Myanmar’s Instability Deepens as the World Watches Silently

John P. Ruehl

Militant groups are increasingly threatening Myanmar’s military government. But other non-state actors, as well as China, are playing powerful roles in the divided country.

Myanmar’s stability has eroded significantly since the 2021 military coup. But the coordinated attack by multiple separatist and pro-democracy groups in October and November 2023 has seen military outposts, villages, border crossings, and other infrastructure overrun. While the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, clings to control in central and coastal regions populated by the country’s ethnic majority, much of the country’s border areas are increasingly slipping into anti-government control.

This current turbulence is not an aberration but deeply rooted in Myanmar’s history. Since gaining independence from British rule in 1948, the country has grappled with what is commonly described as the world’s longest-running civil war. Initial experiments with democracy witnessed limited clashes between Myanmar’s central government and Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs.) Following a military coup in 1962 that established the junta, more EAOs emerged to challenge government power.

Infighting and splintering among EAOs, coupled with their growing antagonism toward the Burma Communist Party (BCP), itself waging a war on the central government, allowed the junta to implement fragile ceasefires in exchange for limited autonomy. By the end of the Cold War, democratic protests in 1988, the collapse of the BCP in 1989, and free elections in 1990 all suggested Myanmar was cautiously embracing a peaceful future.

Despite losing the elections in 1990, however, the junta did not relinquish power, drawing international condemnation. EAOs and other groups like the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which split from the BCP, then continued their struggle for two decades until the junta ceded some powers to a civilian administration in 2011. Elections in 2015 and 2020 saw landslide victories for the National League for Democracy (NLD), as well as some progress toward reconciliation.

But in 2021, the Tatmadaw reestablished the junta and plunged the country back into destabilization, culminating in the 2023 autumn offensive by anti-junta forces. In addition to EOAs and a reorganized BCP, the junta has also been forced to contend with People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), loose armed organizations backed by the National Unity Government (NUG), set up by lawmakers and politicians in the aftermath of the coup. Additionally, the role of the Burman ethnic majority and grassroots civil defense forces in opposing the junta has also complicated its response to unrest.

The junta has proven adept at managing its restive elements before, and can also rely on its Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and other pro-government militia groups. But the broad swathes of Myanmar’s society fighting against it have made the junta’s traditional policy of divide and rule far less effective. Myanmar’s Acting President Myint Swe has said the country could “split into various parts”, prompting Myanmar military officials to retreat to the capital, Naypyidaw, a planned city completed in 2012 that effectively serves as a fortress located near the most restive regions.

China’s role in Myanmar has undergone significant shifts since the latter’s independence. Despite Chinese support for the BCP and other communist groups, Myanmar grew closer to China after its isolation from the West in the 1990s. Beijing supported the junta to stabilize Myanmar and prevent adversaries from establishing a foothold on China’s southern border. Other interests included maintaining access to Myanmar’s raw materials and natural resources, as well as infrastructure development to turn Myanmar into a strategic gateway to the Bay of Bengal through the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China maintained ties to the junta, democracy advocates, and ethnic groups from 2011 to 2021. However, the 2021 coup disrupted development projects and led to attacks on Chinese-run facilities by rebel groups, and the junta’s inability to protect infrastructure exacerbated historical tension between it and Beijing. Four Chinese civilians were killed in 2015 after a Myanmar military airstrike hit across the border into Yunnan, while the junta burned down a Chinese-owned factory and killed Chinese and Myanmar civilians in 2021.

China’s ongoing support to some militia groups, such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and MNDAA, provides Beijing leverage over the junta and a say in the ceasefire processes. Chinese firms also often work with armed groups in “special economic zones” near the border, and some of the anti-junta groups regularly cross the border to China to escape the junta and its proxy forces. Beijing’s tacit approval of their activities may also be partially fueled by wariness that rebel groups were becoming closer to the U.S. prior to the new offensive.

Beijing has nonetheless attempted to sustain a balancing act, arresting a UWSA deputy military chief in October 2023 and initially ignoring calls for assistance from the rebels after the launch of their offensive. But following the steady string of defeats suffered by the junta, China has since altered its outlook. China’s affiliates now form some of the most powerful groups operating in Myanmar, and China’s foreign ministry has called for a ceasefire.

