Myanmar Spring Chronicle – August 16 Perspective
Moemaka, August 17, 2025
Airstrikes Used by the Military as Pressure to Force Territorial Concessions and Ceasefires
While international campaigns are underway urging the cutoff of jet fuel supplies to the Myanmar military to halt airstrikes, the junta’s aerial attacks have become more frequent, targeted, and deadly in recent months.
In recent days, towns and villages in Mogok, Kyaukme, Kutkai, Hsipaw, Demoso, Thabeikkyin, Wetlet, and across Sagaing Region have come under daily bombardment from military airstrikes. One of the most devastating recent incidents occurred in Mogok, where a bomb directly struck a residential neighborhood, killing more than 20 civilians. One bomb hit a house where a woman had just given birth; both the mother and newborn were killed, along with visiting friends who had come to see the baby.
Photos circulated online showed severely mutilated bodies, including one particularly graphic image of a woman’s body blown onto the rooftop of a damaged home—eliciting widespread shock and grief.
Similar scenes are likely occurring elsewhere, even if not all of them are photographed or reported, raising concerns about the scale of unrecorded civilian casualties from these increasingly indiscriminate strikes.
The military junta is using airpower against territories it lost during recent offensives and cannot retake by ground force, launching daily bombing raids. Some airstrikes appear to target military positions, but many have hit civilian areas, including homes, monasteries, schools, and even IDP camps.
Unlike air support during active battles, many of these bombings occur in towns and villages where there is no fighting, indicating a deliberate strategy—possibly to displace civilians and make these areas uninhabitable, especially where ethnic revolutionary organizations (EROs) or NUG-affiliated PDFs maintain control.
Moreover, resource-rich areas are often singled out. The goal may be to disrupt local tax collection and prevent extraction of valuable resources, undermining the governance of resistance groups.
Since late 2023, airstrike patterns have intensified, becoming more strategic and frequent. While some attacks may have caused combatant casualties, most have inflicted greater harm on civilians.
The resistance forces have struggled to find an effective strategy to counter the military’s air campaign. Although there are international and activist-led campaigns to cut off jet fuel, and efforts to pressure through diplomatic and economic sanctions, these actions have not yet produced tangible results.
While some Western nations have condemned the junta’s airstrikes in general terms, there has been no concrete international action to deter or prevent further attacks. ASEAN countries and Myanmar’s neighbors, including China, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh, have treated the airstrikes as an internal affair, refraining from any public criticism.
In fact, some ASEAN countries are believed to be facilitating jet fuel shipments indirectly. There were even reports that Vietnam, despite having endured massive U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War, has allowed jet fuel shipments to Myanmar’s military—a stark and ironic twist.
Because international efforts to cut off jet fuel have been ineffective, civilians on the ground are left to rely on makeshift bomb shelters and self-protection measures, such as avoiding gatherings, staying in cover, or abandoning villages altogether.
These measures may reduce casualties to some degree, but they cannot guarantee safety. As long as airstrikes continue, civilian lives remain at risk.
Even if junta airstrikes do not succeed in forcing anti-junta armed groups to surrender or hand over territory, there is no indication that the military will stop. Instead, airstrikes are expected to continue, serving as a tool to inflict fear, destabilize resistance-held areas, and pressure local populations into submission.