Gautam Mukhopadhaya
Over three years since the Myanmar February 2021 military coup that installed a military appointed State Administration Council (SAC) to govern Myanmar, and six months since the coordinated offensive of three Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs) representing the Kokang and Palaung ethnicities in northern Shan and the Arakan Army in Rakhine state grouped together as the Three Brotherhood Alliance (TBA) under Operation 1027, the Myanmar Army has lost more ground to EROs than at any time in its history, and the military government appears to be in a serious crisis that could signal its potential collapse.
However, there are several factors inhibiting a total defeat of the Army or even a balkanisation of Myanmar, including a restraining Chinese hand; uneven progress of the armed opposition in ethnic areas and the Bamar heartland; lack of significant territorial control in the heartland that they could use to establish a seat for the National Unity Government (NUG); opposition restraint and military limitations; their own decision to preserve Burma’s unity and integrity through a federal democratic union reflected in a Federal Democratic Union Charter adopted in 2021; and the Myanmar Army’s counter-offensives and willingness to use force to prevent the inevitable.
Nevertheless, India must now prepare for all eventualities and work with new players and realities especially along its borders and in the heartland, but also further to be more active diplomatically to preserve a united Burma that is in its interests. The opposition embodied in the NUG, the National Union Consultative Committee (NUCC) and a host of Civil Society and professional organisations, is determined to press its advantage.
While an imminent breakdown of the Army is unlikely, and the vast majority of towns are still under military control, there has been a paradigmatic shift in the status quo since the last quarter of 2023. Until September 2023, an estimated 50 per cent or more of rural Myanmar was out of the military’s hands, but the opposition held no major towns or border trading posts. That changed with the Operation 1027 coordinated military operation (named after the date of its launch) of the TBA that has triggered similar offensives elsewhere.
Since October 2023, the Myanmar Army has lost around 50 towns to the armed opposition including most border trading posts on the Myanmar-China, India-Myanmar, and Myanmar-Thailand borders, most recently, Lejwe on the Kachin-Yunnan border, and Myawaddy, one of the most lucrative, on Thai border. Until last week it had recovered the administrative centre in the heartland, Kawlin, at great civilian cost using punitive artillery, scorched earth tactics and air power against civilians to avenge defeats by Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), though there are signs that it is fighting back tenaciously in Kayin and Rakhine states, in particular Kawkareik, Buthidaung and Maungdaw, though Myawaddy looks like it is back in Army hands.
As things stand now, the Myanmar Army is facing attacks in ethnic areas on virtually all sides: the TBA in Shan State in the north east; the Karenni and Karen EAOs and Bago PDFs in the east from close to the Myanmar capital, Naypyidaw, up to Myanmar’s borders with Thailand; the Chins in Chin State in the west across Mizoram and Manipur; the Arakan Army, part of the TBA, in Rakhine, in the south-west along the Bay of Bengal; and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) which too has made significant advances lately in the north.
Not all anti-government EAOs have joined the resistance on account of internal frictions and tactical considerations, such as the major north and south Shan armies, the SSPP and RCSS, and some are working at cross-purposes, none other than militias raised by the Myanmar Army from its affiliates, known as the Pyu Saw Htee, who actually support the military that is ruling by pure force.
Of these, the Arakan Army and a variety of Chin Defence Forces bordering Mizoram and Manipur with whom they share ethnic and kinship ties, as also the KIA, and the Sagaing Forum of Bamar PDFs that straddle west to east and north-south Indian connectivity initiatives such as the Kaladan project and Trilateral Highway, are of critical importance to us. We should reach out to them if we have not already done so discreetly. Although some of them feel let down by India in the past and have established working relationships with the Chinese, all would welcome greater Indian interest and cooperation with them, not least to limit Chinese pressures and influence. Failure to do so, could make them turn to forces unfriendly to us.
The Myanmar Army may be taking comfort from a two-track civil war, a fast track in the peripheral ethnic areas that it might be prepared to give up, and a slower one in the Bamar heartland that has not yet entered its core ‘fortresses’ of the Irrawaddy Basin and coasts that it would defend at all costs. But that may be changing. The port town of Sittwe has been under pressure for close to a month, and in the last two weeks, top military targets including an air base in the capital, Naypyidaw, and the Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces and the CDS Min Aung Hlaing himself have faced drone and rocket attacks in visits to a Regional Command in Malwamyine and the Defence Services Academy in Pyin Oo Lwin respectively that could not have been possible without insider complicity.
There have also been purges of high military officials for alleged corruption, and a few days back, the arrest of a powerful senior ex-General and later Agriculture Minister in the U Thein Sein government and two others on mysterious grounds, as also the occasional public demonstration by hard-line monks against Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing suggesting that all is not well within the normally monolithic and opaque Army high command too.
The decision last week to relocate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint from a high security prison to house arrest may mark a belated signal to the international community that they need help. It is unlikely to be a signal to the NUG, opposition or even the armed resistance to negotiate or enter into a dialogue that in any case is unlikely to lead anywhere. For the latter, the end of military rule in any form in favour of civilian rule, and return to the barracks, is non-negotiable.
