New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered ceasefire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of three powerful militias that launched a surprise joint offensive last October, renewed its attacks on regime positions last week in the northeastern Shan State, which borders China, Laos, and Thailand, and the neighbouring Mandalay region with the support of local forces there.

Since then, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has joined in, and by Friday, combined forces from the two allied militias had reportedly encircled the strategically important city of Lashio, the headquarters of the regime’s northeastern military command.

‘Safety of people’

This is the next phase of October’s “1027” offensive, said Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the TNLA, which last week said the military provoked retaliation with artillery and airstrikes despite the cease-fire. “In phase two, our number one aim is the eradication of the military dictatorship, and number two is the protection and safety of local people,” she said.

Thet Swe, a spokesperson for the military regime, which seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, accused the militias of putting civilians in jeopardy by restarting the fighting. “As the TNLA are starting to violate the ceasefire, the Tatmadaw is protecting the lives and the property of the ethnic people,” he said in an email, referring to the military by its Burmese name.

There was no indication that the third ethnic armed organisation that makes up the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the powerful Arakan Army, has joined in the renewed fighting in Shan state.

The TNLA claims to have already captured more than 30 army outposts, and to now control the western part of Mogok, whose ruby mines make it a lucrative target. There is also fighting for the town of Kyaukme, which sits at a highway crossroads, and Nawnghkio to the southwest, which leads toward the major military garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin along the same highway.

“That’s where you need to cut it off to prevent the military from sending reinforcements,” said Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who runs its Myanmar Conflict Map project.

In Mandalay, the region west of Shan, a local People’s Defence Force — one of many armed resistance groups that have sprung up in support of the underground National Unity Government, which views itself as Myanmar’s legitimate administration — joined the TNLA’s offensive.

Osmond, a spokesperson for the Mandalay People’s Defence Force who would only give his nom de guerre because of safety concerns, said his and other local resistance groups have seized nearly 20 military outposts.

The October offensive by the Three Brotherhood Alliance made rapid advances as the militias took large expanses of territory in the north and northeast, including multiple important border crossings with China and several major military bases.

Chinese ties

The alliance militias have close ties to China, and it’s widely believed that the offensive had Beijing’s tacit approval because of its growing dissatisfaction with the military regime’s seeming indifference to the burgeoning drug trade along its border and the proliferation of centres in Myanmar at which cyberscams are run, with workers trafficked from China.

China then helped broker the ceasefire in January, bringing the major fighting in the northeast to an end.

With the renewed violence in the northeast, China’s Foreign Ministry said it stood ready to again provide support for peace talks, but would not say whether it had been in direct contact with the Three Brotherhood Alliance or the military State Administration Council.

“China urges all parties in Myanmar to earnestly abide by the ceasefire agreement, exercise maximum restraint, disengage on the ground as soon as possible, and take practical and effective measures to ensure the tranquillity of the China-Myanmar border and the safety of Chinese personnel and projects,” the Ministry said in a faxed reply to questions.

The Myanmar army doesn’t appear to have been surprised by the TNLA attacks, with evidence that it mobilised forces and prepared defences as well as security checkpoints and patrols ahead of the renewed offensive, Mr. Michaels said.

“They didn’t get caught completely off guard, although they’ve not been able to respond yet, there’s been no counter-offensive,” he said.

Objectives unclear

It is not yet clear what the TNLA’s objectives are, and it could be that the group is just looking to expand gains and consolidate positions now while the military is stretched thin by fighting on several fronts, and before new batches of conscripts are trained for service.

Likewise, with the MNDAA, it is not clear whether it is planning to join the broader offensive or whether it intends to take encircled Lashio by force, lay siege to it, or simply tie up the troops now trapped there. The group did not respond to requests for comment.

Gutted buildings, vacant windows and blocks bombed to rubble show the price paid by the western Myanmar town of Pauktaw for victory against the junta in the country’s civil war.

