All Zone Media.
Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.
I'm James and today I am joined by Billy Ford from the United States Institute Piece.
A third time podcast guest.
Billy.
How many?
I think it's just my second, but thanks for second?
Okay, Yeah, well I'll give you a bonus one.
Thanks for the invite.
Yeah, and we're here to discuss the revolution in Memma and bring you up to date on conflict stuff and natural disaster stuff and answer some questions people have asked me by emailing me. So yeah, thanks for joining us, Biddy. We're at another crossroads in the conflicts we talked about before we started recording. Can you pres explain to folks like what has happened since ten twenty seven?
Part two?
Sure?
Yeah, I mean, I think last time we talked, we were just kind of in the throes of the initial ten twenty seven things. I mean, I think zooming out for a second, the you know, February twenty twenty one, coup, September seventh, twenty twenty one, defensive wars announced and armed resistance really kicks off. And then twenty twenty three October things really escalate. After a few years of steady gains by the resistance. Then there was a major level change
in the trajectory of the war favoring the resistance forces. Yeah, I think, as you mentioned, there was a second phase of ten twenty seven in July in early August that took things kind of to another level, although it is kind of just a continuation of a sustained.
Push by the resistance. I think some have perceived these.
Moments of October twenty twenty three in August twenty four
adds real watershed moments. But I think we can see how these are illustrative or broader trends, trends in which the mem or military is losing its capability to defend strategic positions, it's inability to counter attack on the resistance side, much greater coordination among resistance armed stakeholders, growing fighting capability, better weapons access, all these sorts of factors that have swung the balance of military power further in the favor
of resistance forces. But essentially what happened in July and August was, building off of the October advances, the resistance in northern Shan State, not far from the Chinese border, pushed further into central miandmar In collaboration. This was essentially ethnic based armed organizations collaborating with Bamar People's Defense Forces under the command structure of the National Unity Government, and
they started making advances into central Burma. So whereas the initial phase of the war and the NUG strategy was to focus on building relationships between the People's Defense forces under their command with ethnic based armed organizations and focusing strategically on the peripheries to build those relationships, to build ethnic buy into the broader revolution, to get access to weapons, and to make steady advances. Now we're at a phase
where the resistance is pushing into central Meanmar. Now the focus is on the city of Mandalay and central Burma, which is the biggest commercial center of the country. So yeah, I mean this has sparked another phase of I think pressure and anxiety within Napida and the capital among the state Administrative Council, hunta leadership, and yeah, more energy on the resistance side. And it's kind of it's occurred alongside
advances on multiple other fronts. I mean, in the very north of the country, Chen State, starting in March, the Kachin force has pushed the Memori military out of it, it was two hundred posts within four months. Similarly in Rakine State, which I think, well, maybe we'll touch on more. The aur Accon Army has made steady advances, so it's not just in these subregions. It's happening virtually all over the country at this point.
Yeah, it does seem and like clearly the essays the Hunter is kind of on the back foot, like it started to forcibly conscript people, which in turn kind of get people a choice between the resistance or the military, and seems like more of them a choosing their resistance. Some of the conscriptions, you know, people can buy out of them, which obviously causes not great for the morale of the population. And that's combined with shortages and inflation.
Pretty shit situation for folks living under Hunter.
Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean I think the memor of military, I mean, there's a big question here about like the resilience of this meam or military. I mean, frankly in militaries in other countries have collapsed and are much less pressure. So there's a question here about like what is holding this all together, particularly given that its primary resilience factors are heavily degraded. I mean things like its ideological value. I mean it's historically been about what we hold the
country together. We manage the diversity of this complex country. We defend the Bamar and the Buddhist populations. These factors are no longer credible. I think it's more than one hundred thousand homes in central Burma have been burnt to the grounds. Most of those are Bamar Buddhists. And you know, someone in the Sanga have risen up. The Buddhist Songa have risen up in protests, including a recent killing of a senior monk. So I think that ideological foundation is
totally degraded. The other factors, which are economic, the economic benefits of being in this institution are also withering, as like the entire economy is collapsing as your reference. And then the third component is like the social status that want to cheese through. Being a member of this institution used to be a place where you could get economic benefits and social benefits, and now it's really neither.
