By David Scott Mathieson
Revolutionary warfare in Myanmar has changed fundamentally since the 2021 coup. If “network-centric warfare” often refers to the technological and informational advantages of conventional military forces, in Myanmar there is a growing “network insurgency” with patterns of cooperation and mutual support amongst multiple Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) working for one general cause that links them—the eradication of the State Administration Council (SAC) and the surrender of the Myanmar military.
One of the key theorists of insurgency evolution, Steven Metz formerly of the U.S. Army War College, wrote in August about the “Challenges of Next-Gen Insurgency”. “Next-gen insurgencies will be organized as networks with few concentrations of political or military power that the state can target,” he said. “This organization will be a survival mechanism as states develop more effective technology-based (and, in the future, artificial intelligence–based) intelligence capabilities.”
Unfortunately, the Myanmar junta can still target key insurgent personnel and infrastructure with airpower and drones, and has bombed headquarters of EAOs, but not to any major degree—yet.
Metz includes a schematic of the direction the evolution of insurgency is taking, a generalized list of patterns of change in armed-group mobilization. Many are applicable broadly to Myanmar, but they also suggest aspects where Myanmar is unique, a shift from insurgencies that are “emulative” to those that are “innovative”.
Myanmar is both. Many armed groups both want to emulate past insurgencies in some form, but also learn from a plethora of mistakes that older insurgencies made. The Arakan Army (AA), for example, is a thoroughly unique blend of classic insurgency formation with innovative and modernizing features that have been developed over the past decade as they drive the junta out of Rakhine State and attempt to build a new political “confederation”. The AA clearly studied past Rakhine insurgencies, but was determined to become an innovative leader in contemporary Myanmar warfare. Since the coup, it has become a pivotal organization to emulate.
There has long been a “Burma gap” in conflict studies, where broader perspectives and comparisons are rarely used, and also where war in Myanmar is little studied in the broader literature on insurgency. This is why armed-group formation in Myanmar needs to be more systematically studied, and deeper insights are needed into their motivations, operations, combat performance, tactical and strategic outlooks, and importantly, their social interactions.
There are hundreds of strands of research to undertake on armed-group formation, but three broad features stand out, two positive and one negative—alliance building and a military-civilian fusion, and the anti-network zone of Central Myanmar.
Alliance building
One of the major lessons that have emerged from Operation 1027 and in several other conflict zones is the network of loose alliances between pre- and post-coup resistance groups. The composition of forces of both stages of 1027 indicates a combined commitment to toppling the junta and defeating the military, but with more informality than rigid unity.
Operation 1027 also demonstrated the importance of operational security and a tight leadership and planning circle. The Brotherhood Alliance comprises the AA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and all three represent this trend from emulation to innovation in the way they conduct their insurgency.
The BA have trained multiple allies in the Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA), Mandalay PDF, Danu PDF, and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) factions that operate under larger EAO tactical command. Troops from Karen State also took part in the multilateral operation, with some measure of logistical and weapons support from the United Wa State Army (UWSA). In Kayin State, too, most of the PDFs such as the Cobra Column wear KNLA insignia and take their orders from the KNLA chain of command. There are Magwe based PDFs fighting alongside the AA in their ongoing siege of Ann and the military’s Western Regional Command.
In Metz’s schematic, he observes that insurgencies have moved from being “unitary” to “semi-unitary”, and are currently at the “coalition” or “polyglot” stage. Next-gen insurgents seek to form networks or coalitions that avoid rigid hierarchies, which is the general approach of the National Unity Government (NUG). Networks do not need to sign agreements or abide by consensus decision-making, and see polyglot alliances not as a weakness but as a strength.
Many members of the BA cluster coalition see the value in cooperation and passing on training, logistics, weaponry, and ammunition because they understand themselves as a chain of allies that all have specific localized agendas and interests, rather than a centralized military.
Consider the experiences of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA), which formed in 2021 and is led by the prominent poet and free-speech activist Maung Saungkha. He fled the violent crackdown to KNLA Brigade 5 area, one of the staunchest Kayin revolutionary zones, and the fiefdom of the famous General Baw Kyaw Heh.
There the BPLA was given shelter and trained by troops of the AA who had established a base in the area as early as 2018 to further cooperate with the KNLA. A lot of BPLA training, which has expanded since the imposition of the conscription law in February, is now done by their own experienced soldiers.