Myanmar’s porous borders have not only allowed armed groups to flourish but also facilitated the expansion of organized crime networks. Increased cooperation between militant and criminal groups in recent decades, known as the terror-crime nexus, has elevated the power of these groups worldwide.

American efforts to counter communism inadvertently helped develop drug networks in Myanmar during the early Cold War, while transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia burgeoned in the 21st Century. The COVID-19 pandemic further established Myanmar as a hub of criminal activity, expanding the funding networks available to the country’s armed groups. Both local and international criminal networks operate in Myanmar’s special economic zones, engaging in human and wildlife trafficking, slavery, cybercrimes, money laundering, communication fraud, illegal casinos, and online gambling centers.

The relationships between these entities and governments are intricate, with shifting alliances commonplace. Beijing and transnational Chinese gangs play central roles in Myanmar’s heightened criminal activity. The junta has also had close ties to criminal networks for decades, and since the 2021 coup has become increasingly reliant on criminal activity to finance itself and offset international isolation.

China, while entangled in Myanmar’s criminal underworld, has grown steadily more concerned with rising illicit activity on its border with Myanmar and the willing and unwilling participation of Chinese citizens. China’s signals to the junta to address the forced-labor networks since May 2023 went unheeded, leading to China issuing arrest warrants for junta allies and the UWSA to raid online scam compounds and trafficked labor centers in border regions.

However, the resilience of regional criminal groups became evident after the NLD failed to disrupt their activities during the decade of partial democratic rule from 2011 to 2021, and they have only grown financially stronger since. And despite their interweaving with regional elites, criminal networks and their militant partners have developed newfound agency and an ability to act independently from governments since the 2021 coup.

Additionally, while the junta styles its current campaign as a counterinsurgency, Myanmar’s armed groups possess significant military capabilities. Minority groups such as those belonging to the Karen ethnic group were prominent in Myanmar’s armed forces during the British colonial administration, gaining valuable experience. As in Ethiopia, certain ethnic groups have developed and maintained well-equipped forces capable of both insurgency and conventional warfare.

Like other anti-government forces around the world, Myanmar rebel groups have also embraced new technologies and strategies in recent years. This includes crowdfunding initiatives, which have expanded significantly since 2021, to offset the junta’s control over the central bank and other national economic levers. Large-scale application of drone warfare has also made a marked difference on the battlefield, even before the current offensive by the rebels.

Myanmar’s militant groups have also worked with European criminal groups to obtain weapons, and groups like the UWSA have proven capable of manufacturing weapons since 2008. The use of 3D-printed guns by Myanmar rebel groups, just ten years after the first 3D-printed gun was produced, also marks a distinctive feature of the current conflict. The NUG has meanwhile been busily setting up local civic administration and public services and People’s Administrative Teams (PATs) in PDF-controlled or contested areas, indicative of their state-building capabilities.

Hindered by international isolation, increasingly powerful rebel groups, and a growing dependence on a Chinese leadership willing to support multiple sides, the junta’s outlook appears bleak. But it does maintain some other allies abroad. Russia grew closer to the junta throughout the 2010s and despite being tied down in Ukraine, Moscow has offered more support for Myanmar since the coup, including the first ever Russia-Myanmar joint naval exercise in November 2023. Bordering states Laos and Thailand also maintain friendly ties to the junta, and Laos, holding the chairmanship of ASEAN since September 2023, has shielded Myanmar from greater institutional isolation.

Myanmar’s other neighbors, India and Bangladesh, are also wary of additional instability and the potential emergence of a failed state on their borders. India has already seen tens of thousands of refugees (as well as soldiers from the junta) cross the border since 2021, while Bangladesh has seen close to one million Rohingya refugees enter the country since 2016, and India has recently shown it is still willing to engage with the junta despite its vulnerability.

Efforts to further unite anti-government forces meanwhile face obstacles due to differences in strategies, objectives, and allegiances. Several organizations have been set up to encourage greater coordination, but infighting is still common. Some EAOs, like the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), are still open to adhering to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) while others consider a federal system a viable alternative to complete independence. Perceived indifference to the Rohingya crisis in 2017 on behalf of the democratic government at the time also reveals the persistent ethnic tensions among Myanmar’s population despite alternative leadership.

