asia

 ASIA

Bangladesh cricket star Shakib Al Hasan’s election run divides hometown

The country’s biggest sporting icon is fighting for the ruling party in the January 7 vote, boycotted by the opposition.

 Bangladesh – In Magura, a sleepy town in southwest Bangladesh, about 168km (104 miles) from capital Dhaka, more than a thousand people are gathered outside a circular-shaped auditorium.

The crisp winter air barely cut short their enthusiasm as they waited for Shakib Al Hasan – their “boy from the hometown” and arguably the biggest sporting icon in the South Asian nation of some 170 million people.

Hasan arrived in a swanky SUV, waved his hand like a seasoned politician, and quickly went inside the auditorium where again a couple of hundred people were waiting for him as he appeared for an interview with a popular YouTuber and talk show host, Rafsan Sabab.

The event was part of a PR campaign ahead of the national election in Bangladesh, to be held on January 7, in which Hasan, still an active player in the national cricket team, is contesting from his hometown constituency for the incumbent Awami League (AL) party.

As the interview began, Sabab asked, with a smile: “Every district of Bangladesh has its own speciality, be it food, garment or a monument. Here in Magura, when I ask anyone about its speciality, they unanimously say: Shakib Al Hasan.”

“Yes, I would have said the same,” Hasan wryly replied. Sabab laughed, so did the audience.

But that cheeky reply perhaps best portrays the 36-year-old cricketer, known for his aggressive style both on and off the ground. That he is often called the best ever athlete Bangladesh has produced also helps.

Myanmar Junta Loses Town, Dozens of Troops in Five Days of Resistance Attacks

The Irrawaddy January 3, 2024

 

he international analytical feeding frenzy following the stunning Operation 1027 by the Brotherhood Alliance and its numerous allies from the end of October shows little sign of settling. An overwhelming sense of exuberant certainty of the imminent downfall of the State Administration Council (SAC) junta suffused a great many international media, think-tank and consultant ranks, and took many governments by complete surprise, to which an immediate overcorrection took hold: perhaps the anti-SAC resistance could prevail after all? Stunningly successful and disruptive events such as 1027 invariably elicit a cacophony of obviousness masquerading as analysis. Uneven quality and hyperbole are inevitable.

The long-term Myanmar military expert, Australian academic Andrew Selth, performed an admirable public service in a recent piece in East Asia Forum by arraying a range of important cautionary analytical points to counterbalance the 1027 exuberance, especially some of the irresponsible jingoism emanating from Washington DC. Respected journalist Bertil Lintner produced a very careful and detailed analysis outlining many similar points, putting the Myanmar military’s recent losses in perspective in The Irrawaddy in early December.

 

Jane’s Defence Group correspondent Anthony Davis soon after pursued the same measured approach, warning against “guerilla triumphalism” in the wake of 1027 in the Asia Times, and decrying, like Selth, the “breathless and deluded predictions about the impending fall of the Myanmar military regime.” The year-end commentary by Irrawaddy founding editor Aung Zaw was also a measured refrain against any imminent-collapse argument. Balanced assessments such as these were inevitably condemned on social media, largely by the Western Twitterati standing at a critical safe distance.

 

The Myanmar junta lost one more town and over two dozen troops in the past five days as People’s Defense Force groups (PDFs) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) stepped up attacks on regime targets across the country.

Incidents were reported in Shan, Chin and Rakhine states and Mandalay and Sagaing regions.

The Irrawaddy has collected the following reports of significant attacks from PDFs and EAOs.

Some military casualties could not be independently verified.

One more town seized by TNLA in northern Shan

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) claimed to have taken complete control of Mongngaw town in Kyaukme Township, northern Shan on Sunday night after attacking junta bases—including a strategic one—a police station and other junta-run government offices in the town for three days.

In its failed attempted to defend the town, the junta conducted heavy bombardments using aircraft and artillery shelling.

