The broad advances of an alliance of racial forces across Myanmar’s northern Shan state were frequently referred to as a slow-grinding war in the final weeks of 2023, a warning that a military regime that had been held to be too powerful to fail might eventually be overthrown.
Eight months on, following the late June decline of a weak Chinese-brokered peace, a return to full-scale conflict and the army’s transmission reduction of the north Shan city of Lashio mean the issue looming over Myanmar is now of an entirely unique order.
The answer lies simply in whether the second stage of the 1027 campaign, which was launched by the Brotherhood alliance on October 27 last year, has sparked an unprecedented wave of accelerating and potentially terminal reverses for the State Administration Council ( SAC ) coup regime, or whether another Chinese-sponsored ceasefire, supported by the military, or Tatmadaw, can bring order to a more impoverished situation.
The conflict has fundamentally changed as a result of the most recent hostilities in northern Myanmar in three important ways. Interestingly, all three underscore the rapidity with which events are assuming a momentum of their own beyond the control of any of the principal actors, home or outside, but with dramatic geopolitical implications that will impact them all.
The first and perhaps biggest game-changer was the decisive end of hostilities in the country spearheaded by the ethnic Bamar People’s Defense Forces ( PDFs ), which are militarily adept and largely loyal to the opposition’s National Unity Government ( NUG).
Step Two, which was launched on June 25, was planned and carried out across three organizational and logistical boundaries.
One, best described as the “highway top”, required seizing control of the cities of Nawnghkio, Kyaukme and Hsipaw strung out along the regional bridge between the provincial capital of Lashio and Mandalay in central Myanmar.  ,
The ethnic Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Front ( TNLA ), which has around 11, 000 troops stationed in the state’s tea-growing hill country, has a major role in this endeavor.
The Kokang Chinese Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army ( MNDAA ), a Brotherhood ally of the TNLA, conducted operations on the second front while keeping its focus on Lashio itself.
A city with a pre-1027 population of some 200, 000 and an army garrison estimated in late June at around 6, 000 troops, Lashio constitutes the strategic lynchpin of northern Shan state and, until it finally fell on August 3, was the headquarters of the Tatmadaw’s Northeast Regional military command ( RMC).
Fighting raged on both Shan fronts from soon in June through late in July as Brotherhood forces, stricken by unrelenting airstrikes, attacked and conquered scores of well-defended regiment bases that screened all four industrial centers.
The two Brotherhood allies ‘ main goals were essentially secured at a large animal value by the start of August. Neither area has also hinted at its loss, but given the scope and magnitude of the battle, it is probably safe to assume a burden of at least 5, 000 killed and wounded on both edges.
However, a third eastern front that travels along the Ayeyarwady Valley has been the key new element of 1027 Stage Two. Bamar PDFs led the progress from Mogok’s ruby-mining district to Mandalay, the second-largest city in the region, with Bamar PDFs leading the charge.
The most notable has been the Mandalay PDF ( MDY-PDF), a well-organized and well-equipped force of at least 3, 000 troops based in the hills along the Shan state-Mandalay Region border to the north of the garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin.
The TNLA provided education and financial support to the power, but it has since grown and is now under TNLA command and control despite declaring loyalties to the NUG and receiving some funding from the shadow government.
As in Shan state, the improvements of the opposition were contentious; combined TNLA and PDF causes, however, did not finally safe Mogok until July 24. Further north, the strategically important town of Singu where a bridge across the Ayeyarwady connections north Mandalay Region to Shwebo town in Sagaing Region, fell to PDF troops on July 20.
With a population of 1.6 million, PDFs were also launching attacks on villages held by the Army 20 kilometers away from Mandalay, the Central RMC’s main headquarters, in a city with a population of 1.6 million.
The Bamar heartland’s transition from widespread hostilities is significant. It offers logistical and organizational connectivity between the MDY-PDF and opposition forces in two other key zones: to the north, the riverine towns of Tigyaing and Katha that fall within the greater sphere of influence of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA ), and to the west, the resistance hotbed of central Sagaing around Shwebo city, potentially threatening the highway between Shwebo and Mandalay.
The noose around Myanmar’s ancient royal capital would tighten inexorably from both the north and the east if the TNLA/MDY-PDF combined advances from newly captured Nawnghkio along the highway to threaten the garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin.
Chinese influence’s limits
While highlighting the role of well-organized PDFs with strategic punch, 10.27 Phase Two has also laid bare the stark limits of Chinese influence in stemming the coming landslide.
Repeated efforts to end hostilities in Kunming in the midst of bloody battles ended up being predictably unsuccessful after the Hai Geng ceasefire was broken, an agreement reached in Kunming in January this year.  ,
All three Brothers– including the alliance’s third partner, the Arakan Army ( AA ) – benefit to a greater or lesser degree from cross-border connectivity with China and have been at pains to stress that they will safeguard Chinese economic and infrastructure interests.
