Myanmar’s Spring Revolution is both impressive and tragic according to rights campaigner Igor Blazevic.

In this recent interview with Sophia, assistant editor of the Federal Journal Myanmar, Blazevic assesses progress by the Myanmar resistance to oust the illegal military junta.

SOPHIA: The current Spring Revolution has reached a period of more than two years. It has been two years since the Federal Charter was enacted. It is two years since the formation of the National Unity Government (NUG). So, if you review the current Spring Revolution, how do you see it?

IGOR: The Spring Revolution is impressive. It is heroic. It is tragic. And it is hopeful.

When the Myanmar military staged the coup, they were confident that they will suppress protests in few months and that at this point of time Min Aung Hlaing will be elected as President behaving as if he is the king. This did not happen. Every single diplomat based in Yangon and the UN agencies expats believed that it was a pity what was happening, but they believed that it is inevitable to deal with junta because the junta will anyhow prevail at the end over the people’s protests. The determination and courage of the Spring Revolution proved that they were wrong.

There is no need to explain why the military’s war of terror against the nation is tragic.

The Spring Revolution is hopeful because of the courage and readiness of too many people in Myanmar to take absolute risk and endure enormous hardship in order to finally gain their freedom. Their moral and collective strength is bigger than the terror which the criminal, kleptocratic, mafia regime of Min Aung Hlaing is able to inflict.

With just a bit concrete assistance from the free world, neighbours and ASEAN, the struggle of the people of Myanmar for freedom would last just a few more months. Without that assistance the struggle will last longer and will be more painful, but there is no way Min Aung Hlaing’s criminal junta can gain control. They can only be defeated and hopefully brought to justice.

The military is increasingly committing ugly crimes against civilians. Massacres are extremely traumatic but they do not give any real military gains to the junta. In a situation in which the military cannot

suppress determined and stubborn armed guerrilla resistance, the military is targeting civilians. The brutality of the atrocities is trying to hide the profound vulnerability of the sit tat (military). Behind the shocking pictures of massacres, there is something very important going on. Multiple resistance forces are successfully “bleeding” the junta. The Military is in a very bad position; especially once the rainy season comes. The junta is losing the Chin and Karenni states and also large parts of Sagaing. Increasingly they are under irresistible pressure in Karen State as well. Kachin and Arakan are piece by piece strengthening their proto-state from the bottom up.

The military has a simple problem they cannot solve – manpower. They have too many small unitsspread around a huge country. They have no reserves for re-enforcement. They are struggling with recruitment and supplies. On the other side, cooperation between EROs and PDFs is constantly increasing. The resistance is on a learning curve and is gradually increasing its capacity.

The brutality of the atrocities is trying to hide this profound vulnerability of the sit tat. If the pressure of resistance will continue, the military will sooner or later implode from the bottom-up.

SOPHIA: How would describe what kind of revolution the Spring Revolution is?

IGOR: Initial drivers of the Spring Revolution have been young aspirational generation (Gen Z), middle class urban professionals (CDM-ers) and “Lady voters”. The Myanmar Spring Revolution started primarily as the typical urban, middle class and youth non-violent, civic resistance.

However, the brutality of the military response to these non-violent urban protests has transformed the character of anti-junta uprising. With the need of people to defend themselves from military terror and with the shift to armed, guerilla resistance, the Spring Revolution largely became a rural revolution.

There is one more very important thing we need to always have in mind in order to properly understand what is going on in Myanmar. The Spring Revolution is just one struggle and one dynamic evolving since the coup, but not the only one. We also have parallel struggle of the ethnic stakeholders for their self-rule and self-determination. This is not the same struggle as the Spring Revolution. It is complementary struggle, but not the same. This struggle started long, long before the Spring Revolution, and it has its own dynamic, its own logic and its own goals. To make things even more complicated, this struggle of ethnic stakeholders for their self-rule and self-determination is not one homogenous unified dynamic.

