As I'm keen to see this thread include a wide variety of mediums, I figured I'd post this article with a few excepts and my thoughts on why I find it interesting.
This article is good as it's short, it provides sources to follow and provides a good overview of where things are at today:
After a year of fighting, Myanmar’s junta is showing frustration
https://www.9dashline.com/article/after-a-year-of-fighting-myanmars-junta-is-showing-frustration
Within a month, signs of armed resistance emerged and by the summer of 2021, several armed civilian militias had mushroomed across the length and breadth of Myanmar. Unlike the older Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) who had been seeking political autonomy within a federalised state structure for decades, these new militias — or People’s Defence Forces (PDF) have the more revolutionary goal of completely replacing the current military.
It isn’t just the PDFs that are independently attacking the military. Four EAOs — the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO)/Army (KIA), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP)/Karenni Army (KA), the Chin National Front (CNF)/Army (CNA) and the Karen National Union (KNU)/Liberation Army (KNLA) — have also allied with PDFs to join the revolutionary fray.
Desperate to push the PDFs back, the military has increasingly begun to rely on indiscriminate kinetic options —
airstrikes, heavy artillery attacks, violent raids in “rebel villages”, and scorched earth strategies...
According to some reports, some
2,000 soldiers have switched sides to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) as of December 2021. The NUG provides a far higher
estimate of 8,000, combining military and police defections.
...
reports also suggest that the military is training and arming its ultranationalist civilian supporters, political affiliates, and former soldiers. Many of them are already fighting alongside junta troops as part of vigilante militias known as
Pyu Saw Htee (which began surfacing around May). The military is also relying on mercenaries from across the border, such as
Indian insurgents who have bases in western Myanmar.
Thoughts:
- This battle will last for a long time as the resistance will be tracked and executed should they capitulate. So it's a fight to the death
- There are foreign organisations - such as the Free Burma Rangers - who have been training and arming resistance to those fighting the military. They are experienced in guerilla warfare and have some level of funding and support from external actors
- In the short term, the question becomes how will the resistance fund itself - the ethnic orgs have been exporting drugs, gambling, etc. for a long time to support their separatist causes. The temptation will be there for the PDFs to do the same, as well as squeeze the local population for support. The FARC in Colombia are a good example of how a resistance group morphs into a tyrannical organised crime group over time
- Should the military collapse, a few things are likely to happen. First, there will likely be wide-spread reprisals and brutality, which will reduce the legitimacy of those opposing the military. Second, the disparate forces who have come together to fight the military will splinter and compete based on their own interests and desire for power in the new national structures. Lastly, there will be ungoverned spaces that other organisations will look to exploit
- This is important in a regional sense as instability radiates problems across borders, from people movement, to weapons, to crime groups, etc. etc. Secondly, Myanmar is strategically placed as it provides a point for China to bypass the Malacca Strait, which it fears can become a maritime choke point easy to close off to Chinese vessels, challenging China's access to supply and markets. There are already pipelines and ports being built by China for this purpose.