Myanmar’s borderland wars flare post-diplomacy push

Asia Times

Fighting along Myanmar’s fractious borderlands has intensified following last week’s extraordinary Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Jakarta aimed at deescalating the country’s bloody political crisis. Clashes on the Thai border between Karen rebels and the Myanmar army have forced thousands of villagers from their homes. 

Christine Schraner Burgener, the United Nations’ special envoy on Myanmar, reportedly told a meeting of diplomats this week that violence in the country is worsening and the military’s continued crackdown risks undermining momentum toward ending the crisis following talks in the Indonesian capital. 

She pointed to reports that civilians, mostly students that have taken part in protests, are now being trained how to use weapons by ethnic armed organizations, underscoring an emerging alliance between autonomy-seeking ethnic minority forces based in frontier regions and largely urban-based pro-democracy opponents of the ruling junta.  

Asia Times’ correspondent and renowned Myanmar expert Bertil Lintner interpreted the regional summit in his latest report as a bid by Myanmar’s coup-makers to shore up their international legitimacy. He shared his thoughts on the wider situation in the country following this week’s intensified clashes between ethnic rebels and junta forces. 

Myanmar’s military clampdown appears to be widening from cities into ethnic areas. Why is that the case? 

Two of Myanmar's strongest ethnic armies, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), have expressed their support for the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in urban areas, and have attacked Myanmar Army positions in their areas to underline that support. 

The democratic resistance has hoped that ethnic army attacks in frontier areas would pull troops away from killing civilians in the cities and towns. Over 750 have been killed by the military since the February 1 coup.

Many urban dissidents have taken refuge in areas controlled by the KNLA and the KIA, so an alliance between the ethnic armies and the urban-based CDM is emerging. That is no doubt worrisome for the junta, so it has launched new military offensives in the frontier areas.

It is important to remember that it was the KNLA and the KIA which stoked the fight since the coup by attacking – and capturing – a number of Myanmar Army outposts and police stations in their respective areas.

What are the prospects for the formation of a “federal army” comprised of pro-democracy forces aligned with the ousted National League for Democracy and long-standing ethnic armed organizations to oppose the military regime?

It is highly unlikely that such an army will emerge as a result of the alliance between the ethnic armies and the urban dissidents, or even among the various ethnic armies. Some support the CDM and some don't.

Crucially, the Rakhine state-based Arakan Army, a sharp thorn in the Tatmadaw’s side in recent years, has not lent its support to the anti-junta movement. If it had, the Myanmar Army would be more stretched geographically with simultaneous firefights in the east and west, which are now confined mostly in the eastern border areas.

But as the shadowy attacks on the airbases at Magway and Meiktila in central Myanmar on April 29th show, the alliance between the CDM and certain ethnic armies could mean that the civil wars are spreading from ethnic minority areas to cities and towns in the Myanmar heartland.

In several parts of the country, which in the past were not affected by the ethnic wars, primarily in the Sagaing Region and Chin state, local people have also organized their own resistance forces that are independent of the traditional rebel armies. Armed with hunting rifles and homemade weapons including bombs, they have inflicted heavy casualties on the Myanmar Army.

That is an entirely new development since the February 1 coup.

Could such a force present a credible challenge to the Tatmadaw and are we already seeing its first shadowy attacks on military officials, businesses and installations?

Most certainly, yes. And the Tatmadaw's resources will be overstretched when they try to track down those carrying out attacks in urban areas. There are also persistent but so far unconfirmed reports of dissatisfaction among the old guard in the Tatmadaw with coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and his new junta.

The old-timers who were members of the now-dissolved State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) reportedly believe that Min Aung Hlaing's State Administration Council (SAC) has mishandled the situation, leading to international condemnation and a total lack of popular support for central authorities who are now entirely coup-installed.

Some of the old guard reportedly see this as an unnecessary step backward after the SPDC, after years of debilitating international isolation, managed to restore relations with the West and Japan after introducing some democratic reforms beginning in 2010.

It is still too early to say that the rift could result in divisions within the Tatmadaw that could turn the rank and file against Min Aung and open the way for other ways apart from brute and lethal force to solve the crisis he started. This is not the kind of legacy the old SPDC guard would want to leave behind.

In your estimation is Myanmar descending into a Syria-like civil war scenario? Why or why not?

No, and it won't for logistical reasons. The ethnic armies and their new urban allies have limited access to arms and ammunition and so far have no outside support. In Syria, major world powers such as the United States and Russia, and regional actors as well, are deeply involved in the conflict by arming opposed groups. In Myanmar, there is no similar outside power involvement.

But if there are more attacks against targets in central Myanmar, the military will no doubt step up its offensives in urban areas, leading to an escalation of fighting across the country that may from the outside start to look like a Syria-like civil war, but is still very much an internal affair.