Moves (Page 44)

Over a month after the launch of the most successful campaign by anti-junta resistance forces in Myanmar’s civil war, some overarching realities are emerging from events that have been widely hailed as a turning point in the conflict.

The most important is arguably the least obvious: the dangers of triumphalism and a rush to victory by guerrilla forces that are militarily still ill-prepared to confront a trained army in conventional combat.

Those dangers are arguably today playing out on the streets of Loikaw, the capital of eastern Karenni state, and in other smaller towns where lightly armed fighters have been thrown into battles against heavy artillery and unremitting air strikes launched by a military that appears unconvinced by reports of its own imminent demise.

As widely reported and opined, the sweeping insurgent offensive across the north of Shan state by the tripartite Brotherhood Alliance of Kokang Chinese, Palaung and Rakhine ethnic insurgents which opened on October 27 was unprecedented on a range of levels.

Operation 1027, named after its launch date, seized a string of towns along the Chinese border, claimed to have overrun up to 200 military posts and bases capturing huge stocks of munitions, and saw the surrender of three Myanmar army battalions.

Even in the darkest days of early 1968 when Communist Party of Burma (CPB) forces surged into northeastern Shan state from launchpads inside China, the Myanmar Army had never suffered such a rapid and crushing series of defeats.

But northern Shan state is not Myanmar and to imagine that the conditions that produced these successes can be easily replicated in very different operational contexts in other parts of the country is surely illusory.

The 1027 campaign’s striking advances emerged from three essential factors: surprise and coordination at the strategic level and sophisticated deployment of armed drones that compensated significantly for a lack of artillery at the tactical level.

Brought to fruition over many months of planning, these factors were peculiar to 1027 and it is worth examining each in turn. The element of surprise was strikingly manifested in the first hours and days of the operation and then, as the military reacted, became obviously less important. 

The diminishing impact of surprise was clearly reflected in the timelines of key engagements. The fight for the border town of Chin Shwe Haw was won by the Kokang-Chinese Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) within a matter of hours on the morning of October 27 when the element of surprise was overwhelming.

The battle for the town of Kunlong, home to the main Salween River bridge linking Kokang to the rest of the state, took until November 13 to achieve victory. The final assaults by the ethnic Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) that seized the town and base of Mong Kyet came on November 23 after weeks of relentless but ultimately vain military air strikes.

At the strategic level, the element of surprise is now long gone. If it was not before, the Myanmar Army is now fully alert, irate and assessing its limited strategic options.

Battlefield coordination between the Brotherhood Alliance, which in addition to the MNDAA and TNLA also includes the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army (AA), also critically underpinned 1027’s success. 

But such coordination is not achieved over a few months. Often forgotten amid the current euphoria is that the Brotherhood Alliance has been operating closely together in the relatively narrow battlespace of northern Shan state since at least 2014 – or an entire decade. 

The trio’s first major joint offensive came in early 2015 with a full-scale though ultimately abortive attempt to seize Kokang from the military. Further coordinated operations followed, most notably in August 2019 when the Brotherhood – for the first time operating under that name – launched a campaign that in many respects served as a test run for 2023’s Operation 1027.

Far smaller in scale and deployment of manpower, the joint operations in 2019 were not aimed at capturing entire towns but did overrun small posts, blew bridges effectively severing major trade routes to the Chinese border and involved a powerfully symbolic rocket attack on the garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin overlooking Mandalay.

It is difficult to underestimate the importance of years of regular liaison and joint operations in establishing trust between different military organizations. And in this respect, the Brotherhood is unquestionably unique in Myanmar’s context.

No other ethnic resistance organizations have achieved this level of cooperation and interoperability either with each other or with newly formed anti-coup People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) that do not come under their direct command and control. This has obvious implications for the campaigns in central Myanmar in the coming year.

The third element underpinning the success of Operation 1027 was the tactically innovative deployment of drones, something that armed forces commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has himself acknowledged and for which he has blamed foreign experts.

He needs to give Myanmar citizens rather more credit: As his troops in the field have become painfully aware, drone warfare is hardly a new element in Myanmar’s armed conflict.

First launched at a relatively amateur level in late 2021 by local PDFs in Sagaing region, the deployment of attack drones – unmanned combat aerial vehicles or UCAVs in military jargon – have made remarkable advances since. Dedicated PDF drone units such as the Federal Wings now operate under the anti-junta National Unity Government (NUG), flying relatively sophisticated armed quadcopters among other UCAVs.

Where the 1027 campaign appears to have achieved a striking new level of tactical innovation was in the marriage of the expertise and experience already established by PDFs and the organization, coordination and resources brought to the fight by the Brotherhood.

This in turn reflected the relatively new cooperation between the NUG and the Brotherhood that respected Myanmar analyst Ye Myo Hein dates from early 2023. This cooperation, translated into both lift capability allowing for heavier payloads and UCAV numbers.

Images emerging from Shan state in November indicate that larger quadcopters and hexacopters used typically for agricultural purposes such as crop-dusting and commercially available in China for between US$8,000 and $16,000 were converted into makeshift UCAVs.

Able to lift large caliber 120mm mortar rounds (which weigh 14.4 kilograms and have a lethal radius of around 25 meters), these larger drones were then deployed in swarms calculated to overwhelm handheld drone-jamming guns issued to many army units and soften up defenses for ground assaults.

