Igor Blazevic
Myanmar’s borderland periphery can and will be liberated.
It has already happened to a significant degree – somewhere more and substantially, somewhere a bit less but still significantly. This is the irreversible outcome of the failed 2021 coup and ensuing nationwide uprising.
If the junta does not implode and until it does – either from the bottom-up or through an internal counter-coup that will remove Min Aung Hlaing and the State Administration Council (SAC) – the war for Myanmar’s heartlands and “centre” will be even harder than the struggle so far – which has already been very hard and required extraordinary determination, endurance, and sacrifice.
The National Unity Government (NUG) and People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), while crucial, cannot liberate lowland cities on their own. The active participation of Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (EROs) is essential in the battles for Myanmar heartlands and in the war for the centre. Their readiness to invest and sacrifice will be a significant factor in the overall success of the struggle.
The question is how much EROs will be ready to do so, particularly once they have liberated their own territories and started the hard and demanding process of state-building (in some cases also nation-building) with very limited resources and in conditions of ongoing insecurity and fragility.
In the short run, it may seem like a reasonable choice for EROs to accept a ceasefire with the junta, consolidate control over liberated territories, and focus on building their own self-rule. However, the potential risks and long-term implications of this decision, particularly if the battle for lowlands proves to be long, hard, and costly, should not be overlooked.
In the longer run, without defeating the military in the centre and without removing the military-as-regime, ethnic proto-states can never be safe. If unreformed, the dictatorial and predatory Myanmar military will survive in the Bama lowlands, they will always resurrect as imperium striking back.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing does not have too many options at this moment. He knows that at the end of the day, he can sacrifice Myanmar’s periphery as long as he can make a corrupt elite pact with armed groups controlling the territory. He can give the Wa-type of autonomy to the most powerful ethnic armed groups and BGF type of mafia-like autonomy to others, as long as they can agree on a mutual transactional deal and as long as ethnic armed groups will be satisfied with their “own” territory and own businesses, and will refrain from participating in the overall common anti-junta struggle.
The future of Myanmar will be decided by the strength of resistance in the Bama heartlands and in the battles for Sagaing, Magway, Mandalay and Bago regions. This Bama liberation struggle cannot succeed if EROs stop investing their own resources and making strategic contribution to this critical “battle for the centre”.
Without the majority of relevant ethnic actors being actively involved in the common struggle, the NUG and PDFs do not have enough arms, ammunition, supply routes, training, and military expertise for well-planned and sustained strategic offensive operations to defeat the junta.
Without credible – and active, visible – political alliances, neighbours and regional and international actors will continue to believe that the military is an unavoidable factor in any negotiations about the future. And they will continue to bet on the junta’s survival.
However, the argument goes the other way around as well. Without successful armed resistance in upper Myanmar and Bama lowlands, the EAOs are, in a longer-term perspective, no match for the military.
If an oppressive and predatory military regime controls the Bama heartlands and coast, if they control key economic assets and the Bama majority as a recruitment base, even a united ethnic alliance is not sufficient to sustain and protect whatever territory they might liberate and whatever concessions they might get from the current junta.
A reconsolidated kleptocratic military dictatorship will have both diplomatic, economic and hard power to continue to penetrate and exploit land, natural wealth, assets and the prospects of the ethnic people. The combined interests of local bosses, military commanders, unscrupulous investors, organized crime and predatory neighbours will pray on both Bama heartlands and ethnic “autonomies”.
A military and political alliance between the Bama PDF resistance and the EROs resistance is capable of defeating the SAC and breaking the military dictatorship’s domineering power. After three years of enormous suffering and heroic determination, this option has become both possible and probable.
However, if China, Myanmar’s neighbours, and murky players such as the Sasakawa Peace Foundation partly pressure and partly lure ethnic stakeholders to abandon the Spring Revolution and make transactional deals with the SAC, new opportunities will not emerge for at least the next 20 years.
If the SAC is not defeated and if the military is not removed from Myanmar’s politics and economy, a repressive, exploitative, kleptocratic, highly unequal, discriminatory, and wasteful regime will reconsolidate power piece by piece. The Myanmar military will go from being at the edge of collapse toward renewed strength.
The SAC, which will become victorious in Bama’s majority heartlands, will again gain an appetite to take it all. There will be no real sharing of power or wealth, no fairness, and no compliance with the deals. If the monster of the Myanmar military is allowed to survive in Bama’s majority areas, it will recuperate and come back like a metastasis.
The historic opportunity to remove the malign cancer should not be missed, whatever the hardship and length of the battle for the heartlands.
