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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1644 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 26

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Myanmar

The war between the Bamar military junta of Myanmar and their one trillion ethnic secessionist groups has been waging forever, but a twist in the past two years has changed the power dynamic quite a bit - several of the rebel groups have been for the first time working together. For the first time in a while it seems like the military is on the defensive from multiple angles:

Myanmar’s military government faced a fresh challenge Monday when one of the armed ethnic groups in an alliance that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast launched attacks in the western state of Rakhine.

The Arakan Army launched surprise assaults on two outposts of the Border Guard Police, a paramilitary force, in Rakhine’s Rathedaung township, according to independent online media and area residents. The attacks took place despite a yearlong cease-fire with Myanmar’s military government…

The offensive in the northern part of Shan state was already seen as a significant challenge for the army, which has struggled to contain a nationwide uprising by the members of Peoples’ Defense Force. The pro-democracy resistance organization was formed after the army seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021. It also set up loose alliances with several of the ethnic armed groups.

“If combat persists, it will open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched with fighting, including on its eastern border with China,” Richard Horsey, the senior adviser on Myanmar for the Crisis Group think tank, said in an emailed statement.

This comes on the Heels of the United Nations releasing a grim retrospective on the conflict:

About 90,000 people have been displaced in Myanmar due to the intensifying conflict between the country’s military rulers and an alliance of ethnic armed groups, the United Nations said.

“As of 9 November, almost 50,000 people in northern Shan were forced into displacement,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update on Friday.

A further 40,000 people have been displaced by clashes between the military and its opponents in neighbouring Sagaing region and Kachin state since early November, OCHA added…

On Thursday, Myint Swe, appointed as Myanmar’s president after the coup, told a national defence and security council meeting in the country that “if the government does not effectively manage the incidents happening in the border region, the country will be split into various parts”.

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