies seem legitimate, they often go through a process of multiple interviews,” said Rebecca Miller, regional program director for human trafficking at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Bangkok.
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Beijing is clearly losing patience with the chaos on its borders and in particular with the scam centers targeting Chinese citizens as both scam victims and trafficking victims. It has repeatedly urged the Myanmar government to do more to crack down on the centers, albeit with little result.
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So last September China began cracking down on its own, issuing arrest warrants for government-linked militia officials in Myanmar’s northeastern Wa state, on the Chinese border, accusing them of being “kingpins” in the scams. That prompted a crackdown that resulted in thousands of people being returned to China from scam compounds in the state. The government also arrested 11 officials with ties to pro-government militias in Kokang state after luring them across the border to a folk festival in early October
