At face value, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) is just one of many ethnic armed groups laying claim to territory in crisis-plagued Myanmar in the wake of the 2021 coup. They field from 7,000-15,000 fighters, taking a largely defensive posture in the face of junta forces, though recent clashes have occurred, and they side with the National Unity Government (NUG) and People’s Defence Forces (PDF).
But they have control of a growing swathe of territory in northern Shan State and the people living there, with implications for international donors seeking to support civilian populations in an increasingly fragmented Myanmar.
The TNLA are the subject of a new report by the International Crisis Group published 4 September entitled: “The Ta’ang Army Expands in Myanmar’s Shan State”.
WHY THE TNLA MATTERS
"Since Myanmar's 2021 coup, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has significantly expanded its territory in northern Shan State, and now has checkpoints on the outskirts of major cities,” says Crisis Group's Senior Consultant on Myanmar and Bangladesh, Thomas Kean.
“The military has been so stretched fighting new resistance forces elsewhere in the country that it has done little to stop the TNLA – it certainly doesn’t want to face another well-armed ethnic armed group on the battlefield.
“The TNLA doesn’t just control territory, it’s providing schools, health facilities and a judicial system, often in cooperation with Ta’ang civil society. This has enhanced its popularity with many Ta’ang people, but other ethnic communities and ethnic armed groups in northern Shan State feel threatened by its recent expansion,” he notes.
The International Crisis Group has an important suggestion for this group.
“To avoid provoking conflict with other ethnic armed groups or the military, the TNLA should shelve further territorial expansion and instead focus its attention on improving its self-administration. International actors should do what they appropriately can to boost the role of civil society in delivering services and maintaining positive relations between the diverse ethnic communities of northern Shan State," says Mr Kean.
KEY POINTS
The key points the International Crisis Group report notes, including a call-out to the TNLA, are as follows:
Firstly, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has used Myanmar’s post-2021 coup crisis to expand its territory in northern Shan State, recruit fighters and strengthen its parallel administration. Although it has quietly supported anti-coup resistance forces, it has clashed with the military only rarely and has met with regime representatives.
Secondly, the TNLA’s expansion has created tensions with other ethnic armed groups and non-Ta’ang communities in northern Shan State. The group’s ambiguous political positioning since the coup reflects the complex environment in which ethnic armed groups operate. It also helps explain why building a countrywide anti-regime alliance with both Bamar and ethnic groups has proven so difficult.
Thirdly, the TNLA, which seeks greater autonomy, should focus on caring for the people under its control through improved self-administration rather than expanding its territory further. It should also reform its recruitment practices – that include child soldier recruitment. Foreign donors should increase funding for local civil society organisations delivering services in Shan State.
REPORT FINDINGS
Since the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – one of the country’s most powerful ethnic armed groups – has strengthened its control of a swathe of territory in northern Shan State. In conjunction with Ta’ang civil society organisations, it is working to maintain the rule of law, deliver health and education services, and improve the local economy.
Unlike some of Myanmar’s other ethnic armed groups, it has mostly avoided confronting the military since the coup (although there have been a number of clashes recently: Mizzima notes). Instead, it has provided covert support to anti-junta forces and engaged indirectly with new opposition political institutions.
The group’s ambiguous post-coup positioning reflects its long-term ambition to achieve autonomy.
Since its inception in 2009, the TNLA has slowly acquired more strength and territory. It garnered popular support among the Ta’ang by pushing a strict anti-drug use policy and bringing together disparate communities under a common ethnic identity. Other ethnic armed groups in Myanmar – including the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and, more recently, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which is the largest such group and controls an autonomous region in Shan State – provided the training and weapons the TNLA needed to build up its armed forces.
Over the past decade, it gradually expanded its geographical footprint. For much of that time, it regularly clashed with the Myanmar military and its allied militias, as well as the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), a rival ethnic armed group.
