11th October 2021
In an attempt to boost the morale of the troops and government employees, General Min Aung Hlaing emerged from his high-security enclave in the capital, Nay Pyi Daw and paid a visit to Yangon.
The purpose of the visit was a morale booster and also to demonstrate to the nation that the army (Tatmadaw) were in total control in Yangon. Unfortunately for the General, the locals embarrassed him causing at least a dozen explosions throughout the city. No casualty figures have been released.
The General was in town at the time to urge authorities to implement serious security measures. A naval base, police stations, a court and other regime targets were attacked with remote-controlled bombs and other explosives in at least eight townships in Myanmar’s former capital.
A few hours before his push, two explosions rattled a naval base in Thaketa Township on Sunday morning. A bomb was spotted in front of the base and went off before it could be deactivated. Another one exploded a few minutes later, injuring some soldiers, who were rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
The Burma Final Revolution Armed Forces guerrilla group claimed responsibility and said at least three junta troops were severely wounded.
Blasts also targeted a ward administrator’s office in Dawbon and police stations in Thingangyun and Dala. Other blasts were reported in Bahan, North Dagon Township, and at a courthouse in Thanlyin Township on the same day.
The weekend attacks were deliberately timed to coincide with the junta leader’s presence in Yangon; the National Special Task Force, a guerrilla-style civilian resistance force active in the former capital, warned city residents not to go out on Sunday if not necessary.
Yangon has been an anti-regime hotspot since late March, having seen a series of attacks—sometimes fatal—on regime targets. The attacks have included hurling explosives into military convoys and spraying bullets at soldiers standing guard and shooting regime-appointed officials dead at point-blank range
Source The Irrawaddy, 11th October 2021.
Meanwhile all is not going well for the junta in other parts of Myanmar. The junta was shaken by the planned defection of a high ranking senior officer and colleagues.
The head of one of the Myanmar military’s regional commands has been detained and interrogated by the military regime after his plan to defect and take refuge in an area controlled by an ethnic armed group was exposed, according to sources close to the matter.
Brigadier-General Phyo Thant, the commander of the military’s North West
Command, which has responsibility for areas that are strongholds of resistance to the Myanmar regime, is the highest-ranking regime official so far to switch allegiance to the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) against the junta, and the most senior officer to be arrested.“The coast was clear for him to come to us with four or five of his subordinates. But he said he wanted to get more people to join him. Then, the plot was uncovered and he was arrested,” said a senior official from an ethnic armed group.
The brigadier general was apparently detained this week, as he was seen holding meetings with local veterans as recently as Monday in Sagaing Region, one of the areas under his command. He is likely to face serious interrogation, as the regime has zero tolerance for anyone participating in the CDM. Rumors have already circulated that he was tortured to death.
The Irrawaddy has learned that the commander had been under increasing pressure as Sagaing Region and Chin State, which were under his command, had seen deadly and ongoing armed clashes between regime soldiers and local guerrillas known as the People’s Defense Force (PDF) on an almost daily basis. During the fighting, junta soldiers have sustained significant casualties due to landmine attacks and ambushes. To retaliate against the resistance forces, regime troops have raided and torched villages in areas suspected of harboring PDF units, while committing extrajudicial killings.
The ethnic armed group source said Brig-Gen Phyo Thant had also promised to testify that a massacre took place under his command in Sagaing Region, as he feared that his superiors in Naypyitaw would use him as a scapegoat for recent mass killings in the region.
Source The Irrawaddy 7th October 2021.
The junta continues to sustain heavy losses in clashes with various resistance groups and the use of landmines has been especially effective against the junta inflicting casualties on reinforcements being sent into pressure areas.
The National Unity Government’s (NUG) Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration reported that 1,562 soldiers were killed and 552 wounded – more than double August’s death toll – in attacks by ethnic armed groups and civilian resistance fighters between Sept 7 and Oct 6.
The civilian ministry stated that 953 attacks were made on military and administrative targets and military-owned businesses.
Yangon reported the highest number of explosions with 178, followed by Mandalay with 81.
Sagaing Region topped the list for violent clashes with 81, followed by Magwe Region, Kachin State and Kayah State with 32, 30 and 22 clashes respectively, according to the report.
In June and July, around 1,130 soldiers were killed and in August, around 580 soldiers were killed, according to the NUG.
Source The Irrawaddy 8th October 2021.
The resistance is intensifying throughout the country and the junta has found it impossible to impose control over the country, and it is being harmed by the increase in violent resistance in its strongholds of Mandalay and Yangon. Across the country, local officials have been quitting their posts as the violence intensifies.
Over 100 local administrators in Sagaing, Magwe and Yangon regions have quit working for the military regime in recent weeks, fearing for their lives and the safety of their families amid clashes between Myanmar’s military and civilian resistance fighters.
The resignations follow a spike in attacks, many causing casualties, on junta forces by People’s Defense Force (PDF) groups across the country since the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) declared the start of a people’s defensive war on the regime on Sept. 7.
Since late March, administration offices in villages, wards and townships have been torched and bombed by civilian resistance groups to prevent the regime from governing the country. These local offices are the primary elements of the government administrative system in Myanmar. Junta-appointed ward and village administrators and informants have also been stabbed to death or shot dead at point-blank range for collaborating with the regime.
Source The Irrawaddy 8th October 2021.
Finally, the economy continues to spiral downwards, out of control. The reserve bank has run out of available options and the economy is ironically in danger of switching to the US dollar as attempts to limit its use strengthen. The tighter the exchange controls the more attractive US dollars become.
Eight months after the coup, however, the economy is anything but stable.
When the Asian Development Bank updated its forecast for the region in September, it estimated Myanmar’s GDP would shrink by 18.4 percent in 2020-21. A report by the United Nations Development Programme said nearly half of the population will be living in poverty by early 2022.
The International Food Policy Research Institute’s working paper on inorganic fertiliser use in Myanmar predicted that fertiliser sales would decline by nearly half this monsoon season, and as result agricultural yields are likely to decrease significantly.
The kyat, meanwhile, has lost more than 60 percent of its value against the US dollar since the coup. A rapid fall in late September saw it bottom out at K2,700 to the dollar before recovering to about K2,200.
Due to the coup and the SAC’s mishandling of the economy, the people of Myanmar are now looking down the barrel of a rapidly contracting economy in which their money will be worth less, jobs are harder to come by and there may be significantly less food to go around.
Source Frontier 10th October 2021.
And so, the deterioration continues. The junta is unable to control much of the country, currency reserves are draining and with falling exchange rates comes price increases for the replenishment of military materiel for the Tatmadaw. Agricultural output is falling, and the garment industry has just about ceased trading. The country has been ruined.
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