I mean you're reviled or a target.
For resistance assassination if you're affiliated with the institution.
So I think the question remains as.
To like what are the key factors keeping it in place given all of these pressures that it's facing, And you know, happy to go into that, but I think there's there. It's an interesting case study in institutional resilience and the challenges faced by a resistance movement that has major resource constraints and you're fighting up against a military institution that has learned how to orchestrate and sustain authoritarian governance structures for decades.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we can maybe circle back to that. One thing I did want to talk about before we move on to talking about what's happening in recind State is I wanted to talk about the recent flooding that people will have probably seen if they have these friends on social media or keep keep an eye on publications in a region. Can you explain a little bit about like the scale of the flooding and the absolutely bungled if any response from NAPYDAL.
Sure.
Yeah, I think the latest figures that I've seen were one hundred and sixty thousand displaced, six hundred and thirty affected by the floods, two one hundred and thirty dead, and seventy missing.
I think that's what I saw this morning.
But yeah, I mean I think that gives you a sense that this is another humanitarian catastrophe on top of a I think what is now rated the second most intense violent conflict in the world by Accolade.
So this is just one crisis on top of another.
And yeah, as you kind of alluded to, the Memora military is incapable and in unwilling to kind of address the needs here of the population.
I mean, the one factor is that they.
Don't have territorial control to move resources if they had the political will to provide assistance. But of course they're doing the exact opposite. In some of the most flood affected parts of the country, they are continuing to conduct air strikes on civilian populations. I mean, it's it's just kind of a level of brutality that's kind of hard to have them.
But yeah, I mean there's all these other kind of ancillary effects of this.
I think there's signs of a cholera outbreak and yen Gon. The economic conditions, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, are horrendous. I mean, like the economy's lost thirty percent of its value, and it's not a rich country to begin with. Inflation is I think thirty two percent year on year, with the memoar Chat having lost two hundred percent of its value, I mean.
Yeah, it's two hundred percent less value than it was. Yeah. So this is like, you know, it's just.
One catastrophe on top of another, and it's really testing the Memur public's capacity to kind of support one another, which is that's really been the incredible story here, and it's not the first time that the MEMMR military, the governing stakeholder, has failed to meet the needs and that
moment of crisis. Of course, psychloanargus one of the worst natural disasters in the region's history was another instance in which the Memmur military refused international assistance and kind of instrumentalized humanitarian catastrophe for political aims.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think people it's worth reading up on that if you're interested in like the sort of longer term history of the conflict and of sort of the military in Miamma. Maybe now it's a good time to take a break and we'll come back and discuss a little bit about Racine state.
And we're back. Okay.
So I think if people follow the conflict, they will have probably seen like a series of conflicting and confusing articles and messages about what's going on in Rakine State, and some of that is because there's not a great deal of reporting in the English language, a great deal of sources in the English language. And even if there is that, none of us can really make it to Racine State right now. Going through Bangladesh would be quite quite a challenging thing to do with that at this time.
And so I guess we should start breaking down if people aren't aware the people who live and have lived for a long time in Rakine State and the conflicts have fixed it between them and the Burmese state.
Sure, yeah, I.
Mean Rakine State borders Bangladesh on the western side of the Arts along coastal border as well, and the site of some of the largest extractive oil and gas projects, including the terminal for a major gas pipeline that feeds fourteen percent of u Non Province's GP, So it has huge strategic value. It's also China's aiming to kind of access the Indian Ocean and circumvent the Strait of Malacca by going directly to this kind of region of the country,
So it's highly strategically important. But it's also I think it's the second poorest state in the entire country and arguably the most conflict affected.