The most optimistic scenario to preserve the erstwhile Tatmadaw or Myanmar Military is for a significant section of it to split and join the opposition on the latter’s terms along with the all the national institutions it has monopolized since 1962, but given the hermetic, almost Masonic character of the Myanmar Army, such a scenario cannot be banked on. A dissolution of the Myanmar Army in toto, (like that of Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq) would leave a vacuum that would be a dream for transnational criminal interests, and can be in no one’s interest.
The crisis in the Army is also down its ranks. Ground forces have been severely depleted by desertions, low recruitment, surrenders (including one Regional Command in Shan State) and loss of morale. Hundreds have crossed over to India, Bangladesh, Thailand and even China, only to be sent back. The opposition has used light arms and drones to great effect even reportedly bringing down attack aircraft and helicopters in Kachin and Kayin states.
The SAC’s attempt to contain this by introducing a conscription law, seem to be floundering with assassinations of administration officials, bribing of officials to avoid recruitment, potential recruits attempting to flee the country, more youth crossing over to the armed opposition and credible allegations of vulnerable populations (like the Rohingya in Rakhine State) being used as human shields against ethnic forces.
The Indian strategic community within and outside government has been slow to accept that the Myanmar military is in a cul-de-sac; that its only formula of keeping Burma united by force is having the opposite effect; that unlike 1988-90, it will not be able to suppress the popular revulsion against military rule in favour of democracy and federalism; and that the only way to keep Myanmar together is through the will of the Myanmar people for a federal, democratic union that most constituents, but not all, have already adopted.
It has failed to realise that Myanmar is in the grip of a revolution that marks the culmination of its struggle for independence that was arrested by the Tatmadaw, and that could change the face of Myanmar (like the end of the Soviet Union or the break-up of former Yugoslavia) and spell the end of Myanmar as we know it, or reinvent itself as a radically new country. Although, the Indian government has tried to preserve an appearance of ‘balance’ between the military and democratic opposition, in the popular mind it has been perceived to be pro-junta and is believed to be supplying the junta military hardware. This may not be as true as believed.
China has backed the junta, but been more nimble in playing all sides and is quite capable of taking the lead on a transition suited to it in order to protect and pursue its economic and strategic interests towards the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. It has been remarkably tolerant of the ethnic offensives in Shan and Rakhine states so long as its concerns, including those of transnational criminal financial activities affecting them in Shan state, are addressed. It has brokered a ceasefire, albeit an unstable one, with the Kokang MNDAA and Palaung TNLA in the north east close to China’s borders that has virtually ceded control of the Kokang region and 70 per cent of revenues from border trade to the Kokang while retaining 30 per cent for the SAC, and a similar autonomy for the Palaung, in return for limiting their offensive to their areas and not push south towards Lashio, the largest and most important town and garrison in northern Shan State.
The new government in Thailand too has tried to balance its past support for the military, by a more people-friendly approach using humanitarian aid as a vehicle. ASEAN has been hamstrung by its inherently conservative approach towards democratic activism and lack of internal consensus.
Despite the expectations from the ‘Burma Act’, the US has limited its involvement to the bare necessary mainly along and across the Thai border, and the West has kept an arms-length from the conflict in line with their retrenchment from democracy projection outside their core areas of interest.
Russia, like China, has been arming the Myanmar Army and backing it politically in the UN Security Council, but is too stretched in Ukraine to play a larger role now.
In spite of their global geo-political rivalry, the US and China have also been holding constructive consultations on Myanmar, and seem to have decided at least for now to keep Myanmar outside their immediate competition.
Though its credibility has taken a beating, India is one of the few countries (together with Japan and a few others) that still has the credentials and the stakes to play a pro-active political and diplomatic, and pre-emptive conflict prevention role to keep Myanmar together, if it chooses to do so. But given
its intrinsic bias in favour of the status quo, and faith in the use of force, in contrast to its instinctive support for freedom movements in the past, this is unlikely.
It is also increasingly susceptible to false narratives, analyses and solutions such as what prompted the lifting of the Free Movement Regime or FMR and resort to border fencing, that carry the risk of destabilizing and even opening up settled boundaries in the North East that can be exploited by the Chinese. There are far bigger problems such as the Arakan Army’s control over the Kaladan river and Rakhine state where Indian interests (in the Kaladan project) and Chinese strategic investments (in oil and gas pipelines and a deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu) that are part of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor begin, intersect and end; or instability along the Trilateral Highway that need to be urgently addressed, rather than futile efforts to close or seal our borders against the bogey of ‘illegal immigration’ for internal political advantage.
Under the circumstances, it appears that far from remaining helpless spectators complaining about Chinese (and US) conspiracies in Myanmar, India might, by its short-sightedness and intrigue, invite trouble for itself in the sensitive North East of India. One hopes better sense prevails.
Published courtesy of Deccan Herald, Bengaluru.