Over the first two weeks of the campaign, the results appear to have been striking but will take time and resources to replicate on fronts in other regions of the country.

Indeed, even in northern Shan state the key elements of surprise, coordination and drone tactics are now meeting clear limits.

The major cities of Laukkai, the capital of the Kokang region, Lashio, the military headquarters of the Northeastern Regional Command, and Muse, the largest trading hub on the Chinese border, remain in regime hands and will not be captured by Brotherhood forces without potentially protracted urban fighting that sucks up manpower and munitions.

What this looks like has already been demonstrated beyond Shan state where post-1027 euphoria has inspired other resistance groups operating in very different conditions with very different capabilities to make their own quick-win lunges for urban centers with results that have been mixed at best.

The district center of Kawlin in upper Sagaing region which fell to a joint force of Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and local PDF units on November 6 offered a positive example in the immediate aftermath of 1027 and in a region where the KIA has been deeply engaged since 2021.

Very different results emerged from the short-lived battle for Pauktaw in Rakhine state where late on November 15 Arakan Army units seized the riverine town close to the state capital of Sittwe in a surprise assault only to be driven out by a rapid counterpunch from regime ground, air and naval forces.

A similar scenario unfolded in Taze in the center of Sagaing region where an attempt by joint PDF forces to overrun an important town close to Shwebo city was beaten back on November 29 by airstrikes and reinforcements of heliborne infantry.

The battle for Loikaw

But by far the most sobering example of triumphalist overreach has been the attempt by Karenni resistance forces led by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) to seize the state capital of Loikaw, a large city and headquarters of a Regional Operations Command that lies only 125 kilometers from the Naypyidaw Capital Region.

Spurred on by the successes of 1027, the Karenni resistance announced its own “Operation 11.11” on November 11 with the primary objective of capturing the city.

Moving into the urban areas from the northwest, the attackers met with some initial success, not least around the university where video footage of shaken and wounded army troops surrendering at the gates of the strongpoint was shared globally and appeared to promise early victory.

Two weeks on, however, the grinding battle for a largely empty city continues as a garrison several battalions-strong pounds the resistance with artillery while calling in helicopter-delivered resupply and close air support which on one day in late November was reported to have escalated to a remarkable 60 strikes.

For their part, the resistance forces have been limited by light weaponry compounded by the difficulty of mounting drone strikes on army strongpoints given the geofencing around Loikaw airport, which lies only three kilometers from the city center. On November 25, fresh columns of insurgent fighters were filmed moving into the city to reinforce an operation that was clearly not on the cusp of victory.

Under these conditions and depending on events elsewhere, it is entirely possible that the battle for Loikaw could last weeks or even months, exacting a steady toll on resistance forces that might perhaps have been better directed against less ambitious and far more vulnerable garrisons in other parts of the state.

As the war moves into an inevitably bitterly fought dry season, opposition commanders will face the critical challenge of calibrating the right balance between, on the one hand, a headlong rush to exploit the momentum of 1027, and, on the other, limiting further potential advances through an excess of strategic caution.

Striking that balance is certainly not made any easier by the absence of a unified insurgent command that results in local and regional forces, as in Karenni State, making their own uncoordinated assessments of the “big picture” and acting accordingly.

But that calibration will increasingly be made in light of two related considerations emerging from events surrounding Operation 1027. The first is that while the Myanmar military has suffered a signal defeat in a campaign that arguably marks a tipping point in a wider war, it is certainly not on the brink of collapse.

Strategically it continues to benefit from cohesion of command while tactically it still enjoys a clear edge in artillery and, self-evidently, a monopoly of airpower, both of which it will continue to deploy with zero regard for civilian casualties.

Lessons learned from a range of protracted guerrilla conflicts over recent decades suggest that ultimately neither tactical capability can stave off defeat in a conflict also critically impacted by shortfalls in military manpower and deteriorating economic and political conditions. But both artillery and airpower will remain increasingly lethal factors in the coming months.  

The second relates to psychology. Myanmar of December 2023 is not Afghanistan of August 2021 and allowing dreams of a domino-style collapse to cloud realistic assessments of the military’s capacity and resolve invites serious reverses and human losses that will severely impact morale – both in resistance ranks and among the wider civilian population.

The proposition advanced by some analysts that the current situation is nothing new and involves merely a replay of setbacks suffered by an army that has been under siege many times before in its history is undoubtedly misguided.

The geographic scope and military scale of the challenges currently confronting an over-extended and wounded military are without precedent and, short of a negotiated ceasefire, threaten its survival as the dominant politico-military institution it has been since the 1950s.

However, to believe that the advances achieved by 1027 mean the war in Myanmar has abruptly entered the final phase of a “strategic offensive” that requires the seizing of towns and a “march on Naypyidaw” is no less misguided and indeed dangerously delusional.

It risks abandoning a gradualist resistance strategy that has evolved since late 2021 based on relentless attrition, the severing of national communication and trade arteries, and forcing the steady retreat of regime forces into increasingly isolated and ultimately unsustainable urban enclaves.

But lessons from history also suggest that Operation 1027 is an unlikely pointer to future strategy and that in other conflicts overconfident but unprepared insurgent forces have still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

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