No End in Sight to Conflict in Myanmar

Military setbacks, a deteriorating humanitarian situation, and growing leadership tensions – the Myanmar conflict keeps getting worse, while ASEAN and the world look incapable of effective response, writes Pradeep Taneja.

Ever since the February 2021 coup d’état that prevented a re-elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Aung San Suu Kyi from taking power, Myanmar has scarcely been out of the headlines.

One recent headline related to the rescue of 69 Rohingya refugees by an Indonesian search and rescue ship on 21 March off West Aceh.  These refugees had apparently left the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where around one million Rohingya have been living in squalor for years.

The dangerous journeys aboard rickety boats that thousands of Rohingya refugees have embarked on in recent years are emblematic of the hopelessness felt by them about the prospects of ever returning to their homes in Rakhine state in Myanmar.

The humanitarian disaster created by the brutal expulsion campaign launched by the Myanmar military in August 2017 has continued to widen the gulf between Myanmar’s military regime led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and the other fellow members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), especially Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.

Min Aung Hlaing, the 67-year-old Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, and Chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC), has become so unpopular that the March 2024 issue of The Diplomat magazine headlined its cover story “Myanmar: the many foes of Min Aung Hlaing”.  When a Buddhist monk known for his nationalist pro-military leanings calls for the Commander-in-Chief to step down in favour of his deputy, you know the strongman is in trouble.

This is just what happened in January when the ultranationalist monk, Pauk Ko Taw, led a protest by a few hundred pro-regime demonstrators in the former colonial hill station Pyin Oo Lwin, calling for Min Aung Hlaing to resign and hand over the reins of the military and the country to his deputy General Soe Win. The monk said Min Aung Hlaing should move to a civilian role because he was “not coping”, while describing Soe Win as a “real soldier”.

The calls for the junta leader to resign have been prompted by the recent defeats suffered by the Myanmar military – the Tatmadaw – at the hands of resistance forces. In one of the biggest setbacks for the military in decades, in January this year hundreds of soldiers surrendered their weapons and handed over control over the strategic town of Laukkai in Shan State to a coalition of rebel forces known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance. According to some reports, the number of soldiers who surrendered was close to 2,400, including 200 officers.

The Alliance is made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Arakan Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. It has put up stiff resistance to the Myanmar military since last October, capturing swathes of territory in northern Myanmar, including several towns and important trade hubs near the border with China.

The capture of these towns in the Kokang region has been not only humiliating for the Tatmadaw but it has also cut off vital revenue for the militia that the military had installed there in 2009 after expelling the MNDAA from Laukkai. In fact, Min Aung Hlaing first rose to prominence after leading that military operation. According to the The Straits Times, the militia subsequently “enriched itself by producing drugs and selling gambling and sex to visitors from across the Chinese border”.

Following the humiliating military defeat in the Kokang region, the junta has sentenced three brigadier generals to death for “shamefully abandoning” their posts. In February, it also activated the 1959 conscription laws to draft 60,000 young people into the military to boost the numbers. Given the unpopularity of the current regime, it remains to be seen how many young people it would be able to conscript. There were long queues outside the passport offices and foreign embassies in Yangon following the conscription announcement as the youth whom the military wants to recruit tried to flee the country. Two people were killed and several injured in a stampede outside the passport office in Mandalay as young men and women tried to escape being compelled into joining military service.

There is no end in sight to the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, let alone the restoration of democracy in the country. The opposition National Unity Government (NUG) – a government-in-exile formed by lawmakers who were ousted by the 2021 coup – backs the rebel groups that have forced the Tatmadaw to resort to conscription. It claims that almost 60 per cent of Myanmar’s territory is under the control of ethnic armed groups and the NUG. While the NUG predicts the rebel forces will put more and more pressure on the capital within a few months, Yangon has already witnessed a number of bomb blasts in the last few weeks, targeting sites belonging to one of the military-owned companies. Also, on 1 March, a ship transporting fuel for the military was blown up on a river near central Yangon.

The ongoing instability in Myanmar has already created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world by forcing more than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees to flee Myanmar. It has also revealed the failure of the ASEAN to deal effectively with a major crisis in one of its own member states that has serious implications for the region and for its own future. Beset by their own rivalry and distracted by other global conflicts, Myanmar’s largest neighbours – India and China – have adopted a cautious wait and watch approach. While being cautious, China is also supporting the Myanmar military materially as its second biggest supplier of arms. As the biggest foreign investor in Myanmar, China is also mindful of protecting its economic interests.

Dr. Pradeep Taneja is a Deputy Associate Dean (International - India), Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne.

This article first appeared in Delhi Policy Group’s East Asia Explorer Issue 3 in March 2024.