The attacks were part of the ongoing Operation 1027 offensive being conducted by the Brotherhood Alliance of three ethnic armies including the TNLA.

On Tuesday, fierce clashes between TNLA and junta forces were reported in Kutkai and Nawnghkio townships. During the clashes, the junta used aircraft to bomb the resistance forces.

Junta forces also randomly shelled villages in Lashio Township.

The Brotherhood Alliance of three ethnic armies said its member the Arakan Army (AA) managed to seize the junta’s Kha Maung Wa base in Paletwa Township, Chin State on Tuesday.

The AA has also been engaged in intense operations attempting to seize the strategic junta base of Tinn Ma in Kyauktaw Township, Rakhine State. The junta used aircraft to defend the base.

The AA has widened Operation 1027 into Rakhine, attacking junta bases across the state since Nov. 13. Twelve pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia members were killed and many injured in Myingyan Township, Mandalay Region on Saturday when 19 resistance groups jointly raided regime forces stationed at Nyaung To Village, said Anyar Federal Task Force (AFTF), which joined the attacks.

After an hour of fighting, the remaining junta soldiers and militia members fled to nearby Sin Chaung Village, where junta camps are located. The PDF groups chased and attacked the fleeing regime forces and destroyed bunkers and camps in Sin Chaung.

At the same time, other resistance fighters raided junta bases in Kyar Taing Village on the Myingyan-Semekhone Road, killing two regime forces and injuring others.

After the raid, the resistance groups continued to drop drone bombs on a junta base in Taw Pu Village, killing three more soldiers, said AFTF.

 

The tensions between narratives of gushing victory and cautionary contextualization are reminiscent of a decade ago during the ‘pacted transition’ when so many foreigners went wild with enthusiasm over Thein Sein’s administration and Myanmar’s ‘transformation.’ Similar unblinking enthusiasm followed the National League for Democracy (NLD) victory in the November 2020 election: underlying ethnic tensions, uneven development, impunity for mass atrocities, and ongoing armed conflict went studiously ignored.

Similar sentiments swirl around the National Unity Government (NUG) and its ability to ‘govern’, ‘administer’ or ‘control’ a new federal Myanmar. There is no question the NUG has achieved a great deal since its formation in 2021, but its performance has been uneven at best and its claims of unified leadership are contested by multiple constituencies. So much of the immediate post-1027 gush was an attempt at narrative capture, not accuracy, with pro-NUG commentary touting full cooperation between the northern EAOs and the NUG leadership. This brand of ‘solidarity absolutism’ is in itself a blind spot.

‘Coordination’ by the NUG is the new ‘effective control’, the formulation from 2022 that claimed the ‘revolutionary forces’ controlled more of Myanmar than the regime, a ludicrous claim that withered quickly, and in retrospect was counterproductive. Alert skepticism should apply to counterintuitive claims of ‘cooperation’, its veracity and tensile strength if accurate.

The Myanmar information ecosystem has always been clogged with dysfunction: secrecy, ‘stovepiping’, supposition, speculation, funding competition, poor (or non-existent) quality control, questionable data, and an unhealthy culture of imperious mansplaining by prominent ‘experts’, group-think, delusion, ignorance and artifice. There is a bonanza of purloining public information on the conflict and commodifying it for secret consumption, but a lack of public dissemination obscures potential blind spots.

Emotions in a state of daily atrocity quite rightly run high, but in establishing conflict trends and dynamics, too many important issues are relegated to the sidelines, either wilfully or ignorantly because emotion is prioritized over reason. Part of the production of multiple analytical blind spots has been the post-coup surge in self-appointed foreign conflict analysts who feel free to pontificate on matters they have little or no prior experience in. These range from numerous think-tankers, academics with little prior Myanmar experience, ‘Birkenstock Brigade’ aid workers, and commentators who may have a long but undistinguished track record of opining on the country from afar: undeterred by a rudimentary and contradictory assembly of facts and literally no on-the-ground experience yet nevertheless repeatedly claiming the SAC was at ‘breaking point’ (or equally unhelpful terms) to such an extent that ‘crying wolf’ lost its meaning.

