Live Conflict Myanmar Civil War

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Things are heating up in Myanmar.

Thanks @Isa Khan for suggesting to add this to the Live Conflicts section
 

Ryder

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I would support the Rohingas.

Important thing here is to support Bangladesh.

Myanmar has been trying to have a fight with them.
 

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Conflicts heating up in Asia while the americans withdrawing from other areas of the world.

Coincidence?
 

Timur

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I would support the Rohingas.

Important thing here is to support Bangladesh.

Myanmar has been trying to have a fight with them.

may allah protect the rohingas and bangladesh! myanmar can eat herslef....
 

Isa Khan

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Ethnic Armed Groups Unite With Anti-Coup Protesters Against Myanmar Junta​

By THE IRRAWADDY 30 April 2021

In the month following the military’s Feb. 1 coup, many of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), which have been warring with the central government for decades, said they opposed the junta’s overthrowing of the democratically-elected civilian government.

When the Myanmar military killed anti-regime protesters, people in urban areas longed for help from the EAOs in their fight against junta, believing that an armed response is the best hope of stopping the military’s atrocities against unarmed civilians.

But in the three months since the coup, only a few of Myanmar’s 20 EAOs have actually been helping pro-democracy supporters as they “could not bear to watch the civilians being killed brutally by the junta”. The majority have just paid lip service to backing up anti-regime protesters by saying that “the regime will have to take responsibility for what they have done.”

EAOs support for Myanmar’s anti-coup protesters takes several forms. Their attacks on the Myanmar military in border areas hits the regime as they have to deploy more troops to the frontlines, while also having to oppose anti-regime protesters. The EAO’s are also providing shelter to those fleeing the junta and offering military training to the young and enthusiastic urban protesters who have gone underground to join the armed struggle against the military dictatorship.

So far, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), have been the most prominent in their support for toppling the junta.

Since March, fierce fighting between the KIA and the Myanmar military and between the KNLA and regime troops has erupted in several locations in Kachin State, northern Shan State, Karen State and Bago Region. News of the fighting has provided encouragement for people sick of the military’s atrocities against protesters and civilians.

In Kachin State, regime troops lost a strategic hill base to the KIA, while in the south, the Karen soldiers of the KNLA seized a military outpost near the Thai border. In both areas, regime troops have suffered mounting casualties and seen some soldiers captured.

Karen National Union and Karen National Liberation Army

The KNU, Myanmar’s oldest ethnic political party, has opposed the military regime since the coup. Its chairman, Padoh Saw Mutu Say Poe, has refused to meet with junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing until his troops stop killing civilians and release all people detained since the coup. The KNU rejected the regime’s invitation to attend the Armed Forces Day parade on March 27.

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KNLA soldiers at an outpost near the Salween River in Thi Mu Hta, Karen State after capturing the base from the military. /Kawthoolei News/Facebook

The KNLA, the military wing of the KNU, seized an outpost near the Salween River in Thi Mu Hta held by the military’s Light Infantry Division 349 on the day of the junta’s Armed Forces Day parade. The KNLA’s Brigade 5 killed 10 soldiers, including an officer, and captured eight soldiers.

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KNLA soldiers display weapons captured from a Myanmar military base near the Salween River in Thi Mu Hta, Karen State. /Kawthoolei News/Facebook

Brigade 5 is one of the KNLA’s units that has not stopped fighting Myanmar’s military, despite the KNU signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement in 2015. For the past three years, the military has expanded its territory in the area controlled by Brigade 5 and launched systematic attacks on civilians. In December, the KNLA warned the military of severe consequences if they refused to withdraw their troops.

On April 27, exactly one month after capturing Thi Mu Hta, Brigade 5 overran a military border post on the banks of the Salween River in Thaw Le Hta, near the border with Thailand’s Mae Hong Song Province. At least a dozen of regime troops were killed. The military retaliated with airstrikes against the Brigade 5 area, as it did after the capture of Thi Mu Hta, causing some 30,000 local residents to be displaced.

Brigade 5 spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Saw Kler Doh told The Irrawaddy that the KNLA’s attacks are to show support for civilians and the newly-formed National Unity Government set up by elected lawmakers from the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government.

