Peng Jiasheng, the founder and former chair of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which is fighting with the Myanmar Army in northern Shan State, died aged 94 on Wednesday morning, 16 February.

Peng Jiasheng (also spelled Pheung Kya-shin) joined the armed struggle against the Ne Win regime in Burma in 1965 and served as an officer in the Kokang People's Revolution Army led by Jimmy Yang. According to the ethnic affairs and political analyst Maung Maung Soe, he joined the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) armed group under Kokang Saopha as an officer in 1969 and eventually rose to the rank of commander.

“Peng Jiasheng did many negative and positive things during his lifetime,” Maung Maung Soe wrote on his Facebook page, calling him a “capable person”. “In my opinion, his younger brother Peng Jiafu was better than Peng Jiasheng in military matters. But Peng Jiasheng was better in mobilization and administration.”

In 1989, Peng Jiasheng opposed the CPB and in the same year he founded the MNDAA: the first ethnic armed group to publicly denounce the CPB. Immediately afterwards the MNDAA signed a ceasefire with the military regime, which allowed Peng Jiasheng to traffic drugs in the Kokang region on the border with China. The ceasefire collapsed in 2009 and fighting ensued after the junta pressured the MNDAA and the other armed groups to transform into border guard forces under its rule. Peng Jiasheng fled to China.

In 2015, he reformed the MNDAA and it has been fighting the Myanmar Army intermittently ever since.