Is Myanmar’s army reversing its losses? It’s complicated

The fortunes of struggle alongside Myanmar’s border with Thailand have been turning with bewildering velocity.

Two weeks after dropping management of their base in Myawaddy, a significant border crossing, troopers loyal to the navy junta that seized energy in a coup three years in the past have retaken it.

The embattled junta, which has suffered a sequence of humiliating defeats in different components of the nation, seems to have held the road in Myawaddy. But the image is much more complicated than this easy narrative suggests.

The sudden seize by the Karen National Union (KNU) of all of the navy bases close to Myawaddy earlier this month appeared to herald a big shift within the civil struggle which erupted after the junta seized energy in a coup three years in the past.

It was the primary time in a long time that the KNU, Myanmar’s longest-running rebel group, had managed the city, an actual prize as a lot of the nation’s commerce with Thailand passes by way of it, and it’s the location of a number of large and really profitable on line casino complexes.

But the KNU by no means truly occupied Myawaddy, placing only a small contingent of fighters from allied People’s Defence Forces (PDF) to manage the Battalion 275 army base, simply outdoors the city. It saved the identical police, immigration and native authorities officers in place to run the city and maintain the border commerce going.

One cause for the victorious insurgents’ reticence was the presence of different, highly effective Karen armed militias which had till lately been allied to the navy junta, and whose response to the KNU’s advance was unsure. Avoiding clashes between completely different Karen teams was a precedence, says the KNU management.

The largest of those militias calls itself the Karen National Army (KNA), led by Saw Chit Thu, a warlord who broke away from the KNU within the 1990s.

He controls the infamous Shwe Kokko on line casino advanced, which has been accused of internet hosting abusive rip-off centres. The cash that it generates funds a well-paid and well-equipped personal army of a number of thousand fighters, which since 2010 have been working as a border guard power supporting the navy.

In January Saw Chit Thu introduced that he was severing ties with the junta, however the KNU accuses him of serving to the troopers who had been pushed out of the Battalion 275 base, however had refused to give up.

The different cause for the KNU’s warning was the navy’s air energy, which has been used to devastating impact in different areas the place its floor troops have been defeated. Last weekend Mi35 helicopter gunships and Y12 plane bombed KNU positions in Myawaddy, inflicting quite a few casualties and driving hundreds to hunt shelter on the Thai aspect of the border.

KNU sources additionally say they’ve been requested by the Thai navy to not provoke a battle for management of Myawaddy, which might disrupt commerce and ship a a lot bigger wave of refugees into Thailand.

The KNU management ordered its forces to desert the Battalion 275 base, partly it mentioned, to keep away from extra destruction in Myawaddy, but in addition to deal with a a lot greater battle 30km (18 miles) to the west of the city.

Stung by the lack of Myawaddy the junta ordered a big column of reinforcements, backed by armoured automobiles and artillery, to re-establish its management over the street to the border. This is the most important counter-attack tried by the navy for the reason that string of defeats by the hands of ethnic insurgents which started in Shan State in October final 12 months.

KNU fighters have been deployed to ambush the column alongside the street because it climbs by way of forested hills outdoors the city of Kawkareik, slowing its progress to a crawl and destroying quite a few automobiles.

The column is, or was, being commanded by General Soe Win, quantity two within the navy hierarchy, an indication of how vital its success is to the junta. He has now disappeared from public view, elevating hypothesis that he could have been wounded, or presumably purged by his boss, the junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Stopping or driving this column again would symbolize a much more vital achievement than occupying Myawaddy, making certain that each one entry to the border on this space stays below KNU management.

But the KNU faces quite a few dilemmas.

It says the variety of individuals displaced by preventing in Karen State has risen to greater than 700,000 individuals for the reason that coup, a staggering half of its inhabitants. Escalating the struggle in opposition to the junta will make that a lot worse.

It should additionally preserve unity amongst its seven armed brigades, which have historically exercised a excessive diploma of autonomy of their areas. Before the coup there had been bitter disputes inside the KNU over how far to compromise with the central authorities within the pursuits of peace and selling enterprise in considered one of Asia’s most impoverished areas.

The KNU should additionally now determine what its coverage shall be in the direction of Myawaddy, the mainstay of the economic system in Karen State. Historic distrust and resentment of Saw Chit Thu’s breakaway KNA runs excessive, and the official KNU view of the on line casino complexes is that they’re a supply of transnational crime like human trafficking and must be closed down.

Yet Saw Chit Thu has formidable plans to broaden Shwe Kokko, in partnership with a Chinese firm, Yatai, into a large, cross-border leisure zone. He is highly effective sufficient to thwart any try to shut him down, until it’s backed by Thailand, which supplies electrical energy and telecommunications to Shwe Kokko. But that’s unlikely whereas there are influential Thai figures with a monetary curiosity within the Shwe Kokko challenge. There are even some senior KNU figures implicated within the on line casino enterprise.

From discussions with KNU sources it appears the group was not but able to deal with the complexities of occupying Myawaddy when it discovered itself answerable for the navy base there on 11 April.

The KNU has been preventing for a self-governing Karen state for greater than 75 years, and its management takes a protracted view of the battle.

It has already tied its fortunes firmly to the anti-coup resistance motion, nurturing and coaching the PDFs shaped by dissidents fleeing from the cities, and offering a secure haven for the National Unity Government, which represents the administration ousted by the coup.

But co-ordinating the mosaic of ethnic armies, warlords and PDF militias into an all-out assault which might unseat the navy junta is a monumental activity, the success of which remains to be removed from sure.