At least since twenty twelve ish.
So the population of Rakind state is highly diverse, kind of the last to have the broader country's demographics. Woods of Bamar population, which is the dominant ethnic group at
the national level, the ethnic majority is kind. There's I mean, historically a very large Muslim population of Rahinja Muslims primarily, but also other Muslim minority groups including Kahman Muslims, and then a number of other smaller ethnic minority groups Murmaji, Kami and others, as well as a small Hindu population. So you can kind of get the sense that this
is a highly diverse space. I mean, many of the listeners will have heard twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, Go was the site of a massive clearance operation and the genocide of Rhinja Muslims, about seven hundred and fifty thousand of whom were pushed into Bangladesh and almost all of them are still there inhabiting the largest refugee camp in the world. Yeah, I mean, overall conditions for the Rhinja it's hard to
imagine a more difficult set of conditions. The Bangladesh government is quite impatient have hosted many hundreds of thousands of Rahinja, some for seven years but others for actually for much longer than that, as twenty sixteen twenty seventeen was a moment in a genocide, but there have been instances of memoir military atrocities against the Hindu population dating back to the nineteen seventies as well.
So this is a long term kind of situation in which the Bungadesh have been coasting Rehinja.
And yeah, I mean I think conditions in those camps
are really really challenging. The major issue now is the arising and security in the camps, as some Rhinja militia groups have gained ascendency in the camps, most of which have very little public support, and when the Renja population should be noted, the major dynamic that that's happened recently, I mean the Arakan Army, which is almost entirely of Kine ethnic groups and has broad public support among the Rakine population of Rakind State, has made massive advances across
Hine State and now controls virtually all of northern Rakine State and is pushing south. It took the city of Tondue and the airport, which is the first time a resistance group had taken an airport. It recently took a naval base, the first time that has ever happened in the history of the Memory military, and now it's pushing its forest south as guas potentially threatening to control the
entire state. So as this has occurred, the MR military is in a state of complete panic, and as it is losing forces on this front, but also on numerous other fronts, it has attempted to kind of buttress its forces through force conscription and in the most potentially the most horrifying move imaginable, it is forcibly conscripted the Rowhinja into the MR military. They conducted genocide against the Rhinda population and now they are forcing them to wear the
uniform of their genocider. It's kind of a level of horror. It's hard to understand.
And one way.
In which they've undertaken this effort is by collaborating with Rehindra militia forces including ARSA, the Salvation Army and the Rhindra Saldarity Organization ARSO, which have presence in the camps
and have been facilitating recruitment from the camps. So the primary aim here as a military one, but a secondary aim, which is really critical, is undermining interching cohesion in rekind state because ultimately, like the BMW or military operates through coercion, force and violence, but also through fragmentation so that it
doesn't face a unified resistance. And in this case they want to incite instability by creating hatred between the Rhindra and Rekine population and building off of the vitriol that had built over decades. So this is kind of a new paradigm that everyone is trying to better understand. But yeah, it's it's kind of a new level.
Of r Yeah, and it's particularly horrific. As you say, I think sometimes the tendency, especially with people who perhaps are not as familiar with the situation and history there to lump ethnic groups in as sort of monolithic actors, right or homogeneous to be like, okay, so they re Hinja as represented by ARSA and the RSO have joined the Hunter, which is not the case. Like every Hinger person I speak to, everyone I speak to in Cox's
Bizarre shares a loathing for those organizations. They're forced conscription of young people, and yeah, their solidarity with the hunter that committed the genocide against and it continued to commit the genocide against these people. And I think the first thing we need to do is move away from that
kind of homogeneous perspective. But maybe we could explain there have been a few accusations of the our Econ army making attacks against a hiner people, right NGA specifically hinder people who are not armed, who are not part of ROSO or A. Yeah, can you explain like what we know and what we don't know there?
Sure?