So many foreigners who had been overwhelmingly governance-focused technocrats with experience in Naypyitaw and Yangon, but not in conflict zones, were compelled into exile, cataloguing a complex conflict from far away. A lack of experience coupled with geographic distance does not lend itself to expertise. Overwhelmingly Washingtonian ‘Wolfman analysis’ has been damaging to global comprehension of Myanmar’s conflicts.

If one can believe in the long-term inevitable fall of the SAC and the Myanmar military, as this analyst does, but also identify multiple complex challenges ahead on so many fronts that deserve more careful discussion, planning, transparency, and confronting differences and the challenges of cooperation now, instead of yearning for an imagined community of ‘unity’, then a more robust approach to conflict analysis should prevail.

To avoid the pitfalls of analytical blind spots, embrace uncertainty and complexity, and plan for the sustainable demise of the SAC, the following must be considered: historical context; curbing predictions; and emphasizing clear conflict communications.

Putting conflict analysis in historical context

One of the depressing ironies of the 1027 phenomenon is how little concern many foreigners gave to northern Shan State and the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) operating there, especially the members of the Brotherhood Alliance. The rise of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta-ang national Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA) was by no means ignored over the past decade, but except for isolated incidents of kinetic activity, not treated as seriously as their steady progress warranted. Thant Myint U, writing in Nikkei Asia in 2016, dismissed conflict in northern Shan State as akin to rivalry between criminal gangs in Chicago in 1926. So too, the rise of the Arakan Army was scoffed at by diplomats and Myanmar decision-makers as peripheral until early 2019, without any consideration of multiple underlying grievances.

There are numerous intergroup fault-lines that should not be swept under the NUG’s carpet of ‘unity’ and ‘cooperation.’ Kachin and Ta-ang tensions and territorial control are real. Ta-ang and Shan animus and mistrust are generations old. Tensions between Shan armed groups have been vexed for decades, not just since the coup. The recent ‘ceasefire’ between the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP) may have been seen in a positive light, but decades of conflict do not suggest peace is assured.

Tensions between communities in Anya Region are also rumbling. Inter-religious tensions, class differences and urban-rural divides are also real social cleavages that have existed for generations. These tensions shouldn’t be dismissed as irrelevant in an unprecedented revolutionary unity against the military; to do so would be folly. But equally important is to resist the doom-loop of inevitable inter-group extermination. There are undoubtedly numerous initiatives of inter-communal cooperation that have been successful and will be crucial in the years ahead: especially those who have survived the clumsy interference of Western NGOs.

There is a clear imperative to provide independent think-tanks and research collectives with the financial independence to pursue their own research agendas. Blind spots have been in part created by donors who prioritized their own systems and needs, or well-meaning yet ignorant curiosity, instead of asking Myanmar expertise what it was foreigners needed to know. If there is yet another lesson of the ‘transition’ that decisions makers should embrace, it is the real necessity to encourage contradictory perspectives, and not the tepid approaches of ‘critical friends’ and ‘program stress-testing’ but more rigorous processes: ‘red-teams’, ‘tenth man rule’, or old fashioned ‘devil’s advocates.’

The folly of prediction

Victory in three months has been a couple of years in the making. Gradual defeat of the resistance has been its antithesis. Predictive conflict analysis in Myanmar is a tradition littered with failure. The ‘coup won’t happen’ represents perhaps the most glaring collective tendency of the ‘commentariat’ to get it wrong.

