Myanmar Spring Chronicle – November 05 Scenes
MoeMaKa, November 06 2022
Civilians and Organizations Playing by Ear
In the daily news, the news that we hear every day is of villages being torched, civilians being arrested and killed on the accusation of PDF, casualties in the battles of PDF with the junta, civilians being injured and killed due to the falling of heavy weapons upon houses in villages, explosions in cities, killings, arrests, briberies, and corruption. Also, the news of the depreciation of the Myanmar Kyat, the rise in commodity prices, and the news of many youths leaving the country both legally and illegally due to the scarcity of jobs, with some being arrested in the latter cases, are often read, even if not every day.
These are the news that we read in the news from private news agencies and the Myanmar programs established by some big foreign countries.
It really feels like life has gone back 30 years when there is instability in the condition of the towns, lags of the law enforcement of the countryside, outdated living and professions of agriculture and trading, and when there is loss of houses, properties and cattle they owned due to thieves, robbers, the junta and armed battles. When you lose a family member, you will feel an irreplaceable loss. It’s not a rich situation, but being destroyed and taking away assets for living, such as cattle, agricultural equipment, food that has been harvested, and motorcycles that are essential for getting around, is making people’s lives reset to zero.
These kinds of situations happen every day in central Myanmar, and it makes me feel like I’m just watching the numbers grows day by day. Counting the number of deaths, counting the number of houses being burnt down and counting the number of people being arrested, makes me feel that we are in a situation where we cannot afford to stop these incidents. Who can prevent this situation and who can take action to avoid it is becoming a question with no answer.
As the leaders of the PDF forces, they are not in a position to prevent residents from being arrested and killed and their houses from being burned down. The PDF doesn’t have adequate arms power and a strategic position to drive out the junta troops, and they are only in a position to ambush convoys, detonate mines on the road and intersect, so the current situation is that they have not been able to protect the residents from the military council’s attack.
Because these villages accept and support the PDFs and have manpower involved, the military council is torching villages and killing residents on the basis of suspicion that they are PDFs without checking carefully. It is like a frank punitive system and a strategy planned to counter the PDF movement or the armed resistance.
I think that the NUG urgently needs to provide strategic and tactical leadership in the resistance of these regions. It is not clear whether the current situation is a planned one or a reactive one.
In the analysis of international observers, it is often seen and written that the main weakness is the lack of unified leadership and command systems in the armed resistance part of Myanmar’s Spring Revolution. International observers may or may not understand the background of Myanmar’s politics and the key to solving the problem, but we cannot deny that we can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies and tactics in armed conflicts. How to prepare for weakness and how to organize may be the answer to the outcome of the armed struggle of the Spring Revolution. If the battle lasts a longer time, how much the public will be able to support and participate while risking their lives remains an open question.
The fundraising may be limited after a certain period of time, and before that limit is reached, it is now important to adopt a battle strategy to gain an advantage in the battle and the quality in order to take advantage of the situation.
For the next 3 years and the next 5 years, if we continue in this situation, there will probably be difficulties and challenges on the enemy’s side, as well as on our side. Before such a time, I would like to emphasize the importance of having smart leadership in order to have and implement the right strategies and tactics for a change in order to gain an advantage.