Yeah, I think there's just just are There is a massive fog of war in Rekind state, may be worse than any other part of the country, so it is really difficult to disentangle fact from fiction here. But I think there's pretty credible evidence that the Arkhan Army have
committed atrocities against hind Of civilian populations. In early August, there was a specific incident in which hundreds of Rahinja were killed in a drone strike, and Fortified Rights, which is a human rights organization, conducted investigation to the incident and asserts that the ark On Army was responsible for that of course, the AA disputes these claims, and I think there's a few recent interviews with the commander in chief of the Army to nine where you know, he
articulates his side of the story, which you could find on Irwadi dot com and.
I think in a few other news outlets.
Yeah, the diplomat did one as well. He's been on a publicity tour I guess recently. Yeah, absolutely, you've seen this. But like his tendency to cool or hint of people bangladeshis it is unfortunate given that that's a language that was used to justify the genocide.
Right, absolutely, Yeah, it reflects kind of the language that the Memora military used.
Well, Bengali's he'll call them exactly. Yeah, it's very reflective of that.
Yeah, So this is really challenging, and part because I think that there is kind of an important distinction between the Metamora military and the ark On Army in this case, in part because the ark On Army has a raw public support among the rekind public and so it has a more of a legitimate stake to governance than the Menmora military, which has none. And so this is it's kind of an issue that requires attention and an honest accounting of the facts and a long process of reconciliation.
Part because of the ark On Army is likely there to stay as a governing stakeholder. Yeah, so that that is a really tricky kind of set of conditions.
And the other side of this is that the re kind of public.
I think there is a deep sense of a grievance among the rekind public. And this is a population that has also faced years of intense political alienation and persecution.
Not to mention war and violence.
You know, last year when Cyclo and Moca hit the Kind State, the Memora military did virtually nothing to help them.
So it's a population with.
Legitimate a grievances and they and their perception is that the international community only focuses on the rehint of public's well being. And I think the international community can do a better job of showing sympathy for the rekind public's interests. I think sympathy is not like zero sum in that sense, and that needs to be done better. Yeah, But honestly, like the equating a grievances is also really kind of unfair and dishonest.
And you know this.
Rehindered population is marginalized to just such an extreme degree.
And so those are a really interesting report by Doctors Without Borders not.
Too long ago it that showed that only like six hundred thousand of the two point eight million were Hinja in the world, that in MR fifty seven percent of living in camps and Bangladesh or in IDP camps and MEMR. So it's like there's just like a highly vulnerable population that has experienced genocide, you know.
It's like there are there's a power in balance, you know.
So it's like, I think it's not the same.
I don't know.
The whole process of kind Rhinda reorconciliation is one that deserves immediate and urgent attention, but there's also a long term process of constructing, you know, a governance structure that is acceptable and that's not a highly exclusionary of Rhinda and.
These sorts of things. So it's a it's a highly and beyond the.
Fact that we need more a deliberate investigation in some of these incidents, I think a broader conversational reconciliation and justice needs to needs to take place.
Yeah, and it's definitely one at least you know, I speak to people who are probably on the more progressive side of the resistance, and it's one that they've acknowledged, like it's something that they need to address, and kind of the litmus test for like a post hunter mean mars, like are there places for these people who they weren't
places for in this state before? But yeah, how we get there is it's difficult, and I don't think that's not that's not a clear pathway that anyone's kind of pointed to this yet.
Yeah.
The one thing I would add is like this is sort of emblematic of broader perceptions of MEMR and approaches to peace building a MEMR is that there's there's often a horizontal approach that like we need to work on the intercommunal level, individual level trust building, that sort of thing. And I think there is a place for that for sure.
But we've done a couple pieces of research with an academic at UG Austin who has found some really interesting stuff about like the nature of conflict in the country and nature of cohesion in the country. And she's found including through some experimental research, studies and designs which are
quite revealing. I think that national identity is often more important to respondence in her surveys than ethnic identity, which is which kind of cuts against like the traditional perceptions of how Memra is, like, Oh, it's this irreconcilably fractious place and it's so hard to build trust between communities.
