New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered ceasefire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of three powerful militias that launched a surprise joint offensive last October, renewed its attacks on regime positions last week in the northeastern Shan State, which borders China, Laos, and Thailand, and the neighbouring Mandalay region with the support of local forces there.
Since then, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has joined in, and by Friday, combined forces from the two allied militias had reportedly encircled the strategically important city of Lashio, the headquarters of the regime’s northeastern military command.
‘Safety of people’
This is the next phase of October’s “1027” offensive, said Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the TNLA, which last week said the military provoked retaliation with artillery and airstrikes despite the cease-fire. “In phase two, our number one aim is the eradication of the military dictatorship, and number two is the protection and safety of local people,” she said.
Thet Swe, a spokesperson for the military regime, which seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, accused the militias of putting civilians in jeopardy by restarting the fighting. “As the TNLA are starting to violate the ceasefire, the Tatmadaw is protecting the lives and the property of the ethnic people,” he said in an email, referring to the military by its Burmese name.
There was no indication that the third ethnic armed organisation that makes up the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the powerful Arakan Army, has joined in the renewed fighting in Shan state.
The TNLA claims to have already captured more than 30 army outposts, and to now control the western part of Mogok, whose ruby mines make it a lucrative target. There is also fighting for the town of Kyaukme, which sits at a highway crossroads, and Nawnghkio to the southwest, which leads toward the major military garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin along the same highway.
“That’s where you need to cut it off to prevent the military from sending reinforcements,” said Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who runs its Myanmar Conflict Map project.
In Mandalay, the region west of Shan, a local People’s Defence Force — one of many armed resistance groups that have sprung up in support of the underground National Unity Government, which views itself as Myanmar’s legitimate administration — joined the TNLA’s offensive.
Osmond, a spokesperson for the Mandalay People’s Defence Force who would only give his nom de guerre because of safety concerns, said his and other local resistance groups have seized nearly 20 military outposts.
The October offensive by the Three Brotherhood Alliance made rapid advances as the militias took large expanses of territory in the north and northeast, including multiple important border crossings with China and several major military bases.
Chinese ties
The alliance militias have close ties to China, and it’s widely believed that the offensive had Beijing’s tacit approval because of its growing dissatisfaction with the military regime’s seeming indifference to the burgeoning drug trade along its border and the proliferation of centres in Myanmar at which cyberscams are run, with workers trafficked from China.
China then helped broker the ceasefire in January, bringing the major fighting in the northeast to an end.
With the renewed violence in the northeast, China’s Foreign Ministry said it stood ready to again provide support for peace talks, but would not say whether it had been in direct contact with the Three Brotherhood Alliance or the military State Administration Council.
“China urges all parties in Myanmar to earnestly abide by the ceasefire agreement, exercise maximum restraint, disengage on the ground as soon as possible, and take practical and effective measures to ensure the tranquillity of the China-Myanmar border and the safety of Chinese personnel and projects,” the Ministry said in a faxed reply to questions.
The Myanmar army doesn’t appear to have been surprised by the TNLA attacks, with evidence that it mobilised forces and prepared defences as well as security checkpoints and patrols ahead of the renewed offensive, Mr. Michaels said.
“They didn’t get caught completely off guard, although they’ve not been able to respond yet, there’s been no counter-offensive,” he said.
Objectives unclear
It is not yet clear what the TNLA’s objectives are, and it could be that the group is just looking to expand gains and consolidate positions now while the military is stretched thin by fighting on several fronts, and before new batches of conscripts are trained for service.
Likewise, with the MNDAA, it is not clear whether it is planning to join the broader offensive or whether it intends to take encircled Lashio by force, lay siege to it, or simply tie up the troops now trapped there. The group did not respond to requests for comment.
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