BANGKOK: Three well-armed militias launched a surprise joint offensive in northeastern Myanmar a year ago, breaking a strategic stalemate with the regime’s military with rapid gains of huge swaths of territory and inspiring others to attack around the country.
The military’s control had seemed firmly ensconced with vast superiority in troops and firepower, plus material support from Russia and China. But today the government is increasingly on the back foot, with the loss of dozens of outposts, bases and strategic cities that even its leaders concede would be challenging to take back.
“The military is on the defensive all over the country, and every time it puts its energy into one part of the country, it basically has to shift troops and then is vulnerable in other parts,” said Connor Macdonald of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar advocacy group.
“To us it doesn’t look like there’s any viable route back for the military to recapture any of the territory that it’s lost.”
The military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering intensified fighting with long-established armed militias organized by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups in its border regions, which have struggled for decades for more autonomy.
The army’s takeover also sparked the formation of pro-democracy militias known as People’s Defense Forces. They support the opposition National Unity Government, which was established by elected lawmakers barred from taking their seats after the army takeover.
But until the launch of Operation 1027, eponymously named for its Oct. 27 start, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, had largely been able to prevent major losses around the country.
Operation 1027 brought coordinated attacks from three of the most powerful ethnic armed groups, known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance: the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Arakan Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. The alliance quickly captured towns and overran military bases and outposts along the Chinese border in northeastern Shan state.
Two weeks later, the Arakan Army launched attacks in its western home state of Rakhine, and since then other militia groups and PDFs have joined in around the country.
Myanmar’s military has been pushed back to the country’s center
A year after the offensive began, resistance forces now fully or partially control a vast horseshoe of territory. It starts in Rakhine state in the west, runs across the north and then heads south into Kayah and Kayin states along the Thai border. The Tatmadaw has pulled back toward central Myanmar, around the capital Naypyidaw and largest city of Yangon.
“I never thought our goals would be achieved so quickly,” Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, told The Associated Press. “We only thought that we would attack the military council together to the extent we could, but it has been easier than expected so we’ve been able to conquer more quickly.”
Along the way, the Tatmadaw has suffered some humiliating defeats, including the loss of the city of Laukkai in an assault in which the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army captured more than 2,000 troops, including six generals; and of the city of Lashio, which had been home to the military’s Northeast Command.
“The 1027 offensive was a highly impressive operation, quite complex, and the use of drones played a big role because basically they were able to dismantle the military’s network of fire-support bases across northern Shan,” said Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who runs its Myanmar Conflict Map project.
“And then, once the military’s artillery support eroded, they were able to overrun harder targets like towns and battalion headquarters.”
A year later, the military is “substantially weakened,” he said, but it’s too early to write it off.
The military has been weakened, but not defeated
The Tatmadaw has managed to claw back the town of Kawlin in the Sagaing region, which had fallen in the first days of the 1027 offensive, stave off an attack by three ethnic Karenni militias on Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state, and has retained administrative control of Myawaddy, a key border crossing with Thailand, after holding off an assault by one ethnic group with the assistance of a rival militia.
Many expect the military to launch a counteroffensive when the rainy season soon comes to an end, bolstered by some 30,000 new troops since activating conscription in February and its complete air superiority.
But at the same time, resistance groups are closing in on Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, in the center of the country.
And where they might be out-gunned, they have gained strength, hard-won experience and confidence over the last year, said the Ta’ang National Liberation Army’s Lway Yay Oo.
“We have military experience on our side, and based on this experience we can reinforce the fighting operation,” she said.
Thet Swe, a spokesperson for the military regime, conceded it will be a challenge for the Tatmadaw to dislodge the Three Brotherhood Alliance from the territory it has gained.
“We cannot take it back during one year,” he told the AP in an emailed answer to questions. “However, I hope that I will give you a joyful message ... in (the) coming two or three years.”
