Guwahati: As 2024 approaches the end, the revolutionary forces in Myanmar (Burma/ Brahmadesh) continue to grind down an increasingly desperate, demoralized, and brutal military junta. At the same time, the Myanmarese are building a new nation from the ground up, expanding liberated areas and setting into place the building blocks of federal democracy with local administrations and public services, despite the junta’s campaign of terror against them. Hence the international actors need not to follow China and ASEAN’s current approach to support the junta’s election plans (which will only keep Myanmar trapped in the cycles of the military’s violence and elongate sufferings of the common Myanmarese).
Rather, the international agencies support the democratic resistances grown to bring a swifter downfall of the murderous junta, and hasten the formation of a federal democracy that paves the way for sustainable peace in the southeast Asian nation, said the weekly column of Progressive Voice, a participatory rights-based policy research and advocacy organization rooted in civil society, that maintains strong networks and relationships with grassroots organizations and community-based organizations across Myanmar.
The junta continues to lose territory throughout the country in 2024. For the first time ever, a regional military command (Northeastern regional military command, RMC) in Lashio of northern Shan State fell to the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (a member outfit of Three Brotherhood Alliance, 3BHA). In other parts of Shan State, another 3BHA member, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, has taken control of key towns and territories, including the ruby-mining hub of Mogok. Kachin Independence Army has also made dramatic gains, taking control of the lucrative rare earth elements mining areas of Kachin State from the junta ally. Much of Rakhine (Arakan) State is now in the hands of the Arakan Army, including the border area with Bangladesh, India and a second RMC in Ann locality. The year also witnessed a brief but symbolic liberation of Myawaddy, a large border town in Karen State, by the Karen National Union. The resistance forces in Chin, Karen, and Karenni States along with Magwe, Sagaing, and Tanintharyi regions continue to make gains, reclaiming more territories and establishing their administrations.
In 2024, the Myanmar military faced unprecedented battlefield losses that compelled the junta to forcibly conscript young men & women to send to the frontlines with an aim to block the resistance forces. It leads to more people fleeing their localities and even the country and many joined the resistance movement. Meanwhile, the cash-strapped junta is attempting to squeeze every last Kyat from migrant workers as it possibly can, placing exploitative policies on remittances in order to replenish their rapidly depleting reserves of foreign exchange.
“Yet despite these clear signs of significant deterioration, the junta is stubborn in clinging on to what remains of its diminishing power. This is in no small part to its backers in the international community, particularly Russia and China. China has been pressuring the resistance forces to stop their offensives, giving technical and diplomatic support to the junta, and selling it weapons. Russia and India have also been major sources of weaponry, particularly the aircraft that the junta is increasingly using to bomb liberated towns and cities, while Vietnam has been a key supply node for the junta’s aviation fuel that enables its continued airstrikes on civilian areas,” stated the media column, asserting that China, Russia and some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are in this regard not only complicit but aiding & abetting the junta’s atrocity crimes.
A global embargo on arms, aviation fuel, and dual-use goods to the Myanmar military, complete with coordinated and well-enforced targeted sanctions is imperative to at the least limit or ideally stop the junta’s ability to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Additionally, the international aid community must take responsibility to stop the junta’s weaponization of humanitarian aid which is in violation of international humanitarian law. The pitiful, self-serving response of the junta to the devastation caused by Typhoon Yagi and subsequent flooding this year following its blocking of aid to respond to the devastation of Cyclone Mocha in 2023 should again demonstrate that narratives around needing to partner with the junta to ensure delivery of aid have proven to be not only deeply flawed but extremely unethical.
“Rather, aid provision must be directed through trusted, frontline responders and community-based groups through locally led cross-border channels which are the most effective and legitimate way of giving aid to those in most need and saving lives,” opined the forum adding that the Myanmarese have already made it crystal clear that the military’s involvement in politics cannot continue and this murderous institution must be dismantled. The people of Myanmar have been fighting determinedly and with great sacrifice to achieve this and any solution centering the Min Aung Hlaing-led junta will not work. The international community must make concerted efforts to hold the perpetrators to account under international law for their crimes against the Myanmar people and not be propped up by a sham election or any kind of externally imposed peace deal that may bring the junta back to power again.