And that sort of thing.
But for her research kind of points to the vertical dimension, where it's the nature of Memor politics and the nature of governance structures that highly exclusionary, discriminatory governance structures have sustained conflict for so long in the country.
And this is kind of like the main argument for the resistance.
You know, it's like a lot of the stakeholders, at least a critical mass within this resistance movement, they're trying to assert a new political paradigm in the country, you know, a more stable political paradigm in which the Memour military is not a dominant stakeholder, in which violence is not your source of power, in which that's not built on
exclusionary norms of belonging. So it's like it is genuinely a revolution in this sense, and that is why they're they're kind of pushing against the international pressures to enter into a power sharing your dream with the VMR military because there's a perception that if them our military it remains in a position of political power, they will interrupt this reform process and then violence world persist.
In the country.
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's probably a reasonable assumption
to make. Like, again, this is like one of those things that I see a lot in different places in the world where I go, right, there's this tendency to see things, I think from sort of colonial perspective and just be like, oh, these ethnicities will squabble and fight, and like that's not necessarily the case at all, And like if you look even to the PDFs, Like I was speaking to someone the other day who was saying, like, there are jib Muslim women fighting with the koren right now,
which is something that doesn't align up with this idea
of like ethnicities which are clashing and can't combine. And we saw like a statement of solidarity from the Karenni to the Kurdish people, which doesn't line up with this idea of an inherently Islamophobic like you know, sort of massive of Buddhist people in the Amma, which I think, Yeah, it's a little oversimplified to say that stuff and I think sometimes reductive, and it's the analysis of me and Mark as a place where colonialism is still occurring, and
the methods of colonialism, like lots of the things you describe right, like promoting fractures, promoting these different ethnic identities which are seen as kind of zero sum and mutually exclusive. These are things that the United Kingdom did or Britain did all around the world for centuries. And it's not rocket science to see how that jumps to another group which especially in some cases was trained by the British or had relations with the British, and you know, to
see how we got there. But I think we'll take another little break here, we'll come back, and I want to discuss the resilience of the Hunter and how it's hanging on.
All right, we're back.
So for the last little segment of this podcast, I would like to discuss how the Burmese military is holding onto powers. When I speak to soldiers who have defected, I speak to I've spoken to about half a dozen,
I guess soldiers who have defected over time. It's almost comic how disorganized and chaotic things are, and at the same time it's terrible the way like every single one of them has described to me that their families are essentially held as collateral to stop them deserting, right, and so they had to work with the civil disobedience movement to first extract their families before they themselves took their weapons in most cases because they get a bounty for
their weapons and went to join the resistance or in some cases went into exile. So like, maybe that gives us a good view on how the Hunter is it's continuing to force people to fight in this war that it's losing. Can you explain a little bit of how they've held onto power?
Sure, Yeah, I guess the first thing to note is that rates of defection are totally historic. I mean, yeah, by our account, about fifteen thousand deserters, which is actually not radically different than historical norms. The mem Our military has comparatively high rates of desertion even before the coup, so that's not, you know, far outside of the norm. But the defection, I think there's about fifty eight hundred defectors by our account since the coup, which is unprecedented.
There's never never really been defection to resistance in memr's history. The other factor is the number of individuals who are surrendering without a fight with you know, without with putting up little resistance. That number is hard to count, but it's our by our raid, it seems to be quite high. There's forms of acts of disloyalty occurring that are not, you know, spurring institutional collapse, but are that are degrading the memoir of military's fighting capabilities, which is a really
important dynamic. So say that at the outset outset. The other thing I'd say is that, like, I think we need to sort of think about this at three levels. So, like the rank and file soldiers, they are significantly demoralized. Most did not join the military to fight. They joined the military for economic stability and for social status, and neither of those are available to them under this military's leadership.
