Kachin fighters seize border guard outpost near Pangwa in Kachin State’s ‘Special Region’

Members of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and allied forces captured a Border Guard Force (BGF) station near the town of Pangwa (Pang War) in Kachin State’s Chipwe Township on Tuesday afternoon, a KIA spokesperson said. According to the spokesperson, the KIA-led fighters took over the No. 1002 BGF post, located in Lupi village six miles north of Pangwa and within seven miles of Kachin State’s border with China, after five full days of assaults. “We successfully seized the Lupi station just about an hour ago,” KIA spokesperson Col. Naw Bu told Myanmar Now on Tuesday. The fighters also overran several other bases in the surrounding area which had been fighting to defend the Lupi outpost, he said, adding that it was still unconfirmed how many prisoners and weapons they had captured. During the clashes, junta warplanes carried out airstrikes to support the armed BGF personnel defending the outposts from the KIA-led forces, local sources said. Lupi residents said they were forced to flee to Pangwa and neighbouring villages to escape the fighting. According to the KIA, until recently there were no clashes in Pangwa, a town of approximately 9,000 inhabitants known as a hub for rare earth mining operations that profit substantially from exports to China. The area is home to the Chipwe-Nge hydroelectric power project as well as mining operations, which are mostly managed as joint ventures with investment from both the Myanmar military and China. The KIA has yet to issue any definitive statements about their plans for these projects. The Lupi BGF station is on the road between Pangwa and the towns of Chipwe and Tsawlaw, which the KIA captured with support from its allies in the first week of October. All three towns are located within a territory on the Chinese border that the Myanmar military has designated as a ‘Special Region’ under Kachin BGF control. The area, known for its ethnolinguistic diversity, is home to people of Myanmar’s Rawang, Lachik (also known as Lachid or Lashi), Lawngwaw (or Maru), and Lisu ethnic communities. The battalions of the Kachin BGF operating in this territory formerly comprised an ethnic armed organisation—the New Democratic Army-Kachin—which signed a ceasefire with the Myanmar military in 1989 and agreed to be formally incorporated into its command structure as a border guard force in 2009. In June of this year, Zahkung Ting Ying, the 84-year-old warlord who has commanded these BGF battalions since before their cooptation into the military, ordered his forces to push the KIA and their allies out of the Special Region. Old rare earth mines outside of a Kachin State border town in November 2021 (Myanmar Now)

Kachin fighters seize border guard outpost near Pangwa in Kachin State’s ‘Special Region’

After five days of fighting, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and its allies took over a junta-allied Border Guard Force (BGF) station near Pangwa, an area controlled by the military-allied BGF and home to lucrative hydropower and rare earth mining projects

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