Myanmar Spring Chronicle – November 17 View
(MoeMaKa, November 18, 2025)
BGF and the Junta Intensify Crackdown on “Kyar Phyant” Scam Syndicates
After both the junta and the Karen Border Guard Force (BGF) — one of the armed groups previously accused of protecting cyber-scam syndicates — declared their intent to launch “final operations” to eliminate these networks, videos emerged on the night of November 17 showing hundreds of workers fleeing Shwe Kokko in Myawaddy Township.
In recent days, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, visiting Mawlamyine in Mon State and Hpa-An in Karen State, publicly vowed to “eradicate” the Kyar Phyant scam networks. On the same day, BGF spokesman Col. Naing Maung Zaw, whose group was formerly a junta-aligned border guard and rebranded last year as the Karen National Army (KNA), told Thai and Myanmar media that they would launch a final military operation against the scam compounds.
Within hours of those statements, videos surfaced showing vehicles and crowds packing the streets of Shwe Kokko, with people fleeing en masse from the scam compounds — suggesting that operators and foreign nationals were escaping before any attack began. Analysts interpret the junta’s and BGF’s “advance warning” announcements as effectively alerting Chinese ringleaders to relocate to safer zones inside Myanmar or across the border into Thailand.
The wealthy Chinese masterminds behind these syndicates are believed to use their massive profits from online scams to bribe police, soldiers, and armed groups, securing safe passage and relocation. At the same time, many foreign victims enslaved in these compounds — forced into online fraud under confinement — may now have a chance to escape amid the disruption.
Reports also say some Myanmar nationals who worked voluntarily in these operations for wages (not as trafficking victims) have fled to nearby towns and villages to avoid being caught up in raids.
This isn’t the first such “crackdown.” Early this year, the BGF and DKBA raided scam compounds under their protection, detaining tens of thousands of foreign workers and repatriating them via Thailand, while arresting local facilitators.
However, among those who fled then were both victims and perpetrators, mixing genuine trafficking survivors with scam criminals. Embassies of the affected countries screened and retrieved their nationals. That earlier operation was largely seen as a controlled, limited campaign — meant to appease international pressure from China, the U.S., and others pushing for action against these crimes.
Today, it remains unclear how far this new BGF–junta “final crackdown” will actually go. The BGF, estimated to have around 7,000 troops, relies on taxation and border trade revenue to fund itself. Without such income — from tolls, border fees, or protection money — sustaining its operations is difficult.
Similarly, the junta provides BGF troops with minimal salaries, insufficient for practical self-sufficiency. Historically, before the rise of the cyber-scam industry, these groups survived through drug trafficking and smuggling.
For the junta, allowing such local armed groups to exist has long served a strategic purpose: using them as buffer forces and auxiliaries to counter ethnic political armies. Myanmar’s civil war history is full of examples of successive regimes using militia and warlord-type units in this way.
In Shan State, similar local warlords emerged in various forms — drug lords, militia leaders, and “mini-kings” — often tolerated by the central military as long as they helped maintain control. Throughout the civil war, the use of semi-legal, armed groups running illicit businesses has been a recurring model of Myanmar’s internal conflict.
Now, the Kyar Phyant cyber-scam operations in Karen State have become a new chapter in that long history. Just as Myanmar’s drug economy once became a global problem, these scam networks — initially a local and regional issue — have now expanded into an international crisis.
For this reason, Myanmar’s civil war is no longer a purely domestic affair. It has evolved into a regional and global problem, drawing in neighboring states and major powers alike — each with its own stake in how the criminal networks, and the conflicts that shelter them, are finally resolved.