They certainly did not join to commit atrocities against the Bamar Buddhist population, which.
Is now what they're enforced to.
So I think that population, the large number of rank and file soldiers, is highly demoralized, and that's where you have seen lots of desertion, defection, often from the front lines. Though that population's defection desertion is not going to trigger institutional collapse.
At the second level, you have like.
A command or core major, major and above, and these I think since Operation ten twenty seven you've seen their morale to drop. And I mean there's been the fall of Latio and the loss of the Northeast Regional Command, the first time in the Memors history that a regional commands been taken that had sent shockways through the commander level.
The other thing is that min Onligne, the Commander in Chief, in his attempt to consolidate power and protect himself from from internal fragmentation, he's rotating commanders based on loyalty, not based on effectiveness, which is also degrading the Memora Military's fighting capability.
But it's also that's maybe.
One reason why you haven't seen less acts of disloyalty within that layer.
At the senior levels.
I mean mostly most of those senior Memorial military officials who are based in Apida, I think they until the fall of Lastio and the resistance moving into Mandalay, there was relatively high levels of sense of security and morale was was okay, I suppose, but the full of Lastio and the ensuing events has really inflamed internal frustration from what we understand so, and this has also triggered some some shifts in the way in which the MEMR military operates its patronage structures.
So traditionally the patriot in structure is essentially like a feudal state.
I mean you have like a commander in chief that is extremely powerful, has authority to rotate or fire or arrest virtually anyone.
I mean, just huge amounts of powers centralized there.
The deputy commander in chief has little capability to challenge the commander in chief's authority. But then you have these regional commanders that operate as feudal lords at the regional level. They're able to extract huge amounts of value or wealth through you know, attractive.
Industries, illegal industries, all with total impunity.
But often you know, with the approval of nipidal and that approval was often just given. Now it's less it's less easily given. I mean you've seen nineties senior officers shuffled, changed positions since the coup, and fifty have been removed or arrested by our tracking. And you've also seen individuals
detained and arrested. Because I think there's fifteen kernels or above mostly brigadier generals and major generals who have been arrested for business related activities, which I think is emblematic of the restructuring of the patronage network and centralizing the
patronage network with men Online himself. If you do not have his personal approval, you cannot conduct business activities, including these highly lucrative scam operations that are generating billions in value but also really frustrating the Chinese.
So this whole patronage structure.
Which is critical to sustaining the Memora military, is being reoriented, and we'll see whether or not that.
Helps sustain the institution or introduces more instability.
But ultimately, the forms of resilience I guess you would call it are the one maybe you pointed to. I mean their structure. I mean it's like rotating officer, commanders and senior officers regularly holding families hostage. Essentially, you know, a soldier sent to the front lines, its family remains in the barracks. Payment is often made to the families, not to the front line's soldier, and there's retribution if
the frontline soldier defects or deserts. This is also where the fifty eight hundred number I mentioned earlier is likely irradical undercounting because and also the fifteen thousand desertions because a lot of people are recorded as KIA when they're.
Actually they've deserted or defected.
So anyways, I'm not sure if that answers your question, which some thoughts relatives tosiliencia.
No, I think it does.
Yeah, one of the guys I met, we've described basically his entire I guess squad went out on a patrol and defected. I guess the PDF have been I had to describe it really, but it's basically shit talking them in their barracks or like in the position for months right there.
Like you see this a lot. It's a kind of.
Unique feature of the of the conflict in the MR guys with megaphones, just being like, you can surrender if you want.
You know, your life is miserable.
And I guess in this case it worked, And yeah, they will be read to as KIA. They went out in a patrol and never came back.
But yeah, I mean, I guess the other dynamic is that, like you need to align motivation and opportunity for defection desertion and the motivation is there in a lot of cases, but opportunity is not. You know. The resistance is committing some resources to these efforts, but it's really limited given the scale of the challenge.
