Episode #224: Rage Against the Regime
“I'm calling myself Saw Htee Char, which is a pseudonym for my safety because I work on both sides of the border, including inside Myanmar.” Our guest describes first arriving in the country to oversee humanitarian needs following Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and has since been involved in a variety of projects. These include tasks as varied as small business initiatives, refugee resettlement, farming, and more recently, conflict reporting. “I would like people making diplomatic decisions to be [made] more likely to make the right decisions about whom to partner with inside Myanmar, and what to expect as far as the outcome of the war,” he says.
Towards this end, he established the widely read and highly regarded Substack page, Burma Coup Resistance Notes, which draws on a number of non-English language sources and contacts on the ground, to provide daily updates on the conflict. Saw Htee Char has found that a large number of stakeholders, perhaps surprisingly, don’t have access to this information. His news bulletins also respond to what he sees as misinformed interpretations about the situation in Myanmar, that it is an internal matter that is messy on both sides. But Saw Htee Char views things quite differently. “What I see here actually is not just internal strife, it's a really brutal and sadistic military regime trying to monopolize power over a population of 55 million people who do not want it, and who are ready to put their lives on the line in order to get back their brief experience with at least partial democracy during the period of 2015 to 2020.”
Saw Htee Char also sees a slow, yet inevitable defeat of the regime. “I would be very depressed right now if I were a member of the old Burmese military, because they just can't seem to stop losing territory every day now! For all of its enormous manpower and armaments, it has never been very good at fighting… the ethnic militaries before the coup. They could go on onslaughts, but they've never been able to make these insurgencies disappear. Since the attempted coup of 2021, this enormous military has been getting ambushed and blown up on the roads and shot at by young people who never had any thought of warfare before then! So they found themselves on the losing end of skirmishes and ambushes right from the start.” To make matters worse, they are now fighting on nearly every front across the country, not unlike an occupying army. For the first time ever, they are even facing opposition throughout the Bamar heartland, such as the Sagaing Division. Operation 1027 fueled even more momentum for the resistance, and Saw Htee Char predicts a gradually shrinking level of control by the military. The junta must increasingly rely on their one remaining advantage, air power, and they continue to use it to bomb IDP camps, schools, hospitals, and monasteries with impunity.
Still, Saw Htee Char points out that air superiority alone cannot defeat a foe, as the Americans learned during the Vietnam War. “Air power does not equal control. Air power equals destruction and disruption, but not control. What you need for control is troops on the ground, and the junta is running out of those… that's why we're seeing the rapid loss of junta territorial control.” This is also why he finds they are relying so much on airstrikes these days: many “soldiers” who are called up to the front line have little to no experience in any battle conditions, and many divisions are now being filled with forced conscripts, criminals, and drug addicts. It has gotten so bad lately that there are reports of teens literally being abducted throughout Yangon to serve in combat. “I remember a remark by one of the Karenni commanders that it doesn't really seem like a fair fight to be shooting down these people on the other side, who don't want to be there, who are not soldiers. It's just hard to imagine the junta holding out for very much longer in this condition.”
Although few experts predicted any possibility of a military defeat at the start of the coup, Saw Htee Char always saw things differently. In fact, he says, “I don't think there was ever a period where the junta was winning.” He notes that despite its size and firepower, the military has been largely ineffective in recapturing territories from local forces, such as in Chin State, Kachin State, Shan State and Karenni State. It can be seen in the ongoing battle in Loikaw, where it is losing control despite extensive efforts and pouring in resources. He attributes this ineffectiveness to the local forces' superior tactics and intimate knowledge of the terrain. Echoing the words of Zach Abuza from a previous episode, Saw Htee Char explains that even pre-coup, the military was never as formidable as it claimed to be. Not only was its total numbers of troops exaggerated, but its fighting prowess was as well. Moreover, the fact that its top leadership had become so entrenched in corruption and graft that they were ill-prepared to take battle preparations seriously has been a huge factor. Whereas previously, the military was one of the few pathways available to many Burmese people hoping for economic advancement (largely through the conglomerates Myanmar Economic Corporation and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, discussed in a previous episode with Sean Turnell), following mass boycotts after the coup, these entities are not producing financially as before. Finally, Saw Htee Char believes many soldiers would like to defect, but their families are being held as virtual hostages within military compounds.
These days, he explains that far from taking over more territory, soldiers are barely hanging onto their own bases. Saw Htee Char describes how many are now encircled and facing prolonged sieges with supplies entirely cut off, and are then attacked with drone bombs and watched over by snipers. “Soldiers who have either defected or have been captured speak of the terror of living in a camp under drone bombing, where explosions can just occur without warning, anytime, anywhere inside the camp,” he says. “Anytime they stick up their head, they go to the bathroom or get water to go bathe. They can't maintain equipment because the current snipers shoot at the water tank, so they can't keep water on hand! It's a miserable existence, like having to keep your head below the top of the trench every day, all day. That's just no way to live.” Still, he finds that this barely fazes the military leadership. “I don't think low morale is a concept understood by the junta Officer Corps! I think their mentality is that if being very tough hasn't worked, that you need to be tougher,” he says. “It is mind boggling why don't they learn from their endless stream of mistakes, but they don't. They just consider that if force hasn't worked, the solution is more force.”
Turning his analysis to the resistance forces, he says that while ethnic fighters had years of battlefield experience, Bamar-led PDF groups did not. “These were people who were students, farmers, or workers, and suddenly they needed military things! So where could they turn? Well to the ethnic armies, of course, who had those things, which also happened back in 1988.” That relationship was ultimately a failure: many Bamar activists didn’t fare well in the harsh, jungle conditions, nor were they respectful of their hosts, who they had long viewed as inferior. But this time around, Saw Htee Char sees something very different going on. While Karen and other ethnic leaders expressed initial skepticism, many Bamar youths devoted themselves completely to the training, even picking up local languages, and they earned the respect of many ethnic soldiers in the process. Saw Htee Char says things have changed so much, that “[the] Karen army now contains ethnic Burman battalions!” He does have questions about just how far this collaboration really goes; for example, he wonders about the large military arms caches that some ethnic forces have captured and how they will ultimately be shared.
Saw Htee Char’s evaluation squares with the analysis of a recent guest, Matthew Arnold, who similarly predicts the military is on its last legs. “I really don't think it'll be controlling much of the country six months from now,” he says. However, he does not see a clean ending. “There seems to be a group of generals who can't learn from anything! So it's hard to imagine them admitting defeat.” Instead, he imagines them trying another version of their usual “divide and conquer” strategy, although he doesn't see anyone falling for that this time around.
“I just consider this this story so inspiring,” he says in closing. “Because it's a civilian population rising up against a military autocracy. And the perseverance, especially of the young generation, the creativity… And you also have to acknowledge that the people of Myanmar have received very little support from outside! It's not like Ukraine, where other countries helped the victim to level the playing field militarily… They've been left to themselves and they've done it anyway, and that's even more incredible, given that they've got some powerful countries against them: China, Russia, India, Thailand, those who have supplied weapons to the junta or diplomatic recognition, even United Nations agencies that have played into the hands of the junta by operating according to Memoranda of Understanding signed with the junta, that only allows them to distribute aid where the junta says they can, and when the junta weaponizes the aid for its own purposes. So the people of Myanmar have carried through the struggle on their own against some very powerful foreign forces. And when they win, this victory will belong entirely to them. They will not owe anybody anything!”