(MENAFN- Asia Times)
As torrential monsoon rains give way to the year-end cold season, a central question looms heavily over the war in Myanmar: is time on the side of federal-democratic forces battling the State Administration Council (SAC) military coup regime? Or, rephrased, can the remarkable military momentum achieved by those forces over the last year be maintained in the year to come?
Given an interplay of multiple domestic and external factors, some“known unknowns” and other“unknown unknowns”, there are today no clear answers to the question in either formulation. But two overarching realities that before long will inevitably – and probably decisively – impact the war are already in full view.
The first is that the rebel victories of the yearlong 1027 campaign launched on October 27, 2023, were won in the borderlands of Shan, Kachin and Rakhine states, where well-organized ethnic forces configured as battalions and brigades with clear lines of command executed coordinated operations.
They were also able to absorb a level of casualties never publicly revealed but which in certain engagements, notably the month-long battle for Lashio city in Shan state and brutally protracted sieges around army strongpoints in Rakhine state, undoubtedly cost thousands of lives.
In contrast, the war in the coming year will be fought primarily in the national heartland of central Myanmar by a far less capable or organized cohort of ethnic majority Bamar Peoples Defense Forces (PDFs).
Indeed, this shift has already begun with PDF forces moving within rocket range of Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city, while in neighboring Sagaing region PDFs loyal to the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and supported by the long-running ethnic forces of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) overran the strategically important town of Pinlebu on October 8.
Window of opportunity The second stark reality now shaping the conflict is that the SAC military is gearing up to fight for its survival. The unprecedented blows to manpower, materiel and morale of the past year have undoubtedly shaken the regime to the core.
But notwithstanding gung-ho opposition commentary predicting retreat without end and possible regime collapse, there is little evidence to suggest that the discipline and cohesion that has underpinned the military for seven decades has evaporated in a single year.
At the same time, improvements on the battlefield are already being accelerated in a regrouping process that will likely only pick up over the coming year.
Against the backdrop of ramped-up diplomatic, material and advisory support from Russia and China, the military continues to push ahead with a conscription drive that is now in its sixth iteration. Initiated in April, it has, on paper at least, dragooned over 20,000 new recruits into the army's depleted ranks.
How effectively this desperately needed infusion of manpower translates into battlefield capability remains to be tested. And that test will be difficult to measure given that newly trained draftees, however reluctant, are being deployed to bolster battalions already in the field rather than forming new units that might break and run at the first opportunity.
But as Joseph Stalin famously noted of technically inferior Soviet tank power thrown against the German panzers of World War II,“quantity has a quality of its own.”
History proved the wily Soviet dictator right.
At the tactical level, the army's new directorate for unmanned aerial warfare is boosting the impact of the SAC's largely unchallenged airpower. Established earlier this year to accelerate the induction of drones to front-line battalions, the directorate is already benefitting from Chinese material support.
Russian expertise derived from the war in Ukraine is also almost certainly playing into a drone war in which opposition forces no longer dominate Myanmar's battlespaces.
That said, while these and other improvements to the SAC's sagging capabilities will likely gain traction over the coming year, it is still safe to argue that none has yet achieved a critical mass that alone or in combination could provide a decisive advantage over an emboldened resistance.
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