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
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.
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