All three are undoubtedly determined to prioritize war goals that go far beyond granting their own regions autonomy, including supporting Bamar’s efforts to overthrow the edifice of military dictatorship.
China, for its part, is undoubtedly deeply enraged over the capricious and incompetent dictator Min Aung Hlaing, whose 2021 coup effectively undermined Beijing’s long-term economic and strategic objectives in Myanmar.
At the same time, China has no interest in facilitating the collapse of the SAC regime, which it fears would mean either a descent into fragmentation and chaos or an interim administration in Naypyidaw centered on a NUG that Beijing views as a stalking horse for Western meddling in its backyard.
In consequence, Beijing appears to be caught between the Brotherhood’s Scylla and violent PDFs, which it is unable to control, and the Charybdis of its backing of a Naypyidaw-led regime led by generals whose failed victories and potential collapse have put years of economic and political investment in Myanmar in danger.
The outcome wo n’t be a foreign policy disaster like Cambodia 1978, when thousands of Chinese advisors were abruptly forced to flee for their lives by a Vietnamese army after Lashio’s fall.
But the dilemma policymakers in Beijing are wrestling with today is already a far cry from the caricature of China-in-Myanmar projected by its many Western critics: as a deeply prescient chess master skillfully moving pawns and knights in pursuit of grand geostrategic ambitions stretching decades into the future.
However, all of that has been done to highlight China’s unquestionable ally, the United Wa State Army ( UWSA ), one of the largest drug-trafficking militias in the world.  ,
The 30-person force’s sudden intervention, which had previously been a stand-in for the post-coup chaos that was sweeping the rest of the nation, undoubtedly contributed to the third significant game-changer that 1027 Phase Two brought about.
Having grown strong, rich and influential behind the shield of a 35-year-long ceasefire with the Tatmadaw, the once-despised Wa tribals have emerged from their mountain redoubts east of the Salween River and along the Thai border to reshape the political and military balance across south-central Shan state.
A contingent of around 500 Wa soldiers entered the city on July 27th to form a neutral force that was known to be in good relations with both belligerents in order to protect a liaison office and other real estate interests while fighting was still raging.
Independent observers were left to wonder, however, how effectively the UWSA had benefited from the conflict by establishing a significant and easily resolute military presence in the region’s capital, north Shan, beyond their traditional bailiwicks.
For those paying attention, pointers to the wider scope of Wa ambitions had come 16 days earlier in central Shan State when on July 11 UWSA forces abruptly crossed the Salween River and occupied the Tatmadaw garrison town of Tangyan on the west bank without a shot fired.
Vice Senior General Soe Win, the head of the Myanmar Army, was likely pleading with his hosts to halt the Brotherhood and distribute more ammunition two days earlier when China brokered the move.
However, Tangyan’s occupation was well-known and prior to the Tatmadaw garrison’s agreement, effectively shielding the army from losing the town to MNDAA and TNLA forces.
The ethnic Shan State Progress Party ( SSPP ), a close Wa protege, collaborated with it to coordinate its expansion west of the Salween with new infusions of UWSA-supplied weapons, vehicles, and drones. SSPP troops advanced 65 kilometers to the west of Lashio, which is where the Wa moved before the Wa arrived in Tangyan, and then advanced to Mong Yai town, where it is located.
The Wa power-play has served to throw into sharp relief two new realities with major geopolitical implications. The first is that south-central Shan state is now ideally suited for the UWSA-SSPP alliance.
The Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), the SSPP’s long-standing rival for the state’s ethnic Shan majority, will suffer as a result of the expansion.  ,
The RCSS is facing the prospect of being forced to relocate to its bases on the Thai border under the leadership of Yord Serk, an aging warlord-cum-businessman and warlord-turned-businessman.
With the MNDAA and TNLA’s northern Brotherhood Alliance forces occupying the entire central and southern Shan state, its retreat would leave the Wa-SSPP combine in place.
The second emerging reality is closely related to the first: the Tangyan gambit served to lay bare the striking weakness of the Myanmar military, an incapacity with potentially far-reaching repercussions.  ,
The Tangyan precedent is all too likely to spur further Wa takeovers of larger army bases in eastern Shan state, including the Triangle RMC in Keng Tung and Tachilek city, which are located just south of the Thai border.
Any such scenario implies the fulfillment of a cherished Wa dream: the fusion of the UWSA’s Military Region 171 enclave on the Thai border and its autonomous zone along the Chinese border.
The territorial tie-up would mean the emergence of a newly unified” Wa State” with close political, military and economic links to China and sympathetic to China’s infrastructure ambitions in Shan state and beyond.
What may seem like a dream on the cusp of reality may turn out to be nightmare for Thai military planners, who are already struggling to stop a wave of illicit drugs crossing the border from industrial-scale production centers in Wa-ruled territory.