In the pre-dawn silence on October 27, a hushed group of armed men exploited the shroud of darkness to steal toward the Chin Shwe Haw Bridge in northern Shan State on Myanmar’s border with China.
At the military outpost near the bridge a security guard nodded drowsily, unaware of the looming danger. A sudden burst of automatic rifle fire, followed by mortar explosions, announced a surprise attack by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a Kokang rebel group intent on taking control of a major portal for Myanmar’s cross-border trade with China.
But the MNDAA was not alone in attacking the military regime’s positions on October 27, nor was Chin Shwe Haw Bridge the only target of the assault.
In fact, the MNDAA attack was just the opening salvo in a coordinated strategy developed over the past year by major armed elements of Myanmar’s anti-coup movement to mount a 360-degree assault on the military from east to west, and from north to south.
The Myanmar generals’ decades-old military strategy of keeping the country’s various ethnic armed groups engaged in separate battles with the army - and, at times, with each other - has finally been countered.
Coordination and preparation
Despite various claims that China has played a key role in Operation 1027, in support of its goal of eliminating scam centers in Kokang that prey on Chinese citizens, in reality this was not the driving factor.
Rather, the offensive we are seeing is the beginning of a coordinated strategy developed over the past year among key resistance groups with the aim of engaging the military of the State Administration Council (SAC, as the junta calls itself) on all fronts.
Observers closely monitoring the post-coup conflict were probably aware that the anti-coup movement had formed several coordinating mechanisms for conducting the ground battle against the military, namely, the Central Command and Coordination Committee (C3C) and Joint Command and Coordination (J2C), formed to coordinate the work of the PDFs and allied ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).
The civilian National Unity Government (NUG) also formed an Alliance Relations Committee (ARC) to liaise with ethnic armed groups that had remained nominally independent, including the Brotherhood Alliance between the MNDAA, the Arakan Army (AA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).
From mid-2022, NUG ARC members met frequently with the Brotherhood Alliance, which was providing military training to PDFs and other armed groups with common goals.
Negotiations for a joint military strategy between the NUG and the Brotherhood Alliance appear to have commenced in earnest in early 2023, when the Brotherhood Alliance members began openly disclosing information about their support for resistance groups.
According to insider sources, NUG Minister of Defense U Yee Mon visited the northern part of the country to engage directly with the Brotherhood Alliance for several months on a coordinated strategy.
Other resistance groups, such as the Burma People’s Liberation Army (BPLA) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which received military training from the Brotherhood Alliance, played key roles in aligning the strategic objectives of the alliance with the anti-coup resistance movement.
Preparation for Operation 1027 began a year ahead of time, when the MNDAA formed and equipped a new military brigade known as Brigade 611 composed of soldiers from diverse ethnicities, including Bamar, and diverse groups such as the AA, NUG PDFs, Karenni National Defense Forces (KNDF), BPLA, PLA and others, all under the command of the MNDAA.
Brigade 611 was deployed primarily between Lashio and Muse and Lashio and Chin Shwe Haw/Laukkai in order to block the military’s strategic routes to Kokang on the border with China. Drone experts from resistance groups in other areas had also been present in Shan State since 2022.
Without explicitly analyzing the progress of the post-coup military trend, some readily concluded that Operation 1027 is not a coordinated attack, but primarily driven by the Brotherhood Alliance without prior consultation with the NUG.
The extent of the coordination, however, was clearly revealed by the general secretary of the TNLA when he admitted to extensive consultations with the NUG and the inclusion of forces under the command of the NUG Ministry of Defense in Operation 1027, making clear that the offensive was not a spontaneous event, but emerged from year-long preparations coordinated with the broader resistance movement.
Operation 1027
The attack on the military stronghold in Kokang on the Chinese border, code-named Operation 1027 for the date it began, was led by the Brotherhood Alliance in coordination with a number of other resistance forces.
The assault on Chin Shwe Haw was followed quickly by attacks on Kunlong, Mongko, Lashio, Hopang and Namkham along Myanmar’s border with China.
Within weeks, the alliance managed to capture over 200 military positions, including strategically significant bases in these towns and beyond, effectively closing the border to trade between the two countries.
A month after the launch of Operation 1027, the Brotherhood Alliance declared that the operation had evolved to the next phase: a nationwide battle against the military.
Other ethnic armed groups along with PDFs were attacking military encampments in Kachin State to the north, Sagaing, Magwe and Bago regions in the country’s heartland, Chin and Rakhine states in the west, Karenni (Kayah) in the east, and Karen State and Tanintharyi Region to the south.
For the first time in history, the military now faces simultaneous attacks from armed resistance of various types, ranging from conventional warfare to guerrilla tactics and from overt to covert operations, in 12 out of Myanmar’s 14 states and regions.
The evidence of a coordinated nationwide offensive by the combined forces opposing the hapless coup regime has become unmistakable.
Resistance offensives cascade nationwide
The Mandalay PDF aims to occupy Mandalay Region, collaborating with the TNLA in Operation 1027 to attack military positions and penetrate Mandalay.
The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) focuses on encircling towns, dominating key routes, and cutting off military supply routes, gaining substantial control in Karen and Tanintharyi regions.
Resistance forces, including the KNLA and PDFs, seek to infiltrate Bago Region, penetrating the military’s defense lines and potentially threatening Yangon and Naypyitaw.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) capitalizes on the military’s redirection of resources, making advances in northern Shan State and upper Sagaing Region.
Coordinated attacks by NUG PDFs in Sagaing and Magwe complement Operation 1027, gaining control over towns and strategic routes.
The Chin National Front (CNF) confronts the military in Chin State, achieving successes in capturing towns and military bases.
The AA launches offensives on military positions in Rakhine, focusing on border posts to open gateways to neighboring countries.
Combined Karenni resistance forces aim to capture Loikaw, the Karenni capital, forcing the junta to defend it against aerial assaults.
These offensives reflect a nationwide response against the military junta, presenting diverse challenges across different regions.
Analysis of the nationwide conflict reveals three key observations.
First, the operations across different theaters are interconnected.
Second, the synchronized 360-degree attack on the military from many locations around the country provides unmistakable evidence of a substantial degree of prior coordination among the resistance forces.
And third, the SAC military must now concentrate its remaining limited resources in a few key conflict theaters.
History may one day conclude that the military coup of February 2021 proved fatal to the Myanmar military’s decades-long monopoly on power by energizing the country’s wide array of non-state armed groups to at last find common cause in bringing down the military dictatorship that has plagued the population for so long.
However, the battle is not over, and many challenges still lie ahead for the anti-coup movement.
Ye Myo Hein is a global fellow at the Wilson Center based in Washington DC. The full version of this article was originally published in the Irrawaddy.
