Myanmar’s dictator Min Aung Hlaing may seem detached from reality, as his military empire crumbles across the country with resistance forces advances, but he recently served up a skewed version of events that suggests he is fully aware the State Administration Council (SAC) is in dire straits.
On Monday Aug. 5, the senior general addressed the security situation in Myanmar, coming soon after it was finally clear that the northern Shan State city of Lashio, plus the military North East Command, had fallen to the ethnic Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) after a month of heavy fighting. Min Aung Hlaing’s pudgy, cadaverous and querulous countenance betrays what must surely be a crisis of faith in his ability to prevail. But far from defiance, the speech reads like a pathetic sob-story.
Perhaps the most arresting section discusses the technological advances of the Brotherhood Alliance, which also includes the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA), bolstered since Operation 1027 with allies from the Mandalay People’s Defense Force (M-PDF) and several other smaller PDFs. “To do so, they have been gathering manpower and arms since 2022 and completing training in attacks with drones. They committed the impacts of war on the whole peaceful and stable region.” Northern Shan State has been wracked by conflict for decades, so as usual Min Aung Hlaing’s method is mendacity sprinkled with shards of reality.
Min Aung Hlaing then claims that arms and ammunition factories have been established on the China border, which is accurate, but also an odd admission of gross incompetence by a military leader that would allow his adversaries such advances. “It is not an ordinary situation to establish these factories. It needs to spend monetary and technological power. So, it is necessary to analyze the sources of monetary and technological power.” He then goes on to claim that insurgents in southern Myanmar also source weapons from neighboring countries, which his regime has been incapable of adequately interdicting. If the Myanmar military officer corps was capable of free thought, this speech would jolt them into realizing their commanding officer was admitting diminishing fortunes to the point of likely defeat.
Observing the rapidly changing nature of the conflict, marking a potential transition from guerilla warfare to a conventional warfare stage with the territorial gains of Operation 1027, the role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployed by the Brotherhood Alliance was also mentioned by the senior general. “It was seen that technologically upgraded bombs from drones and rockets are being used by MNDAA and TNLA terrorists. Their drones can be purchased in foreign markets, but they cooperate with foreign mercenary technologists to develop these drones and improve them to be helpful in the fighting.” The SAC calls drone attacks ‘drop bombs.’
The speech included frequent admissions of severe setbacks, from northern Shan State to Rakhine State, and discussed the role of Kachin insurgents assisting People’s Defense Forces in Sagaing, the fighting in Karenni, and what he called the treachery of the Karen National Union (KNU) for breaking the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) (although the official English translation is as grammatically ragged as the reasoning of the person who delivered it).
“All Myanmar citizens have the right to freedom of travel and trade without any restrictions in the country. As insurgents control the regions, those people lose their rights and liberties automatically. Without considering familiar racial characters and languages in addition to shared histories, traditions and cultures, their wrong racism and narrow-minded attitude, which had never occurred in history.”
Where to start. First, an admission of “insurgents control(ling) the regions” should raise questions over the Three Main National Causes: “Non-Disintegration of the Union.’ Also, note the term “citizen”, which automatically restricts the rights of movement of so many non-citizens or “unofficial minorities”—the term the research group Mosaic Myanmar uses to refer to so many people inside the country. And “wrong racism and narrow-minded attitude” is about as tart a summary of long-term military Burmanization as one could hope for.
Second, Min Aung Hlaing is clearly pursuing the same race-baiting tactics of previous military regimes, and wondering why it hasn’t worked as well so far. In one section he claims that recent Brotherhood Alliance gains have disrupted the ethnic “balance” of certain areas. “For example, some 20 per cent of Kokang people reside in Lashio Township, and most of them live in villages, not in urban areas of Lashio. The urban area of Lashio is the residences of Shan, Bamar, and Kachin ethnics. Likewise, some 15 per cent of Palaung (Ta-ang) ethnics reside in Kyaukme and Hsipaw townships. Nawnghkio Township does not have even 1 per cent of the Palaung ethnic population, but most of the people are Shan, Bamar, and Danu ethnics.”
