Myanmar junta restations northeastern command HQ after loss in Lashio

Since Kokang fighters seized its northeastern command headquarters in Lashio, northern Shan State late last month, the Myanmar military has reestablished the regional command in Mongyai, northern Shan State, ex-military sources said. The group that captured the headquarters—the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) or Kokang army—is a member group of the Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed organisations, which resumed a sweeping offensive campaign against the Myanmar military in northern Shan State in late June. According to former military officers who defected to the anti-junta resistance, junta generals in the administrative capital Naypyitaw assigned Maj-Gen Myint Kyaw Tun—the regime’s deputy chief of armed forces training—to head the relocated command office in Mongyai, which is located some 40 miles southeast of Lashio. The Myanmar army founded the Northeastern Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters in Lashio in 1972, at a time of intense fighting against the People’s Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma. After Myanmar’s communist party and its armed wing splintered and disintegrated in the late 1980s, the northeastern headquarters became a nerve centre for the Myanmar military’s efforts to subdue or co-opt ethnic armed organisations operating near the border with China. During clashes with the MNDAA in and near Lashio in July, the military council in Naypyitaw replaced two chiefs of the Northeastern RMC over the course of a few days. After the RMC fell to the anti-regime forces—an unprecedented event in Myanmar’s military history—the MNDAA captured Maj-Gen Soe Tint, the officer who had held the command at the beginning of the month. His successor, Maj-Gen Soe Hlaing, has been reported missing. Members of the MNDAA—also known as the Kokang army—at the Northeastern RMC in July (Photo: MNDAA) Myint Kyaw Tun, the current commander at the reestablished RMC headquarters in Mongyai, previously had a role in organising summits on military and security cooperation between Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc of which Myanmar is a member. He also oversaw the forcible recruitment of new personnel into the military under the conscription law that was revived by Myanmar’s military regime earlier this year to address its urgent shortage of manpower. Naypyitaw-based military sources said Myint Kyaw Tun is a close associate of Lt-Gen Ni Lin Aung, the junta’s deputy minister for home affairs and chief of police, whom the regime appointed as commander of its special operations bureau overseeing four Shan State-based RMCs, including the Northeastern. The other regional commands are the Eastern RMC in Taunggyi, the Eastern Central RMC in Kholam, and the Triangle RMC in Kengtung. With a population of less than 70,000, Mongyai Township is small and underdeveloped relative to Lashio, which served as northern Shan State’s administrative capital and had at least 150,000 inhabitants until the recent clashes there, which displaced thousands. Members of the MNDAA—also known as the Kokang army—at the Northeastern RMC in July (Photo: MNDAA) Records published by the military council last year estimated that around 80 percent of Mongyai Township’s inhabitants are ethnically Shan, while 15 percent are ethnically Ta’ang or Palaung. Other Shan State-based groups including Myanmar’s largest ethnic armed organisation, the United Wa State Army, and its ally the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA or Shan State Army-North), have an active presence in Tangyan, some 30 miles east of Mongyai. Both groups are ostensibly neutral in the conflict between the Myanmar military and Brotherhood Alliance, although the UWSA is an avowed ally of the MNDAA and the SSPP/SSA maintains an alliance with the Ta’ang National Liberal Army, the MNDAA’s fellow Brotherhood Alliance member. SSPP/SSA armed personnel entered Mongyai on July 12 and established a temporary base there. Mongyai is also the site of a junta light infantry battalion base and an artillery battalion base.

Myanmar junta restations northeastern command HQ after loss in Lashio

After the Kokang army’s capture of its Northeastern Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters in the northern Shan State capital, the military has relocated the command some 40 miles to the southeast

Subscribe for full access

The Russian general behind Moscow’s decades-long military courtship of Myanmar

Explainer: Who are the companies and cronies backing Myanmar junta leader’s Thailand visit?

From palace stages to exile: A Myanmar dancer who chose conscience over ceremony

Her parents gone, a Myanmar student prays for the return of a father lost in conflict

Subscribe for full access

Related Articles

Myanmar junta airstrike in Paletwa kills five and injures 17, including children

How Myanmar’s regime turned a Buddhist retreat into a scene of death and destruction

Myanmar military pushes to retake oilfields and cut resistance revenue

Russian companies want majority shares in Myanmar projects