Losses across key regions, coupled with mass defections and severe military setbacks, suggest a crumbling grip of Military on power in Myanmar
By all indications, 2025 is going to be, militarily, a dismal year for Myanmar’s ruling junta. It is clearly losing its war against the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) and its armed wing, the People’s Defence Force (PDF), ethnic armed organisations (EROs), and the Three Brotherhood Alliance (Henceforth the Alliance). 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, the alliance has been acting in close cooperation with the PDF and other ethnic armies.
Crystal-gazing is a hazardous business. Nevertheless, a fling at it is warranted by the unfolding events in that star-crossed country. A report under the headline, ‘Junta’s Writ Only Runs in One-third of Myanmar: NUG,’ (datelined January 6, 2025), in the news website The Irrawaddy, cited the NUG as stating that the military regime controlled only 107 of the country’s 330 townships. The PDF and EROs fully or partly controlled 144 townships or 44 per cent of the country. The website, which enjoys a high-measure of credibility, carried an article by Maung Kavi (datelined January 8, 2025) under the headline, ‘Myanmar Junta Boss warns resistance as Regime Loses Ground Nationwide,’ saying that the NUG had further claimed that nearly 1,500 of the junta’s soldiers and police personnel had defected to the civil disobedience movement and 480 of them had taken up ‘revolutionary duties.’
The report titled ‘Junta’s Writ Only Runs in One-third of Myanmar: NUG,’ further states that 315 officers were killed and 127 injured in course of the last year. In the same period, 53 senior officers ranging in rank from colonel to major general, were either killed, injured, or taken prisoner. Among the rank and file, 14,093 soldiers and border guard policemen were killed and 7,363 injured.
Anti-regime groups seized 741 junta positions. They were mostly captured by ethnic armies, but 162 were taken by PDF and People’s Defence Teams in Sagaing, Magwe, Mandalay, Bago and Tanintharyi regions.
The military lost in 2024 some 140 battalions and two regional commands-Northeastern Command in northern Shan State and Western Command in Rakhine-plus one regional operations command, five military operations commands, six operational bases, two airbases, 17 border guard police bases, as well as many infantry and light infantry battalions, and artillery, logistics, signal, and military engineering units.
While one should not take the NUG’s claims at face value reports from the ground indicate that the Sit-Tat (as the junta’s army is called) has suffered severe body blows during the last year. The Three Brotherhood Alliance has gained significant ground since launching its offensive, codenamed Operation 1027, on October 27, 2023. The AA had established control over almost the entire Rakhine State 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.’
Besides gains in the north, the 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.
On October 8, 2024, the Sit-Tat suffered a serious reverse with the fall 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 opened up to the opposition forces the routes leading to the Kawlin township and the surrounding areas.
Besides its geo-strategic significance, the township’s fall is important for what it revealed of the Sit-Tat’s state. A report by Saw Lin, published in the news website, The Irrawaddy, on October 14, 2024, cites the NUG 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.
In keeping with the trend, the Junta had ceded three townships and the Western Command headquarters in Rakhine State in December, 2024, as the ethnic Arakan Army gained control over 14 of the 17 townships in the westernmost state. On January 1, 2025, the Sit-Tat retreated from a heavily-fortified police station in Sagaing Region’s Budalin Township after a yearlong siege by regional resistance forces, making it easier for the latter to operate in the region.
According to Maung Kavi’s report cited earlier, the junta, which has been losing towns and bases to EROs in Rakhine, Chin, Kachin and Karen states, has not been able to launch any military operation to retake the northern Shan State, almost the whole of which it had lost in 2024. The Sit-Tat is in a bad way.
Its morale is low. There is internal discord. Several three-stars generals have been removed. Many younger officers are unhappy as they recognise that almost the entire country is against them. According to a piece by Ye Myo Hein (datelined May 4, 2023) featured by the United States Institute of Peace, it was found the Sit-Tat, whose “headcount,” showed a “strength of a total 300,000-400,000 before the coup,” showed that it currently “had a strength of about 150,000 personnel.
Roughly 70,000 are combat soldiers. At least 21,000 service members have been lost through casualties, desertion and defection since the coup. At this troop level, the Sit-Tat is barely able to sustain itself as a fighting force, much less a government.”
The odds are now rapidly stacking up against the Junta. No doubt, the latter 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 swept to a victory in Vietnam.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