JUNTA DISTRACTED
The 2021 coup has further strengthened the TNLA’s hand. Busy fighting on other fronts, the Myanmar military has largely withdrawn from the northern Shan State battlefield, enabling the group and its allies to gain territory and expel the RCSS from the area. The TNLA, which counts an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 personnel (other estimates claim 7,000-10,000: Mizzima notes), can now project power into nearby towns. The military’s withdrawal has also enabled the TNLA to assert authority in places it controls and govern in a way that advances its goal of building a robust, autonomous Ta’ang nation.
Working in partnership with Ta’ang civil society organisations, it has followed the lead of larger armed groups and created an incipient “Ta’ang State”, complete with courts, schools and health facilities. This quasi-state is very much a work in progress, but since the coup the group and its civil society partners, many of which are women-led, have moved well down the road toward creating a de facto autonomous governing body.
The report claims that to focus on consolidating control, the TNLA has staked out a middle ground in Myanmar’s post-coup conflict. It now tries to steer clear of clashes with the military. Although the Ta’ang group has been an important source of training and weapons for new forces resisting the junta, it has avoided publicising this support. It has also kept “informal” its engagement with the National Unity Government (NUG) – a parallel administration set up by lawmakers ousted by the coup – instead allowing Ta’ang civil society groups and politicians to lead the way in building these relationships.
The TNLA has also maintained contact with the junta. Along with two other ethnic armed groups, it recently had a rare meeting with regime negotiators tasked with striking ceasefire deals.
NEIGHBOURING BIG BROTHER
It did so under pressure from Beijing. China has longstanding ties to Myanmar, with which it shares a 2,160km border, and since the late 1980s has invested heavily in its neighbour, in part through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In order to protect its economic interests, China is particularly keen to keep the southern border it shares with Shan State stable.
The TNLA’s positioning helps explain why building an anti-military coalition in Myanmar has proven so difficult. Most ethnic armed groups are hostile to the military regime, but they also see little prospect of it collapsing, making them reluctant to cement alliances with the NUG or armed resistance.
Chinese pressures further push these groups away from overt confrontation. At the same time, the TNLA and other ethnic armed groups are influenced by their communities, civil society organisations, and the broader domestic and even international public. They thus have to balance various demands when determining the best pathway to achieving their objectives – in the TNLA’s case, a de facto autonomous Ta’ang State.
FRAGMENTATION
The group’s expansion in recent years also reflects a broader fragmentation within Myanmar’s national borders that has accelerated since the 2021 coup. With the central administration unable to operate normally, non-state armed groups such as the TNLA or civil society organisations working in the areas
they control are the purveyors of public services to millions of people. Together, the TNLA and Ta’ang civil society organisations run schools, provide health care, collect taxes and administer justice systems.
The TNLA’s rise is not without risk to it or the people under its control. Further expansion could provoke conflict with either other ethnic armed groups or the military. Even absent TNLA growth, the military may at some point seek to recapture some of the lost territory.
It is important to recognize that non-Ta’ang people in Shan State feel threatened by the TNLA’s gathering might, and this could fan inter-communal tensions. The high costs associated with maintaining a large armed force and system of governance also mean that the TNLA runs the risk of overreach. The need to raise revenue already appears to be pushing it into competition with other ethnic armed groups and pro-military militias, which could lead to sharpening hostilities.
GROUP RECOMMENDATION
Given the reality of state fragmentation in Myanmar, the people of northern Shan State will be best served through a combined effort by the TNLA, civil society and donors to manage conflict risk, improve governance and deliver services, the report suggests.
The TNLA should refrain from further expansion, which would risk renewed conflict, and take greater care to avoid provoking other ethnic minorities living in its territory. It should reform its recruitment policies, including by ending conscription – often enforced through violence or threats thereof – and cracking down on recruitment of child soldiers.
Meanwhile, donors should expand support for civil society organisations in northern Shan State, including not only Ta’ang groups but also those run by other ethnic minorities. Strengthening civil society would not only allow these groups to provide more services to civilians, but it would also afford them a degree of moderating influence over the leadership of armed groups, particularly when it comes to maintaining peaceful inter-ethnic relations in this corner of war-torn Myanmar.