Fighters from the Arakan Army (AA) ethnic minority armed group took control of the fishing port of 20,000 people in January, as the conflict sparked by the military’s coup entered its fourth year.

Pauktaw was one of a string of losses suffered by the junta across the country at the time, leading many to hope its decades-long stranglehold over Myanmar’s politics could be broken.

Four months later, the Arakan Army remains in control but Pauktaw is mostly empty of residents, who are living on the outskirts and fearful of a repeat of the junta’s heavy artillery attacks on the town.

“We are frightened of them (the military),” one man told AFP from his temporary home just outside Pauktaw, asking for anonymity for security reasons.

“We don’t know what will happen or what kind of weapon they will drop on us if we go and stay back at home in the town.

“We can’t detect their air strikes or bombs and we will be killed if they attack.”

Video taken by locals this month and obtained exclusively by AFP shows streets silent apart from birdsong and the sounds of AA soldiers sifting through piles of debris and sheets of corrugated iron.

Near a deserted market that once bustled with vendors buying and selling crabs and tiger shrimp, a ragged awning advertising a mobile phone carrier flutters above the doorway of a gutted shop.

Phone and internet services have been all but cut off.

No chance

The AA has fought an on-off war for years against the Myanmar military, seeking more autonomy for the state’s ethnic Rakhine population.

As the army has faced growing resistance to its rule, from multiple armed groups — some new, some long-established — the AA has stepped up its campaign.

As the junta has lost territory on the ground, it is increasingly calling on its air power to support its ground troops.

Rights groups accuse the junta of using the strikes to punish communities suspected of opposing its rule.

When a military helicopter hovered over Pauktaw and began shooting into the town last November, many fled in panic.

“There was no chance for us to take a single thing from our house,” one woman now living outside the town told AFP.

“We had cooked a pot of rice and we were not able to eat it,” she said, also asking for anonymity.

“We had no money when we fled. We only had some gold jewellery with us. We tried to pawn that but it wasn’t easy. The interest was too high.”

The fate of Pauktaw’s residents reflects a nationwide tragedy. Across Myanmar, around 2.7 million have been forced to flee by the civil war.

Looting

The AA has not allowed residents to live back in Pauktaw, citing the danger of more air or artillery strikes on the town, although it does allow them to come and go to pick up items.

The man who spoke to AFP said he had returned to check on his house and found it partly in ruins, with the family statue of the Buddha fallen onto the floor.

His savings box — containing money for a Buddhist ritual for his children and for timber to repair a roof damaged by a cyclone last year — was gone, he said.

“I have lost all of that money,” he said.

“Everything in our house got stolen… my father’s fishing nets were stolen,” another woman said, also requesting anonymity.

“I am a tailor, and luckily, I managed to save my sewing machines.”

During the fighting, both sides looted houses and damaged buildings, according to local reports.

In March, the AA said it would “investigate” any reports of looting by its members during the fighting.

‘Decisive battle’

The AA’s offensive has seized swathes of territory in Rakhine state and along the border with India and Bangladesh.

It has said it will capture the state capital Sittwe, 25 kilometres from Pauktaw and the last major town in northern Rakhine in the military’s hands.

In April, the AA warned residents of the town, which is home to an India-backed deep sea port, to leave ahead of a “decisive” battle.

Sittwe residents contacted by AFP said the military was restricting travel out of the town by road and river and the prices of basic foods such as rice and eggs had doubled.

Those already displaced from Pauktaw fear further fighting nearby.

“I am sad that we have fled our own house and we can’t live in it,” one resident told AFP.

“I have pawned my necklace for 18 lakhs ($850) so we have money to live. I still hope I can claim it back.”

Others said they wanted payback.

“I haven’t joined the Arakan Army because I am worried about who will look after my child,” one woman said.

“If I wasn’t… I would join them and fight back. I will be satisfied only if I can take revenge.”