Convincing criminal and militant groups to give up their lucrative illicit networks, as well as untangling their links to the junta-dominated economy, will also prove challenging. And with the U.S. diplomatically tied down in Ukraine and Israel and ASEAN’s divided approach to the crisis, China enjoys relative freedom to manipulate the situation on its border. Yet despite positive relations across Myanmar’s political spectrum, Beijing’s reluctance to intervene more directly only amplifies the persistent uncertainty surrounding Myanmar’s future.

Hostages and families clash with Netanyahu

Jean Shaoul

Recently released hostages and families of hostages still held in Gaza vented their anger over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to make the safety and release of the remaining 138 hostages a priority.

Emerging from a tense and angry meeting with members of the “war cabinet” on Tuesday afternoon, they denounced the government, saying it had no plan to secure the release of the remaining hostages and that its tactics were endangering their lives. Some reportedly told Netanyahu to step down, echoing the now daily calls for his resignation.

While 110 captives were returned to Israel, of whom 86 are Israelis and 24 are foreign citizens, under a seven-day ceasefire, an estimated 138 hostages remain, of whom 117 are men and 20 women. While 11 are foreign nationals or holding dual citizenship, the rest are Israelis, of whom most are thought to be soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, October 28, 2023. [AP Photo/Abir Sultan]

Since the “operational pause” ended on Friday morning, Israel has resumed its savage aerial bombardment, targeting Khan Younis, Gaza’s second city in the south, with a renewed ferocity ahead of an expected ground attack, as Israeli tanks approach the city from the north.

The UN said “some of the heaviest shelling in Gaza so far” took place between Sunday and Monday afternoon. On Monday, it was reported that Israel had prepared plans to flood Hamas’s network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip with water pumped from the Mediterranean Sea.

Such a move, aimed at driving Hamas’s fighters above ground, is to be carried out with no consideration for the safety of the remaining hostages, who have been cynically employed to justify the genocidal assault on Gaza. The truth is that Netanyahu and his fascist allies could not care less whether the hostages live or die. “Bring them home” is a useful slogan, but the real goal is mass murder and ethnic cleansing, whatever collateral damage this might involve.

Largely ignored by Netanyahu and his cabinet of war criminals, the families, who had only been granted one meeting since the October 7 incursion, had been demanding an urgent meeting to discuss what the government was doing to secure the safe return of the remaining hostages. Netanyahu was finally forced to agree a meeting on Monday.

This followed a small rally—joined for the first time by families of some of the captives—on Saturday evening outside Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv to protest the resumption of the bombardment of Gaza they blamed for halting the release of the captives still held by Hamas. The protest was a breakoff from the regular gathering calling for the Netanyahu government to prioritise and secure the release of hostages, which takes no position against the slaughter in Gaza.

The meeting in Herzylia, attended by Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gollant and opposition leader Benny Gantz, as well as Gal Hirsch, Netanyahu’s coordinator for captives and missing persons, confirmed that the hostages are viewed as cannon fodder in the wider cause of Zionist expansionism “from the river to the sea,” and American imperialism’s domination of the resource-rich region.

The war cabinet kept the former hostages and families waiting 45 minutes after the arranged time. According to one of the attendees, “There was great disrespect at the entrance and there was a camera in the room, despite promises of a sterile meeting.” She said it was “turbulent and tense.” Their phones were taken away so they could not record what was said. Many families left in disgust even before the meeting started.

Netanyahu’s pro-forma responses prompted a furious response, with people shouting and screaming that they wanted all the hostages brought back and that the prime minister should resign.

One of the former hostages explained that Netanyahu “didn’t respond to the questions that were posed—instead, he read from prepared remarks on a piece of paper.” She added that “Netanyahu stated that it wasn’t feasible to bring everyone back, and questioned whether any of us thought that if such an opportunity was available, anyone would reject it.” Some of the families were so outraged that they got up and left the meeting mid-stream.

Bashir Alziadana, one of Israel’s Bedouin citizens whose brothers remain in captivity after two other relatives were released, said, “We asked if returning the captives is the primary goal now, and I didn’t leave with a clear answer.”

