Myanmar: The Many Foes of Min Aung Hlaing

The small protest in the central Myanmar town of Pyin Oo Lwin on January 16 was far less spectacular than the military’s recent battlefield losses, but for dictator-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing it was possibly just as damaging. Rather than call for the end of the junta that seized power in a February 2021 coup – as millions across Myanmar have done over the past three years – the pro-regime protesters urged Min Aung Hlaing to step down as head of the military, and hand over power to his deputy, Soe Win.

“Look at Soe Win’s face,” the nationalist monk Pauk Ko Taw told the crowd of a few hundred people. “That's the face of a real soldier. Min Aung Hlaing is not coping. He should move to a civilian role.”

A former colonial hill station, Pyin Oo Lwin occupies a strategic location on the edge of the Shan plateau astride the main highway to China. It is also of great operational, symbolic, and emotional importance to the military, hosting not only its elite Defense Services Academy and other training institutes but also many retired officers, who live in new suburbs colloquially referred to as bogyoke ywar (“village of generals”).

Security is relatively tight; Pyin Oo Lwin is one of the few places in Myanmar where pro-regime types can move around without having to watch nervously for resistance hit squads. Although no military personnel are known to have taken part in the protest, it is unlikely to have been possible without at least some tacit support from within the regime’s own ranks.

There was little dissent on display when the military-controlled National Defense and Security Council met on January 31 – just ahead of the third anniversary of the coup – and formally agreed to Min Aung Hlaing’s proposal to extend military rule for a further six months. But behind this pro forma show of unity lies real and growing discontent with Min Aung Hlaing’s leadership.

The military is arguably in its weakest position since the 1950s, when by some reports it controlled barely a quarter of the country. Insiders say that senior officers openly curse Min Aung Hlaing behind his back, mocking his detached-from-reality public pronouncements, his micromanaging style, and his naked political ambitions.

This growing anger may explain some of the leniency shown to the organizer of the Pyin Oo Lwin protest, Pauk Ko Taw, who was detained for questioning but later released. It contrasts with the punishment meted out just months earlier to another prominent Min Aung Hlaing critic within the military establishment. In November, Ye Htut, a former military officer who served as minister for information and presidential spokesman under Thein Sein in the mid-2010s, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for seditious posts on Facebook. Ye Htut was arrested on October 28, a week after he hit publish on an allegorical post about an arrogant buffalo at Inle Lake that was standing triumphantly on a pile of trash, but didn’t realize it was surrounded by water.

At the time, Min Aung Hlaing had just been forced into sacking and jailing some of his closest allies in the regime’s upper ranks for their role in a colossal corruption scandal that had seen them misuse the regime’s precious foreign currency reserves for personal gain. It had seemed like a nadir for the regime, but far worse was to come – this time on the perennial battlefield of northern Shan State, which had been unusually quiet since the coup.

Operation 1027: The Impossible Becomes Possible

Even as regime forces swooped in to arrest Ye Htut, Min Aung Hlaing’s fortunes were already taking a further nosedive. On October 27, a trio of ethnic armed groups, who call themselves the Three Brotherhood Alliance, launched surprise attacks in northern Shan State, quickly overrunning scores of regime positions and killings dozens of soldiers, police and militia forces.

All three groups – the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and Arakan Army (AA) – had been biding their time since the coup. Although they had avoided confrontation with the regime and refrained from publicly aligning with the post-coup resistance, the three groups had dramatically built up their forces and expanded their territorial control since February 2021, taking advantage of the military’s weakness. They had also quietly been supporting new anti-coup armed groups, ranging from ethnic Chin militias and National Unity Government-aligned People’s Defense Forces to the rebooted armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma.

In contrast to 2015, 2016, and 2019, when the regime was able to beat back similar Brotherhood Alliance offensives in northern Shan, it had few answers to Operation 1027, as the offensive was codenamed. Within a month, the MNDAA, which represents the Mandarin-speaking Kokang ethnic group, seized a string of towns along the China-Myanmar border and surrounded the city of Laukkai, the capital of the Kokang region.

After two failed rounds of China-brokered peace talks in December, more than 2,000 soldiers in Laukkai surrendered to the MNDAA in early January, handing the group control of the city. They were sent back to a regime-controlled military base in Lashio, where the junta promptly prosecuted six brigadier-generals for giving up Laukkai without approval. Three were reportedly given the death sentence, the others life in prison, while a score of colonels were also jailed.

