Opinion Myanmar’s failed military regime is unsettling the whole region

The failure of the military regime in Myanmar to establish control over the country is evident in the fighting that rages across the land. Ethnic militias have joined hands with pro-democracy civilians who have taken up arms against the military since the February 2021 coup. The junta’s confrontation with these groups is nowhere better exemplified than in Chin state, which shares a border with Mizoram. For nearly a decade, Chin was one of Myanmar’s relatively peaceful border states after the Chin National Army, the armed wing of the Chin National Front, signed a ceasefire in 2012 with the then military government, which was at the time gradually loosening its grip and transitioning towards accepting that a democratic government was the way forward. After the coup, the CNF joined hands with the National Unity Government, the political leaders of the pro-democracy struggle in Myanmar. Another ethnic organisation called the Chin National Organisation, which has its own armed wing called the Chin National Defence Organisation, also came up two months after the coup. Plus, every township in Chin state has its own people’s militia called the Chin Defence Force.

Camp Victoria, the CNF-CNA headquarters located right on the Mizoram-Chin border, has been training hundreds of volunteers who have signed up to take on the junta. Earlier this week, it was this camp that the Myanmar Air Force hit in targeted air strikes. The proximity of the camp to settlements on the Mizoram side — with one bomb reported to have fallen on the Indian side — has once again underlined the destabilising potential of the coup. The Myanmar military has not only pushed its own people back by two decades, it also directly threatens the stability of the entire Northeast region. While Mizoram has given refuge to over 40,000 Chin people, refugees have crossed over into Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh as well. The military’s aerial bombardment in Rakhine bordering Bangladesh, and in Kayin, on the Thai border, did not go down well in these countries. In July last year, the Thai Air Force scrambled its jets as Myanmar’s bombers intruded into its territories. More than once last November, Dhaka, already furious over the Rohingya influx, summoned the Myanmar envoy to register its protest as shells fell in Bangladesh territory. In the last week of December, Beijing’s special envoy to Myanmar held his own talks with seven ethnic armed organisations active in areas close to the Chinese borders, as the fighting in Kachin continues unabated.

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Close to the second anniversary of the coup, the State Administration Council – as the junta calls itself — led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, is fully tied down, trying to tame the hundreds of small and big revolts across Myanmar. Large swathes of the country are no-go areas for the military. Its efforts to tie up peace pacts with some of the 21 EAOs in the country have at best yielded mixed results. The bottom line is that the country’s ethnic groups who live along its borders and make up one-third of Myanmar’s 54 million population, do not trust the military to give them the federal autonomy they seek. Peace in Myanmar and along its boundaries will come only with real democracy, not the sham election the junta is planning.