Burmese army troops surrender, civilians and soldiers flee to Thailand

The fighting continues. The military junta bombed the city, located in Karen State. The Thai government said yesterday that it expected the arrival of 100,000 displaced people. The generals are in difficulties in the peripheral areas of the country and are betting on compulsory recruitment, forcing civilians to enlist.

Yangon (/Agencies) – Dozens of Burmese army soldiers who had attacked the city of Myawaddy, in the Karen State that borders Thailand, have surrendered to the militias that are part of the anti-coup resistance. The Thai government later announced that it had granted permission for a special flight from Yangon to Mae Sot – the Thai city across the border – to “carry passengers and goods”, without providing further details. These are the latest news to come from the front lines of Myanmar's “forgotten war”, which Pope Francis once again referred to today during the general audience in St. Peter's Square.

The border crossing between Myawaddy and Mae Sot is important because more than $1 billion in commercial traffic crosses there each year, which Thai officials say has dropped about 30% in the last year. “We are concerned about trade on the border with Thailand and hope to quickly stabilize the situation,” said a spokesman for the Karena National Union (KNU), the local ethnic militia that defeated the regime's soldiers – about 600 according to local sources – together with the People's Defense Forces, which respond to the government in exile. In other areas liberated from military control, local ethnic organizations have already created independent administrations.

However, as has happened on other occasions, after the surrender, the military junta gave new impetus to the fighting by bombing the Myawaddy area to try to regain control of it, forcing the local population to escape and take refuge in Thailand, which expects a growing number of displaced people, close to 100,000 people, according to stated yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara. “We have been preparing for a long time and we can temporarily receive about 100,000 people,” the minister said yesterday. Thailand, like other countries in the region, is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on refugees and last month began sending humanitarian aid (which is considered insufficient and dependent on the logistical structures of the military junta) to Myanmar.

Over the past three years the Thai government has often been criticized for supporting Myanmar's military. Referring to the flight that departed from Yangon, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained in a statement: “After considering the urgency of the situation and the possibility of an evacuation of Myanmar personnel and their families to safe areas, the government has made the decision to approve Myanmar's request on humanitarian grounds.”

Myawaddy's defeat is new confirmation of the weakness of the Burmese military junta (which tried to take control of the country with a coup d'état in February 2021) in the peripheral areas of the country. A weakness which was also highlighted last week by Thai Prime Minister Srttha Thavisin, according to which “the current regime is starting to lose some strength. But even if they are losing, they have the power and they have the weapons. Maybe it is time to reach an agreement – he said – and added that Thailand would be much better off if it had a stable and prosperous Myanmar nearby.

Since October last year, ethnic militias have regained large swaths of territory in the Shan States (bordering China), Rakhine (bordering Bangladesh) and now the Karen States. Thousands of soldiers have died or deserted in recent months, forcing the military to impose mandatory military service on men and women to try to compensate for the losses.

Hundreds of people are trying to defect by fleeing to neighboring countries, to the point that Nikkei Asia claims that the demand for foreign currency has further depreciated the kyat, the Burmese currency. According to observers, it is likely that in the coming weeks the military will ferociously attack civilians to force them to forcibly join the ranks of the army. Indeed, the recruitment program has so far not achieved the results expected by the generals, so, according to experts, “Military officials will have to resort to capture, kidnapping and other repressive methods” to enforce the law on mandatory military conscription.