Western Backed “Pro-Democracy” Terrorists Wage War In Myanmar

Tatmadaw parade

04-12-2023: If the West’s corporate media is anything to go by, popular pro-democracy groups in Myanmar have linked with ethnically based armed organisations in an attempt to restore civilian rule in the South-East Asian nation, which is bordered by Bangladesh and India to the west, Laos and Thailand to the east, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the north. Supposedly, the Tatmadaw (the military of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar) cancelled elections in February 2021, brought the military to political power, and then proceeded to wage war against all those who resisted the takeover. Of course, this narrative, like many spun in the corporate media of the West, is little but an elaborate fabrication. In reality, the ruling classes of the West, principally those of the United States of America (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) are engaged in yet another proxy war of regime change in Myanmar,[1] which is squarely aimed not only at Naypyidaw, but also against its giant northern neighbour and economic and political partner, the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Operation 1027

On October 27, the grandiosely titled “Three Brotherhood Alliance” launched coordinated attacks on military posts in the northern Shan state bordering China. They claimed to have taken several towns and border crossings, in an operation named “1027” after the date it began.[2] The “Three Brotherhood Alliance” comprises the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. These groups claim that there have been large numbers of the Tatmadaw and national police surrendering themselves to the ethnic armed militia, but these claims are not able to be verified[3] – and hence are likely to be little more than propaganda. The same goes for the claim from the Orwellian named US government funded United States Institute of Peace (USIP), which stated that the 1027 offensive had cut off 40% of the Tatmadaw’s land access to China.[4] Nevertheless, it does appear that the attacks were coordinated, with the Arakan Army opening a front against the Tatmadaw in the Rakhine state on the West coast, attacks were launched in Kayah state bordering Thailand to the east, and in the Chin state which borders India.[5]

The United Nations Officer for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) claims that the clashes between the Arakan Army and the Tatmadaw in the Rakhine State have resulted in the displacement of 25 175 people.[6] How this exact figure was arrived at is anyone’s guess, but there is a history of innocent civilians fleeing deadly clashes between the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the Tatmadaw in 2017. This was blamed on Myanmar, but in fact the Tatmadaw were only responding to armed provocations from ARSA, who do not at all deny their links to Al Qaeda.[7] It is probable that ARSA has simply been renamed to today’s “Arakan Army”, containing many of the same personnel. The plight of the Rohingya people in the Rakhine state has been skillfully exploited by imperialism, with many liberal refugee rights groups in the West pleading with their governments to accept Rohingya asylum seekers. While it is the case that many Rohingya people are seeking refuge in regional countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia,[8] they are not fleeing from the State Administration Council (SAC – the Tatmadaw led government which assumed power in February 2021), but from the deadly attacks on the SAC launched by the bloodthirsty anti-government groups.

Proxy terrorist forces

The corporate Western media labelling these armed groups as “pro-democracy” borders on absurdity. In practice, these ethnic armed groups are proxy terrorist forces of US and UK imperialism, which seek to abolish Myanmar’s independence via violent conflict which would serve to destablise the region. The chaos and destruction would then undermine Myanmar’s economic cooperation with the PRC and provide a beach head for terrorist militias to cross into the Chinese mainland. What is more, these ethnic armed organisations are a part of the fake National Unity Government (NUG),[9] which only exists with the express backing of US imperialism. In 2022, the fraudulent NUG “Defence Minister” Yee Mon called on Western governments to provide arms and funding for its “resistance” forces, in the same way Western governments have provided arms and funding for Ukraine.[10] In other words, the NUG calls for arms and funding from the West in the same manner in which the US and the UK states sent weapons and money to Nazi infested Ukraine in a failed war of regime change aimed at Russia.