The capture of Laukkai was both a homecoming for the MNDAA and a personal blow to Min Aung Hlaing. In 2009, when the group controlled the Kokang enclave, he had personally led an operation to expel the MNDAA after it refused to transform into a Border Guard Force (BGF) under military control. MNDAA leader Peng Jiasheng and many of his soldiers were forced to flee into China; a faction that defected to the military was installed as the new leaders of the Kokang region. For the Tatmadaw as an institution, losing a Regional Operations Command to ethnic insurgents, as it did in Laukkai, would have seemed all but impossible just a few years ago.

Other members of the Brotherhood Alliance have also made dramatic gains. The TNLA, which represents the small and long marginalized Ta’ang community, spent much of the past decade fighting a guerrilla war against the regime, slowly establishing its political and military power. After the coup it opted for an informal ceasefire, and used this lull to quietly secure control of a large area of rural northern Shan.

Since late October, the TNLA has effectively completed the job by evicting military troops from half a dozen towns north and west of the main highway to China. The group’s location means it has the capacity to interrupt Myanmar’s multi-billion-dollar land-based trade with Yunnan province when it chooses to; for now, there are still no trucks plying back and forth on the once-busy highway.

On January 11, China-brokered talks finally delivered a ceasefire in northern Shan. The MNDAA and TNLA had already achieved most of their immediate goals; the Kokang are back in charge of Laukkai, while the Ta’ang now have an outlet to the Chinese border, at Namkham. The deal gives them – in theory, at least – a reprieve from the regime’s airstrikes and artillery barrages. But the Haigeng agreement, as it is known, is a fragile truce; there is no demarcation of territory and mistrust runs high on both sides.

Less than a day after talks concluded, the TNLA had already accused the regime of violating the ceasefire, and numerous more alleged violations have been reported since. The military has also tried to make it as difficult as possible for the TNLA to govern its newly won territories, cutting off supplies of essentials, such as fuel, which sent prices soaring.

Cyberscams and the China Factor

The offensive and the subsequent ceasefire both reinforce China’s position as the dominant international actor in Myanmar. Had it wanted to, Beijing could have intervened either before or shortly after October 27 to stop the fighting. But Chinese authorities allowed the offensive to proceed because they were incensed at the military regime’s failure to rein in cyberscam operators in the Kokang region, where tens of thousands of people had been put to work fleecing people around the world out of billions of dollars, in what are known as “pig butchering” scams. Many were human trafficking victims, effectively forced to work as slaves; the United Nations estimated last year that in Myanmar at least 120,000 people were likely being “held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams,” along with another 100,000 in Cambodia.

The scam operations have become an increasingly pressing social issue in China in recent years, both because Chinese citizens made up for a large portion of those being trafficked to serve the scam centers, and because a lot of these scams targeted Chinese victims. They were brought to even wider attention by a recent hit movie, “No More Bets,” which tells the story of a Chinese couple lured into working in the cyberscam industry in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Released last August, the movie (and other media coverage of the issue) made such an impact that it deterred some Chinese travelers from heading to Southeast Asia. Yet despite increasing Chinese pressure, Min Aung Hlaing’s regime made only token efforts to rein in the scams.

Why didn’t the military act, when the warning signs were clear? The regime’s unwillingness or inability to recognize the importance of the issue to China represents an intelligence failure almost on par with launching the coup. Min Aung Hlaing’s personal enmity toward Beijing, which he has accused numerous times of providing weapons to ethnic armed groups, is likely to have been a factor. The feeling is largely mutual: The Chinese were exasperated at Min Aung Hlaing’s decision to seize power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, with which Beijing had worked hard to forge a close working relationship.

For its own survival, the regime has been forced into action. After Operation 1027 commenced, it handed over tens of thousands of trafficking victims and cyberscam suspects to Chinese authorities, and in late January gave up 10 ringleaders, including Bai Suocheng, whom Min Aung Hlaing had installed as head of the Kokang region when he defected from the MNDAA in 2009. They were last seen on January 30 being escorted from a charter plane in Kunming into waiting police vans. Their fate is unknown, but the death penalty is certainly not out of the question.

The regime’s change of tune along with Beijing’s growing alarm at the rapid success of Operation 1027 prompted Chinese negotiators to force a ceasefire on the TNLA and MNDAA. The groups ultimately had to accept, but there are limits to Chinese influence in Myanmar on all sides of the conflict. Reaching a deal on paper is one thing; enforcing it on the ground is another.

