Bangkok– BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar The military regime acknowledged Monday that it had lost communications with commanders at a strategically important army headquarters in the northeast, adding credibility to claims by a militia group that it had captured the base.
The fall of the army’s Northeast Command in the city of Lashio would be the biggest in a series of setbacks for Myanmar’s military government this year, as an offensive by an alliance of powerful militias from ethnic minority groups makes broad gains in the civil war.
“The regime’s loss of Northeast Command is the most humiliating defeat of the war,” said Morgan Michaels, an analyst at the Singapore-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, who heads its Myanmar conflict map project. “Without Lashio, it will be extremely difficult for the regime to maintain its last outposts in the theater of operations.”
These include the key Muse border crossing with China, as well as the strategic crossing at Kyaukme, and open the way for attacks on Pyin Oo Lwin and Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, Michaels said.
In a video broadcast Monday night on state television, the head of the ruling military council. General Min Aung Hlaing gave a vague account of the fall of the base, saying that some security forces in northern Shan state abandoned their outposts because keeping people safe was their priority.
In his 25-minute speech, he accused ethnic resistance forces and “traitor worms” inside and outside Myanmar of working together and circulating propaganda to demoralize the people.
He alleged that caudillismo is growing among leaders of insurgent groups and that people are likely to face illegal and unjust killings and an economy that involves drug trafficking and gambling. The military will continue to implement security measures to restore stability, he said.
The loss of Lashio raises questions about whether Myanmar’s ruling military council could be forced to abandon attempts to control the disputed territory to consolidate defense of the central heartland.
It could also contribute to growing discontent with Min Aung Hlaing, who took power after leading the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in 2021.
“It seems increasingly unlikely that the military can survive with Min Aung Hlaing at the helm,” Michaels said.
Lashio, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of the border with China, has been the target of an offensive by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army since early July.
The MNDAA is a military force of the Kokang minority, of Chinese ethnicity. It is part of the Three Brothers Alliance, which in October launched a surprise offensive that managed to seize large areas of territory along the northern border with China.
China helped negotiate a ceasefire in January, but it collapsed in June when the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, another member of the Three Brotherhoods Alliance made up of members of the Ta’ang ethnic minority, launched new attacksfollowed by the MNDAA.
The alliance’s third member, the Arakan Army, has never stopped fighting in its home state of Rakhine in western Myanmar.
Alliance groups have been fighting for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government for decades. They are loosely allied with the People’s Defense Forces, pro-democracy resistance groups that have emerged to fight the military government.
The MNDAA initially claimed the capture of Northeast Command and Lashio on July 25, but it turned out that the announcement was premature as the army continued fighting.
The MNDAA, in a statement on Facebook on Saturday, said the group had finally completely captured the Northeast Command headquarters and defeated the remaining military units in Lashio.
The claims could not be independently verified, as access to Internet and mobile phone services in the area was virtually cut off.
A member of Lashio’s Freedom Youth Volunteers-FYV, contacted while he was out of town, told The Associated Press on Monday that other members of his aid group had reported that army personnel were still controlling some areas of the Command headquarters. Northeast, although most had been taken. by the MNDAA.
He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from both sides.
There were reports of gunfire in the city on Sunday, but images of captured soldiers and equipment circulated widely on social media, suggesting the MNDAA had taken the base. The MNDAA posted a photograph of its fighters posing in front of a sign outside the Northeast Command.
“The regime has clearly suffered an enormous loss and no longer has any meaningful control of the city, even if it maintains a foothold for now,” Michaels said.
Early Monday, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for Myanmar’s ruling military council, said in an audio statement on state television MRTV that he had lost contact with commanders at the Northeast Command headquarters on Saturday morning. night and that he had received unconfirmed reports that some have been detained by the MNDAA.
He did not address the MNDAA’s claim to capture the base.
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