Myanmar’s civil war, underway since the 2021 coup, may have reached a tipping point. The battle for the strategic northern garrison town of Lashio appears to have ended with victory for an alliance of anti-junta forces. Rebel claims of taking the town have been verified by a number of local sources.
The battle for Lashio, headquarters for the junta’s north-eastern military command, began in late June when the ethnic Three Brotherhood Alliance and the National Unity Government-aligned People’s Defence Force (PDF) coordinated their attack. The fall of Lashio means that Myanmar’s central, second city of Mandalay, which has anti-junta forces on two sides, may be next to come under assault.
The civil war, which has so far cost more than 50,000 lives, began after Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, staged a coup against the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi and other leading ministers have been imprisoned since February 2021.
Since then, many of Myanmar’s armed ethnic groups have risen against the junta, loosely coordinating with the PDF. Numerous reports confirm that junta control is now limited to sections of the far north, about half of Shan State and the more heavily populated lower half of the Irrawaddy basin.
The Myanmar junta has been supported by neighbouring China, which has increasingly pressed it to hold elections. With only around 40 per cent of the country under junta control and the main political party, the NLD, forming the core of the anti-junta National Unity Government, any elections under the junta would be effectively meaningless.
The junta, formally the State Administration Council, declared a state of emergency in September 2021 and has renewed it each six months since. The state of emergency was again renewed at the beginning of August, following Myanmar’s acting president taking medical leave, replaced by military commander and coup leader Min Aung Hlaing.
While momentum appears to be in favor of the PDF and its allies, the junta retains considerable forces as well as an extensive arsenal of Russian, Chinese and Singaporean-supplied weapons. India and Thailand have also supplied weapons to the Tatmadaw.
Should they eventually be successful, the anti-junta forces broadly agree on a new federated structure for Myanmar. However, the armed ethnic groups also have their own agendas, which has limited overall anti-junta coordination.
Should they coordinate sufficiently to lay siege to Mandalay, that will leave exposed the sprawling, loosely connected capital of Naypyidaw. In such a situation, the junta would then effectively be in full retreat.
Damien Kingsbury Emeritus Professor at Deakin University and author of The Rise and Decline of Modern Democracy, Routledge, 2023.
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