Amid a sub-judice case at the top United Nations court in The Hague over Myanmar’s genocide against its minority Muslim Rohingya population in Rakhine, a recent report revealed similar killings in the Kayah state.
The military murdered at least 61 civilians and used them as human shields, in a series of atrocities between May 2021 and January 2022 in Kayah that may amount to war crimes, rights group Fortify Rights said on February 15.
In the process, the junta forces-- known Tatmadaw in Burmese-- unleashed yet another wave of aerial bombings in the country’s spiraling post-coup civil war, Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner wrote in the Asia Times.
Lintner sees it as a change in traditional counterinsurgency tactics that points more to military weakness than strength.
Myanmar is seeing increasingly deadly battles between its military and organised groups of armed civilians since the February 1, 2021 coup, with about 12,000 people killed in political violence till late January.
Of the deceased, hundreds were from the junta forces who were killed by resistance armies over the period.
Russian-made Hind-type attack helicopters fired rockets and machine guns once again this month while jet fighters dropped bombs on what appeared to be mainly civilian targets in eastern Kayah state where resistance to the coup has been particularly robust.
Recent attacks by local resistance forces are believed to have motivated the Tatmadaw’s bombing campaign, which at the same time has raised hard new questions about the fighting ability of its increasingly stretched ground forces.
In Kayah state, as in other parts of the country including Sagaing Division and Chin state, the military’s infantry was deployed first but was quickly withdrawn when it suffered heavy casualties. Then came random bombings on villages and other population centers.
Myanmar military atrocities committed during campaigns in ethnic minority areas are nothing new. Simultaneously, it was actually quite poorly armed despite having a battle-hardened and largely effective light infantry force, Lintner stated.
Its troops were constantly on the move during past conflicts against the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in the northeast, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the north, and the Karen National Union (KNU) and other rebel groups along the Thai border.
Doubt in capacity?
By 2021, Tatmadaw became a force of as many as 350,000 people.
But Australian Myanmar watcher Andrew Selth said: “The key element here is not the total number of men and women in uniform, but the number of combat soldiers that the junta can put into the field.
The aerial bombardments in Kayah state will likely be replicated in other inflamed parts of the country in a counterinsurgency strategy that underscores the Tatmadaw’s underlying weakness and ensures more popular support for fast-rising anti-coup forces, furthered Lintner.
Myanmar’s military leaders also had to make sure that the urban dissidents did not link up with the ethnic rebels. Thousands of them did, but the KIA and KNU did not have enough weapons to share with the urban newcomers.
Citing the outcomes of previous junta-resistance group confrontations since 1988, the Swedish journalist claimed “that is what is happening again in Kayah state and other war zones that have mushroomed across the country since the February 1, 2021 coup.
By any measure, however, the Myanmar military now finds itself stretched thin on many fronts, including areas in the country’s central region that have not seen any serious combat since the 1970s, he added.
It is clear by now that the Tatmadaw cannot decisively defeat the scores, if not hundreds, of small and not-so-small resistance armies.
However, they rebel groups despite having widespread popular support but are poorly armed and lack a common, well-planned strategy beyond inflicting as many casualties on the Myanmar military and its junta officials as possible.
