A little more than a year ago, the government’s military was on the back foot in its bloody civil war, pushed out of great swathes of the country’s north by an alliance of seasoned militias, and forced into defensive action around the rest of the country by other established groups and new pro-democracy guerrillas.
Today the picture has changed.
With its ranks swollen by tens of thousands of new conscripts, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has reversed some of its losses and appears poised to resume the offensive, while some opposition groups have left the fight and infighting and supply issues have weakened others.
“I think we’re nearing a crescendo here where the Tatmadaw is going to reassert itself and the resistance movement is going to peter out,” said Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who runs its Myanmar Conflict Map project.
Still, he said, even if the broader resistance movement that has grown since the military seized power stumbles, the conflict is not close to over.
“Armed resistance will always continue in Myanmar until there’s a comprehensive, negotiated political solution, but the Tatmadaw has retaken the strategic initiative and everything is in the Tatmadaw’s favour.”
Meanwhile, after five years of fighting that has seen tens of thousands killed, including some 8,000 civilians, and millions displaced from their homes, there is a general weariness, both among the forces fighting the Tatmadaw and the general population, said Aung Thu Nyein, a political analyst from Myanmar who now works in Thailand.
“There are many saying that the local population doesn’t care much who will win the war, but (just want) to stop fighting,” he said.
There is also great pressure from China for stability in Myanmar, which is a critical source for its rare earth elements and other natural resources, to ensure its mines and other operations are secure, he said.
Beijing has invested billions of dollars in Myanmar’s mines, oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure and is a major arms supplier to the Tatmadaw, along with Russia.
It also carries significant influence with the paramilitary groups that operate in border areas with China, many of whose members are ethnically Chinese.
China initially supported the Oct 27, 2023, offensive against the Tatmadaw by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, largely due to Beijing’s irritation that the military-run government had allowed organised crime operations to proliferate in border regions.
But it has since pulled the plug on arms and ammunition supplies to the militias and pressured them to stop fighting.
The Brotherhood Alliance members are all long-standing paramilitary groups organised around ethnic minority lines known as Ethnic Armed Organisations, or EAOs.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s ouster has also given rise to pro-democracy militias known as People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, many of which are affiliated with the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), organised by former members of Suu Kyi’s party and others.
In the face of an anticipated intensification of attacks by the Tatmadaw, there is a need for top-level coordination of resistance operations by established EAOs in concert with the NUG, said the Burma Liberation Democratic Front, a pro-democracy group that has been fighting in the Sagaing and Mandalay regions.
The group, which is part of an alliance of 20 PDFs, added that the Tatmadaw was actively “attempting to divide and weaken the situation by creating divisions between the public and revolutionary forces, among different ethnic groups, and even among revolutionary groups”.
The military officers who ousted Suu Kyi’s civilian government in 2021 also successfully held elections recently, even though they were criticised by UN experts as neither free nor fair with opposition stifled.
Min Aung Hlaing, who as the military’s senior general led the country with an iron fist after ousting Suu Kyi, was sworn in as president in April.
Politically, the elections appeared to be a thinly veiled attempt to add a veneer of legitimacy to his rule to help improve relations with its neighbours and others as Myanmar struggles under international sanctions.
China, which had been pushing for the election, immediately congratulated Hlaing and quickly sent its foreign minister to meet with him in person.
In one of his first acts as president, Hlaing invited the country’s armed resistance forces to new peace talks, including both the EAOs and the PDFs.
No mention was made of the NUG, which immediately denounced the offer as “aimed at prolonging people’s subjugation under military rule”.
The vague offer, reported in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, said the groups had until July 31 to take part in discussions, with the caveat that they should not come in with “unrealistic demands”.
There was no mention of what might happen if groups refused to take part in the process.
In a possible attempt to mollify the opposition, the military recently announced that Suu Kyi had been moved from prison to house arrest. She was originally sentenced to 33 years in prison in late 2022.
Her supporters and rights groups described the conviction as an attempt to legitimise the army takeover that removed her from office and to stop her from returning to politics.
In the meantime, the Tatmadaw has continued its attacks, including pressing ahead with large-scale offensive in Sagaing to try and retake the northern city of Indaw, which was captured by PDF groups with the support of the Kachin Independence Army EAO last year.
At the same time, it has been on the defensive in the east as it tries to hold off a push by the Karen National Liberation Army toward a Tatmadaw stronghold near the Thai border. — AP
