"Opinion: “We Won’t Be Satisfied Until the end Of The World”[1] Over the past couple of years, it has not been uncommon to come across headlines such as “Why Has the World Forgotten About Myanmar?”, “U.N. Rapporteur: Myanmar Crisis ‘Has Been Forgotten’”, “Myanmar’s ‘forgotten war’”, and “Myanmar: the Forgotten Revolution”. To be sure, while the uprisings in countries such as Sudan (2019-2022), or the Palestinians’ ongoing resistance to settler-colonial genocide in the Gaza Strip, have received international coverage from major media outlets, it seems that the world has all but forgotten about the ongoing struggle against Myanmar’s military dictatorship, which will enter its third year in 2024. This is particularly striking in light of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) most recent report on “The top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2024,” which listed Myanmar as the country that is currently undergoing the fifth most urgent humanitarian crisis and projects a worsening of the situation for, what IRC classifies as, approximately three million “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDPS). According to the language of the report, in terms of the total number of persons in need, the crisis in Myanmar is rivaled by only four other countries: Sudan, the Gaza Strip and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, South Sudan, and Burkina Faso. And as of December 2023, outside of “Ukraine and Syria, Myanmar recorded the highest number of conflict-related incidents (more than 8,000) for the year.” The 1221 Coup[2] On 1 February 2021, Myanmar’s Army (Tatmadaw) staged a successful coup which saw the arrest of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and the installation of the Army as Myanmar’s new governing authority, led by Army Chief, Min Aung Hlaing. In the weeks and months that followed, the country witnessed mass demonstrations against the military junta as well as its brutal repression by the military junta, including the army’s use of live ammunition against protestors. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), “at least 6,337 civilians were reported as killed and 2,614 as wounded for political reasons in Myanmar in the twenty months between the military coup of February 1, 2021, and September 30, 2022.” Meanwhile, the United Nations Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA) expressed concerns similar to those of IRC in their December 2023 report, Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan: Myanmar, concluding that more than two years of a military junta has resulted in an all but “grim” humanitarian landscape “with a third of the population” now said “to be in humanitarian need.” According to the report findings, the military junta’s “attempt to suppress opposition and consolidate power” has included the use of “systematic violence against the civilian population resulting in over 4,000 deaths, tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests and other human rights violations, including the use of sexual and gender-based violence.” While the State of Emergency imposed by the military in 2021 remains in place alongside restrictions on the freedom of assembly in 127 townships, Martial Law has now been imposed on 59 out of 330 townships across the country. And to make matters worse, the difficulty in satisfying basic subsistence needs for a growing number of Myanmar’s population has been compounded by “the devastating impacts of Cyclone Mocha in May…placing the people of Myanmar in increasing peril.” In total, “some 18.6 million people are estimated to require humanitarian assistance in 2024 — one million more than the same time last year — with the number of displaced people expected to continue steadily rising during the year from the record 2.6 million at the end of 2023.” By 2024, an estimated $994 million will be required to address the needs of more than 19 million people in Myanmar. From 3D Printed Warfare to Operation 1027 A military dictatorship that the world has all but been happy to forget and the worsening effects of compounded political, social, and environmental crises: it is on all of this that the people of Myanmar, displaced in their millions, have nourished themselves and refined their struggle. What began as a popular uprising has transformed into an exodus to the countryside to take up makeshift arms — ranging from bow and arrows to refurbished wooden rifles — against Min Aung Hlaing’s military. Thus unfolded a now three-year-long protracted guerrilla war, wherein resistance fighters have reached the point of being able to 3D print drones capable of carrying explosives in various, nondescript, caves amidst an otherwise ordinary South East Asian landscape. Speaking with a Dutch journalist who spent time with one armed resistance unit, one guerrilla who goes by the name “3D” (a nom de guerre stemming from his overseeing of the manufacture of 3D printed guns and drones) said, “[the military] can’t win on the ground, so they resort to bombing us from above. We can’t defend ourselves. All we can do is hide…Drones are the only thing we have to make them feel even a fraction of the trauma we feel when they bomb us with their fighter jets.” Despite their capability to engage in warfare both on the ground and in the air, analysts have tended to view Myanmar’s armed conflict as a stalemate with no clear end in sight. However, on 27 October, the anti-junta coalition known as ‘The Brotherhood Alliance’ — made up of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Arakan Army (AA), and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) — “launched a coordinated offensive taking control of several military posts and towns near the border with China,” with additional news of the MNDAA having “closed the roads from the trade hub of Lashio to Chinshwehaw and Muse on the China border in advance of a ‘major offensive.’” After a mere two weeks, “anti-junta fighters operating with ‘unprecedented coordination’ have overrun 100 military outposts and the junta stands to lose control of key border crossings that account for some 40% of cross-border trade, and a vital tax revenue source.” According to analysts, “the current offensive poses the biggest threat to the junta’s grip on power since the 2021 coup.” Speaking with DW, Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst, said, “the offensive has denied the military regime access to key trade hubs on the Chinese border and the revenue derived from them,” while emphasizing the offensive’s “potential to bring down a regime that is already facing deep economic and political crises.” Earlier this month, China succeeded in brokering “a ceasefire [agreement] in northern Myanmar between the junta and an alliance of rebels.” A few days into the ceasefire, however, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) announced that “it had taken control of the town of Namhsan in northern Shan state as well as the so-called 105-Mile Trade Zone, a key trading area on Shan state’s border with China.” Despite this shift in China’s regional policy and demonstrated willingness to assume a more active, diplomatic, and despite China’s interest in eliminating forms of illicit and illegal activity along its shared border with Myanmar, one of the main allies of the Brotherhood Alliance, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) — the military wing of the de facto ruling party, the United Wa State Party (UWSP) in Wa State, a self-administered division in the north-eastern part of the country — continues to be “entirely equipped with modern weaponry and equipment produced in China”. Hence, Davis noted, given China’s “powerful influence over the UWSA, [it] could undoubtedly affect a major reduction in munitions reaching northern groups if it wanted to.” As things currently stand, China has yet to show any interest in reducing the cross border flow of arms and munitions that make it into the hands of the UWSA. ‘Kabar Ma Kyay Bu’ Myanmar’s is a young war relative to those waged by imperial states from the global North, especially when the median age of the country’s population is 29.6 years. And the youthfulness of this armed struggle is something on full display amongst the various guerrilla camps spanning its countryside. Having previously lived as precariously employed workers, delivery drivers, university students, engineers, and the like; never having seen a day of military combat in their lives before the armed resistance against the military junta; Myanmar’s 20-somethings are now seasoned guerrilla fighters initiated into that long tradition of the struggle for liberation using armed resistance. [1] This title is taken from the Burmese-language anthem ‘Kabar Ma Kyay Bu,’ which was sung during the 1988 People Power Uprisings (also known as the “8888 Uprising”). On 8 August 1988 (8/8/88), in what was then still known as Burma (present-day Myanmar), a major wave of protests and strikes ushered in a period of national mobilizations. This wave of protests, which has come to be known as the People Power Uprisings, culminated in a harsh crackdown and eventual military coup on 18 September 1988. This 1988 anthem of the People Power Uprisings would be sung once again by demonstrators during the 2021 protests against Myanmar’s military (Tatmadaw) coup d’etat. [2] In a country known for auspicious dates, just as the People Power Uprisings have come to be known as the “8888 Uprisings”, the military coup of 1 February 2021 (1/2/21) was quickly dubbed the “1221 coup.”..."