The SAC leader could only know these spurious figures if he had access to the discredited results of the 2014 Nationwide Population and Housing Census, the ethnic data of which has never been made public. As experienced researchers cautioned at the time, ethnic data could be used for division, and the potential for violence and discrimination was serious. They were right then, and have been proven right yet again. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which regularly bends the knee to the SAC in Naypyitaw, stands drooling on the sidelines, desperate to assist if only their donors called for it.
The SAC has likely been depending on what they believe to be an inevitable internecine conflagration: hold on and wait for the disparate, diverse and competitive armed groups to start fighting each other, as they have inevitably over seven decades of civil war. While there is nowhere near the revolutionary “unity” that the slack-jawed pro-NUG flunkies spout, the new alliances and arrangements could potentially manage these tensions, especially if at key points the Wa were involved.
In a sop to State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)-era paranoia about Western meddling, Min Aung Hlaing alluded to interference in support of the resistance forces, at one point rolling out a classic line referring to the Brotherhood Alliance “and their stooges at home and abroad.” He alleged that “(s)ome foreign countries wish for the existence of armed conflicts and shaping the form of Myanmar as they like providing money, food, medicines, arms and ammunition, technologies and logistic opportunities to armed insurgents and terrorist groups from politically diverse persons, helping malicious media outlets to wage psychological warfare.” Many Western donors have indeed been providing much-needed humanitarian assistance, much of it discreet yet accountable and principled, even as the military has blockaded humanitarian access across the country for many years, even before the coup. The SAC recently took measures to rein in aid organizations in Rakhine under terrorism financing claims, including the sinister Sasakawa Peace Foundation, whose head is close to Min Aung Hlaing.
One of Min Aung Hlaing’s longtime henchmen, U Khin Yi, the Lurch-like head of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), continued the appeal for support in a recent interview with the Russian disinformation site Sputnik. “What we primarily need from Russia is to assist in fighting terrorism. To achieve this, the current situation in Myanmar must be recognized not merely as a domestic political issue but as an act of terrorism. If Russia designates it as such, Russian government agencies can collaborate with us in our counter-terrorism efforts, aligning with our objectives.”
Facebook/Meta warns users that Sputnik “may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government.” (Before we roundly denounce consumers of Sputnik, let’s recall that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi consulted the site when she was in full denial mode of the mass murder of the Rohingya in late 2017, something her servile inner circle of Western advisors didn’t appear to find problematic at the time).
The SAC head downplayed the military conscription program instituted in February, as the fourth round of recruits are sent to training depots and 15,000 recruits are deployed to units across Myanmar, although in what roles and proximity to conflict areas is unclear. As human wave tactics go, it’s not exactly Stalingrad, but it could be headed in that direction if recruits are press-ganged in large numbers to the frontline. But like so much of Min Aung Hlaing’s murder republic, there is more speculation than certainty. He did denounce the forced recruitment by the resistance “terrorists”, claiming that “education of children, and the future of youths will be extinct… (y)ouths will see their lives with holding arms instead of books and ball-pens. They all will return to the darkness from the legal fold.”
Repressive recruitment seems to have escaped the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which claimed in a recent analysis that “(m)ost of these recruits either volunteered or received inducements to join, meaning that the junta initially avoided more coercive forms of conscription.” It’s not clear what source the author has for “voluntary recruitment” of 15,000 young men under the circumstances in Myanmar. It is a serious contention that should be supported with evidence. Clearly too, the IISS Myanmar people are unaware of the nature of coercion and how it works in authoritarian settings. Compounding this stew of sloppy fact connecting, the report claims “Moreover, these figures do not include what may be tens of thousands of fighters who have joined pro-regime militias across the country, many of which are now receiving better arms and training directly from the military.” The source for this is an early-July Facebook post of a pro-Sit Tat Pa-O National Army (PNO) sniper training course that appeared to have 45 recruits: several short of “tens of thousands.”
