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.