Grotesquely, the agents of the West also refer to the unhinged armed attacks on the SAC as a “revolution”, which fools some well-meaning individuals. As the slavish Vox media organisation states, so called “civil society” groups have been a part of what is in practice a terrorist operation, with medical professionals associated with the “Civil Disobedience Movement” (CDM) who have been caring for the wounded ethnic armed organisations fighters.[11] The CDM is joined by the ludicrously named “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF) in frenzied conflict alongside the proxy terrorist armed militias. However, it is not difficult to see where the funding and political support for the ethnic armed organisations, such as the CDM and the PDF, arrives from. The notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Congress funded specialist overseas regime change arm, admits to hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for “civil society”, “human rights”, “democratic norms” and “citizen inclusion” groups in Burma (disrespectfully using the old British colonial name for Myanmar) just in the year 2021.[12]

Not to be outdone, the US government funded Agency for International Development (USAID) boasts that it had trained 255 “independent” media outlets on “unbiased” reporting (!), and “strengthened” 235 civil society organisations to advocate for “democratic reforms” in “Burma”.[13] Referring to Myanmar as “Burma” is par for the course, and an indicator that the US and the UK essentially aim to recolonise Myanmar in its overall war on the giant PRC. In the UK the “Burma Campaign UK” dubiously appears as a dedicated NGO, disconnected from the UK government. For example, it complains that the UK government has slashed aid to Myanmar by 70% since February 2021.[14] Yet last year, in response to their campaign to prevent British companies supplying aviation fuel to Myanmar (supposedly to prevent Tatmadaw bombing), the UK government “suddenly” announced warnings to British firms against supplying such fuel to its former colony.[15] In reality, British imperialism has never accepted the loss of its former colony, which fought for and won its independence in 1948. Since that time, the UK ruling class has covertly backed the ethnic armed organisations against the central Myanmar government, as has the US ruling class in more recent decades. The relentless economic rise of the PRC has only accelerated the West’s ongoing deadly meddling in Myanmar.

Myanmar “on the verge of collapse” ?

The West’s corporate media has seized on comments by interim Myanmar President Myint Swe where he remarked that if the SAC does not effectively manage the incidents happening in the border regions, the country would be split into various parts. Yet Myint Swe made these remarks at a meeting of the National Defence and Security Council, which was attended by SAC chief Min Aung Hlaing and other Tatmadaw officials.[16] The fake NUG “Foreign Minister” Zin Mar Aung, who is in exile in Japan, recently made fantastic comments that the Tatmadaw “is ready to collapse”,[17] which has been augmented by Western corporate media as meaning that Myanmar is “on the verge of collapse”. Yet this has been claimed by various conservative media outlets since 2021,[18] and nothing of the sort has occurred. Moreover, Zin Mar Aung is a fellow of the NED[19], which exposes the NUG not as a “shadow government” but the US government funded front which presents itself as a pivot from which to further propagandise for liberal international support for the reactionary overthrow of the SAC.

Myanmar is obviously not about to collapse – though this is the direct aim of Washington and London in their proxy war of regime change to undermine Red China. Yet the nation of Myanmar, with a population of over 54 million people,[20] does face a reactionary Western backed armed insurgency dressed in the risible claim that it is a “Spring Revolution” which has linked with decades old Western backed ethnic militia such as the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Karen National Union (KNU).[21] However, there is a long history of the Kachin, Karen and Chin ethnic groups being used by British imperialism against the newly independent Myanmar (then Burma), which continue to be funded today to disrupt desperately needed infrastructure projects agreed to between Myanmar and the PRC, such as dams, roads, ports and pipelines.[22]

In fact, it is not only the KIA, the KNU and other ethnic armed organisations which are funded by Washington and billionaire regime change specialist George Soros – so too is the National League for Democracy (NLD) and even Aung San Suu Kyi herself. More than three decades of funding from the US state department and George Soros[23] created and sustained the NLD to the point where it was impossible for any other party to win an election in Myanmar. Even so, the NLD and its Western backers still had to carry out staggering levels of electoral fraud to “win” the 2021 election. The electoral commission appointed by the SAC found 11 million cases of fraud, which included instances of people without citizenship being on voter rolls and duplicate registrations in all 315 constituencies.[24] Needless to say, if the SAC did not take action in response to this, Myanmar would likely have lost any semblance of independence, and may have been remote-controlled by the West.