Political and military leadership of different ethnic groups are making different calculations how to achieve their short-term and longer-term goals.

So, what we have is a very complex dynamic in which we do not have one revolution. But we have the Spring Revolution that is trying to remove the military from power and we have multiple already long-lasting revolutions that are aiming to fulfil self-rule aspirations of the ethnic nationalities. Those different revolutions are partly convergent, but they are not the same. It requires both wisdom and responsibility on the side of leaders to keep those different revolutions together, so that overall the anti-junta uprising has enough strength to defeat and remove the junta.

SOPHIA: What are determinant factors to achieve the goals of the revolution?

IGOR: There are many factors that are important and it is impossible to take one of them and say that that one is more important than others. There is no silver bullet. The outcome of the current struggle against the military will be decided by the interplay of many different factors. Let me mention some of them.

People’s support is critically important. The resistance to the junta has come this far because of the will and determination of the people. The SAC (State Administration Council) is trying hard to create the impression of “normalization” in urban centres and is ruthlessly trying to make support for the revolution extremely costly for people in the rural areas. In spite of that, it seems to me that the core support of people is likely to continue in spite of the hardship. The diaspora will remain mobilized as well.

However, it is critically important to keep participation and hope alive. Small victories matter. Bigger victories matter even more. Positive, hopeful narratives matter a lot. Bravery of youth protesters and of the guerilla soldiers keeps alive the revolutionary “social contract” for the whole nation. Their readiness to undertake the highest risk possible, the risk of losing lives, is putting a high moral imperative on everybody else. The new “social contract” is spelt out like this - if they, our brave kids, are ready to do so much, then every single one of us should do at least something.

It is also important to celebrate victories, and to turn pain into determination, victims into heroes. It is important to sustain strong civic and youth, the non-armed dimension of the anti-junta resistance in order to keep on mobilizing the general population.

Joint collective actions are very important; we need to practice them constantly. A myriad of highly motivated and creative Spring Revolution actors should keep on taking initiatives and doing their own campaigns and at the same time they all need, as much as they can, to participate in joint campaigns. This combination of horizontal diversity and capacity to coordinate collective actions is what is the source of enormous strength of the Spring Revolution.

We also need to be realistic about what to expect from the international community, in order to avoid demoralizing disappointments. There are no quick game changers. The Spring Revolution must continue to bet on determination and resilience. As Churchill said in the midst of the Second World War: ‘If you're going through hell, keep going’.

I think that in this moment it is better not to overburden the struggle with too many demands and agendas. Better not to spend too much time or to disagree about formal agreements and details of how the future without military oppression and terror should look like. Better first to make that future come. Minimum consensus about a few fundamental principles and strong, inspiring, visionary narratives about a positive, hopeful future is sufficient.

The NLD (National League for Democracy), I think, should boldly commit itself to ethnic self-determination. It is not enough to say we have already done that in this and that document or statement. Better to say it again and again thorough speeches of different NLD and NUG leaders. At the same time, ethnic political and ERO leaders should visibly and publically bet on the common project. Current operational cooperation between PDFs and EROs is extremely important, but it is also necessary that ethnic leaders publicly speak about the common project of a new Myanmar. We need to project Togetherness – both domestically and internationally.

It is necessary to continue improving operational and tactical cooperation of PDFs and EROs. But at some point of time it will be necessary to undertake a second D-Day - a large coordinated waves of attacks on multiple weaker positions of the sit tat. Something like a Myanmar “Tet Offensive“. Currently cooperation between PDFs and EROs is taking place in separate theatres of war. What will be needed is to achieve a strategic capacity to undertake offensives – not “taking territory”, but waves of hit and run operations – happening simultaneously in all theatres. This would stretch the sit tat to the breaking point. This would send the shock and awe through the military rank and file. This will make junta loyalists feel extremely insecure. At the same time, if anyhow possible, with specially deployed units, it will be good to hit targets of strategic importance - for example facilities that are critical for junta revenue streams, planes on the airfields, ammunition and fuel depositories, or top brass officers.

