Myanmar’s military claimed on Wednesday (May 20, 2026) to have recaptured a town on the Thai border, expanding the frontier trade crossings it claims to control in the grinding civil war.

The southern Myanmar border town of Mawtaung is a relatively minor trading post, transiting $26.7 million of freight in the 2023-24 financial year, according to Myanmar official statistics.

But its capture would represent another boost for the military, adding to a string of recent victories against ethnic minority armies and pro-democracy guerrillas it has warred with since staging a 2021 coup.

Myanmar state media said the military lost control of Mawtaung in Tanintharyi region in November, but retook it on Tuesday (May 19, 2026) after a two-week counter-offensive.

The battle included more than 200 “major and minor clashes”, killing at least 24 opposition fighters, according to The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Some military members “also heroically sacrificed their lives”, it said, without specifying the death toll.

“Cross-border trade flows and transport activities between the two countries via the Tanintharyi-Mawtaung route will be able to resume,” added the newspaper.

Civil war has engulfed Myanmar since the military coup five years ago deposed the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, ending a decade-long experiment with democracy.

In late 2023 a combined rebel offensive put the military on the back foot, but after the campaign stalled, the armed forces have more recently seized the initiative.

The military this month claimed to retake a key northern highway that leads towards the Chinese border, and last month staged a ceremony celebrating the recapture of the road towards the busiest trade crossing with Thailand.

Two ethnic minority armies which were key to the 2023 offensive have signed Beijing-brokered truces, leaving lesser-trained and worse-equipped pro-democracy partisans exposed on the battlefield.

There are also signs the pro-democracy movement is in danger of being politically outmanoeuvred.

After five years of martial rule, the junta oversaw a tightly restricted election excluding detained Suu Kyi’s party and returning a walkover win in January for its allies in civilian politics.

Lawmakers elected coup-leader Min Aung Hlaing to serve as civilian President — evidence, democracy monitors say, that the poll was a charade designed to whitewash his continuing rule.

Despite criticism of the election, there are signs some nations in the region are now willing to ramp up diplomatic engagement, providing de facto recognition to the new administration.

Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday (October 20, 2025).

Myanmar is notorious for hosting cyberscam operations responsible for bilking people all over the world. These usually involve gaining victims’ confidence online with romantic ploys and bogus investment pitches.

The centers are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretenses, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities.

Scam operations were in the international spotlight last week when the United States and Britain enacted sanctions against organizers of a major Cambodian cyberscam gang, and its alleged ringleader was indicted by a federal court in New York.

According to a report in Monday’s Myanma Alinn newspaper, the army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime center, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime.

It published photos displaying seized Starlink equipment and soldiers said to be carrying out the raid, though it was unclear when exactly they were taken.

KK Park is located on the outskirts of Myawaddy, a major trading town on the border with Thailand in Myanmar’s Kayin state. The area is only loosely under the control of Myanmar’s military government, and also falls under the influence of ethnic minority militias.

Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park.

The allegation was previously made based on claims that a company backed by the Karen group allowed the land to be leased. However, the Karen, who are part of the larger armed resistance movement in Myanmar’s civil war, deny any involvement in the scams.

Myanma Alinn said the army ascertained that more than 260 buildings were unregistered, and seized equipment, including 30 sets of Starlink satellite internet terminals. It said 2,198 individuals were detained though it did not give their nationalities.

Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company and the terminals link to its satellites. It does not have licensed operations in Myanmar, but at least hundreds of terminals have been smuggled into the Southeast Asian nation.

The company could not be immediately reached for comment Monday but its policy bans “conduct that is defamatory, fraudulent, obscene, or deceptive.”

There have been previous crackdowns on cyberscam operations in Myanmar earlier this year and in 2023.

Facing pressure from China, Thailand and Myanmar’s governments launched an operation in February in which they released thousands of trafficked people from scam compounds, working with the ethnic armed groups that rule Myanmar’s border areas.