As reported by Channel 12, Sharon Cunio, one of the released hostages, whose husband David and other relatives are still held captive, told the war cabinet, “You are putting politics above returning the hostages.” Ha’aretz reported that another hostage who had been held separately from her husband challenged Netanyahu, saying, “He was taken to the tunnels, and you talk about flooding the tunnels with seawater.”

Another person said, “Gallant informed us that Hamas only responds to the use of force, insinuating that any cessation in the hostage release stages was purely Hamas’ decision. The discussions were truly distressing, and those who attended were visibly upset about the divisions made between various groups and categories. Netanyahu’s reply was curt, and he seemed detached from the conversation.”

Gallant’s response was met with anger from the mother of one of the hostages, who said: “I’m not prepared to sacrifice my son for your career… My son did not volunteer to die for the homeland. He was a civilian abducted from his home and his bed… Promise me that you’ll get back my son and all the other hostages, alive.”

While the Israeli media carried reports of the families’ meeting with the war cabinet, they were low-key and headlined the hostages’ mistreatment in line with government’s attempts to portray the Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular as monsters to justify their extermination.

While some of the hostages reported that they had been denied adequate food and water and kept in horrible conditions underground and without access to the news, it was clear they were unaware of both Israel’s denial of all supplies of food, fuel, power and even water and its carpet bombing of Gaza.

Further fueling the families’ anger are the almost daily revelations indicating that the Netanyahu government possessed detailed advance knowledge of the Hamas battle plan for the October 7 attack, but took the decision to stand down the military and intelligence forces to create a pretext for its ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

On Monday, Ha’aretz reported that just hours before the October 7 attack, Israel’s security forces, having received warnings that Hamas was trying to stage an attack inside Israel, could have prepared at least partially for the possibility of an incursion from Gaza. Although the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade had approved the staging of the SuperNova music festival in the Kibbutz Re’im parking lot, was responsible for its security, and its commander was aware of the warnings, the military had not informed either the organisers or the thousands of party-goers about the threat or demanded that the event be shut down. Even the army units on duty in the area at the start of the Hamas attack were unaware that the music festival was taking place.

The organisers said that if they had received a warning even an hour beforehand, they could have evacuated the festival in time. The army’s failure to warn the organisers led to the deaths of 360 attendees in a shoot-out between the Palestinian infiltrators and the Israeli military, and the capture of at least 40 hostages.

It also now appears that some of those in the know sought to take advantage of the inevitable military repercussions by selling their shares on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. Reuters news agency reported on a detailed study by two US professors, who wrote, “Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come.”

They cited short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that “suddenly, and significantly, spiked” on October 2, based on data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). They added, “And just before the attack, short selling of Israeli securities on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) increased dramatically.”

UK homelessness figures rise amid council funding crisis

Charles Hixson

Homeless charities and local housing authorities in the UK are struggling with record numbers of people unable to balance the costs of renting a property with increasingly expensive food, energy and other basic needs.

As of March, 104,510 English households, including 131,000 children, were in temporary accommodation, a 10 percent increase on the previous year and an all-time high.

Between April 2022 and March 2023, English councils supported 298,430 families (1.2 percent of all households) to relieve or prevent homelessness, a 6.8 percent annual increase.

Even when temporary accommodation is available, families with children often spend years living in situations which threaten their health, according to Just Fair. Patricia Leatham, who became homeless after her mother’s death, spoke of moving into housing without proper heating—a leaky, mouldy and damp place with open wires. She struggled to make it liveable for herself and her son, who desperately needed Wi-Fi for school. “That’s it”, she said, “they’ve given you somewhere to live and you can’t say no.”

This misery stands in the shadow of the monumental residences of the rich. Perhaps the most obscene example is at Embassy Gardens in Nine Elms, southwest London, where, 10 storeys up, sits the “Sky Pool”, described as the world’s first swimming-pool bridge, connecting two sections of the luxury development.

Nine Elms [Photo by sludgegulper / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 2.0]

Part of a 230-hectare area stretching from Vauxhall Cross to Battersea Power Station, the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea (VNEB) development was described two years ago by Guardian writer Oliver Wainwright as taking “the inequities of the real estate-industrial complex to extremes. It is a place where penthouses with private chapels and running tracks loom above crumbling council estates across the railway line, where scores of flats lie empty, held by secretive shell companies in off-shore tax havens, and where the division between absentee investors and owner occupiers confined to poor doors couldn’t be more stark.”