Anthony Davis, one of the most experienced conflict analysts on Myanmar, has been nevertheless criticized for making grand predictions that oscillate between certain defeat and definite victory. On Feb. 5, 2019, his headline analysis was “Why Myanmar’s military will win the Rakhine war.” Six months later it was “Why Myanmar is losing the Rakhine war.” Davis’ analytical points are more carefully calibrated than the punchy titles suggest, but regardless, more circumspect forecasts in such a dynamic environment are warranted. This could be called the ‘Davis Pendulum.’ The nearly three years since the SAC seized power have produced much analysis with a greater amplitude of winning and losing than is necessary.

One of the most prominent cases of premature prediction must involve the Karen National Union (KNU). Myanmar’s longest-running EAO, the KNU ‘endgame’ has been predicated at multiple points over many decades as its battlefield fortunes undulated, or after every factional split or ideological or religious rupture. The greatest threat followed the defection of forces in late 1994 to the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), and the loss soon after of major border bases such as Manerplaw and Kawmoorah. The SLORC’s ubiquitous propaganda machine produced a compendium of spurious reports in the 1995 volume Whither KNU?

The insurgency was ostensibly finished by popular (foreign) consensus. A decade after the fall of the major border bases, one news report claimed the “ruling junta seems poised to eliminate the Karen resistance o­nce the rains subside later in the year.” The Times of London ran a story on the KNU in 2009 with the headline: “Burma: world’s longest war nears its end.” A 2011 report from the highly respected Transnational Institute (TNI) also predicted the demise and irrelevance of the KNU: “[Myanmar’s] best-known insurgent organization, the Karen National Union (KNU), is in crisis, having lost control of its once extensive ‘liberated zones’, and lacks a political agenda relevant to all Karen communities… the long-term prospect is one of the decline of insurgency as a viable political or military strategy.”

What satisfaction so many KNU loyalists must have felt in recent days when the capture of every Myanmar army post along the Salween River in Mutraw District was announced. ‘Endgame’ should be excised from responsible conflict analysis, and certainty of any end of armed resistance treated as a mirage. As painful as it is, this approach is equally valid for the prospects of the Myanmar army. They’re not finished yet.

‘Anticipatory action’ is a recent buzzword generated by the international aid industry’s inexhaustible ability to reformulate failing approaches, but it does hold some measure of utility in stabilizing expectations of the course of conflict in Myanmar, by looking for ‘forecastable hazards.’ This is especially important for humanitarian aid and natural disaster response, but some of its elements could be incorporated into conflict analysis to reduce blind spots. The major challenge then becomes ensuring that decision-makers are receptive to consuming this complexity and planning for it.

More robust conflict communications

Analytical blind spots can be reduced by more transparent communications. The Brotherhood Alliance has been largely adept at making clear the general (if not always specific) conflict dynamics, as have central spokespersons for the AA, KNU, Karenni resistance. The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) has observed radio silence for years, which is a form of communication. But more attention to strategic communications on the course of the conflict could usefully limit blind spots. Transparency and honesty generate trust, but also necessary course correction and leadership accountability.

Take for example the recent interview with General Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, in The Economist. There is so little useful comparison between the wars in Ukraine and Myanmar that it would be a waste of time to try, but what is instructive is Zaluzhny’s candor in assessing the contours of the conflict there. He attributes the disappointing gains of the Ukrainian mid-2023 counteroffensive to a technological impasse between the two armies: “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing.” The war is not over at all, but it has become an expensive ‘meatgrinder’ of soldier’s lives and massive military equipment waste.

There is one salient comparison for Myanmar in The Economist interview, with Zaluzhny’s assessment of Russia as “a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us [Ukraine] the most expensive thing we have is our people.” The SAC has shown equal disregard for the lives of its own troops and civilians across the country. Operation 1027 and its offshoots came perhaps not as a total surprise to the SAC, but it illustrates the Myanmar security forces’ structural weaknesses in responding effectively on multiple fronts.