Even if the ceasefire holds, the TNLA and MNDAA will work to consolidate and potentially expand their gains, while maintaining support to anti-military resistance groups that will fuel fighting against the regime elsewhere. So too will the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the country’s largest and most powerful ethnic armed group, which has feigned neutrality – even traveling to Naypyidaw for meetings with regime negotiators – while selling large quantities of arms to resistance groups. Meanwhile, ethnic armed groups not party to the ceasefire, such as the Kachin Independence Army, have continued to fight on in northern Myanmar, and in late January captured a strategic region on the border of Shan and Kachin states.

Similar to their counterparts in Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo, policymakers in Beijing have been grappling with how to respond to the coup and ever-spiraling conflict in Myanmar. For China, the goal is preserving its economic interests, ensuring stability in border areas, and limiting any spillover into its own territory. From its perspective, though, there is no clear path forward – the regime is unlikely to consolidate control, but is also not facing imminent collapse.

China’s most logical approach, therefore, is to hedge its bets, and use its leverage with both ethnic armed groups and the military to maintain an uneasy truce in the borderlands. By not backing the regime unequivocally, it also creates possibilities for common ground with Western countries that are more openly critical of the junta and supportive of anti-military forces – enabling, for example, the United Nations Security Council to pass an unprecedented Myanmar resolution in December 2022.

Arakan Army Advances in Rakhine 

While the guns have mostly fallen silent in northern Shan for now, the January 11 ceasefire has had little impact in the rest of Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State in the west, where the third member of the Brotherhood Alliance, the AA, operates. Since late October, the group has cemented control over much of northern Rakhine State, while also capturing remote but strategic Paletwa Township in southern Chin State, which straddles both the Bangladesh and India borders.

Like the TNLA, the AA has massed its forces against heavily fortified but isolated regime command posts, either convincing the soldiers within to surrender or overwhelming them through sheer weight of numbers. Since late January, this approach has delivered the AA a string of victories in the Rakhine heartland; the capture of eight Light Infantry Battalion bases has effectively given the group control over Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, and Minbya townships. The conquest of Mrauk-U, in particular, is loaded with symbolism; the town was until the late 18th century home to a thriving, independent Rakhine kingdom, snuffed out by invading Burmese forces who enslaved much of the population.

But the AA hasn’t stopped there; it has also seized regime camps at Taungpyo Letwe and Taungpyo Letyar on the Bangladesh border, captured an important bridge on the road between Buthidaung and Sittwe, the regional capital, and sunk, damaged, or captured several naval vessels. Hundreds of soldiers have surrendered to the AA, and a significant number have been killed; embarrassingly for the regime, more than 300 soldiers and Border Guard Police fled into Bangladesh. The military’s rapid losses have created a growing sense of panic in the capital; the regime has put Sittwe under a curfew, and introduced a rule that anyone wanting to fly out of the state needs approval from local authorities.

Despite similar tactics, the AA faces different constraints to its allies in northern Shan. China has less interest in bringing about a ceasefire in Rakhine – provided the AA stays away from Kyaukphyu port and nearby oil and gas infrastructure, in which Beijing has stakes – but the state’s geography limits how long the AA can fight.

Rakhine is a fertile strip of land between the Bay of Bengal and the steep Rakhine Yoma mountain range, and the state’s residents are heavily dependent on rivers for movement, with a very limited road network. Accordingly, when fighting erupted in mid-November, the military could immediately institute a movement blockade, preventing goods from entering or moving around the state; many businesses have been forced to close and food prices have soared. As a result, the AA is likely to agree to a ceasefire at some point, but is reluctant to pause the fighting while it has the military on the back foot.

Beyond Operation 1027: The Military Under Pressure

The military setback for the regime in Rakhine is all the more remarkable given the lull in northern Shan. The ceasefire has afforded it little breathing space, however, because Operation 1027 is also reverberating around the rest of the country.

When fighting broke out in the north, the military pulled troops out of Kayah (Karenni) State that had been advancing on resistance positions, near the Thai border. It also pulled back remaining troops in the state to its few remaining strongholds, mostly in the major towns. Anti-military forces, led by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), sensed an opportunity, launching an assault on the state capital, Loikaw.

After months of fighting this offensive seems to have stalled, yet resistance forces now control much of the state and can move with relative freedom; where the military maintains a presence, they simply give it a wide berth. A new governing body, the Karenni Interim Executive Council, is working to establish administrative systems for newly liberated territories.