The VNEB was touted as an “opportunity area” and described by former prime minister Boris Johnson as “the greatest transformational story in the world’s greatest city.” Responding to criticisms that the VNEB encourages separateness and absentee ownership, Ravi Govindia, Conservative leader of Wandsworth Council from 2011-22, proclaimed, “London is an international city. It has always had people who didn’t live in their homes for 365 days a year.”

In what was known as Billionaire’s Row in Bishop’s Avenue in the Borough of Barnet, north London, only ruins remain after nine Saudi-owned mansions were abandoned in the early 1990s. By 2014, investigative reporters found the buildings overgrown with vegetation, their swimming pools and ballrooms in a state of advanced decay. The number of long-term empty homes in England has increased by 60,000 since 2018, and now stands at over a million properties.

Architects have suggested that up to 300 homes could be built on one site. The owner of the current property is a registered company from the Isle of Man, whose beneficial owner is listed as a Cypriot businessman with a Dubai address. Russell Curtis, director of architecture firm RCKa, asked, “Is it right that there should be land like this sitting in a ridiculously expensive part of London that is unused?” The waiting list for housing in Barnet has more than tripled in the last decade to over 3,000 households.

The Conservative government is waging a war on the homeless, most notoriously with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s proposals to ban tents in urban areas, and description of living on the streets as a “lifestyle choice”.

According to housing charity Crisis and real estate firm Zoopla, only 4 percent of English properties (and 2 percent of London’s) are affordable at the government-set housing allowance rates, which were frozen in 2020. Deborah Garfield, policy manager at the homelessness charity Shelter, observed that social housing stock in England had fallen by 14,100 in the last year alone.

The spiraling housing crisis spurred 158 local councils—more than half of England’s local government organisations—to meet in an emergency summit hosted by Eastbourne Borough Council and the District Councils Network on October 31. Participants reported that more than 20 councils were on the verge of bankruptcy and were overwhelmed by the cost-of-living crisis and the sharp rise in evictions, as well as the shortage of social housing.

In a letter to Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, councillors insisted they would have to start withdrawing services, and requested a meeting in advance of his Autumn Statement. The Local Government Association (LGA) predicted that councils in England faced a funding gap that would reach £4 billion over the next two years, an additional £1 billion on its July forecast. Its analysis showed that “by 2024/25 cost and demand pressures will have added £15 billion (almost 29 per cent) to the cost of delivering council services since 2021/22.”

Hunt was forced to make a gesture, ending the three-year freeze on the local allowance housing cap. The allowance will finally cover the cheapest 30 percent of market properties simply by providing 1.6 million households some £800 in additional support each year.

A homeless man sleeping in a shop doorway in Romford, London, December 2022

Housing charities Shelter and Crisis criticized the delay until April 2024, with the latter adding that councils faced immediate financial collapse. The Salvation Army warned that Hunt’s measures would fail to stop the widening poverty gap, and St. Mungo’s predicted a difficult winter with record numbers of rough sleepers.

Jonathan Carr-West of the Local Government Information Unit accused Hunt of simply “tinkering around the edges”. “Each year citizens are paying more and getting less from their councils, and without significant structural changes to the way funding is allocated it is difficult to imagine these dire straits ending.”

In London alone, 4,068 slept on the street in summer (June to September), over 25 percent more than the previous winter. The Big Issue warned that the recent Home Office decision to reduce support for asylum seekers after their claims are processed from 56 to seven days could drive as many as 6,900 onto the streets nationwide by year’s end.

Many rough sleepers are killed by entirely treatable diseases. A new study by University College London, published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, shows that a homeless person dies every seven hours. Some 25 percent of these are under 40, succumbing to tuberculosis, COVID-19, pneumonia, diabetes, gastric ulcers.

Invisible People, a US-based group which reports on the “growing homeless crisis, affordable housing, and the criminalization of homelessness”, noted this month of the situation Britain that crowded conditions in shelters and transitional accommodation cause these diseases to spread, as well as “formerly eradicated plagues, diseases and viruses.”