Myanmar Slides Into Total Civil War

Aizawl: Myanmar is steadily sinking into an unending civil war with more and more civilian resistance forces emerging to confront the military rule. 

UN envoy Christine Schraner Burgener informed a news conference this week  that clashes between the military and local defense forces in Myanmar are continuing.

She said the World Bank is predicting an 18% drop in GDP this year and the International Labor Organization estimates 2.2 million jobs have been lost since January.

 Myanmar is also currently facing “a severe Covid-19 third wave” with more than 333,000 reported cases.

Unlike 1988, when resistance to military takeover remained limited to peaceful mass demonstrations, angry young people are now turning to armed struggle. 

Some armed insurgent groups have emerged among the ethnic Burmese after a flood of young people fled to bases of longstanding ethnic rebel armies like Karen National Union and the Kachin Independence Army. 

Armed and trained by these guerilla war veterans,  the young Burmese are returning to their cities and villages to fight the military. 

Two such nationwide groups are already in the fray — People’s Defence Force (PDF) and Federal Army ( FA) . Former Miss Myanmat Htar Htet , sporting battle fatigues and a rifle in her Facebook post, has joined the PDF.

But a plethora of localized resistance groups have also emerged . They fight the military with hunting Rifles, slingshots, bows and arrows. But as they are forced to retreat in the face of artillery-backed military assault,  their fighters rush to bases of established old rebel groups for training and weapons.

Across Mizoram’s hill border with Myanmar , one can see this story unfold.
Chin National Army (CNA) fighters are seen imparting arms training to civilians fighting the Myanmar military at the former’s “liberated area” called Camp Victoria on the banks of the Mizoram-Myanmar border river Tlau.

‘Camp Victoria’  is a designated camp housing the CNA fighters after their leaders signed a nationwide ceasefire agreement with the federal government.  

A CNF leader, now in Aizawl, says the civilians from the Chin state and Sagaing division, who have taken up arms against the military junta, under the umbrella organisation called “Chinland Defence Force” (CDF), travelled far to reach Camp Victoria, just across the Farkawn village on the Mizoram side.

The “new recruits” refused to be turned back on grounds of Covid protocol and insist they should be trained to fight the Myanmar military responsible for the February 1 coup.

The CDF cadres were determined to undergo “urban guerilla training” to fight back the brutal Myanmar military.

The CDF itself emerged from a large number of town resistance committees like those formed at Mindat ( Chin Hills) and Kani ( Sagaing Division). In both places, the local fighters resisted the Tatmadaw ( Burmese army) for a week or ten-twelve days  before retreating into hills to live to fight another day. 

In Mindat, the army lined up local villagers as shield to force the resistance from firing on them.

 The Chinland Defence Force, whose recruits are now being trained at Camp Victoria, have expressed allegiance to the exiled Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG).
 The exiled administration is an apex body coordinating a loose  alliance of anti-junta forces and has no command or control authority over the armed groups inside Myanmar itself.

The CNA’s Camp Victoria leadership had a close call recently when the Tatmadaw tried to enter the camp and inspect whether Myanmar refugees, a majority of them belonging to police and fire service, were being harboured in the “liberated area”. 
“We warned the Myanmar soldiers that if they enter the Camp Victoria, established after the Nation-wide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) signed in 2015, we would open fire,” the CNF leader in Aizawl said.

 The NCA was signed by the then Myanmar President Thein Sein and the signing was witnessed by many foreign  observers and delegates.

But many big rebel groups did not sign the NCA while some who did have now reneged it because they don’t trust the present military regime. 

Officials in Mizoram said that at least 13,000 refugees from Myanmar, who had fled their country due to the coup, remained in Mizoram . The Indian government says 8400 Myanmar refugees are in India.

Despite Delhi’s diktat to prevent entry of refugees from Myanmar , Mizoram’s ruling MNF government led by chief minister Zoramthanga has pursued an open door policy . He insists that the mostly Chin refugees from Myanmar  are ‘ ethnic kin of Mizos’ and sheltering them from a brutal military regime was only natural. 

Some of the resistance groups have attacked Chinese factories,  even an offtake station on the oil-gas pipeline that connects China’s Yunnan province to Myanmar’s Kyaukphyu port.

Because they resent China’s unstinted support to the Burmese military regime and see it as their major sustaining factor. 

India’s own Kaladan multi modal transport project linking Mizoram to Indian mainland by road, river and sea through Sittwe port has been hugely delayed due to violent disruptions by the China-backed Arakan Army. The Arakan Army , which faced Indian military operations in South Mizoram last year , has now signed a temporary  ceasefire with the Myanmar Army, covertly brokered by China. – India News Stream