In the closing weeks of 2023, the sweeping advances of an alliance of ethnic forces across Myanmar’s northeastern Shan state were often described as a watershed in a slow-grinding war, a telling sign that a military regime long held to be too big to fail could after all be defeated and ultimately overwhelmed. Eight months […]

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In major cities around Myanmar’s war-torn borderlands, a pattern is emerging. From Myitkyina and Bhamo in northern Kachin state to Lashio in northeastern Shan, and Sittwe, on the Bay of Bengal in the west, the Myanmar Army is pulling back into urban bastions shielded by air power, artillery and plentiful supplies of ammunition. Driven by […]

The post The road to a resistance victory in Myanmar appeared first on Asia Times.

After six disastrous months of serial defeat, Myanmar’s military has finally swung back onto the offensive with a high-stakes campaign already teetering precariously between success and further failure.    Troops have been locked for the past three weeks in the army’s single largest operation in decades aimed at pushing back insurgents of the Karen National […]

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Even before the end of a dry season that has dramatically upended the military balance in Myanmar, the broad and profoundly sobering contours of conflict over the remainder of 2024 and into 2025 are already taking shape. Recent months have seen large swathes of the nation’s borderlands fall under the control of powerful ethnic minority […]

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As the tempo of conflict in Myanmar’s northeast slows after months of dramatic insurgent advances, the civil war’s center of gravity has shifted decisively to the western seaboard state of Rakhine. In the wake of the third anniversary of the disastrous military coup of February 1, 2021, that set Myanmar on the path to popular […]

The post Myanmar junta in a make-or-break Rakhine fight appeared first on Asia Times.

Over a month after the launch of the most successful campaign by anti-junta resistance forces in Myanmar’s civil war, some overarching realities are emerging from events that have been widely hailed as a turning point in the conflict. The most important is arguably the least obvious: the dangers of triumphalism and a rush to victory […]

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If the echoes of World War II have any resonance in 21st century Myanmar then events have not yet reached the point in April 1945 when the delusional commander-in-chief of a defeated German army directed non-existent divisions from an underground bunker amid the ruins of the national capital. They are, though, plausibly at a similar […]

The post No good options for Myanmar’s mortally wounded regime appeared first on Asia Times.

Amid the last torrential storms of the 2023 monsoon, the fog of war is thickening over Myanmar. And growing numbers of observers monitoring the country’s unfolding implosion are in danger of getting lost in the gloom. No one doubts that hostilities between the country’s embattled State Administration Council (SAC) coup regime and a plethora of […]

The post Fog of war: Myanmar’s armed conflict is not a stalemate appeared first on Asia Times.

At the onset of a monsoon season unlikely to see much respite in Myanmar’s raging civil war, the month of June was especially unkind to a coup regime struggling to impose its will on a nation in revolt. The State Administration Council (SAC) junta’s woes were compounded by additional US sanctions on a listing banking […]

The post Blowing the bridge on Myanmar’s fluid civil war appeared first on Asia Times.

At the end of a dry season that saw a sharp escalation in Myanmar’s civil war, one incident more than any other will remain seared in collective memory: the slaughter of some 170 civilians, many children among them, in a precision airstrike on a village in northwestern Sagaing Region. The April 11 atrocity at Pazigyi […]

The post Myanmar PDFs getting the guns to turn the war appeared first on Asia Times.

Well before the Myanmar Air Force (MAF) began preparations to escalate a countrywide onslaught on the federal-democratic opposition in the coming months, resistance politicians, commanders, combatants and ordinary villagers alike were grappling with a looming concern: a desperate lack of air defense. There has been no shortage of efforts to at least mitigate the dilemma […]

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As Myanmar’s military regime struggles to contain a rising tide of armed resistance to its coup of 2021, its unchallenged airpower has already emerged as a central factor in the civil war. At the dawn of 2023, the question now confronting both sides is whether the Myanmar Air Force’s improving capabilities will prove decisive. With […]

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Less than two years since the military coup that triggered a new era of civil war, Myanmar’s democratic resistance is pushing for a swift conclusion to a still escalating conflict. In a high-risk move that effectively defines the dry season of early 2023 as decisive for the country’s future, the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) […]

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Born of Europe’s 19th century wars, it was a quip that neatly captured the difference between the hard-boiled Prussians of the north German plain and the fun-loving Viennese of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the Prussian says the situation is serious but not desperate; the Viennese says it’s desperate but not serious. Which of today’s Southeast Asian […]

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In Myanmar, where the May onset of the southwest monsoon typically heralds a stand-down in the country’s forever brush wars, rains already sweeping the central plains and enfolding hills will bring little respite this year. As popular resistance to Naypyidaw’s coup regime grows in numbers and experience, and the national military, or Sit-Tat, backs into […]

The post Is Myanmar’s military starting to lose the war? appeared first on Asia Times.

BANGKOK – The anniversary of the Myanmar military’s February 2021 coup has briefly refocused the fickle attentions of the international media with a flurry of “one year on” reporting on popular resistance and its prospects for success or failure. Overshadowed by this central drama, meanwhile, another major power shift has been unfolding in the remote […]

The post Wa an early winner of Myanmar’s post-coup war appeared first on Asia Times.

BANGKOK – As consequential as was 1948, the year of Myanmar’s independence from colonial tutelage, 2021 and its popular revolt against military rule has marked a second critical watershed in the nation’s modern history. But at the end of a tumultuous year, the future of a struggle that has plunged the country into bloodshed pitting […]

The post Who’s more likely to win Myanmar’s raging civil war? appeared first on Asia Times.

Sooner or later Myanmar’s military was bound to wheel out the big guns. Since March, when peaceful protest against the February 1 coup turned to armed resistance, the generals in Naypyidaw have watched too much go too wrong in too many places for too long. In the nation’s ethnic Bamar heartland so-called “people’s defense forces” […]

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The rains that begin in May and end in October mark a year in and year out respite in the various brush wars that have flared for decades in Myanmar’s borderlands. But a year like no other in the country’s modern history has turned even this time-worn rhythm upside down as vicious fighting pitting the […]

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BANGKOK – It has taken peaceful protests, bloody massacres, economic collapse and a lethal pandemic but six months after Myanmar’s military seized power from an elected government, one reality has become entirely clear: For all the anguished outrage and diplomatic hand-wringing, the “international community” is not coming to the rescue. The people of Myanmar are […]

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