Opponents vow ‘beginning of the end’ for Myanmar’s junta as resistance launches nationwide offensive
Almost three years on from its bloody coup, Myanmar’s military junta is facing the biggest threat to its hold on power as it fights wars on multiple fronts across the Southeast Asian nation.
In recent weeks, powerful armed ethnic militias have joined with resistance forces to mount major new offensives with unprecedented coordination, exposing the limits of the deeply unpopular junta’s capabilities as it loses strategic border towns, key military positions and vital trade routes at a scale not seen in decades, according to experts.
“The junta is actively collapsing right now and that’s only become possible because there is this wider effort across the country,” said Matthew Arnold, an independent Myanmar analyst.
Calling it an “existential moment for the military,” Arnold said the resistance is “now focused on taking major towns to fundamentally defeat the junta.”
An offensive named Operation 1027, launched in late October by an alliance of three powerful ethnic rebel armies in the country’s northeast, has since catalyzed into a nationwide push to take control of towns and areas in Myanmar’s north, west and southeast.
Nearly 200 civilians have been killed and 335,000 people newly displaced by the fighting since October 27, according to the United Nations.
Civil war between Myanmar’s myriad ethnic armies and successive military governments has raged for decades. But the latest escalation in fighting comes off the back of nationwide public resistance to army chief Min Aung Hlaing’s February 2021 coup, which sacked the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
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