Enter the new year with fighting and arson at the beginning of 2023 after ending a calendar year

Myanmar Spring Chronicle – January 01 Scenes
MoeMaKa, January 02, 2023

Enter the new year with fighting and arson at the beginning of 2023 after ending a calendar year

While the military council administration sponsored a New Year’s music concert in Yangon, Mandalay, and Nay Pyi Taw to welcome the new year, hundreds of thousands of people are living in tents in Karen State, Sagaing Division, and Karenni State where there is armed conflict because their houses were burned down and even though they had a house to live in, they were not allowed to sleep in their houses due to battle or stationed junta troops. So they entered the year 2023 sleeping in temporary shelters in refugee camps, monasteries, churches and forests. In the year 2022, fighting was going on regardless of summer, rainy season, or winter, so agriculture was not done well, there was also looting or burning of stored food without being able to carry with them, and there were many incidents where family members lost their lives.

People who live in cities may be subjected to bombings and shootings on occasion, but they do not suffer the consequences of being arrested, tortured, and killed as much as people who live in the countryside. Because villages are linked to battlefields where armed conflicts are taking place, or revolutionary forces are fighting military council forces using guerrilla tactics, rural people suffer the most from the effects of war.

Social media users are claiming the newly begun year 2023 as the end of the military dictatorship. These social media inspiring and rhyming slogans were posted in mid-2021 and 2022, so it can be assumed that these slogans are encouraging the public rather than predicting the political future.

In his New Year’s speech, Acting President of NUG Duwa Lashi La said that 2023 will be a turning year for politics and that it will be a decisive year because we have been able to achieve greater unity with the ethnic armed organizations and other important organizations.

It is still too early to say whether the political and military balance will change significantly compared to last year in 2023, as it has not been explained to the extent of how the agreement has been reached or what activities will be different from last year.

In terms of foreign aid, there may be hope that the pace of the armed revolution will increase because of the Burma Act in the US defense budget, which is approving $50 million in non-lethal weapons aid per year for 5 years to the Myanmar opponents, war-affected refugees, NUG, CRPH, PDF, NUCC, and ethnic armed organizations that are fighting against the military council.

On the other hand, if it were determined that the victory of the spring revolution would be achieved only through armed attacks, I think that it would be necessary for the NUG to move from being sheltered in the territory of the ethnic armed organizations to establishing a base in a region of their own choosing, so that the armed forces, which are already divided, could be united under a single command.

It will also be necessary to analyze and study the international examples of the decisive victory of the armed forces, as well as the world political background and the geopolitical position of Myanmar.