Yeah, there's a lot.
Of factors that need to kind of come together, like the ability to safely communicate with resistance, the ability to move into resistance, all the areas of the perception that we.
Were accepted and not phase retribution.
The perception there was that living conditions are acceptable to them.
You know.
So there's all these conditions and given the call of defection desertion which could be like major attribution against your family, and deep uncertainty about leaving this institution that is kind of a.
State within a state.
That's why we're not seeing the kind of large scale, commander level defection desertion I think.
Right, So, one last thing I wanted to talk about before we finish up. If people, I guess keep tabs on the conflict, they would have seen recently a video I'm sure you've seen the Kachin Independence Army shooting down in aircraft with an FN six Chinese man portaal air defense system. It's what they sort of called manpads. I'm sure women can carry them to just fine or anyone else for that matter. But I think it happened in
January and the video has just come out. Can you explain the significance of that within the conflict landscape?
And we am a yeah.
I guess there's a couple of points. One is about China's posture and the other is about the military balance. I think the Menomour military's air power is its primary comparative advantage. I think this point it has fewer by infantry forces than the resistance, but that it's heavy artillery and especially it's air power. You know, that's how it terrorizes the population. But it's also been a source of
It's been a very powerful mobilizing force. I mean, I think after Phase one of ten twenty seven, the mmdaa Ko Kong armed group, essentially it took back territory that it proceeds to be their own and took the town of Lau Kai, which was really surprising but a major advance. And then everyone kind of perceived, Okay, they'll just stay in the quote unquote Ko Kong areas, They'll stay where they are.
But I think there's a deep perception.
Among the MDAA but also broader ethnic minority groups that as long as the MR Military is in power and has air capability.
It will terrorize the public.
Even if it cannot reach or ever take back lau Kai, it will vomit. And that's exactly what we saw after ten twenty seven. You saw air strikes and Laukai. You saw air strikes and lights of the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army. You see airstrikes in parts of her kind state that the mem R Military has no chance of recapturing.
You know, it's a terrorizing the pumbplic thing.
Yeah, it's a punitive thing.
Yeah, it's punitive thing. So and it also is powerfully motivating.
It's like, okay, now you see the MNDA pushing all the way to Lascio, and a lot of people didn't think they would do that.
But it's like, if you have a perception.
That this m R military can hurt me from a distance, they may need to eliminate them altogether in order to achieve the level of stability and safety that they pursue.
So like it's the double edged sword in that regard.
But going back to your question, I mean, think like if the resistance is capable of constraining the MR military's air capability, it radically changes the balance of power.
I mean, I think there are.
Some elements of this that are been a primary focus of some of the international human rights community, for example, constraining access to jet fuel and these sorts of things trying to push right arms margo, none of which I've succeeded, but there's been kind of progress on the margins.
Although I think we just saw Russia.
Delivered jet fuel and the maritime routes in Southern Mars.
So yeah, in exchange for the artillery shows that the Mamma has sent to Russia, right, Oh.
Okay, and realize okay, yeah, so I mean they're continued, they're able to sustain that, and you know, and the Chinese has sold i think six aircrafts last year, so yeah, they still have this fighting capability, and they're still able to extract foreign exchange essentially by stealing from exporters. But that's a whole different conversation. But anyway, like I think, yeah, this is a key dynamic if they're able to affect their their air power. The other thing is that like
China is attempted to play both sides. I mean historically, that's sort of their approach. I mean, they have deep connections with armed organizations along its border, maybe closer even than with the VMW or military. But they also provide politically tuitimacy and material assistance to the Menmoral military. They just actually signed an MU on law enforcement and security
or some sort with the military. That's a deep and abiding relationship, in part because the Chinese don't see an alternative.
I mean, I don't think they have much trust for dan U G or other.