What can bring us in the quickest way to this level is visible and confident political alliance among key political and armed groups stakeholders. Such a political alliance will further deny the junta any legitimacy. The political alliance will advance the capacity for military victories. The political alliance can sustain mobilization and organization of the people. And, last but not least, a clear political alliance can shift the position of neighbours and the international community on questions of legitimacy, money and arms.

SOPHIA: How important is the role of local ethnic armed resistance organizations or EAOs in the Spring Revolution?

IGOR: The role of ethnic armed resistance organizations (EROs), and not only EROs, but more broadly the role of ethnic stakeholders, both armed as well as political and civic, is of critical importance.

If the NUG will be isolated, it will be defeated. Without the majority of relevant ethnic stakeholders backing and working with the NUG or even being involved in the NUG, the NUG does not have full legitimacy. Without EROs, the PDFs do not have arms, supply routes nor training. Without EAOs, the PDFs do not have sufficient military strength and manpower to inflict serious enough harm to the sit tat and to stretch it. Without the political alliance, international factors will remain unwilling to actively support anti-junta forces.

However, the equation goes the other way around as well. Without armed and civic resistance in Bama lowlands and upper central Myanmar, the EROs are no match for the sit tat either. EROs will always have a hard time to unite in one front, if for no other reason, than because of geography. If the military regime controls the Bama heartlands, all economic assets and the Bama majority as recruitment base, even united ethnic alliance is not sufficient to gain concessions from the junta. The junta’s divide-and-rule policy will always be more effective.

However, the alliance between the Bama PDF resistance and the ERO resistance, supported by the population at large and the diaspora, are capable of stretching the sit tat to the breaking point of the SAC and removal of MAH(Min Aung Hlaing). Once that happens, a completely new history of Myanmar will start. That will be like the new independence, like defeating the Japanese fascist occupying army. The opportunity for a new start.

SOPHIA: How much international support has the Spring Revolution been able to obtain?

IGOR: The outcome of the current war in Myanmar - junta’s war of terror and aggression against the population, and self-defensive and liberating war of people against military dictatorship - will be decided primarily by dynamics inside the country. Foreign, outside factors will play a secondary role.

So far international actors have abstained from intervening in order to solve the crisis. They have been sitting-and-waiting for fires inside Myanmar to extinguish by themselves. Myanmar neighbours and ASEAN have been in a containing game. They have tried to limit the negative impact of the Myanmar crisis on themselves instead of seriously trying to do something meaningful to solve the crisis.

Myanmar neighbours, other Asian countries and the rest of international actors still cannot imagine Myanmar without the military. They think the military must be part of a “negotiated solution”. Only when it becomes obvious that the junta will probably lose, they will change their approach. Not before.

A credible image of a winning anti-alliance will shift the position of neighbours and international players on questions of legitimacy, money and arms. No amount of junta atrocities will wake them up from the current passivity. They will express regret, they might make the junta even more of a pariah with whom they do not want to deal, but they will not actively support the anti-junta struggle in any meaningful way. It is not sympathy with people’s suffering which will move neighbours and regional actors - but the prospect of an anti-junta alliance prevailing.

There are three main biases that are preventing outside actors from supporting the Spring Revolution.

One we can describe as the “authoritarian bias”: Authoritarians support authoritarians, simple like that. That is why Thailand, China, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam support the junta. But even they do that in a limited way. Nobody really wants to be seen as too close to the junta.

Western democracies are far away, they have other priorities and have no core interests in Myanmar.

The second prejudice we can call the “Goliath bias, namely the belief and experience that brutally repressive regimes prevail at the end over people’s uprisings. That in real life Goliath will always prevail over David. This is what happened in Egypt, Venezuela, Belarus, Hong Kong. Entrenched, resourceful regimes that kept loyalty of their repressive apparatus at the end suppress with systematic and brutal violence very big, mass protests. So many foreign actors expected that the same would happen in Myanmar as well. This is why the UN agencies, India, Japan and many others are trying to appease the junta in spite of junta crimes. The want to keep their geopolitical and economic eggs in the Myanmar nest.