The way forward in 2024
In order to achieve the collapse of the SAC, liberate country from the military dictatorship and lay the ground for the peaceful, federal, democratic future of the country, allied anti-junta forces, political, armed and civic ones, should focus on the following priorities:
• Wave after wave: Land one strong blow after another with strategically prepared offensives, which will liberate more territory and, even more importantly, capture more strategic assets such as: important supply or trade routes, border crossings, sources of revenue, etc. There is only one military and one hierarchical chain of command that is fighting the war on the side of the junta. However, on the side of resistance, there can be a rotation of a burden of bigger offensive operations. While one or two sub alliances of the EROs & PDFs are undertaking offensive operations in parts of the country, the other sub alliances can have a break to either prepare, supply or concentrate forces for their offensives. Or they can have a break after successful offensives to consolidate and secure defensively recent gains, to treat the wounded soldiers and rest their own units.
• Hundreds of bees biting: Relentlessly harass and bleed military outposts and personnel across the vast country with the strategy of “hundreds of bees biting a big animal” every single day. This is chopping off military strength bit by bit and making junta soldiers and loyalists deeply insecure.
• Special operations: Hit high-value targets, either because they have important military value (jet fuel depots, airports and ports, ammunition storages, weapons and ammunition factories, etc.) or because they have significant psychological and symbolic value (attacks on high-ranking officers, or on special military facilities or events). A combination of bigger, well-prepared offensives which liberate chunks of territory and capture strategic assets with spectacular, surprise attacks hitting something that is valuable or highly symbolic for the junta will sustain significant real and psychological pressure on the junta and will sooner or later break its neck.
• Cut the supply lines: Particular effort should be put into making roads, railway and river shipments either impossible or highly costly for the junta. Resistance should continue to cut the SAC where they are highly vulnerable – on supply lines. It is particularly useful to explore what are the options to target vehicles transporting jet fuel and materials for weapons and ammunition production.
• Psychological and information warfare: Turn each success into a psychological and informational warfare offensive targeting both junta loyalists and internationals with the overarching stratcom message: “SAC is losing and will be defeated; liberation alliance is winning and will prevail. Abandon the sinking boat.”
• Cut the revenues: Explore options for subversions or passive strikes on economic assets that are valuable for the junta. Sanctions will not be the game-changer. So, it is better to look at how to subvert production or distribution facilities (taking into consideration, of course, the sensitivities of neighbours)
• Hinder recruitment: Increase prices and slow down the junta’s attempt to replenish its units with new recruits.
• Push back meddling of neighbours: A well-coordinated effort of the NUG and K3C foreign affairs teams on one side, and the civil society, advocacy NGOs and strike committees on the other side is needed to push back any foreign effort to give a lifeline to the junta through the ceasefire negotiations and “all-inclusive” dialogue. The general line should be: “Liberation forces do not reject negotiations with the military; however, they are possible only when the military unilaterality stop sattacks on civilians and liberated territories and when they are ready to agree on three common political objectives: no military in future politics; new federal democratic constitution and accountability through transitional justice”.
• Change the proportion of how aid is channeled: It is necessary, through the exposure of failures of the UN agencies to address the needs of the most needy population in Myanmar and through systematic advocacy, to change the proportion of how international aid funds are channeled in the country. The goal should be that 50-40% of overall aid funds should continue to be distributed through the UN agencies and INGOs that are based in Yangon and who are hostages of the junta. 60-50% of international aid funds should be channeled to Myanmar through local civil society, religious charities and the NUG and EROs public service structures.
• Revolutionary fundraising: Do not take a break from fundraising for the revolution. To run the war, one needs money. International donors might contribute to humanitarian aid and, to some extent, also to public services and governing capacity on the liberated territories; however, they will never invest in liberation and revolutionary struggle. Liberation struggle must be self-financed by the population of the country, diaspora and locally harnessed revenues.
• Credible political alliance: Forge and make a visible political agreement about the ways in which the transition process will be managed. Project a credible political alliance.
• Winning alliance of moderates: Do not play hardball in internal political discussions. Sideline troublemakers. Do not compete for authority. Cultivate political moderation, tolerance and compromise. Understand and respect different sources of legitimacy (democratic legitimacy coming from elections; legitimacy of decades of ethnic liberation struggle for self-rule; legitimacy of bravery, leadership and heroism of the Spring Revolution actors). Move forward through minimum consensus, mutual assurances, collaborative actions and joint victories.
• Do not try to catch all rabbits at the same time: Do not overburden the struggle with too many demands. To remove the murderous military dictatorship and gain freedom, security, federalism, democracy, and fundamental rights must be seen as a priority so that other issues can be addressed in more favorable conditions through political and civil activism, without the need for deadly existential struggle. However, host thousands of dialogues and run educational programmes that aim to secure and defend justice, equality, and a democratic, liberal, inclusive and tolerant future of Myanmar.
• Internet army: Build and deploy an internet army for more effective psychological and informational warfare.
• Practice constantly aligned campaigning.
Igor Blazevic is a European democracy activist with years of experience in Myanmar.