Lt.-Col Saw Kler Doh said, “We are doing what we can to show that seizing power by force and shooting unarmed people is unacceptable. We have to do what we can to support the people”.

Kachin Independence Army

After a 17-year ceasefire broke down in Kachin State in 2011, the KIA has largely maintained a defensive position in clashes with the Myanmar military. However, after the coup, they began launching attacks against the regime in several key locations across Kachin States and northern Shan state with an intensity not seen since 2018.

The KIA have stormed more than a dozen military and police outposts in Kachin’s Waimaw, Momauk, Hpakant, Tanai, Mogaung, Shwegu and Injangyang Townships. Moreover, they have attacked a number of military convoys bringing reinforcements to troops fighting the KIA and launching crackdowns on anti-coup protesters in Kachin.

Soon after the coup, the KIA asked the military’s Northern Command via the Kachin-based Peace Creation Group not to harm peaceful Kachin people protesting against the junta. But two men died when the military opened fire with live rounds on anti-regime protesters in Myitkyina on March 8. Three days later, the KIA attacked a military outpost in the jade-mining hub, Hpakant.

The KIA threatened to step up its attacks if the junta continued to shoot peaceful protesters across the country. On March 15, the KIA raided another military outpost in Injangyang Township. Ten days later, the KIA occupied the strategic Alaw Bum base in Momauk Township near the border with China, which had been occupied by the military since the early 1990s.

Thousands of regime soldiers have been sent as reinforcements to Momauk Township and there have been almost daily airstrikes in their efforts to recapture the base. But the regime has lost more than 100 troops killed, including a battalion commander, and the KIA has also captured around 50 soldiers during the clashes.

In late March, the KIA attacked a police station in Kyaukgyi village-tract in Shwegu Township, Kachin State, saying that the attack was carried out because police are involved in lethal crackdowns on anti-military regime protesters.

The KIA also attacked two police outposts and a military base at Tarpein Bridge in Momauk Township on April 11. Following the attack, four civilians were killed when artillery shells fired by Myanmar’s military landed in Myohaung, Myothit and Sihike villages. On April 15, the KIA attacked a base in the area of Nam Byu in Tanai Township, which the military had captured from the KIA in 2018.

Currently, there is intense daily fighting in Momauk, Putao, Bhamo and Hpakant Townships. KIA information officer Colonel Naw Bu said the military has been especially active in its efforts to recapture the Alaw Bum base.

Colonel Naw Bu said the KIA would not recognize the junta. He said the KIA would take the upper hand by attacking the reinforcements sent to fight against them.

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Residents in Kachin’s Hpakant staged a protest against the regime on Friday, showing support for the KIA and National Unity Government. /CJ

Showing support for K2K

Pro-democracy activists have expressed their support for the KNU and the KIA since the fighting began in Kachin, Karen and Shan States. Young people in major cities have taken to the streets holding placards reading “We support KIA and KNU”.

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Residents in Doopalaya District, Karen State protested against the military junta on April 5. /Doopalaya District

Until now, people living in Myanmar’s cities have not experienced the brutality of the regime’s soldiers at first hand. But residents of the borderlands have long suffered at the hands of the military. Now, Myanmar’s peoples are coming together in unity to reject the military dictatorship.

“I never thought that the majority of Burmese people would support the ethnic armed groups,” Seng Bu, a Kachin activist based in Myitkyina, told The Irrawaddy. “The situation has completely changed. Burmese people now realize what ethnic people have suffered for generations,” she said. “We are very united now,” she added.

Growing Refugee Crisis

While the majority of Burmese people support the EAO’s, thousands of ethnic people in Kachin, Karan and Shan States are fleeing from their homes as a result of the fierce fighting. In response to the KIA and KNLA’s attacks on security outposts, the military has retaliated with airstrikes on villages in Kachin and Karen States.

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Ethnic Karen people prepare to cross the Salween River to Thailand following Myanmar military airstrikes in Papun. / Salween Peace Park / Facebook

There have been frequent airstrikes on villages in Momauk Township since mid-April. In the latest fighting, fighter jets bombed villages for six days, forcing 5,000 villagers to flee from their homes. Nearly three dozen homes in Myothit village alone have been destroyed by the airstrikes, according to residents.