Resistance groups, and despite the fact that they don't, they don't also don't really trust the Memora military or perceed them to be competent. They see them kind of as their only potential partner in ipudot. But it's kind of a question as to whether this strategy is still working for them. I think we've seen lots of acts of defiance from both sides, the meum Or military and resistance groups visa China, I mean.
The Man military. They've been pressuring.
Them to hold elections for since the coup essentially, and they're really no closer yeah to that happening. I mean, I think they dissolve the NLD something the Chinese said not to do, and more recently, they've designated a number of resistance groups as terrorist organizations, which essentially obviates political negotiations, which I think would certainly frustrate the Chinese, given that they hope to achieve stability through political ingratiations between a
subset of resistance groups and the Manama military. So there are these kind of acts of defiance also on the resistance side. I mean, the Chinese are pushing for ceasefires, and yet the resistance continues to push into the country, and they're sort of a perception that, like, as the resistance groups aligned with China, quote unquote aligned with China, maybe they aren't a gain ascendency on the battlefield, in particular that China's influenced gains.
But I'm not sure whether that's the case.
It might actually be in verse, like, as these groups push into memmore and have more charitorial control, maybe they have more options and they're less dependent on the Chinese. So that relationship in the north along the Chinese border is also very much in flux.
I don't think it's clear exactly how that will play out.
Yeah, no, it's not, And I think that's sort of a big question that's overhanging. Obviously, you have actors that are more close your line with China, like the United Worst Date Army, who have sort of largely remained aloof from the conflict or a loof maybe it's your own word, but are not like directly committing most of their forces to the Conflict's really a better way of saying it, right.
Yeah, I think so.
And now that there's a ton of pressure on them to stop selling arms to other groups, So we'll see where there that happens.
Yeah, which is probably where the Kaschin Independence Army was able to get the surface where missiles from, which brings us back to that. Yeah, it's it's never not complicated, but it's always very sad that, like the folks quit in the middle of this are suffering horrendously and sometimes suffering kind of out of sight and out of mind for so many people. As you know, a news cycle continues to kind of either trivialize or completely ignore what's
happening in me, amma, which is really sad. People often ask me like where they can find reliable news sources and where they can send them money if they want to help people in Mema. Do you have any good suggestions for that?
Sure? Yeah, I mean I think for news, I guess for like day to day news like Fronter Memr is a fantastic source, as is Meanmar Now and the Irawadi.
These are they have English.
Language content that would be really interesting and accessible. My organization, the US in suit Piece. You can check out our website. We publish a lot of analytical work on there related to the conflict. You're welcome to check there. I think there's a really good another podcast, it's really good, Insight MEMR, that is worth checking out. Started as like a Buddhism oriented podcast talking about in Pasuma. Now its branched into a much broader range of issues.
Some of the best stuff I've heard and actually affiliated with.
INSIGHTEMMR is an organization called Beta Burma that provides humanitarian.
Assistance in one you could contribute to.
There's an organization called Skills for Humanity that provides a lot of humanitarian systems on the ground.
Ye and you.
Mentioned Liberate the NMAR before we start recording. That can also be a good support.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think schools to humanity also accept maybe they accept direct I was speaking to them about like medical equipment that they needed. Yeah, they they accept direct donations or not. But people who want to volunteer medically, let's want to look out for.
Yeah, that was fantastic. Billy is there anyway?
And I think you else you'd like to plug like why people can follow you or us i P online.
Us i P dot org. Most of my writing is on there.
I'm on Twitter, Twitter at b I L L e E, the number four, the letter D. But yeah, I mean I checked those sources I mentioned. It's rather there's not more kind of content in the mainstream media, but there's there's a lot of really incredible reporting coming from the ground from people taking incredible risks to share information. So encourage you to support some of those local outlets.
Yeah, definitely, including financially if you can. It's like they're doing the work that really needs to be done.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, James, and we appreciate you being our host.
Jeers It could.
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