RISING UP
Although the TNLA is newer than many of Myanmar’s other ethnic armed groups, its roots lie in a 60-year armed struggle for greater autonomy for the Ta’ang people.
Referred to as “Palaung” by the country’s majority Burmans, the Ta’ang speak Mon Khmer languages and live mainly in the mountains of northern Shan State, including some particularly remote areas. Smaller Ta’ang communities reside in southern Shan State, China’s Yunnan province and northern Thailand. At least three major Ta’ang sub-groups, speaking six Ta’ang languages, are dispersed throughout parts of Myanmar. Historically, the community has had little interaction with the Myanmar state.
Geographical isolation, however, did not insulate the Ta’ang from the conflict that gradually engulfed Shan State following Myanmar’s independence in 1948. A year after General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, Ta’ang political leaders formed the Palaung National Front to fight for autonomy from the military regime. In 1976, some members broke away to create a new armed group, the Palaung State Liberation Organisation (PSLO), and allied themselves with the KIO. The PSLO kept up its struggle throughout Ne Win’s rule, which ended in 1988 amid national protests. Another military regime quickly took over, however, launching a bloody crackdown on demonstrators.
Soon after the new junta seized power, it started cutting ceasefire deals with ethnic armed groups in Myanmar’s borderlands. The PSLO resisted at first, but its leaders were forced to accept a ceasefire in 1991 after a devastating military operation targeting Ta’ang civilians.
The PSLO gradually lost influence and territory, until eventually the regime compelled it to disarm in 2005. During the ceasefire period, illicit drugs began to flood into Ta’ang communities, and human rights groups reported high rates of addiction. Like other minorities, the Ta’ang came to see the influx of narcotics as a “military strategy” aimed at “destroying” their identity and undermining their political goal of greater autonomy.
ANTI-DRUG
The Ta’ang struggle for autonomy went on, however. The drug addiction crisis, in parallel to the PSLO’s weakening, strengthened the belief among the Ta’ang that they needed a new armed group to protect themselves, though the group took some time to come together. Just months after the PSLO reached a
ceasefire in 1991, disgruntled members formed a new organisation, the Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF), based on the Thai-Myanmar border, which was primarily a political entity rather than a fighting force. By the late 2000s, the military regime was pressuring many of the country’s ethnic armed groups to become Border Guard Forces under its control, leading to a certain level of solidarity among them. In 2009, the PSLF formed an armed wing, the TNLA, with support from the KIO, which provided the new outfit with training and weapons.
THE USE OF TA’ANG
The TNLA is both an armed group and a nation-building project. The PSLF’s decision to use the term “Ta’ang” – which is how the Ta’ang people refer to themselves – as the name of its armed wing reflected a “reshaping of the ethnonational collective identity”. It was a way for the TNLA to assert leadership of peoples beyond the area traditionally considered the Ta’ang homeland, including Ta’ang subgroups in other parts of Shan State, as well as in China and Thailand.
Using the word Ta’ang was also a symbolic rejection of the Palaung Self-Administered Zone created under Myanmar’s 2008 constitution, which encompasses only two townships (Namhsan and Mantong). The TNLA instead fights for a larger “Ta’ang State” that would be carved out of present-day Shan State, within a genuinely federal system. At the same time, retaining “Palaung” in the name of the political wing emphasised the continuity with earlier resistance movements.
GROWTH IN STRENGTH
During Myanmar’s decade of political liberalisation, from 2011 to 2021, the TNLA grew slowly but steadily into one of the country’s most powerful ethnic armed groups. Particularly in the early years, its key strategy was to pursue a harsh antidrug policy – drug users were forced into rehabilitation camps – that was highly popular among the Ta’ang. After it had established a foothold in isolated areas of northern Shan State, its influence burgeoned. With a strictly enforced recruitment policy that required most Ta’ang households with more than one child to supply a soldier, the group expanded its forces. It soon began to clash with the military and its allied militias.
