newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Sun Nov 05, 2023 12:41 am You don’t mentioning the giant elephant in the room… China…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Myanmar_pipelines

This pipeline supplies 3-5% of China’s energy needs. In the event of war, this oil doesn’t need to transit the straits of Malacca.

But this is all dependent of the junta winning the civil war. It’s the national survival of the CPP at stake.

The number of civilians tortured and killed means very little when the existential survival of the communist party is at stake.

Junta authorities in Laukkai on the Chinese border have urged Chinese nationals to leave for their safety as the area is under siege from an ethnic alliance offensive in northern Shan State.

A Nov. 3 public notice issued by the administration body of Kokang Self-Administered Zone says Laukkai is now in a state of chaos as companies, businesses, and hotels and restaurants have shut down.

Laukkai, a nest of gambling and telecom scams, is currently controlled by the junta-affiliated Kokang Border Guard Force.

A Myanmar migrant working in Laukkai said: “Most of the hotels and companies operating gambling businesses have shut down. Some gambling dens are however still operating. Some companies are preventing their employees from leaving by threatening to withhold or slash their salaries.”

Is China finally turning its back on the ethnic armed groups across its border with Myanmar – and are they distancing themselves from their traditional benefactors in the Chinese security services? Coordinated attacks carried out by the Brotherhood Alliance – comprising the Kokang-based Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army and Arakan Army – across northern Shan State which have led to the disruption of trade between China and Myanmar seem to indicate precisely that. And before what is termed “Operation1027” was launched by those three groups in late October, China issued arrest warrants for two leading members of the United Wa State Party and Army (UWSA), Chen Yanban, aka Bao Yanban, and Xiao Yanquan, aka He Chuntian.
The Chinese have also reportedly detained Bao Junfeng, a deputy commander of the UWSA. He Chuntian is none other than the son-in-law of UWSP/UWSA supremo Bao Youxiang and Bao Junfeng is a nephew. Bao Yanban is a prominent businessman who operates casinos and scam compounds in the UWSA-controlled areas. All of them are accused of involvement in telecom fraud operations in areas near the Chinese border.
.......
As long as Myanmar is weak, China can play official games of being a “friendly neighbor” and “peacemaker” and, at the same time, use a carrot-and-stick approach to whatever government is in power: trade coupled with investment on the one hand and indirect support for the ethnic armed organizations on the other. If Myanmar ever became exactly that – strong, peaceful, democratic and federal – China would be the first to lose. The leverage China has today inside Myanmar would be gone. But then China does not want to see the situation get totally out of hand either, because that would mean serious instability in the frontier areas and, most likely, an unwanted flood of refugees across its border.

Armed groups collecting taxes in Myanmar’s Lashio is nothing new, but a mysterious outfit is upping the ante by bombing public places if its demands are not met and refusing to negotiate.

Crime has become rampant in Lashio, the largest city in northern Shan State, which like many places in Myanmar, has seen a significant breakdown in rule of law since the 2021 military coup. The military’s North Eastern Command is headquartered in Lashio town, but even that is not deterring attacks.

Local sources say there have been at least 17 such bomb attacks in Lashio Township since the coup – at least eight this year alone. In another shocking recent incident, two people were killed and at least 10 injured at a Denko petrol station on the highway connecting Lashio and Mandalay on September 27. Some business sources said Denko was targeted because it refused to pay protection money.

The military-installed president of Myanmar has warned that the country is in danger of breaking apart if the government cannot control fighting which has broken out in Shan State.

Former General Myint Swe, who was appointed after a coup in 2021, was speaking at an emergency meeting held by the ruling military council to address a series of co-ordinated attacks by anti-military insurgents which have inflicted serious losses on the armed forces.

Three ethnic insurgent armies in Shan State, supported by other armed groups opposing the government, has overrun dozens of military posts, and captured border crossings and the roads carrying most of the overland trade with China.

It is the most serious setback suffered by the junta since it seized power in February 2021. After two-and-half years of battling the armed uprising it provoked with its disastrous coup, the military is looking weak, and possibly beatable.

The government has responded with airstrikes and artillery bombardments, forcing thousands of people to leave their homes. But it has been unable to bring in reinforcements or recover the ground it has lost. Among hundreds of troops killed is believed to be the commander of government forces in northern Shan State, Brigadier General Aung Kyaw Lwin, the most senior officer killed in combat since the coup.

What makes this attack even more significant is that it marks the first time that the well-armed insurgents operating in Shan State have explicitly aligned themselves and their military operations with the wider campaign to overthrow the junta and restore democratic rule.

However, there are other factors at play. These three insurgent groups have long-held ambitions to expand the territory they hold. And crucially China, which normally acts as a restraining influence on all the groups along its border with Myanmar, has not prevented this operation from going ahead.

That is probably because of its frustration over the military government's inaction over the scam centres which have proliferated in Shan State. Thousands of Chinese citizens and other foreigners have been forced to work in these scam centres. The insurgents say one of their aims is to close them down.

According to the UN the number of people displaced by the fighting has reached two million, and the Secretary-General appealed to all sides to protect non-combatants and open access for humanitarian aid.
The striking success of an alliance of three ethnic armed groups in Shan State in driving the army and police out of large areas along the border with China has emboldened other opposition forces around Myanmar.

In Kayah State, south of Shan State along the border with Thailand, ethnic Karenni insurgents, who already control much of the state, are attacking the main town of Loikaw and have already captured the university on its outskirts.

With the coordinated strategy of the resistance forces spreading across the country, the degree of joint planning that preceded the launch of Operation 1027 has become visible in both the comprehensive nature of the nationwide strategy and the diversity of the opposition armed forces deployed in the various theaters of attack, as was described in the first part of this two-part series. After a two-and-a-half-year standoff between the junta’s military and those fighting for a new democratic federal government free of military control, the whole structure of the conflict seems to have shifted suddenly to incorporate a powerful array of ethnic armed forces that previously had not openly declared themselves to be on one side or the other of the anti-coup movement.
The junta military now finds itself facing a more formidable enemy, even as the strength, capacity, and morale of its own forces have diminished severely. And the opposition forces find themselves consolidating victories against the military across the country much more rapidly than they expected. The generals in Naypyitaw are clearly fumbling to find an effective defense against the formidable new threat facing them.

There is no doubt that recent events in Myanmar were as unanticipated as they are unprecedented. An alliance of three ethnic resistance armies in the north—the Kokang-based Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA, a Palaung group) and the Arakan Army (AA)—has overrun more than 200 junta bases and confiscated huge quantities of weapons. Morale among the Myanmar army’s troops is low, and there have been surrenders and even defections. The alliance’s military successes in the north have encouraged other resistance forces across the country to be more active, and the Myanmar army seems to be losing ground everywhere. Myanmar appears to be ablaze with resistance to the junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), which seized power in Naypyitaw in February 2021. But is this really going to lead to the downfall of the SAC and the government it appointed, and to the disintegration of the Myanmar army, and put the country on a course to the federal democracy that many see as the final goal of the resistance?