Rebels celebrate taking key border town, Thailand left scrambling

Thailand is bracing for a crisis on its border amid fears Myanmar’s brutal junta are about to launch a counter-offensive to reclaim a strategic city it has lost to resistance forces.

The city’s full capture by forces for the Karen National Union and its allies on Thursday was one of the most significant gains by armed resistance groups inside Myanmar since the military took power in a February 2021 coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Karen forces and allied groups took the town of Myawaddy from Myanmar’s military junta last week.Credit:

“You can think of it in two ways,” Morgan Michaels, a Myanmar analyst at Singapore’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said of Myawaddy’s fall. “There’s the material and strategic value, but also the symbolic value. And symbolically, it’s massive.”

“This is the last major international border gate that the military controls. It makes them look weak, and it will galvanise opposition forces.”

Across Myanmar other ethnic armies and newer militias, the latter loosely grouped under the tag “People’s Defence Forces” (members of which are often regular citizens without combat experience), have been winning back swathes of the country in regional areas closer to the China and Bangladesh borders.

The rebel-held city of Myawaddy, with a population of more than 200,000, lies just across the border from the Thai trade hub of Mae Sot, about 500 kilometres north-west of Bangkok.

Myanmar residents cross the 1st Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge into Thailand on Friday.Credit: AP

Myawaddy residents, anticipating retaliatory strikes by the military rulers’ powerful air force, have begun crossing the river into the Thai city of Mae Sot, where local authorities have set up accommodation in temporary shelters and a sports stadium, according to local media reports.

Fears of a military counter-offensive with the potential to create tens of thousands of instant refugees has drawn Thailand closer to the conflict.

Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has warned the junta not to intrude into his nation’s airspace, while Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, speaking from Mae Sot on Friday, told junta authorities not to respond with violence.

“We want to see them talking with each other,” Parnpree said.

Reports on the weekend suggested at least some elements of a Myanmar military convoy had crossed the mountains into the Myawaddy region, fuelling fears of a counter-offensive.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, I truly don’t,” Michaels said. “What is critical at this time is what the Border Guard Force does.”

Border Guard Forces, or BGFs, are militarised ethnic groups notionally commanded by the army. However, each BGF is different and has its own aims, leading some to flip to the resistance.

“It’s been unclear what [this BGF’s] intentions are, and this is when it really matters,” Michaels said.

“The military is likely negotiating with the Border Guard Force to allow them to move through the area uninterrupted to conduct a counter-offensive, or perhaps even to have them facilitate or help the counter-offensive.

“The other possibility,and this is just speculative, is that rather than try to retake this town, which is going to have consequences – Myawaddy will be destroyed – is to negotiate for the Border Guard Force to assume [administrative] command of Myawaddy town.

“That could be an acceptable outcome for all parties.”

While the military remains strong in the major cities, rebel groups this month managed to hit the capital of Naypyidaw with drone strikes.

Opposition armies have been gaining momentum and numbers since October 27 last year, when a bloc of ethnic forces known as the Brotherhood Alliance pushed the junta from portions of northern Shan State.

A Thai soldier keeps guard along the on the Thai side of the Moei river.Credit: AP

The junta’s response to its defeats and military defections has been mandatory conscription.

Despite its many failures, most observers do not expect the regime to collapse in the foreseeable future. A possible way out of the conflict, Michaels said, was if the humiliation of mounting losses forced senior general Min Aung Hlaing to step down as prime minister.

“If that was attempted, whoever takes charge could immediately try to negotiate an exit strategy,” he said, adding that another outcome of internal chaos could be accelerated regime implosion.

Fears among the people of Myawaddy about a brutal counterattack from the military were not without basis. Rights groups, civilians and observers allege the regime has deployed kidnappings, torture and extra-judicial killings to hold power.

A man looks on at homes destroyed after air and artillery strikes in Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp, in Laiza, Myanmar, in October last year. Credit: AP

Obtaining accurate data was difficult, and any casualty numbers needed to be taken with caution, but at least one study, by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, estimated more than 6000 civilians were killed in the 20 months following the coup.

Observers and rights groups are calling for the international community to do more to help end Min Aung Hlaing’s regime.

The United Nations recently called on countries to stop exporting jet fuel that could be used by the military.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced this month he had appointed Australia’s former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as his Special Envoy on Myanmar.

with Reuters

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