Myanmar Spring Chronicle – View from September 6
(Moemaka), September 7, 2025
It’s time to organize the public with accurate facts and reality—not wishful thinking
When armed groups issue battlefield updates—or when the media asks them about ongoing fighting—it’s normal for those groups to downplay their own losses and inflate the enemy’s casualties. That’s done to keep their own fighters’ morale up and to sap the opponent’s. Internationally, too, some armies release little or no information about their own losses.
In Myanmar, a few months after the February 1, 2021 coup, armed clashes accelerated and the civil war has now burned for over four years, entering its fifth. Resistance forces have taken not only territory the junta once controlled, but dozens—nearly hundreds—of towns as well.
During periods like this, however, releases from anti-junta forces about the fighting have tended to overstate what actually happened. As such reports proliferate, misconceptions take root.
Many Myanmar outlets—especially those based abroad—lack the capacity to independently verify battlefield claims issued for propaganda purposes, and so they often reprint them as is. For readers, a steady drumbeat of stories about clear-cut resistance victories, mass enemy casualties, surrenders, and defections is naturally heartening—but when expectations of imminent victory are built on such information, perceptions drift away from reality.
It hasn’t just been ordinary people taking comfort; political and military decision-makers have also, at times, deliberated on the basis of such reporting and given the public unrealistic hope, as we’ve seen in recent years.
Recently, BPLA leader Maung Saungkha wrote on Facebook:
“We can and should say this revolution must succeed. But it would be better if we stop saying ‘we’ll win very soon,’ ‘we’re already winning,’ or ‘victory is close.’ As time passes, people’s trust in those saying such things declines; the public get lured into a long journey on false hope and may run out of stamina before we reach the goal.”
Back in early 2021, some popular Spring Revolution figures and social-media celebrities rallied people with predictions that the military dictatorship would collapse within months. During the CDM, the call was that if everyone held out for a month or two, the junta machinery—governance and the economy—would seize up and fall. Later, after the armed path was adopted, public messaging framed defections and surrenders as signs the enemy would crumble soon.
From the military high-water mark for resistance forces in 2024 to mid-2025, however, the junta has acquired more weapons and technology, and—by enforcing conscription—has rebuilt manpower. Some areas held by resistance forces have been lost, and while the army still suffers defeats in places, it has shifted from a largely defensive posture to mounting offensives on multiple fronts.
These realities make it evident—even to ordinary civilians—that a total military victory won’t materialize immediately.
In this context, continuing to mobilize people by saying “victory is just around the corner” is not sound organizing. Instead, it’s time to prepare the public for the long haul—materially and psychologically—and to rally them with accurate information and hard-headed perspectives.
Historically, armed revolutions rarely achieve swift success without outside involvement. (As a comparative example, the decade-long Syrian civil war saw outcomes shaped only after the United States and Turkey provided decisive backing; likewise, Russia’s shifting focus to Ukraine reduced its attention to Syria. This is offered as an illustration, not an endorsement.) To be clear, the point here is not to call for foreign intervention: when great powers step in, wars often intensify, narratives are crafted to serve geopolitical interests over the people’s will, and dictatorships can be prolonged—as Myanmar is already experiencing with China’s involvement.
For political forces and armed resistance groups alike, the time has come to speak plainly and organize honestly—to put the people’s will and interests ahead of factional advantage.