As the opposition secures control over key territories, including vital trade corridors, the junta’s authority appears increasingly tenuous
Myanmar’s ruling junta is facing defeat and ouster, which will happen sooner than most people think. The latest, and one of the most serious, reverses suffered by the Sit-Tat (Myanmar’s Army’s name), has been the fall, on October 8, 2024, of the township of Pinlebu to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an important part of the coalition of forces fighting the junta, and its allies. Located on the border of the Sagaing Region and Kachin State, its capture opens up to the opposition forces the routes leading to the Kawlin township and the surrounding areas.
Apart from its geo-strategic importance, the township’s capture is significant for what it revealed of the Sit-Tat’s state. It suffered a resounding defeat. A report by Saw Lin, published in the news website, The Irrawaddy, on October 14, 2024, cites the opposition National Unity Government as claiming that the junta’s troops, numbering 800, were defeated despite 670 airstrikes and the dropping of over 5,000 bombs, that around 70 junta soldiers were killed, 275 were missing, 225 were wounded, 48 surrendered and 102 captured during the fighting. Around 400 firearms and other military equipment were seized.
The report further cites Thoe Gyi, the leader of Kawlin District People’s Defense Team, as saying that Pinlebu, surrounded by forests and mountains, was easy to defend, and difficult to attack. There had been four attacks since the first one in 2022, each of which had almost succeeded but the regime held on with air support and airlifted troops. The fifth one, which began on August 15, 2024, was successful.
The enemy, Thoe Gyi said, was weak. Those who were forcibly recruited or drafted under the conscription law dared not fight and surrendered when the fighting broke out. Others surrendered after they ran out of food and could no longer fight. The Sit-Tat suffers from other weaknesses as well. There is discord within. Several three-stars generals have been removed. Many younger officers are unhappy as they recognise that almost the entire country is against them.
Prior to Pinlebu, anti-junta forces had captured four towns in northern Mandalay. According to a report by Andrew Nachemson published in Al Jazeera dated September 23, 2024, their capture had placed them within striking distance of the city of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest urban centre, with a population of nearly two million.
In fact, the Sit-Tat has suffered a series of reverses since the opposition Three Brotherhood Alliance (henceforth the Alliance) launched its offensive, codenamed Operation 1027, on October 27, 2023. Comprising the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), active in the Kokang Special Region of northern Shan State, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), also active in the Shan State and the Arakan Army (AA), based in the Rakhine State in the country’s western part, it has been acting in close cooperation with the opposition National Unity Government’s military arm, the People’s Defence Force (PDF) and other ethnic armies like the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and Karen National Army,
The AA had brought almost the entire Rakhine State under its control by April, 2024. In a major development, the MNDAA claimed on July 31, 2024, that it had captured Sit-Tat’s military base in Lashio, a city in Shan State close to the border with China, and its airport. This was a major loss for the junta. As Vivek Shankar has pointed out in a piece in The New York Times datelined August 5, 2024, the “city of Lashio and its airport lie on a crucial trade corridor to Yunnan Province in China, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a high-speed rail link and other infrastructure projects on both sides of the border.”
The opposition forces now control large swathes of territory along Myanmar’s borders and mountainous region; the military retains control over the major cities and lowlands in the central Irrawaddy Valley. It is losing even the cities and towns. As Vivek Shankar has stated in the article cited above, the forces resisting the junta now held “roughly 75 cities and towns across Myanmar and two airports, one in Thandwe in Rakhine State in the west, and the other in Lashio.”
The odds are now rapidly increasing against the Junta. The latter doubtless has tanks and other armoured vehicles, artillery and air force. Tanks and armoured vehicles are very difficult to deploy in the areas dominated by the ethnic forces. With densely forested mountainous terrains, deep gorges and steep climbs, these are ideal for staging ambushes. Moreover, air-strikes and artillery do not win wars, even when backed by heavily armed and trained infantry. Otherwise, the United States would have romped to a victory in Vietnam.
Can the junta see the writing on the wall? During its 8 p.m. news broadcast on September 26, 2024, the junta seemed to offer, for the first time, a major concession to the opposition armed resistance groups. It said in a statement, “The state lost a large number of human resources, infrastructures, lives and property of the people due to the fact some individuals and organizations chose to resort to armed terrorism and armed struggle line without solving political problems through political ways.” Given the statement’s accusatory undertones and unbelievable inherent irony, it is hardly surprising that several commanders of the rebel forces, ethnic armies, and the opposition NUG government, promptly rejected the offer.
A report (datelined September 27, 2024) by Sui-Lee Wee in The New York Times, quoted Ye Myo Hein, a visiting senior expert for the Myanmar programme of the United States Institute for peace, as saying, “The reason they made this announcement is to appease China.” It could well be so.
As Wee points out in her report, while expressing support for the junta, Beijing has also been engaged in talks with northern Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups. According to the report, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, had travelled to Myanmar in August, 2024, to urge the country’s army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, to pursue political reconciliation and hold elections. Earlier, in a meeting with Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, in China in June, Wang Yi had also called on the military to hold talks with Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently serving a 27-year prison term on totally false charges.
There is no indication that the junta has any intention of holding talks with Suu Kyi. In fact, in an interview to Myein Myein carried in The Irrawaddy on October 24, 2024, her son, Kim Arris, said she had been kept completely incommunicado in prison in Naypyitaw with even her family and lawyers barred from meeting her. The conditions in the prison being terrible and with Suu Kyi having serious health issues, he expressed the fear that she might die in prison, which may well happen. In that case, the burden of guilt not only be on the junta but the Western democracies which seem no longer bothered about developments in Myanmar.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