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Villagers at a Kachin Baptist Convention centre in Momauk Township on Monday. / Bhamo Platform

More than 10,000 people have been displaced in Injangyang, Hpakant, Momauk, Myitkyina, Shwegu and Waimaw Townships in Kachin State, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and local humanitarian groups. Most of them have taken refuge in churches and monasteries in Momauk.

“More and more residents are sheltering in churches. Churches are already flooded with people,” a representative of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) said. “We are expecting more people. But we don’t have enough space,” he said.

Rev. Dr. Hkalam Samson, the president of the KBC told The Irrawaddy that the coup has not only created a new humanitarian crisis, but also stopped the refugee repatriation process led by the Kachin Humanitarian Concern Committee (KHCC), a joint strategy team.

Formed by various Kachin religious and community-based NGOs under the NLD government, KHCC is trying to facilitate the return of refugees. More than 100,000 civilians have been displaced since 2011. Most of them are in camps or temporary shelters in both government-and KIA-controlled areas.

“As long as the military is in power, the repatriation of refugees will not be possible. If the military hadn’t staged the coup, the repatriation would have been very successful,” Rev. Dr Hkalam Samson said.

“As long as the fighting continues, the number of refugees will continue to rise,” he added.

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A civilian house in Myothit, Momauk Township reduced to ashes after a regime airstrike on April 25. / Bhamo Platform

OCHA has estimated that around 40,000 people have fled their homes in Papun District in Karen State and Shwe Kyin, Kyaukkyi and Nyaunglebin Townships in Bago Region, following the coup and military airstrikes in the areas. An estimated 1,000 refugees – mostly elders, the sick, women and children – have taken refuge in Thailand.

On Thursday, a total of 41 Karen civil society groups asked the Thai government to grant temporary asylum to people displaced by the airstrikes.

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Young people in Yangon staged guerrilla-style protests on the city’s main streets, despite the rain on Friday./CJ

Young People Take up Arms in Kachin and Karen States

The military’s brutal crackdown on anti-coup protesters – including killings, arrests and torture – has pushed some young people to take up arms against the regime.

Thousands of young people including students, doctors and engineers have sought refuge in ethnic areas, mostly in Karen and Kachin States. They are undergoing military training as most of them have a dream of fighting back against the regime and returning the country to civilian rule.

One human rights activist who believed in and conducted research on non-violent protest movements told The Irrawaddy that she no longer believes that non-violent protest will topple the junta.

“You might say everything seems to be so depressing these days. You might ask me, has the regime already won? Absolutely not. People will fight against them. The people training in the jungle will restore our lost democracy,” she said.

“There is always a silver lining,” she stressed. “The people in the jungle are our silver lining.”

 

Nilgiri

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So far its only KIA that have expectedly started their activity (having invested into ASSK/NDL peace+democracy deal that is now basically scrapped).

Shan militias are more or less quiet for now....I guess China reserve to use them again if junta strays from current status quo line w.r.t PRC influence.
 

Isa Khan

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Rebels and conflicts in various Burmese region existed long before the current coup. (There's even a movie about it, "Rambo 4". One of my favorites) Arakan Army was quite active in Rakhine recently until Burmese junta removed them from terrorist list.

 

Madokafc

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What is more crazy, how can junta military preserved their ailing economy, when many major Cities is actually in riots, school, markets is disturbed, logistic movements is halted coupled with pandemic problem of Corona, the cost of war and fighting is surely great.... Myanmar condition is getting worsen by days

And they only need some high level of super Typhoon which usually happened after El Nino in the region occurred (in which according to the cycle is not far off from this year or later year) to brought Myanmar to the knee
 

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‘Now We Are United’: Myanmar’s Ethnic Divisions Soften After Coup​

Amid the resistance to military rule, some are saying that democracy can’t flourish without respecting the minorities that have been persecuted for decades.

April 30, 2021

The Myanmar military’s disinformation was crude but effective.
Army propagandists claimed an ethnic group called the Rohingya was burning down its own villages and wanted to swamp Buddhist-majority Myanmar with Islamic hordes. The Rohingya were spinning tall tales, the military said in 2017, about soldiers committing mass rape and murder.