Just over the border from Kayah, in southern Shan State, regime efforts to stem the flow of weapons to Karenni groups from ethnic allies in the north have drawn new actors into the conflict. On January 21, regime troops and members of a military-affiliated ethnic People’s Militia Force, the Pa-O National Organization (PNO), intercepted a Pa-O National Liberation Organization (PNLO) weapons convoy, sparking a brief battle. The PNLO has avoided fighting the regime since the coup, even sending its leaders to Naypyidaw for meetings with Min Aung Hlaing. Like the UWSA, though, the Pa-O group has been playing a double game, quietly supporting anti-military forces.

Although the military initially downplayed the January 21 incident, fighting erupted again the following day and shortly afterward the PNLO and the KNDF joined forces to capture the town of Hsihseng in southern Shan. The PNLO has also now disavowed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement it signed in 2015, saying it would instead “work alongside our allies to bring an end to military dictatorship in accordance with the will of our people and to build a federal democratic country.”

The example of the PNO and PNLO – two armed groups of the same ethnicity on different sides of the larger conflict – is replicated in many parts of Myanmar. This is largely by design. For decades, the military has managed conflict in restive ethnic minority regions by building an elaborate network of Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and People’s Militia Forces (PMFs) – ethnic armed groups drawn to supporting the military out of ethnic, personal, or ideological rivalry. In exchange for their loyalty, these BGFs and PMFs were often given the freedom to pursue both licit and illicit economic interests in areas under their control. While the PNO remains on the regime’s side for now, the military’s collapse in northern Shan State has prompted some of its staunchest allies to waver.

The military’s Faustian pact with the Kokang BGF that enabled Laukkai to become a hub for cyberscam operators – loyalty in exchange for autonomy – has been replicated in the southeast of Myanmar, where the Karen State BGF has leased land along the border with Thailand to dubious overseas Chinese investors. This began around a decade ago, when the first casinos began popping up in Myawaddy, on the Thai border; gradually operators moved into online gambling, and now into “pig butchering” scams on a massive scale at places such as KK Park.

Since the coup, the Karen BGF had fulfilled its side of the bargain, deploying its 13 battalions against the Karen National Union and their resistance partners. But events in the north were causing new calculations behind the scenes. As the military packed off the Kokang BGF leaders to face Chinese justice, the Karen BGF leadership announced they would no longer fight alongside the military against their Karen brethren, and would instead stand independently.

No doubt recent Chinese pressure on Thailand and Myanmar to root out cyberscam operators – and the presence of Chinese police in Tachileik, a border town to the north of the BGF enclave – forced the Karen group into a rethink. The BGF is unlikely to switch sides completely, but even its neutrality could be disastrous for the regime, in particular leaving towns along the Asian Highway – which carries most overland trade between Thailand and Myanmar – extremely vulnerable to anti-military forces.

For a much-weakened military, maintaining relationships with its ethnic allies will be an increasing challenge. Aside from economic motives, these groups are drawn to the military for protection, often from other ethnic armed groups. When the military can’t provide that protection, the BGFs and PMFs have little incentive to stand by its side; instead, an alliance with a much-weakened military becomes a liability.

Many are also under pressure from their grassroots supporters and rank-and-file troops because they are waging an unpopular war on the military’s behalf, often against the will of their own ethnic communities. This was already a growing headache for the regime before Operation 1027: In June, a BGF in Kayah State switched sides to the KNDF-led resistance, turning the tide in the fighting there. Even if the military can preserve the rest of these alliances, it seems clear that most territory in ethnic minority states has been lost or is, at best, contested; there is also little prospect of it recapturing ground from powerful groups such as the TNLA or AA.

Along with territory and soldiers, the junta has also lost huge quantities of weapons and materiel to ethnic armies in recent months. While larger acquisitions – ranging from tanks and howitzers to multiple launch rocket systems – provided great propaganda value and dealt a financial and psychological blow to the regime, the small arms and ammunition will have a more tangible effect.

Some analysts estimate the regime may have lost as much as $100 million in arms, and much of these stockpiles are likely to be sold off or doled out to resistance forces, particularly those with close ties to ethnic armed groups. Social media users now joke that Min Aung Hlaing is the largest benefactor to the resistance, which until now has been heavily reliant on crowdfunding and other forms of donations to buy weapons.

Whither Myanmar?

Where does all this leave the National Unity Government (NUG), the parallel administration set up after the coup to lead the fight against the regime? Although it has benefited to some extent from Operation 1027, Myanmar’s conflict is far from zero-sum: The military’s losses are not always NUG gains. Recent developments have in fact underscored some of the limits of NUG power and influence, and the extent to which ethnic armed organizations – both older groups and those founded since the coup – are in the driving seat.