The danger of such contrary reporting is that it leads to amplified calls for engaging the SAC on a mediated solution. Min Aung Hlaing’s speech threw in several simpering lines that could potentially appeal to those SAC-positive states who want a negotiated settlement. One section claims “(w)e, as a polite society, cannot totally accept the act of solving the armed conflicts in terror attacks but not using political ways. So, those insurgents must be designated a common enemy, and the government will continue to strive to ensure peace and stability not only in Shan State (North) but in the entire nation.”
This is abject lunacy of course, but it will appeal to defeatist leaning diplomats willing to overlook the SAC’s intensifying destruction of people and place throughout Myanmar. Looking at the devastation of so many towns and villages across Myanmar, with retribution raids by air, drone, ship and artillery firebase against any built up area lost to the resistance, it suggests increasingly that Min Aung Hlaing is resigned to his very own Ragnarök.
Like most of what emerges from the depths of SAC Naypyitaw, Monday’s rambling speech was divorced from reality, but it was a noteworthy concentration on security issues as opposed to the usual rambling list of disconnected issues. His address to the SAC cabinet meeting 6/2024 on July 29 was the standard mish-mash of economic nonsense, an ominously brief section on “fulfilling needs in health care sector as much as possible”, rule of law, education, traditional arts and sport, and calls for “cotton based industries” which had that retro bio-fuel program of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) ring to it.
The Meeting 2/2024 of the National Defense and Security Council on July 31 extended the six-month state of emergency declared to justify the coup, outlining the health reasons for why the duties of “Pro-Tem” President U Myint Swe were transferred to Min Aung Hlaing. This meeting addressed several issues in detail, even if the data and determinations are dubious at best. He clung to the promise of eventually holding elections, and insisted on the conduct of the population census from Oct. 1-15. This is looking increasingly unlikely, although it lacked any shred of credibility when it was first announced. Now the senior general mentions security situation caveats, that only in limited areas could the census be conducted. Min Aung Hlaing though has repeated his promise to hold polls. “Holding the election is a government’s vision which never changes. Hence, preparations are ongoing to hold an election…(he) reaffirmed that he will implement the vision to achieve success.”
The SAC’s Information Team spokesperson Zaw Min Tun appeared even more disheveled than his boss when he railed against the Brotherhood Alliance’s assault on Lashio at a press briefing on July 27, looking like an exploding puffer fish. His usual “Young Jabba the Hutt” look has degenerated into what appears to be a subsistence diet of Myanmar Beer, KFC and crystal meth, as he claimed that “(w)hen terrorists attacked Lashio and related areas, people from all over Myanmar, including local people and even the Chinese people, protested their bandit-friendly act. Therefore, they fired rockets and heavy weapons at houses and in the neighborhoods where the people lived and scared the people away.” Even the Chinese people? Less dog whistle propaganda and more Sit Tat racist loudhailer, his trembling delivery even descended to calling the resistance “scumbags.”
If senior SAC leaders suffer stress-induced aneurisms as a result of resistance advances, it’s as good as a head shot really. Or being decapitated by a “drop bomb.” But it does cheat the war crime chambers of its main “defendants” in the future. It’s tempting to consider that Min Aung Hlaing’s Monday speech was an indication of his imminent hpin-lan-pyaay (showing his arse, or running away). After all, he might as well follow the example of so many of his frontline troops. But it has been a fear widely expressed since the 2021 coup that if the hapless dictator departs (there is little to indicate that he will) or is toppled (despite much speculation there is scant evidence that this is imminent) he could be replaced by someone even more ruthless and perhaps less incompetent. Someone steeled to dispense with vapid loser speeches and escalate extreme violence to survive.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst.
