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2 Pyrrhic
victory in Myanmar By Anthony
Davis
The armies separated; and, it is
said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of
his victory that one more such victory would
utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of
the forces he brought with him, and... there were
no others there to make recruits. -
Plutarch
The apparently relentless
advance of the Myanmar military eastwards towards
the town of Laiza, headquarters of the insurgent
Kachin Independence Army (KIA), has involved some
of the heaviest sustained fighting in the country
since independence in 1948.
Predictably,
international news coverage has focused on two
salient elements of the conflict: the sheer weight
of force, including newly acquired air-power,
brought to bear by the government; and the yawning
gulf between the conciliatory
statements emanating from
the office of President Thein Sein and the actions
of the military, or Tatmadaw, on the ground .
However, reports of air-strikes and
cease-fires-that-never-happened have tended to
obscure another less obvious but arguably more
important aspect of the war: the striking
battlefield failings and losses of the Tatmadaw,
which over the past 20 years has benefited from
the lion's share of government spending, a
dramatic increase in manpower and a
transformational modernization of its weaponry.
Pitting a conventional army equipped with
artillery, armor and air-power against guerrilla
forces attempting to defend a fixed position, the
battle for Laiza should have been nasty, brutish
and short. In the event, it unfolded as a
drawn-out, meat-grinder campaign which at best
marks a painfully pyrrhic victory for the
government.
At worst, the costly failures
of the war in Kachin state - and they are probably
not yet over - will have significant political
repercussions in addition to the substantial
military losses incurred. Both in terms of the
future relations between the central government
and the armed ethnic minorities, and no less
importantly the standing of the military as a
national institution, the battle for Laiza and the
Kachin war more generally may well mark a
watershed in the nation's politics.
Targeted broadly at the KIA's Laiza
headquarters on the Chinese border, the Tatmadaw
campaign, code-named "Operation Thunderbolt",
appears to have been aimed either at bludgeoning
the insurgents back to the cease-fire agreement
which collapsed in June 2011, or, failing that,
decapitating the KIA by neutralizing its command
center and logistics hub in a manner that would
permit a declaration of victory over its scattered
residual forces.
After a year-and-a-half
of mounting government losses in Kachin state, the
offensive also reflected real impatience in the
upper echelons of the Tatmadaw over both the
intransigence of the KIA - estimated to field a
main force of some 7,000 to 10,000 fighters - and
the prospect of an open-ended guerrilla war.
The insurgents' political wing, the Kachin
Independence Organization (KIO), has made any
renewed cease-fire conditional on the promise of
politically substantive, national-level
negotiations between the government and the ethnic
minorities. Such a position almost certainly
implies significant changes to the
military-scripted, centralist constitution of
2008.
An optimum scenario for the both
government and Tatmadaw would have been a KIO
decision last year to renew the cease-fire. But it
was also clear that contingency planning and
preparations for a major offensive in the current
dry season (November- April) - which also served
to increase psychological pressure on the Kachins
- were in train since at least early 2012.
In March, the Tatmadaw staged a major
divisional-level exercise near Meiktila in central
Myanmar. Attended by commander-in-chief Vice
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the exercise
involved all 10 battalions of the Meiktila-based
99th Light Infantry Division, supported by armored
and artillery units, while reportedly using a
command post sand-table modeled on the Laiza area.
Significantly, the usually secretive military
ensured the war-games were given wide media
coverage, not least on television.
In
April, the military began a protracted build-up of
forces deployed in the northern regional command
area, moving men, armor and artillery north both
by rail to the Kachin state capital at Myitkyina,
north of the Laiza area of operations, and by boat
up the Irrawaddy river to Bhamo, to the south.
Aviation assets, notably light strike jets and a
range of helicopters including the Air Force's new
Mi-35 Hind-E gunships, were forward-based at
Myitkyina, a few minutes flying time from Laiza.
Almost certainly the largest single operational
build-up in the history of the Tatmadaw, these
deployments were closely monitored by the KIA,
which saw them as a direct threat.
Significantly, the bulk of the manpower
reinforcements were from light infantry divisions
(LIDs). Well-trained mobile formations, of which
the Tatmadaw fields 10, these divisions operate
independently of various regional commands and
essentially constitute a large strategic reserve
force answering direct to the War Office in
Naypyidaw.
Battalions from the 33rd, 66th,
88th, 99th and 101st LIDs - none of which are
home-based in Kachin State - are now operating
under a theater-level Bureau of Strategic
Operations in Myitkyina, headed by Lieutenant
General Myint Soe. A tactical military operations
command (MOC 21) overseeing the Laiza campaign
specifically is based at Bhamo and headed by
northern region commander Brigadier General Tun
Tun Naung.
Despite this build-up, the KIA
failed to blink and the Operation Thunderbolt
offensive around Laiza began in mid-December.
Since then, one of the most noteworthy aspects of
the war has been the striking disconnect between
the nine-month lead-time for planning and
preparations enjoyed by the Tatmadaw command on
the one hand, and the tactically disjointed and
frequently inept execution of operations on the
other.
Particularly in its opening phases,
Operation Thunderbolt, touted in advance as an
exercise in "shock and awe", might more accurately
have been dubbed "Operation Heavy Drizzle".
Tactical confusion Broadly, the
battle for Laiza unfolded as two overlapping
phases in different sectors of the area of
operations. Opening on December 14, the first
phase focused squarely on the area around Laja
Yang. Often described as the gateway to Laiza,
Laja Yang is a cluster of villages just north of
the Tapin river astride the main two-lane highway
between Myitkyina and Bhamo. At the northern end
of the bridge across the river, a turn-off from
the highway leads east along the Tapin valley
leads towards the Chinese border and the KIA
headquarters some 15 kilometers away.
From
December 14, it was immediately apparent that an
army with significant conventional capabilities
had neither a plan nor the assets to launch a
concerted offensive up the most direct axis of
advance to Laiza and the Chinese border. Typically
this would have involved a combined-arms operation
involving armor and mechanised infantry, preceded
by artillery bombardments and air-strikes and
backed by close air support, breaking through
Kachin defences at Laja Yang and pushing as
rapidly as possible along the Tapin valley to the
border.
Such a thrust would have posed a
direct threat to the KIA's nerve-center while at
the same time splitting the insurgents'
Laiza-based 3rd Brigade from their 5th Brigade
based near Maija Yang on the Chinese border to the
south.
This would have been the "shock and
awe" option. Indeed, it is difficult to exaggerate
the impact of such a combined-arms advance
involving intense fire-power along a relatively
narrow corridor of advance, particularly against
lightly-armed guerrillas. As this writer witnessed
during Soviet offensives in Afghanistan's Panjshir
valley in the 1980s, the combination of armor and
mechanised infantry backed by air-strikes and
low-flying helicopter gunships is both unnerving
and generally decisive.
Rather than
seizing the initiative in the battle for Laiza,
however, the Tatmadaw appeared to back into the
fighting in tactical confusion and with a striking
lack of preparation. Reports indicate that the
fighting on December 14 escalated as government
forces attempted to resupply posts in the Laja
Yang area and were then ambushed in strength. On
that day alone, the KIA claimed the government had
lost 50 dead, a figure which, even if exaggerated,
suggests significant casualties.
Despite
the swift commitment of air-strikes, the fighting
at Laja Yang then bogged down in protracted,
piece-meal engagements that remarkably lasted
until January 24, when government forces
eventually secured the area after taking control
of the high ground on both sides of the valley.
Despite relatively flat terrain, it appears armor
was never seriously committed.
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