Myanmar Rebels Claim Regional Military Base in Major Victory

A rebel army in Myanmar announced this weekend that it had overrun a regional military base near the border with China in what is likely to be the most significant victory yet for a patchwork of resistance groups that have challenged the country’s junta.

On Monday, Myanmar’s military rulers signaled that the insurgents had, in fact, made a major advance, saying the junta had lost contact with the base, the northeastern command in the city of Lashio in Shan State.

The junta leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said in a speech later Monday that security forces had withdrawn in northern Shan State because they were “prioritizing the safety of the people.” He said the rebels were getting weapons and other supplies, including drones and short-range missiles, from “foreign countries,” which he didn’t identify. Some arms and ammunition were coming from factories just across the China-Myanmar border, he said.

“We need to investigate where these factories are getting their funds and technological support from,” the military leader said.

The junta has been on the defensive for months as a broad alliance of rebel militias and pro-democracy groups has made inroads across large swaths of the country. Suffering repeated losses of territory and troops, the junta in recent months has imposed a mandatory draft.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the latest development would ricochet in the wider civil war. But the fall of a regional military headquarters — one of 14 in Myanmar and home to thousands of government soldiers — would be a major defeat for the junta, which has been on a war footing for decades. It would also give the rebels control of Lashio, a strategic city, and its airport.