No to war in South-East Asia

Myanmar’s Western backed “freedom fighters” have no claim to anything but extreme violence. Even the British government funded BBC reported on the case of Lily Naing Kyaw, a 58-year-old singer who was shot in the head and later died.[25] Her “crime” was nothing but disagreeing with the US and UK backed “opposition” political views, by speaking out in favour of the SAC. The barbarous acts of the proxy terrorist forces has a chilling effect on free speech and normal political dialogue in Myanmar. During the recent “Operation 1027” even the US government funded Voice of America outlet reported that the terror groups had attacked military checkpoints, toll gates and police stations. Tatmadaw spokesperson Zaw Min Tun also stated that a hotel was attacked, with hotel staff and civilians being seized and taken away.[26] In other words, the “pro-democracy” fighters have engaged in literal terrorism including the kidnapping of innocent civilians as hostages. Just as with Hamas in Palestine on October 7, the terrorist “pro-democracy” militias have little to no concern for the lives of bystanders.

Yet the Western backed terrorist proxies not only face the Tatmadaw itself. The Tatmadaw has trained the Pyu Saw Htee civilian militia, which takes action to defend the government and Myanmar itself from this Western backed violence. Even the US government funded Myanmar Now reported that Pyu Saw Htee groups had forced the terror militias to retreat from two villages (Ye-U and Shwebo) in the Sagaing Region.[27] Moreover, the PRC is well aware of the dangers of the terror militia’s deadly campaigns against the Tatmadaw, especially in areas which border China. In late November, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began conducting live fire drills on its side of the border, in which they tested “rapid mobilising, border sealing and fire strike” powers.[28] Myanmar is a key partner in Red China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, which is another reason why Washington and London seek to break ties between Naypyidaw and Beijing at almost any cost.

Working people have the power to stop war in South-East Asia, despite the never-ending attempts at regime change and politically reactionary colour-revolutions ultimately aimed at the PRC. The fact that imperialism has to resort to war and violent terrorism via proxy forces is proof positive that capitalism cannot combat the giant publicly owned and planned economy on the Chinese mainland, and its friendly and co-operative relations with its neighbours, and indeed the world. While the PRC remains a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state which is hampered by the leadership of a conservative Stalinist caste, it is in the interests of workers internationally to defend Myanmar and China against the ravages of imperialist backed machinations. The formation of Marxist vanguard parties forged with the theory of Permanent Revolution remains key for Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh and India, combined with proletarian political revolutions in China, Vietnam and the DPRK (“North Korea”). Only genuine socialism has the power to stop and reverse a rapidly deteriorating Western Empire.

WORKERS LEAGUE

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[1] www.redfireonline.com/2021/04/08/myanmar-western-backed-subversion-aids-regime-change-war/ (29-11-2023)

[2] www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-22/myanmar-junta-civil-war-three-brotherhood-alliance-1027/103130406 (29-11-2023)

[3] www.nbcnews.com/news/world/entire-army-battalion-surrendered-myanmar-rcna125275 (29-11-2023)

[4] www.usip.org/publications/2023/11/myanmars-junta-losing-control-its-border-china (29-11-2023)

[5] Ibid, 2.

[6] www.dw.com/en/myanmar-un-says-tens-of-thousands-displaced-in-clashes/a-67471901 (29-11-2023)

[7] www.redfireonline.com/2018/09/13/myanmar-rohingya-manipulated-for-the-wests-drive-to-war/ (29-11-2023)

[8] https://www.iom.int/news/iom-calls-increased-regional-support-rohingyas-search-protection (29-11-2023)

[9] www.nugmyanmar.org/en/ (29-11-2023)

[10] www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-resistance-urges-west-provide-arms-fight-against-junta-2022-05-17/ (29-11-2023)

[11] www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/25/23975516/myanmar-military-junta-tatmadaw-three-brotherhood-alliance-china (29-11-2023)