Myanmar’s military government has acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from a key city on the northeastern border with China after it was taken over by an alliance of ethnic armed groups it has been battling for months.
It said 2,389 military personnel — including six brigadier generals — and their family members had surrendered by Friday and that all were evacuated to safety.
Damn. Every video I've seen from Myanmar is like three teenagers with one homemade rifle trying to take out individual soldiers in small ambushes. They must have really built up their capabilities for an offensive like this.
It's an extremely interesting conflict from a military perspective since it was the first documented use of 3D-printed firearms in a warzone. Not even to speak of the homemade mortars and artillery.
It's disgusting the indiscriminate murder of civilians that the junta regime resorted to once they began to lose a grip on the country.
It's gone under a qualitative shift recently IMO. For the most part the start of the fighting was presented as the PDFs; with them emerging as a guerilla force with all the ragtag hullabaloo you would expect from a bunch of students transitioning into full-time fighters. Most of these forces have united into broad coalitions with various ethnic rebel groups that have been fighting for decades, have established smuggling operations, etc. Combine that with the massive successes all of them have been having recently they are starting to resemble a more professional fighting force with all that captured equipment--esp. since the 1027 operation.
Can it be categorized as a progressive force? I have no idea. The Communist Party of Myanmar exists again... And it has its armed wing in one of the alliances, but not in a leading capacity.
Remember when libs blamed the Myanmar military's coup on China somehow did fucking protests not against the military junta, but fucking China. Now Chinese backed ethnic militias are literally going to war with the military government. I wonder if they'll do a 180° and claim "actually the military junta are the good guys".
How are they chinese backed? I'm pretty sure the PRC's relationship with Myanmar, regardless of whether the government is civil or military, has been based on non intervention, kinda has to be since they have such a long porous border.
Last I heard they were mediating negotiations between the junta and rebels groups, would be kinda weird if they started backing one side for no reason
Go look up the Wa State on youtube or bilibili. They're literally equipped with PLA equipment, speak Wa and Chinese bilingually, use the Yuan as their currency, etc. They've been finding Chinese equipment "in the forest" for a while. The PRC also did military exercises with the Myanmar gov't so the situation is more complicated. The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese enclave while the Wa are another ethnic minority in China who mostly live in Yunnan.
Yeah I know there are ethnic chinese fighting, and I don't know how they're getting the equipment, but I'd find it hard to believe that the PRC would be backing a militia like this, it's not really their style (or hasn't been their style for a while)
But the offensive was also widely recognized as an effort by the MNDAA to regain control of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone by ousting a rival Kokang group backed by the military government from its seat of power.
Peng Deren, the MNDAA commander, said in a New Year’s speech published by The Kokang, an affiliated online media site, that the alliance had seized over 250 military targets and five border crossings with China. He said more than 300 cyberscam centers were raided and more than 40,000 Chinese involved in the operations were repatriated.
Apparently the government is supporting rival warlords in the region, and one of their big sources of revenue is running online scams... and maybe trafficking people into doing that work?
There are a lot of seams in Myanmar, and they don't look that sturdy.
I'm not a doomer. It's a fact that the world will get more and more chaotic as the empire loses its grasp on power though. I do not consider this a bad thing. In fact it's very very good for us.
Unless america gets involved to fuck with china or the losing side in this conflict starts begging for american intervention I don't see how this can be a flashpoint for any bigger conflict, and I don't think china would ever intervene militarily here
Damn. Every video I've seen from Myanmar is like three teenagers with one homemade rifle trying to take out individual soldiers in small ambushes. They must have really built up their capabilities for an offensive like this.
It's an extremely interesting conflict from a military perspective since it was the first documented use of 3D-printed firearms in a warzone. Not even to speak of the homemade mortars and artillery.
It's disgusting the indiscriminate murder of civilians that the junta regime resorted to once they began to lose a grip on the country.
It's gone under a qualitative shift recently IMO. For the most part the start of the fighting was presented as the PDFs; with them emerging as a guerilla force with all the ragtag hullabaloo you would expect from a bunch of students transitioning into full-time fighters. Most of these forces have united into broad coalitions with various ethnic rebel groups that have been fighting for decades, have established smuggling operations, etc. Combine that with the massive successes all of them have been having recently they are starting to resemble a more professional fighting force with all that captured equipment--esp. since the 1027 operation.
Can it be categorized as a progressive force? I have no idea. The Communist Party of Myanmar exists again... And it has its armed wing in one of the alliances, but not in a leading capacity.
Remember when libs blamed the Myanmar military's coup on China somehow did fucking protests not against the military junta, but fucking China. Now Chinese backed ethnic militias are literally going to war with the military government. I wonder if they'll do a 180° and claim "actually the military junta are the good guys".
How are they chinese backed? I'm pretty sure the PRC's relationship with Myanmar, regardless of whether the government is civil or military, has been based on non intervention, kinda has to be since they have such a long porous border.
Last I heard they were mediating negotiations between the junta and rebels groups, would be kinda weird if they started backing one side for no reason
Go look up the Wa State on youtube or bilibili. They're literally equipped with PLA equipment, speak Wa and Chinese bilingually, use the Yuan as their currency, etc. They've been finding Chinese equipment "in the forest" for a while. The PRC also did military exercises with the Myanmar gov't so the situation is more complicated. The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese enclave while the Wa are another ethnic minority in China who mostly live in Yunnan.
Yeah I know there are ethnic chinese fighting, and I don't know how they're getting the equipment, but I'd find it hard to believe that the PRC would be backing a militia like this, it's not really their style (or hasn't been their style for a while)
The last two paragraphs say the most.
Apparently the government is supporting rival warlords in the region, and one of their big sources of revenue is running online scams... and maybe trafficking people into doing that work?
There are a lot of seams in Myanmar, and they don't look that sturdy.
I haven’t been keeping tabs on Myanmar.
Which side is the one growing opium for the cia?
To many fucking flashpoints to keep up with. 2024 sucks already.
The weeks where decades happen are on the horizon
They're already here for people in Gaza
let us not fall into doomerism, comrades!
I'm not a doomer. It's a fact that the world will get more and more chaotic as the empire loses its grasp on power though. I do not consider this a bad thing. In fact it's very very good for us.
Unless america gets involved to fuck with china or the losing side in this conflict starts begging for american intervention I don't see how this can be a flashpoint for any bigger conflict, and I don't think china would ever intervene militarily here
I was barely aware of this, what with all the genociding. NATOpedia: Operation 1027
radio war nerd podcast has a great episode explaining the situation in detail.
"Ethnic alliance" is hard.