Lastly, there is the prejudice we can describe as stability bias, namely that pretty much everybody in world politics is concerned about stability. Everybody is afraid of failed states. Many will not tell that openly, but they do prefer “authoritarian stability” over state break-up, chaos, un-governability and multiple civil wars. In today’s international politics there is nobody any more who sees protection of democracy and human rights as its priority. Human rights and democracy supporting rhetoric might be still around, but not willingness for hard politics in favour of democracy and human rights protection. Everybody cares primarily about their own narrow self-interest, economic, security or geopolitical ones, and everybody is concerned about stability in the world that is becoming increasingly unstable.

Most of the outside actors have a deep prejudice that without the Tatmadaw, Myanmar will be broken up into many small territories controlled by different armed groups and warlords with no central government. What they do not understand is that it is exactly Min Aung Hlaing’s junta that is doing what they are afraid of – breaking Myanmar in total chaos and making it a failed state.

I think that the NUG and actors of the Spring Revolution should use a different narrative when engaging with international players. Instead of emphasizing human rights and democracy discourse and instead of trying to rely on assistance because of junta atrocities; what we need to do is to put forward and enforce our own “winning narrative” and our own ”stability narrative”.

Key talking points in the “winning narrative” are: We will never give up; the junta is gradually losing and will lose; we will win in the end. Key talking points in the “stability narrative” should be: the junta is the source of state failure and endless war. Min Aung Hlaing’s futile effort to consolidate power can never succeed but if he is allowed to continue to wage a war of terror against the civilian population, he can irreparably break the country into a failed state. We, the NUG and EROs, are the alliance which is the only hope for lasting peace and stability in Myanmar.

This should be repeated again and again, in every single communication with international players, be it policy-makers or media.

What is realistic to expect from neighbours, regional actors and international players? We can only gradually advance our agenda. We can make those currently passively supporting or appeasing the junta to be less and less willing to do so. We can make those who are currently passively supporting the Spring Revolution to be ready to do that a bit more. But nobody from outside will come to help the people of Myanmar defeat and remove MAH and junta. That can be done only by the domestic forces, and to do that, active and committed alliance is necessary.

SOPHIA: What is your opinion about the election planned by the Military Council?

IGOR: The junta’s talk about elections is just a time-buying strategy. They do not really mean to stage elections in the timeframe they are announcing. The SAC is using rhetoric about elections and the pretense of preparing one, to play a game in an effort to gain some legitimacy from countries like China, Thailand and India. The SAC is aware that it cannot organize even sham, staged elections any time soon.

Initially, in the moment of coup, Min Aung Hlaing had a Plan A with elections after two years but in the meantime, the military itself has admitted that it failed. So, the SAC is now testing what it can achieve with psychological warfare operations it calls “elections”, “postponed elections”, “collecting voter lists” and “conducting a census”. Always a new smoke bomb to divert attention and justify some new fake timeline.

MAH is now following another, alternative plan, trying to muddle through a five-year cycle after which he believes the 2020 election result will no longer be significant, and only after that hold elections.

The bottom line is, there will be no junta-staged elections: not in 2023, not in 2024, not in 2025.

There will be no elections simply because the people of Myanmar will reject them. The people will not participate. Resistance, both civic and armed, will disrupt it. And it is fully legitimate to disrupt such “elections”, because they are not “elections”, but a psychological operation or PSYOPS warfare operation.

Myanmar Spring Revolution activists, civil society and resistance just need to stay alert and active, and discredit, undermine and disrupt any attempt to even start preparing the scaffolding for what would be the electoral equivalent of a Potemkin village.

SOPHIA: To what extent can the Federal Charter guarantee federal democracy?