The truth — that troops were waging genocidal operations against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities — was perhaps too shocking for some members of the country’s Bamar ethnic majority to contemplate.
But as Myanmar’s military seized power this year and killed more than 750 civilians, Daw Sandar Myo, an elementary-school teacher, realized that the decades of persecution suffered by the Rohingya and other minorities was real, after all.

“After the coup, I saw soldiers and police killing and torturing people in the cities,” she said. “Then I started to feel empathy for Rohingya and ethnic people who have been suffering worse than us for many years.”
The Bamar majority’s most visible resistance to the Feb. 1 putsch has come in the form of mass protests, civil disobedience, worker strikes and even the tentative beginnings of an armed struggle.

But another transformation is quietly underway: a growing acceptance of the nation’s ethnic diversity, something that was notably absent during an earlier political transition. With the military’s violence unleashed once again, some are acknowledging that democracy cannot flourish without respecting the ethnic minorities who have endured decades of persecution.

More than a third of Myanmar’s population is composed of ethnic minorities, who inhabit a vast frontier where the country’s natural resources are concentrated. Their insurgencies against the Myanmar military, which has ruled the country for most of the past six decades, rank among the world’s most enduring civil conflicts.

These ethnic minorities offer important insights on how to fight the Tatmadaw, as the military is known. And they say they know better than the Bamar just how unstable Myanmar can be when its armed forces act as an occupying force rather than the people’s protector.

“Myanmar never had real democracy because there was no hope for ethnic people,” said Lieut. Col. Mai Aik Kyaw, a spokesman for the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of the ethnic insurgencies struggling for autonomy in Myanmar. “If you compare it to what ethnic people have suffered for 70 years, what Bamar people are suffering right now is nothing.”

With the military’s power grab, Myanmar is careening toward full-fledged civil war, the United Nations has warned. The country could even disintegrate, it said.

“Myanmar stands at the brink of state failure, of state collapse,” Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the International Crisis Group, told the United Nations Security Council in a briefing this month. But, Mr. Horsey added, Myanmar’s existential crisis in the wake of the coup has catalyzed a national reckoning on ethnicity that could lead to a more inclusive, cohesive country.

“In the midst of all this horror, the transformative nature of the resistance against the military has to be acknowledged and applauded,” he said. “A new generation of political action has emerged that has transcended old divisions and old prejudices and gives great hope for a future Myanmar that embraces, and is at peace with, its diversity.”

Earlier this month, a shadow civilian government was established to oppose the military junta, which has imprisoned most of the country’s elected leaders, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

For the first time in the country’s history, the National Unity Government, as the shadow authority is called, has openly endorsed federalism rather than a centralized authority. A constitution that enshrines federalism could help free ethnic minorities from the Bamar supremacy that has dominated politics in Myanmar since the country was founded in 1948.

The shadow government’s cabinet also boasts more ethnic minorities than the cabinet formed by the National League for Democracy, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party.

The National League for Democracy is the only nationally popular political force in Myanmar, but it has a recent history of abetting the persecution of ethnic minorities. Although the party won a landslide re-election in November, more than a million members of ethnic minorities were disenfranchised during the vote.
During their five years of power-sharing with the Tatmadaw, the N.L.D.’s civilian leaders defended the military’s continuing atrocities against ethnic minorities. Decades ago, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent struggle for democracy.

Yet she called the 2017 forced exodus of three-quarters of a million Rohingya the byproduct of “clearance operations” against a terrorist insurgency. The Rohingya were, in fact, victims of a well-documented ethnic cleansing campaign.

But the military’s seizure of power has led to soul-searching.
“The blood that has been shed in the aftermath of the coup has brought about a sea change in public views on federalism and inclusion,” said U Khin Zaw Win, a political analyst and former political prisoner who has long pushed for the rights of ethnic groups in Myanmar.

“While the N.L.D. does remain popular, the country has moved on” since the coup, he added. “It isn’t about an N.L.D. restoration any longer.”

