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Notes -
With the election over it's time to talk about my favorite topic Wars you've forgotten about or never heard of
The War in Myanmar.
This war like many civil wars is in some way described as 1 major faction (national unity government) vs the military. However calling the National unity government one "side" seems a bit.. wrong. For example let's take the chin brotherhood the Chin Brotherhood seems to be nominally a part of the national unity government as does the chinland council yet these 2 groups are also opposed to each other. Another example is the Shan state army who is somehow opposed to the main government and allies of the arakan liberation army even the the ALA is allies of the myanmar government.
In spite of this being a messy web of weird alliances where everybody hates somebody on "their" side and nobody is neatly in any camp, it's still 2 broad coalitions fighting. What's facinating is how the rebels procure arms.
The rebels use 3d printed guns. They even use the GOAT firearm, the FGC9 (stands for Fuck gun control 9 milimeter) The rebels make IEDs and use drones to drop them like they are in ukraine. It's like the modern warfare meta has evolved to "tiny helicopters armed with explosive that I happened to find" as one of the main tools of engagement. The IEDs used by the insurgents are quite weak, but it's clear they don't have good manufacturing capabilities. Someone should get them The actual IED manual (a note to the FBI I am not intending for anyone to use this to commit a federal crime, this is for entertainment purposes only) This book is far better than the Lame Anarchists cookbook which was extremely poorly sourced and sloppily made. Instead use this guy who tells you how to make C-4 EDIT the us army has their own IED manual which is far better.
As a whole the rebels are actually doing much better than the were in 2022 and in some regards appear to be "winning" the war. However I put that in quotes for good reason. Honestly just reading about the war has been exausting, it's a constant strain of guriella tactics by the rebels followed by Junta counterattacks followed by chinese intervention. It's this weird state that's really hard to understand. I mean just look at operation 1027 A major offensive operation, with high Junta losses, followed by an attempted Junta counteroffensive that started getting ambushed by rebel forces A successful military counteroffensive, the chinese start getting involved (arresting people in the Junta they don't like)the The rebels get a large offensive going again, the chinese negotiate a ceasfire, junta makes some sneaky counterattacks during the "ceasefire" and another offensive beigns by the rebels. It's pretty clear that the chinese were essential to the rebels effort in this operation though how much we'll never know (state secrets and all)
The Rebel forces have definitely done far above expectations. Though my main scenario is that the Junta will control a much smaller fraction of myanmar and then the NYG will splinter off into a bunch of smaller factions who were previously united mainly by their hatred of the Junta. Evidence of the rebel's strength is that they are refusing the Junta's requests for peace and are trying to instead continue the war. But I would be surprised if this strength holds out instead of becoming another Syria like situation where after they defeat the main group they start infighting.
What about the basics ? What's the death-toll like. What's the % GDP decline and starvation rates in comparison to before the war?
Death toll
13k people died this year,
Compare to
26k isreal gaza war
52k Russo Ukraine war
GDP decline is 6%
Starvation unknown
Thx. I also note the UA numbers are probably bullshit - we can be reasonably sure how many Russians died, but no one's counting Ukrainians and it's a state secret too.
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It gave us this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6r6vnSR0wbI?si=dMHS7xwOIMSRFuea
I watched the whole thing. I like her commitment.
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Yeah it's mostly in the you've forgotten about category.
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What advantage does that one have over the actual IED manual?
Anyway. The subject has come up on occasion. My understanding was that China backed the Tatmadaw as a stabilizing force, but when they failed to deliver, fell back on the iron fist. It’s more like the U.S. interventions in Central America than in Afghanistan.
I think it’s worth remembering that the fog of war makes a lot of obvious interference less obvious. Take a day to consider your options, and that rebel army is suddenly two towns further down the road. China isn’t puppeting the war so much as funneling it.
TIL of this manual. I'll drive down to the bomb range and test some of those out when I get the time. I wonder how those will do compared to IED's made from Ammonia, formaldehyde and nitric acid. you can make pretty effective cluster grenades with that, ball bearings and a plastic coke bottle.
Yeah it's just weird that a war which has 1/4 the casualties of the russo-ukraine war, or 1/2 that of Isreal gaza has orders of magnitude less coverage
There’s no designated bad guy and we’re not paying for either side. So like Sudan…
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