Unfortunately, there is little hope for any similar honest assessment or longer-term insight from NUG Defense Minister Ye Mon, who in a post-1027 Facebook post lauded ‘cooperation’ in the operation as proof of ‘Union Spirit.’ Acting President Lashi La is made of sterner stuff, but some of his recent pronouncements have unfortunately listed to the over-optimistic side. A recent interview in Voice of America (VOA) was a notable improvement in clarity and the need for coordination (even with the tired insistence on formal recognition of the NUG).

The NUG must embrace the hard reality of the conflict situation that Western states want to hear, not a discredited imminent victory narrative that has been on broken-record setting since the first ‘D-Day’ announcement in September 2021. One interview that should be applauded, and emulated, for its clarity and principles is with the Karenni National Defence Force (KNDF) deputy Ko Mawi in late November, where he discusses in detail the progress of the offensive to liberate Loikaw. “It is important that we launch operations in our respective areas so that a nationwide coordinated attack takes shape on its own. We urge revolutionary groups in other areas to carry out similar operations. We need to help each other, take strength from each other’s success and try to destroy the military dictatorship.”

An important improvement in conflict communications is planning for the future. There is an unfortunate tendency to assume a post-SAC utopia awaits the people of Myanmar. The famous quote from General Omar Bradley, “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics” is equally valid in the multilayered insurgency in Myanmar: so much speculation about strategic direction and gains and so little talk about capabilities, finance, supplies, infrastructure and actual long-term challenges, and how to reach final victory, and what comes in the years afterward. This takes far more serious bureaucratic capacity than solidarity absolutism cares to mention.

A recent article by energy specialist Guillaume de Langre forecasts the inevitable collapse of the nearly three-decade resource boom that sustained military rule between 1990-2010 followed by the ‘transition’ decade, but which will be running out almost in synchronicity with the fall of the SAC, indeed marking an inevitable collapse of the system. This promises a poisoned inheritance for the resistance forces: a liberated wasteland with few natural resources for reconstruction, and an almost certain competition for international funds amid immense global needs and no repeat of an investor scramble from 2013. A ruthless bear market for development projects is more likely than limitless international largesse.

If the NUG doesn’t address many of these analytical blind spots, and all the ones not mentioned, even just to the point of simply acknowledging them, any future peace could be seriously disrupted. Challenges on the road to peace include landmines and unexploded ordnance, dismantling the militia system, crime and disorder, demobilization of multiple combatants, de-SACification, de-SitTatification, de-NLDification, retribution against anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). Other pitfalls include the tyranny of ‘repatriate’ arrogance and entitlement. And consideration must be extended to people in urban spaces who adopt a wait-and-see attitude: will they be spared vilification or revenge?

In such an uncertain environment, certainty is not simply unwise, but dangerous. Post-1027 optimism is admirable, but over-expectation is counterproductive. The only certainty in Myanmar’s civil war is the illegitimacy of the SAC. Armed resistance and multiple forms of opposition, then, are more accurately cast as a ‘just-war’ revolution. But victory can only be assured by an accurate reading of the reality in multiple battlescapes, not the alternative reality of propaganda and its multiple blind spots.

 

Plane held in France over trafficking concerns lands in India

Airbus A340 carrying 276 Indian passengers arrives in Mumbai early on Tuesday.

A plane conveying many Indian travelers that was grounded in France for four days in the midst of a test into conceivable illegal exploitation has shown up in India.

The Airbus A340 conveying 276 Indian travelers arrived in Mumbai right off the bat Tuesday morning, flight following information showed.

The flight, worked by Romania-based Legend Carriers, had been on the way from the Unified Middle Easterner Emirates to Nicaragua when it was confined at a provincial air terminal on Thursday following a clue that its travelers might survivors of traffic.

Travelers on the flight were bound at Vatry air terminal, around 150km east of Paris, while specialists transformed the terminal into a shoddy court to do crisis hearings.

Among the 303 unique travelers who remained behind in France, 25, including five minors, mentioned refuge in the nation and two others were at first confined as a component of the dealing test prior to being delivered, nearby specialists said.