Civilian casualties rise as the military turns more to indiscriminate strikes
As the military has faced setbacks in the fighting on the ground, it has been increasingly relying on indiscriminate air and artillery strikes, resulting in a 95 percent increase in civilian deaths from airstrikes and a 170 percent increase in civilians killed by artillery since the 1027 offensive began, according to a report last month by the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Tatmadaw has been accused of deliberately targeting civilians whom it believes support the resistance militias, a tactic that is only turning more against them, said Isabel Todd, coordinator for the SAC-M group.
“It doesn’t seem to be having the effect that they want it to have,” she said. “It’s making them even more hated by the population and really strengthening the resolve to ensure that this is the end of the Myanmar military as it’s known.”
Military spokesperson Thet Swe denied targeting civilians, saying it was militia groups that were responsible for killing civilians and burning villages.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting, and there are now more than 3 million internally displaced people in Myanmar overall, and some 18.6 million people in need, according to the UN
At the same time, the 2024 humanitarian response plan is only 1/3 funded, hindering the delivery of aid, said Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs operation in Myanmar.
“The humanitarian outlook for the next year is grim, and we anticipate that the deteriorating situation will have a massive impact on the protection of civilians,” he said in an interview.
In some areas, however, the offensive has eased pressure, like northwestern Chin state, which borders Bangladesh and India and had previously been the focus of many of the Tatmadaw’s operations, said Salai Htet Ni, a spokesperson for the Chin National Front whose armed wing has been involved in fighting the military.
“In October of last year the military convoys that were going up into the Chin mountains were withdrawn,” he said. “As a result of the 1027 operation there have been almost no major military activities.”
Success brings new tensions between resistance groups
As the front has expanded it has seen militias advancing out of their own ethnic areas, like when Rakhine-based Arakan Army in January seized the Chin town of Paletwa, which has given rise to some friction between groups, foreshadowing possible future strife should the Tatmadaw eventually fall.
In the case of Paletwa, Salai Htet Ni said his group was happy that the AA took it from the Tatmadaw, but added that there should have been negotiations before they began operating in Chin territory and that the AA should now bring Chin forces in to help administer the area.
“Negotiations are mandatory for these regional administration issues,” he said. “But we will negotiate this case through dialogue, not military means.”
At the moment there is a degree of solidarity between the different ethnic groups as they focus on a common enemy, but Aung Thu Nyein, director of communications for the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar think tank said that does not translate to common aspirations.
Should the Tatmadaw fall, it could lead to the fragmentation of Myanmar unless the groups work hard to resolve political and territorial differences.
“As far as I see, there is no established mechanism to resolve the issues,” he said. “The resistance being able to bring down the junta is unlikely, but I cannot discount this scenario, (and) if we cannot build trust and common goals, it could lead to the scenario of Syria.”
Chinese interests and ties with both sides complicate the picture
Complicating the political picture is the influence of neighboring China, which is believed to have tacitly supported the 1027 offensive in what turned out to be a successful bid to largely shut down organized crime activities that had been flourishing along its border.
In January, Beijing used its close ties with both the Tatmadaw and the Three Brotherhood groups to negotiate a ceasefire in northern Shan, which lasted for five months until the ethnic alliance opened phase two of the 1027 offensive in June, accusing the military of violating the ceasefire.
China has been displeased with the development, shutting down border crossings, cutting electricity to Myanmar towns and taking other measures in a thus-far unsuccessful attempt to end the fighting.
Its support for the regime also seems to be growing, with China’s envoy to Myanmar urging the powerful United Wa State Army, which wasn’t involved in the 1027 offensive or related fighting, to actively pressure the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and Ta’ang National Liberation Army to halt the renewed offensive, according to leaked details of an August meeting widely reported by local media.
There is no evidence that the UWSA has done that, however.
“The idea that the northern groups and the Three Brotherhood Alliance etc. are somehow just agents of China is a complete misconception,” Todd said.
“They have their own objectives which they are pursuing that are independent of what China may or may not want them to do, and that’s apparent in the incredible amount of pressure that China has put on them recently.”
Because of the grassroot support for the resistance, it is less vulnerable to outside influence, said Kyaw Zaw, a spokesperson for the opposition National Unity Government.
