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On August 3, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) announced it had captured the Myanmar military’s Northeast Command headquarters in Lashio, a key city on the northern Shan Township trade route with China. The seizure of Lashio marks the biggest victory since the launch of Operation 1027 on October 27 last year.

The victory triggered joyful celebration among Myanmar’s people and sent shock waves through domestic and international communities. Northeast Command is significant not only as a strategic base but also for its historic achievements, which the military often uses for propaganda. The regional command defeated the Kuomintang invasion in the 1950s and the Communist Party of Burma insurgency in the 1980s. 

Its unprecedented fall comes as resistance forces gain momentum on battlefields nationwide in a coordinated campaign to oust the junta. Despite this, analysts and policymakers in the international community remain either confused or fail to understand the Myanmar crisis, resulting in few effective and actionable solutions to help resolve the conflict. The despair and misguided conceptions that mark this international approach have helped shield one of the world’s most brutal regimes and its military from justified international pressure.

The fall of Lashio adds urgency to the question of whether the junta’s imminent collapse will pave the way for a new country or merely greater chaos. More importantly, those in the international community who seek a stable, peaceful, and prosperous Myanmar must assist in finding effective solutions for the emerging nation and help avoid or mitigate the risks of further chaos.

Misguided international narratives

While many analyses of Myanmar’s crisis and longstanding complex problems are insightful, they tend to focus on the resistance, leaving out the sole culprit for the crisis, Min Aung Hlaing, and the seven-decade conflict’s main driver, the Myanmar military. As a result, international actors often consider Myanmar’s problems unsolvable, pressure only the resistance side to negotiate and, worse, appear to be worried about a potential resistance victory.

Dominant narratives on Myanmar can be divided into three phases: First, it was believed the resistance could not win since Myanmar’s military is among the strongest in the region and the most enduring institution in the country’s modern history. Second, the fighting was seen as being driven by radicals on both sides, with the general population caught in the middle and suffering most. In the third and most recent phase, the consensus view is the Myanmar military is probably incapable of winning the war but the country will fragment because resistance forces are scattered and cannot unite the nation.

Some of the key narratives include:

The Myanmar military will win in the end.

The conflict is a fight for the heart of the Bamar majority between the Tatmadaw (military) and the National League for Democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the election in 2020.

Resistance forces lack unity while the Myanmar military is highly unitary, monolithic, and hierarchical.

The military is weakened but will not collapse soon; the conflict is headed toward more intense violence and greater uncertainty.

The conflict will drag on “without truly threatening the military’s core power centers,” deepening human suffering.

Post-coup Myanmar is fragmenting

Although the earlier misconceptions are understandable, the later analyses and commentaries often ignore the fact that Min Aung Hlaing’s coup caused the current crisis and suffering of the populace. Worse, these narratives are often critical of the resistance, inviting the false conclusion that it is the people’s revolutionary forces who are driving the conflict and humanitarian crisis and threatening stability in the country. At the same time, they shield Min Aung Hlaing’s regime from deserved international pressure.

Headed toward fragmentation?  

The lack of unity resistance forces has been a common concern and criticism of both domestic and international observers. While this concern is valid, the real question is how the Myanmar military can be stopped from killing its own people now and in the future. Can the military be persuaded to compromise with political stakeholders and ethnic armed organizations? And is it capable of holding the country together to bring lasting peace and stability to Myanmar?

The international community has been urging resistance forces to forge a united front since the coup – partly as this is considered the only way to defeat the mighty Myanmar military and partly because a unified resistance would make it easier for neighboring countries to achieve border security and trade flows.

But for some reason, international players have ignored the remarkable political cooperation and unification between various resistance forces fighting the junta. The political collaboration includes the establishment of the Federal Democracy Charter (FDC) and the National Unity Consultative Council in March 2021, and the National Unity Government one month later.

It would have been ideal if the various resistance forces across the country had united under one central leadership to fight their common enemy. However, the reality has been far from ideal. As the Myanmar military escalated violence over the past three years – burning Thantlang, committing massacres in A Nang Pa and Pazigyi, and deepening economic hardship – the resistance has faced a life-and-death struggle to combat and uproot junta rule. It lacked the luxury of time and resources to establish a central institution: the fight against an enemy that would not stop killing innocent people had to come first.