Despite its growing clout, the TNLA was largely excluded from the peace process that Myanmar President Thein Sein initiated in 2011. It was one of the few ethnic armed groups that did not sign a bilateral ceasefire with the quasi-civilian government between 2011 and 2021. It participated in collective negotiations over the text of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), but the Thein Sein government, under pressure from the military, later blocked the TNLA from signing the accord.
Heightened conflict and the exclusion of several groups from the peace process spurred non-signatories into closer political and military collaboration, including joint offensives.
In late 2015, amid a steady increase in clashes with the military, the TNLA found itself battling a new foe. Shortly after signing the NCA that October, the RCSS began to move its forces from the centre and south of Shan State into northern areas, allegedly with the Myanmar military’s support. Fierce firefights erupted between the TNLA, on one side, and the RCSS and the army, on the other, taking a severe toll on the locals and exacerbating tensions between the Ta’ang and Shan peoples.
For much of the liberalisation decade from 2011 to 2021, the TNLA was on a war footing, fighting either the military, military-backed militias or other ethnic armed groups. It had little time to focus on administration or service delivery. That changed in about 2018, after the TNLA gained a firm foothold in parts of northern Shan State. Around the same time, the group began shifting away from the KIO, which had reached an informal ceasefire with the military, toward building closer relations with the UWSA. TNLA members were dispatched to UWSA territory for administrative training, which gradually led to improvements in TNLA governance and services.
At the same time, Myanmar’s imperfect but nevertheless marked political liberalisation created greater space for Ta’ang civil society and political groups to operate. The Ta’ang National Party was formed to contest the 2010 elections, and from 2012 civil society organisations that had been based in Thailand, such as the Ta’ang Women’s Organisation and the Ta’ang Students and Youth Organisation, moved inside Myanmar, focusing on issues such as empowerment of youth and women, documentation of human rights violations and environmental protection. After the Thein Sein government lifted longstanding bans on the teaching of minority languages, Ta’ang literature and culture committees also emerged.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
The International Crisis Group report offers suggestions of ways forward for this ethnic armed organization.
In barely a decade, the TNLA has gained control of a large section of northern Shan State, encompassing significant parts of at least eight townships. Taking advantage of a lull in fighting after the February 2021 coup, it has encouraged Ta’ang civil society to greatly expand services to Ta’ang people, which in turn has helped enhance the group’s popularity. The TNLA now has a firm grip on the mountains of northern Shan State, and it is unlikely to be dislodged in the foreseeable future, given both the weakness of the military and the priority China puts on stability along the border.
At the same time, its territorial expansion and continued cooperation with post-coup resistance forces carry a risk of renewed conflict with the military. In places, the group’s expansion has also created tensions with other minorities and ethnic armed groups, which could spark clashes affecting civilians.
The TNLA’s consolidation of power is symptomatic of the fragmentation in postcoup Myanmar. A multitude of armed actors are carving out territory for themselves.
The TNLA’s approach of avoiding direct confrontation with the military while quietly supporting anti-military resistance forces reflects the complexity of the situation Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups face. Reconciling their long-term objectives with pressure from their base to confront the regime makes for a rocky path to tread.
Complicating matters further, Beijing is keen to reduce tensions along the border it shares with Myanmar. Although TNLA leaders are sympathetic to the anti-military resistance movement, they are unable or unwilling to formally participate. Instead, they play a behind-the-scenes role. That helps explain why it has proven so difficult for the NUG and its allies to build a broad alliance to topple the regime, as many hoped might be possible at first.
SAY NO TO EXPANSION
Against this backdrop, the best near-term hope for the Ta’ang people of northern Shan state is that TNLA and its civil society partners will provide them with governance, services and a level of security that in the absence of the state will otherwise likely be unavailable. Some of its actions to date are positive.
Others – particularly those that involve underaged or forced recruitment of foot soldiers – should be stopped.
To the extent that the TNLA is considering expanding its territorial control, it should shelve the idea, recognising that it could wind up provoking both competing armed groups and the military regime. More effective self-administration will be a better focus for its efforts, and international actors should do what they appropriately can to assist it in this endeavour.
