Analyst Zachary Abuza has a tight handle on Myanmar’s worsening crisis. As he points out to Insight Myanmar in a newly-released Podcast, the Myanmar military appear to have bitten off more than they can chew.
Check out the podcast on Insight Myanmar here: https://insightmyanmar.org/complete-shows/2023/9/28/episode-196-the-brut...
“Just look at the number of fronts that [the Burmese military] is fighting,” says Abuza, who joins the Insight Myanmar Podcast for a fourth interview. “They're fighting in Chin state, Magwe, Mandalay, different parts of Shan states, Kayah state, they're just fighting everywhere right now. There are very few parts of the country that are free of violence.”
TIMELY ASSESSMENT
Abuza offers a timely assessment as an ethnic alliance in northern Shan State makes news headlines with their “Operation 1027” that is sweeping up junta military outposts.
In the Podcast, Abuza starts off by noting the multi-front war that the junta is waging across the country, where it is simultaneously facing more foes than ever before. “You have these new battlefields that the military seems unprepared for and certainly doesn't have the manpower or resources,” he says. “And yet they're fighting! They've chosen to fight in these places.”
BATTLE FOR THANTLANG
In Chin State, for example, he explains how the military has been undertaking a last-ditch effort— unsuccessful so far—to retake Thantlang. Then the Kachin Independence Army has started an all-out offensive, and Abuza says the generals are terrified of losing their hold on the highly profitable jadeite mines there.
Meanwhile, Karen forces have been battling them to a standstill, and Kayah fighters have begun launching a series of coordinated attacks. To make matters even worse for the coup leaders, several divisions of the once-aligned Border Guard Forces have defected. Abuza also discusses how even when soldiers are able to take over a village, for example, they rarely gain control over the roads leading in and out, and are totally unable to offer any real local administration, in contrast to the services that the NUG and ethnic forces have begun looking after.
Here Abuza references the insights of the acclaimed French journalist, Bernard Fall, who pointed out in the 1950s that although French forces in Vietnam had far greater military capacity, local militias were still able to continue collecting taxes and administering local services, which to Fall was a key indicator that the French would never be victorious there.
STEPPING UP PRESSURE
With few options left now in Myanmar, “the military has no option but to intensify attacks, even though they're running short on manpower.”
Abuza explores various facets of the present state of the Myanmar military. “Without a doubt, the PDFs are better armed,” Abuza notes. “They're getting a steady supply of ammunition. There are battlefield losses, and we also know that the military doesn't really have great battlefield medicine. So people that are wounded, [and] who should live, are often dying. It's what they call ‘The Golden Hour,’ and they're losing troops they should not lose.” Adding that exact defection numbers are hard to come by, he says one thing is for certain, that fewer soldiers are choosing to leave their positions. Partly this is because many soldiers’ families are held as virtual hostages within military housing camps, and would be severely punished were the soldier to defect.
DECADES OF ABUSE
But also, Abuza suspects that many doubt they would ever be welcomed back into Burmese society, aware of the terrible atrocities and war crimes the army has been committing for years now throughout the country. “There's this sense right now of either ‘we hang together or we hang separately,’” he explains. “And never forget the power of indoctrination! They've always been told that they are the only people that can hold this otherwise fractious country together. This has been literally beaten into them since the first day they join the military.”
Yet while defection numbers may be down, Abuza finds that more and more commanders are simply refusing to follow orders, leading to a series of high-level disciplinary measures and replacements.
FUNDING PROBLEMS
An even more worrisome concern for the generals is how to continue to fund their terror campaign. After allocating themselves a 50 per cent increase in military spending, they are committing a whopping $2.7 billion towards waging this bloody war. But Abuza points out that much of this figure will be siphoned off in corruption, and with state-owned factories not producing high quality products or spare parts, and with jet fuel getting increasingly hard to come by, he believes that their available monies won’t actually go very far. And he also points out that this huge budget allocation does not actually mean there is more money available to pay for it.
