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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   1309 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 1, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. 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 coalition of separatist groups, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, continues to steadily push back

thousands more military personnel – including entire battalions – are reported to have surrendered. In some cases, soldiers say they defected for moral objections or political reasons. In many others, they surrendered after being overwhelmed by their opponents.

By early January, anti-junta fighters captured the key town of Laukkai near the Chinese border. Ye Myo Hein, an analyst at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based thinktank, described it as “the largest surrender in the history of Myanmar’s military”, saying he understood that 2,389 military personnel, including six brigadier generals, had surrendered.

It was reported that some of the six generals had been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment by the junta for surrendering. The junta has since denied this.

Since Operation 1027, more than 4,000 soldiers are estimated to have defected or surrendered, according to Dr Sasa, minister of international cooperation for Myanmar’s national unity government, which was formed to oppose the junta.

This is in addition to 14,000 military personnel who defected since the 2021 coup through programmes set up by activists to persuade soldiers to join the resistance, he says.

Russia has been the junta’s primary backer militarily since they rose to power (from 2022 onward, in exchange for Tatmadaw stymying any attempt by ASEAN to deal with Ukraine). For now they seem to be continuing to stand by them:

After the 2021 coup, Moscow decided to support the junta and bet on its survival… what has followed is an intensive bilateral cooperation spanning transfers of arms and counterintelligence know-how, joint army and naval exercises, and diplomatic cover, with Russia vetoing United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Sit-Tat.

Russia provided a third of all international arms transfers to Myanmar’s military when counting from 1992, so the Tatmadaw has additional stocks compatible with Russia’s systems. In November 2023, Russia’s navy carried out separate joint exercises with Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar, projecting power and compensating for the loss of training space in the Black Sea…

However, China has steadily soured on the junta. They weren’t really on board with the coup at first in general as they had maintained good relations with the democratic government, but they made their peace with the situation. However, the junta’s consistent inability or unwillingness to crack down on illicit organizations on the border, and to make sure bombs from the conflict don’t land on Chinese soil, have rapidly reduced China;s enthusiasm for the Tatmadaw.

China is Myanmar’s largest trade partner and has made sizable investments in Myanmar as part of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a subset of the Belt and Road Initiative. On the other hand, China has been building leverage in the country through patronage of and arms sales to ethnic insurgent groups, notably the United State Wa Army and the members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance…

During a May 2023 visit, Foreign Minister Qin Gang expressed China’s disappointment at the junta’s inability to control the border area between the two countries. What apparently tipped the balance for Beijing was the proliferation of online scammers and human-trafficking operations in the northeast of Myanmar.

No one really knows what will happen next so the coming months may prove to be very interesting and very dynamic.

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