“No matter who is putting pressure on us, we are winning because of the power of the people,” he said.
Resistance forces push military regime close to brink in Myanmar
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Resistance forces push military regime close to brink in Myanmar
- Before the offensive, the military’s control had seemed firmly ensconced with its vast superiority in troops and firepower, and aided with material support from Russia and China
- “To us it doesn’t look like there’s any viable route back for the military to recapture any of the territory that it’s lost”
Biden praises COP29 deal, vows US action despite Trump
- Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate
- As agreed, developed nations will pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America despite his incoming successor Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
The Baku meeting kicked off shortly after Trump won a new term in the White House, potentially setting the stage for him to undo actions by Biden’s administration.
Biden, who leaves office on January 20, said he was “confident” the United States “will continue this work: through our states and cities, our businesses, and our citizens, supported by durable legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“While some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America and around the world, nobody can reverse it — nobody.”
A $300B a year deal for climate cash at UN summit sparks outrage for some and hope for others
BAKU, Azerbaijan: United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
But it was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and some developing nations were livid about being ignored.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak. When they did they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”
She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.
After a deal, nations express their discontent
A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.
“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.
The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.
“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”
Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal. And the Alliance of Small Island States’ Cedric Schuster said he had more hope “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”
Some see deal as relief following tough talks
There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.
Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”
“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”
UN Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”
The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the UN talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising.
Hopes that more climate cash will follow
Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.
Other deals agreed at COP29
The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a UN-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.
With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
Daesh group claims attack on Sufi shrine in Afghanistan
- A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening
KABUL: Daesh (IS-K), the terrorist group’s branch in Afghanistan, on Saturday claimed responsibility for a gun attack that left 10 people dead at a Sufi shrine in northern Baghlan province.
Taliban authorities in Kabul have repeatedly said they have defeated IS-K, but the group regularly claims responsibility for attacks, notably against Sufi or Shiite minorities, targets they consider heretical.
On Friday, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qani told AFP that a gunman opened fire on Sufis “taking part in a weekly ritual” at a shrine in a remote area of Nahrin district, killing 10 people.
A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening.
They had begun a Sufi chant when “a man shot at the dozen worshippers,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“When people arrived for morning prayers, they discovered the bodies,” he added.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, wrote on X: “Religious minorities remain under grave threat. More prevention, protection & justice needed.”
The Daesh group accuses Sufis of worshipping more than one god because of their devotion to saints.
In mid-September, the group claimed responsibility for an attack in central Afghanistan that killed 14 people who had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from Karbala in Iraq, one of the holiest sites for Shiites.
India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted
BAKU: India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit.
UN secretary general says more work needed on COP29 finance deal
- Final deal commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developed countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
- Climate chief Simon Stiell says it was “no time for victory laps”
UNITED NATIONS/BAKU, Azerbaijan: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the climate finance deal agreed early Sunday in Azerbaijan did not go far enough, as he urged nations to view it as a “foundation” on which to build.
“I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome — on both finance and mitigation — to meet the great challenge we face,” Guterres said in a statement, adding that he is appealing “to governments to see this agreement as a foundation — and build on it.”
After two exhaustive weeks of negotiations, the final deal commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developed countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
That is up from $100 billion now provided by wealthy countries under a commitment set to expire — and from the $250 billion proposed in an earlier draft Friday.
The deal “must be honored in full and on time,” Guterres said.
“Commitments must quickly become cash. All countries must come together to ensure the top-end of this new goal is met.”
He called on countries to deliver new economy-wide climate action plans “well ahead of COP30 — as promised.”
“The end of the fossil fuel age is an economic inevitability. New national plans must accelerate the shift, and help to ensure it comes with justice,” he said, closing with a message to activists pushing for more to “keep it up.”
“The United Nations is with you. Our fight continues. And we will never give up,” Guterres said.
‘No time for victory laps’
UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Sunday said it was “no time for victory laps” after nations at COP29 in Azerbaijan agreed a bitterly negotiated finance deal.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps,” Stiell said in a statement.