“The military doesn't know what they're doing!” he exclaims. “When they give themselves a 50 per cent increase in their military budget, it's not because they have more revenue. For that, they've taken money away from other departments and other social services. They're cutting back education and public health.”
POOR TACTICS
Moreover, Abuza explains that besides their dwindling supplies, the military’s tactical and strategic skill, from top to bottom, is as poor as ever. “The one thing you can say about them is that they haven't changed their tactics at all. Here we are, over 30 months since the coup, they control less territory than before, and the NUG is increasingly able to arm and provide a steady stream of ammunition to their fighters,” he explains. “There's been no fundamental reassessment of their strategy. What they're doing is simply more of what they had done previously: more attacks on civilians, more arson, and more of the Four Cuts strategy to terrorize the population into submission. And this has failed.”
Indeed, leaked minutes from a recent meeting involving the major architects of the military’s strategy revealed an awareness that their military campaigns are not achieving their objectives, but again, there was no capacity for thinking how to innovate or fight in a different way. “There's been no reassessment of the fundamental military strategy, and they cannot sit there and think that they're winning!”
RESISTANCE ADVANCES
On the flip side, the resistance forces are faring better than ever, achieving recent victories in ground conflicts. “They deserve a lot of credit for battlefield innovation and improved tactics. But all that said, that strategy is not going to bring the military to their knees anytime soon.”
The real question, then, is how long can the military continue to hold on? And the answer, unfortunately, is that there may be no real resolution coming anytime soon, as the regime is able to continue selling off its natural resources to neighbouring countries.
In addition, investment from Thailand and China has not slowed down; money is also sent from Singapore where it gets incorporated and returned to Myanmar to buy up “distressed assets.” The real estate market in urban areas remains hot as homes are bought as tangible assets in the face of high inflation; however, the military has set up a system that intentionally makes it hard to trace the money and know who is doing the buying, though it is most likely cronies of the regime.
ASSET FREEZE?
For Abuza, the only significant game-changer would be if the military’s nearly six billion dollars in foreign holdings is frozen, but he suspects that there is slim chance of that happening. “The economy is going to continue to weaken, and the country is going to fall further and further behind its ASEAN neighbours. And it's heartbreaking.”
In this same vein, Abuza notes that the Burmese economy has contracted by 12 per cent. This is “a decade's worth of economic growth that was just eviscerated by the avarice, the greed, the desire for power of the military! You now have nearly 60 per cent of the population living beneath the poverty line, and food insecurity is growing.”
The numbers are staggering, with inflation hovering between 14-20 per cent (by comparison, a 5 per cent inflation rate is a major political issue in a developed country), and the kyat has declined 300 per cent since the coup. Because of the diminished value of the kyat combined with the high inflation rate, a
new, 20,000 kyat bill was just introduced by the junta, which will only further damage the monetary value.
“They can't provide any macroeconomic stability,” Abuza notes of the military. “They run the Central Bank not as a normal bank that's trying to deal with economic growth and controlling inflation. They're using it as a wartime bank to support the war effort!”
On top of this, those top bankers and experts who have not already fled the country have mostly been arrested, meaning that these financial decisions are likely being made by individuals with no background in managing a national economy.
URBAN DECAY
Urban areas in Myanmar are now being transformed not only by this massive investment offsetting the collapsing economy, but also by a sharp spike in crime and illicit narcotics, which Abuza attributes to the city’s dwindling police forces as they get re-assigned to quell PDF and ethnic attacks in the countryside.
Meanwhile, he notes that in rural regions, the everyday bravery of fighting against the military’s tyranny continues.
“From the northernmost part of the country to the southernmost, and from east to west, despite the threat of arrest, of terrible treatment upon arrest, whether sexual violence or rape, being tortured to death, people are protesting military rule,” Abuza says. “Every day, there are flash mobs in villages around the country protesting military rule! The courage of the people of Myanmar to do this for 30 plus months, it is astounding.”
Check out the podcast on Insight Myanmar here: https://insightmyanmar.org/complete-shows/2023/9/28/episode-196-the-brut...