In 2023, a unit of the BPLA was trained in the Kokang region by the MNDAA and affiliated with their Brigade 611. By October 2024, the BPLA was sending more northern-trained troops into the Dry Zone of Sagaing. This would have been unthinkable just three years ago, and it transpired not just through the efforts of one group, but of a network of armed groups who see the benefits of cooperation.
The BPLA case also reveals a new form of pragmatic military leadership that is adept at building cooperative, informal relationships. Baw Kyaw Heh is one of the key figures leading this new approach along with Ta’ang, Kokang, Rakhine and other leaders who maintain a lower profile than many political leaders. They have been adept at regulating multiple armed groups into more effective military formations, including in Mon State and in Tanintharyi, where military training, armed-group consolidation, and preparing for a new front in the conflict have been dynamic throughout 2024.
Meanwhile the political leaders of the “K2C” (Karenni, Karen and Chin groups) are occupied with strategy sessions for regional diplomacy or with various mediation initiatives from Western organizations and visits of foreign capitals. These efforts have been less impressive than their actual military cooperation on the ground, which mirrors efforts for bottom-up federalism as opposed to endless elite discussion about a federal system designed by committee.
The AA, TNLA, MNDAA, and Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and their network allies are having to consider pressure from China to avoid all of these forums, and privately many have disdain for the NUG and many of these international initiatives. In other words, the political dimension of the network insurgency is lopsided.
Military-civilian network revolution
There is also a heritage aspect to modern network insurgency, in that many people in various organizations know each other from previous generations of activism, political mobilization, women’s rights, human rights documentation, and advocacy and environmental activities during the 1990s and 2000s. One reason why this system works more effectively is a fusion of the older generation and post-coup insurgent leadership of various ethnicities, who enjoy high levels of interpersonal trust.
Many of the leaders of various military and civilian groups may well have attended the same “Federalism and Constitution” workshop in Chiang Mai 15 years ago, and many of them may well be experiencing a sense of revolutionary déjà vu. Others may have spent time in prison for political activities, like some of the leaders of the Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF) who protested the Aung San statue in Loikaw and were imprisoned for six months by the National League for Democracy (NLD) government. The AA leadership, for its part, has roots in natural-resource activism.
Younger Gen Z or Gen Y activists are connected through a range of activities during the political opening of the pre-coup decade, studied together, demonstrated together after the coup, and fled to the jungles as a group. Some of their friends are now in neighboring countries pursuing numerous support activities in activism, the arts, political organization, media, and human rights. This is a highly interconnected and politically savvy generational intersection, and not the gerontocracy of older EAO leaders or the fossils of the NUG.
The vision of a fully unified anti-military network was always fine idea with little chance of success. Indeed, Bertil Lintner has tracked its history and rightly called it a “mirage”. The arrogance of the NUG, which initially expected obsequious fealty from ethnic groups, is a major reason its leadership has been a lamentable failure.
The virtual aspect of interaction between armed-group leaders on the ground, and civil society actors, aid workers, fundraisers, political strategists, and allies has accelerated after the coup, especially with the significant breakthrough of Starlink communications in many areas. It is totally routine to FaceTime or Signal chat with people in conflict zones or headquarters with relative safety. In the not-too-distant past, getting in touch with insurgents required either discreet meetings in hotels in neighboring countries, slogging up red dirt hills to their base areas in the borderlands, or attending one of the highly choreographed insurgent events like Revolution Day in liberated areas.
Now prominent leaders may be easier to contact, but they also live in daily expectation that they can be hit by the junta with better targeting technology and drone strikes, including kamikaze drones.
Despite the dominance of men in leadership positions in insurgency organizations, the important role of women has also been significant at almost all levels of operations. The younger leadership are—mostly though not universally—more open-minded to gender equality and the standard 30 percent rule of gender inclusion. But as the Women’s League of Burma (WLB)’s revolutionary research and exhibition on ending “manels” (all-male talk panels and webinars) has shown, there is still a great deal of male entitlement and outright misogyny, and unacceptable levels of sexual harassment and sexual violence amongst revolutionary actors.
Nevertheless, women’s groups have a pivotal role to play in regulating armed group’s behavior, especially those ethnic organizations that have deep social ties to armed-group leadership; they are key humanitarian and social actors in conflict areas, and lead many international advocacy efforts.