The essence of a central leadership is to facilitate coordination and collaboration. But despite lacking a central command, resistance forces have managed to collaborate and cooperate since the beginning – both politically and militarily. Even under constant pressure from the junta’s go-to strategy to divide resistance forces by using ultra-nationalistic provocation, the resistance alliance has not only held firm but emerged stronger, delivering tangible military results. Victory in Lashio is a striking example of effective cooperation among the resistance forces.

Can Myanmar become a new country

Now that the collapse of the Myanmar military seems to be only a matter of time, the second criticism commonly leveled at the resistance side is that it lacks a plan for post-junta rule. While this concern is valid, it contains flawed reasoning and a victim-blaming undertone. It is also misleading and dangerous to suggest that the military must remain in power in some shape or form. The old saying, “mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent” is relevant here as resistance forces and civilian populations continue to face the military’s indiscriminate lethal violence.

In this current phase of resistance victories, bonds of solidarity are strengthening among resistance forces and Myanmar people. Key ethnic armed organizations like the Karen National Union, Karenni National Progressive Party, and Chin National Front, which are collaborating with the National Unity Government (NUG), sent a letter congratulating ethnic Brotherhood Alliance forces on capturing Northeast Command while reinforcing their commitment to ousting junta and establishing a democratic federal union. The populace is overjoyed about successive resistance victories, expressing their feelings online and on the ground.

If one questions whether Myanmar will descend into greater chaos after military rule, it’s easy to find incidents and evidence that support such a scenario. But we need to be wary of confirmation bias in such analysis.

On the resistance side, leaders and ordinary citizens are well aware of the risk of chaos following the junta’s removal. Unfortunately, Myanmar people cannot afford to dwell on that possibility. For political elites, the chance to build a new country is worth the risks, while for ordinary people, an uncertain future is better than the current threat of being killed or arrested by Min Aung Hlaing’s brutal junta.

How can the international community help?

Despite the dangers, hardships, scant resources, and absence of international support, Myanmar’s resistance has achieved remarkable gains in a short time. Its forces have consistently proven their determination to remove the Myanmar military from politics and the economy once and for all so it can never threaten innocent people’s lives again. The military’s campaign of terror has failed to quell the resistance but only strengthened its resolve to break free from the vicious cycle of military coups, and junta attempts to deceive the people and confuse the world about “transitioning to a disciplined democracy.”

Instead of continually highlighting current problems and the risks of chaos, it would be more constructive for the international community to focus on finding solutions. Guiding policy options to mitigate unfavorable outcomes would help Myanmar resume its path toward stability, peace, federal democracy, and economic development.

The key is a solution-oriented approach by the international community in three phases:

1.Negotiated settlement/dialogue: International players who insist on a negotiated end to the conflict can still pursue this approach. However, the pressure to come to the table must be applied to the Myanmar military. Specifically, it must be pressured to cease violent actions across the country while being held accountable for its atrocities and crimes committed against Myanmar people.

The resistance side has exhausted all peaceful means – protests, civil disobedience, pleas for R2P (responsibility to protect), and calls for a no-fly zone. Only when these peaceful efforts failed to safeguard their own lives and those of their loved ones did they finally resort to armed resistance. This choice, though seen as irrational by some, was made in the face of real dangers of death, arrest, or prolonged hardship under military rule. For the resistance, even a slim chance of breaking free from military rule was deemed worth the risk. Thus, pressuring the resistance to negotiate is often perceived as unjust and heartless.

2.Humanitarian assistance: Three and half years of conflict and deepening economic crisis have left the populace impoverished. Unless military rule is brought to an end, Myanmar has no chance of resuming its path to economic development and an equitable society. In the meantime, a large chunk of Myanmar’s population requires urgent humanitarian assistance. So far, this aid primarily comes through “people-to-people” support via informal networks both within the country and in the worldwide diaspora. The international community should explore ways to build mechanisms and channels to deliver humanitarian assistance more effectively.

3.Support for Myanmar’s rebirth as new country

Even in the darkest days of this crisis, Myanmar people continue to aspire to a new country – an inclusive federal democracy of lasting peace, stability, and sustainable development. Their history, individual experience, and sheer instinct tell them they cannot achieve this dream while the military remains in power. However, belief is now surging that they have a real fighting chance of making this aspiration a reality.

Khin Oo is a public policy analyst and researcher on the political economy of Myanmar.

This article was originally published on The Irrawaddy.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.