With a few notable exceptions, ethnic armed organizations are the ones who have most benefited from the coup. The NUG can rightly claim to be partnering with many of them, through different modalities, but this cooperation is generally on the terms of the ethnic armed organizations, which are harnessing anti-military support to create auxiliary forces under their command and create buffer zones around their territory. Efforts to forge a common political understanding between the key players have also largely stalled, in part due to concerns that the members of National League for Democracy, who were influential in setting up the NUG, are reluctant to share power with other political forces.

Fighting in the Burman-dominated lowlands is also a very different equation to the upland ethnic states. Often far from international borders and at the end of long weapons supply chains, and operating in much flatter terrain closer to regime centers of control, the various anti-military forces in Myanmar’s central areas have their work cut out for them. Born post-coup, armed groups here tend to be much smaller, less well trained, and forced to operate with far fewer resources; in some cases, they are also fighting each other.

This challenge was evident when, shortly after Operation 1027 began, NUG-aligned PDFs, in cooperation with ethnic armed groups, launched their own offensive in northern Sagaing Region. Although they captured several towns, most notably Kawlin, they were also forced to abandon offensives in other areas under intense bombardment. In early February, the military then launched a large operation to recapture Kawlin, with up to 1,000 soldiers; after more than a week of fighting, the military took the town back.

For the military, the fighting in the lowlands is the existential battle that it cannot afford to lose. Since independence in 1948, the Myanmar state has never controlled all of the territory within its borders. The extent of its grip has ebbed and flowed based on a range of internal and external dynamics, but such loss of control always took place on the country’s periphery, dominated by ethnic minorities. The military can grudgingly accept the loss of large areas of ethnic minority states, both because it has been here before and because it retains a confidence (possibly misplaced) that it can eventually cut deals with ethnic armed groups to at least neutralize the threat they pose.

What it cannot countenance is the idea of NUG-held enclaves in the Dry Zone – or Anyar, the low-lying central plains that constitute the Bamar heartland in upper Myanmar –  from which anti-military forces could springboard toward the major cities.

Desperation will only make the military more dangerous – a chilling prospect given the barbarity and destruction it has already been willing to inflict. But this desperation could manifest in other ways, too. Struggling to replace the tens of thousands of soldiers it has lost on the battlefield and through desertion and defection since the coup, the military on February 11 announced it planned to enforce a decade-old law that would enable it to draft in men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27. This is a risky strategy given the strength of anti-military sentiment among the population, and clearly reflects a regime that is stretched beyond its limits. But the intention is likely to bring in a relatively small number of recruits to bolster numbers, and possibly give legal cover to the forced recruitment that is already taking place. While it’s tempting to see such a sweeping measure as a sign of imminent collapse, the difficulty in dislodging the military from lowland areas makes such a scenario unlikely, particularly in the short term.

Which brings us back to Min Aung Hlaing’s political future. Although the military can accept battlefield losses in Myanmar’s borderlands, the losses associated with Operation 1027 have significantly damaged his credibility – as the recent protests reflected. But Min Aung Hlaing is also a liability in several other respects. His management of the economy has been disastrous, and it is only the recent rolling back of his more drastic policies – such as pegging the local currency, the kyat, at an overvalued level, and restricting access to foreign currency – that has brought some recent economic stability.

He also limits the military’s options moving forward, both because many anti-military groups are unlikely to consider negotiating with the regime while he is in charge, and because its decisions are heavily influenced by his own ambitions and insecurities. A change in leadership would offer the chance for a reset and the opportunity to negotiate a way out of the current mess.

But that does not mean we should necessarily expect any change at the top. The Myanmar military is an institution that highly prizes internal unity, something that it believes sets it apart from its opponents and is essential for its future survival. If Min Aung Hlaing does not choose to go, he would need to be forced out. But it would take a brave clique of officers to make such a move; the few who tried something similar in the mid-1970s ended up in the hangman’s noose. The junta chief has also, to the extent possible, surrounded himself with younger loyalists, who are unlikely to challenge his decisions, let alone move against him.

Min Aung Hlaing’s continued leadership will likely be a boon for the military’s many opponents, including ethnic armed groups and the National Unity Government. But it also locks Myanmar onto a course of continued conflict. That means we should expect things to only get more dire in the immediate future, with Min Aung Hlaing’s regime resorting to ever more desperate strategies in a bid to stave off their many opponents.