So far, the new unity government is little more than a compendium of policy statements sent by encrypted apps. It has no army or international recognition.

If it is to succeed, it will need support from the very ethnic minorities who have been persecuted for so long.
Already, members of the shadow government have sought sanctuary in Myanmar’s borderlands, where ethnic insurgencies control territory. Young activists are undergoing weapons training in these frontier regions to form an armed resistance to the Tatmadaw. Recent explosions at urban government offices and military-linked businesses signal their intent.

Joining forces with ethnic minorities involves other tactical considerations. Around the time of the coup, many of Myanmar’s most fearsome infantry divisions were transferred from remote bases to cities. Since then, security forces have killed dozens of children with single gunshots. Pro-democracy figures have turned up dead, some with signs of torture.

With the Tatmadaw preoccupied in the cities, ethnic armed groups have launched their own coordinated offensives in the borderlands. Scores of Tatmadaw soldiers were killed in recent fighting when insurgents overran their outposts, according to the ethnic armed organizations and local residents.
The hope is that with ethnic militias pushing in the borderlands and an armed resistance rising in the cities, the Tatmadaw will be forced to battle on multiple fronts.

“If the ethnic armed organizations fight together against the Myanmar military, then it will have better results for the country,” said Colonel Mai Aik Kyaw of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army.

But unity is fleeting among the ethnic armed groups, some of which have reserved as much firepower for each other as they have for the Tatmadaw. Many of the major ethnic groups, such as the Shan and Karen, have more than one armed organization purporting to represent them. Control of these borderlands means access to lucrative mines, forests and illicit drugmaking facilities.

Myanmar is a crossroads culture, squeezed between India and China. Even the notion of Bamar purity is contested. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is part Karen. Other Bamar have Indian or Chinese ancestry. The British, who colonized what was then known as Burma, called the country “a zone of racial instability,” according to Thant Myint-U, a historian and author of “The Hidden Histories of Burma.”

“Myanmar was never a place of neatly packaged racial and ethnic categories,” he said. “Ending Bamar political domination of minority communities may be helped by a more decentralized system of government. But what’s equally important is a radical program to end discrimination in all forms and a reimagining of the country as a place that’s always been home to many different peoples.”

This week, soldiers from the Karen National Liberation Army overran a Tatmadaw outpost across the river from Thailand. Karen forces captured another base in eastern Myanmar last month, prompting the military’s first airstrikes against Karen villages in 20 years. Tatmadaw reprisals in areas populated by ethnic minorities have killed dozens.

As fighting intensifies, tens of thousands have been displaced nationwide, particularly in Karen territory and in the north, where the Kachin Independence Army is making inroads against the Tatmadaw.

For the first time, the Karen National Union has received donations from Bamar people for civilian victims of the Tatmadaw, said Padoh Saw Man Man, a spokesman for the group. “Now we are united with the Bamar people, and I strongly believe that we will win when we fight together against the Tatmadaw,” he said.

 

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The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) shot down a Myanmar military helicopter as it was conducting air strikes in Momauk, Kachin State at around 10 a.m. on Monday, KIA information officer Colonel Naw Bu confirmed to The Irrawaddy.

“It happened at around 10:20 a.m. today. The attack on the gunship scared away two fighter jets accompanying the helicopter,” he said.

A local resident confirmed the crash. “The aircraft crashed after being hit in its tail rotor. I saw smoke spewing from it. It landed near Konglaw Village. We have heard loud gunfire since morning along with continuous artillery fire. The situation is not good,” said the witness.

Military tensions have been running high between Myanmar’s military junta and the ethnic Kachin armed group in Momauk since April 11, with the former using aircraft to bomb KIA outposts.

At around 2 a.m. on April 29 the KIA launched an artillery attack on Bhamo Airport, which military choppers use to take off and land.

The fighting in Momauk surrounds Alaw Bum base on a hill on the Chinese border. The hill, located on the route to the KIA’s headquarters, is strategically important for gaining the military upper hand over areas between Bhamo and Myitkyina.

Myanmar’s military has been attempting to retake the hill since the KIA seized it from the former on March 25.

More than 5,000 people from 10 villages have been displaced by the fighting in Momauk.

 
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