Ideally, next-generation insurgents would seek input from civilian networks for assistance, guidance, and ethical considerations. Yet here is where some important caveats must be factored in. Many EAOs, and quite a few PDFs, have demonstrated a questionable commitment to democratic norms and practices. Some have deplorable human rights records. Many practice predatory forced recruitment. The Kokang are outright authoritarian, partly due to their Chinese Communist roots, but mostly because they like it that way. Other groups who emerged post-coup with a strong commitment to human rights and democratic values will find it all but impossible to fully observe the full spectrum of values they espouse.
This is where civilian networks are important. Even if they have limited intervention capacity, they can privately and publicly challenge the excesses, corruption, and atrocities of armed groups. The Myanmar media, as always, will also have a prominent role to play in seeking to make armed actors accountable. That task is getting more difficult by the day, as the media is increasingly seen as a disruptive and anti-revolutionary force.
Lastly, there needs to be a commitment to avoid overloading EAOs and their allies with too many expectations. Building bottom-up federalism will take decades, and on limited budgets that must compete with a cornucopia of demands: humanitarian, health, education, climate change and the environment, law and order and policing.
There is also an urgent need to rethink the economic dimensions of network insurgency, and where trade, development and finance intersect. This is hopefully where the civilian side of the insurgency will be invaluable: if the right resources are redistributed effectively, how will all this be paid for?
The anti-network insurgency zone
Where the positive evolution of network insurgency has a dark mirror is in the Dry Zone of Sagaing, Magwe and Mandalay, where hundreds of armed groups, mostly PDFs, operate at local levels with increasing disorder. The NUG has simply been incapable of establishing the networks of effective armed-group cooperation that are needed for operational coherence, let alone long-term planning, training, logistics, and effective leadership.
Too much outside research remains fixated on counting PDFs rather than deepening a sense of the motivations, actions, and inner workings of armed groups, as well as their inter-group relations. Too much store has been placed on “effective control” of PDFs, and the incoherence of Local Defense Forces (LDF), Pa Ah Pa, Pa Ka Pa, Pa Wa Pa, who often report to different NUG ministries or local officials. It is worth pondering if the attempts at rationalizing local administration may have inadvertently distorted the security dimensions of local revolution. But hyper-localized violence, inter-communal competition, and grudges have also contributed to the thwarting of more cooperative arrangements.
The Dry Zone is now awash with weaponry. There are tens of thousands of trained combatants in EAOs and PDFs across Myanmar, many of them in organizations with clear chains of command, codes of conduct and discipline, and in most cases a strong desire to defeat the military and protect civilians. But there are also thousands of people in the center bearing war weapons, assault rifles and handguns, some with a nebulous commitment to revolution, markedly less discipline, and mixed motivations for taking up, and keeping, these arms.
In some reports of PDFs assaulting junta security outposts, there are sometimes dozens of distinct groups taking part. This could be termed a “network”, but not if they are ad-hoc and one-off events.
This week’s announcement of the BPLA that it is sending troops to the Dry Zone alongside People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units, all trained by the BA, could signal an opening for more effective networking among armed groups who have pledged to work with the NUG on improving the security situation. But has the disorder become so entrenched that—even with networked and professional armed groups assisting in military reorganization and management—it could make matters worse? There is such a high degree inter-group violence in these areas that they may be past the point of rationalizing.
These efforts must also take into account the networks of the junta’s security system. The cooperation between the military and its allies in People’s Militia units, Pyu Saw Htee, and Thwe Thouq (Blood Drinkers), Sangha leaders, and officials of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and other actors such as the Dark Grim Reaper Group operating in Pyay, has been effective at spreading terror. These networks are also backed by terrifying firepower from the air, artillery, and gunboats operating along the rivers. The anti-regime forces must consider how to disrupt these networks, which will involve a mixture of military and political means.
The nature of insurgency in Myanmar has changed irrevocably, as has the nature of warfare. As positive as many of these adaptations have been on the battlefield, there is also devastating human suffering across the country. So far, the networks have demonstrated a measure of robust effectiveness. But the specter of fragmentation remains ever present in Myanmar. That is a historical legacy of civil war that remains vivid in the present.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues
source : irrawaddy