Myanmar Junta's Billion Dollar Army 'Helpless' before Rebel forces

Military rule in Myanmar has passed three years, but now it is moving along the road of decline. Millions of dollars are spent on the army, but the army is not able to play its poised goal. Its fighters are becoming helpless in front of united rebel groups. Which the head of the junta government admitted too.

Pro-democracy supporters took up arms when the junta started an unprecedented crackdown to stop the protests that spread after the coup in 2021. Various ethnic rebel groups that have been fighting in the past expressed solidarity with it. 

Although the fighting started a few months after the coup, it gained momentum towards the end of last year (2023). Since then, there have been reports of insurgents winning one after another in the border areas over the past few months. Junta officials are also admitting defeat on various fronts.

Recently, the Junta Army has faced great resistance from the rebel groups in the Shan State bordering China and Thailand. Insurgents have used advanced technology such as unmanned drones in this fight.

The head of Junta regime General Min Aung Hlaing himself responded to the matter. He said in a plaintive tone that fighters from ethnic insurgent groups are attacking his troops in Shan State with high-powered and high-tech weapons.

The junta chief was speaking at a meeting of the National Defense and Security Council last Wednesday (January 31). Addressing the colleagues present at the meeting, he said that the rebel forces have surpassed his forces in terms of strength and weapons.

Along with the army, the navy and the air force are also being used in this ongoing fight. In contrast, rebel groups have nothing but foot soldiers. But recently, various reports are coming out that they have got some more advanced weapons apart from the latest drone technology.

Billion dollars in arms and ammunitions

After Myanmar gained independence in 1948, the junta ruled the country for most of the past 76 years. During this great period more attention was paid to building and strengthening the army. The highest expenditure and budget allocation have been allocated to the military sector.

Even during the five-year rule of the National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after starting its journey to democracy in 2015, the bulk of the national budget went to the military.

According to The Irrawaddy, the junta has spent billions of dollars on the military over the past three years since Suu Kyi's government was ousted in a coup. According to a report by the United Nations Special Adviser on Human Rights in Myanmar published in May last year, the army has imported at least one billion dollars’ worth of weapons and ammunition since 2021.

Earlier, according to the report prepared by the United Nations Special Advisory Council on Myanmar, published in January last year, the Myanmar army is producing a large amount of weapons on its own. That is why they are getting supplies of necessary equipment from at least 13 countries. The 13 countries also include the US, India, Japan and France.

Weapons being developed by Myanmar's junta include sniper rifles, anti-aircraft guns, grenades, bombs, landmines and missile launchers. After the coup of 2021, the production of these weapons did not stop despite the imposition of sanctions by some countries and international isolation.

Under one of these contracts, Myanmar received the first shipment of two Sukhoi fighter jets from Russia in September last year. Hlaing made the deal to buy 6 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets from Russia in September 2022, a year after the coup.

Thus, despite having domestic and foreign advanced weapons and warplanes and increasing the military budget year after year, the Sit-tat or Tatmadaw is failing to deal with ethnic insurgent groups.

They have lost dozens of cities and hundreds of army posts in just four months after the Three Brotherhood Alliance's 'Operation 1027', formed by three ethnic rebel groups, began.

At the end of last October, three ethnic armed organizations (Ethnic Armed Organizations or EAOs) conducted a major military operation in the northern part of the country against the military junta and achieved success.

Soon after this success, the People's Defense Forces (PDFS), an armed group formed by opposition political parties, and other ethnic armed organizations and militia groups began heavy fighting in the western, eastern and southern regions of Myanmar. which is still ongoing. As a result, the junta government is in a lot of trouble.

60 percent of the country is under the control of the rebels

The opposition National Unity Government (NUG) says 60 percent of the country is now under the control of rebel groups. Analysts, however, say the conflict situation is extremely complex. As a result, it is difficult to gauge who controls which regions of the country.