IGOR: The Federal Charter and the whole NUCC process has been an important phase of the Spring Revolution. However, that process got stuck in one moment. Some very important actors have not been part of the NUCC from the beginning. Some others, have withdrawn from the process. In the meantime, political reality and power dynamics have moved somewhere else.

Federalism, autonomy, self-rule and self-determination has been the core demand of all Myanmar ethnic nationalities from the country’s independence onward. That demand has never been listened to and has been suppressed by the military dictatorship. In a period between 2010 and 2015, and between 2016 and Feb 2021, the critical question in the core of negotiations about the peace, has been how much devolution of power the Myanmar military and from 2016 on the NLD government will be willing to accept in favour of the states and how much power Bama-dominated central government will be ready to delegate and share with ethnic nationalities.

We can say the critical question has been how much power and budgetary resources the central unitary state has been ready to decentralize, devolve and federalize through incorporating that decentralization in the constitution. This is not the fundamental question of Myanmar federalism any more. Attempted and failed coups, and athe ftermath of the coup have fundamentally changed the situation and power relations in Myanmar.

The failure of the military coup and junta’s gradual loss of the administrative and territorial control over big parts of the country on the one side, and, on the other side, critical dependence of the NUG and “democratic camp” on EROs and ERO-controlled territories have drastically weakened any central power in Myanmar.

In the meantime, emerging bottom-up federal structures have already advanced and that is an irreversible process. Chin and Karenni have already in significant extent liberated their own territory, they seem capable and determined to defend it and they are in the process of building, bottom up, its own proto state. Kachins have also very patiently and very strategically laid down the building blocks of their own state. Rakhine people led by the AA (Arakan Army) are also in advanced stages of creating foundations of their own proto state. Due to internal divisions among Karens and due to fact that they are not just territorial concentrated in Karen State but also territorially dispersed in few other states and regions, they are slightly lagging behind, but they will also not give up from their ambitions to have their own ethnic state. The Wa de facto already have their state. The Mon did not have leadership up to the challenge of this historic opportunity, but they are wakening up as well. Shan State is such a complex case due to its extreme diversity and number of armed groups there, that it is very hard to predict how things can develop there.

So, the question is not any more will some top-down political negotiations process devolve and federalize Myanmar and how that will be done. The question is, will bottom-up federal structures that already came into existence on one side, and political and armed leadership of the Bama majority on the other side, will they have prudency enough to navigate the very complex process of coming together.

If this future “coming together” of the country that has been already broken by the attempted and failed coup will be driven by maximalist and dogmatic, uncompromising demands by representatives of different ethnic groups – all of them armed - then the people of Myanmar will continue to live in something that will be similar to a Hobbesian Warre, in which life of man and even more so of women and children will be “poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

I see in current Myanmar – if I take the criminal junta out of the equation – three different political groups which are deriving their legitimacy from very different sources. In the first group are political actors that have done well in previous elections, whenever they have been at least partly free and fair. This is where the NLD belongs, but also the SNLD and few more ethnic parties. They will most probably do well in any future elections again, if they will be free and fair.

The second group are civic and social groups that have been drivers of the Spring Revolution and who are until today making huge contribution to the struggle. They have their own organizing infrastructures, their own leadership and their own significant reputation. Inevitably, they will also claim their own right and legitimacy to have a say in how the future of Myanmar will look like.

The last group consists of all those who will hold guns and control smaller or bigger territories in the moment when the junta will collapse.

It will require a lot wisdom and responsibility on the side of leaders of all those groups to “come together” in a new Myanmar. Nobody will be able to get all of what he or she would like to have, and everybody will need to accept some compromises.

Lessons learned from the bitter past, end of decades of internal conflict, end of dictatorship, prospect of peace and socio-economic development, the wealth an hope, strong incentives enough to tune the majority of key actors into a compromising mode, instead of dogmatism of maximalist demands.

Igor Blazevic, lecturer at the Educational Initiatives Myanmar between 2010 and 2016 and senior advisor at the Prague Civil Society Centre

Sophia, assistant editor in Federal journal Myanmar