Powerful Wa armed group enters Myanmar’s embattled town of Lashio

Hundreds of members of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) entered northern Shan State’s largest city of Lashio on Sunday amid ongoing clashes between Brotherhood Alliance forces and retreating junta troops. The entry of UWSA troops comes after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)—known colloquially as the Kokang army—claimed to have seized the Myanmar army’s Northeastern Regional Military Command headquarters among other junta targets in Lashio last week. Both the UWSA and Chinese-speaking MNDAA maintain headquarters in Myanmar towns bordering China’s Yunnan province. The two groups are military allies. According to UWSA spokesperson Nyi Rang, the group reached an agreement with both the Myanmar military and the Kokang fighters for the UWSA to enter the town. He added that the UWSA would not intervene in the clashes or lend support to any of the fighting forces in Lashio. UWSA members entered the town in military vehicles and took up positions around their liaison office in Lashio to ensure security, according to local sources. “The main reason for entering Lashio is to protect the liaison office. It’s also at the request of the people there. It’s mainly to keep everything calm and avoid any problems," said San Bain, another UWSA spokesperson. Liaison offices have been established in military-controlled areas as communication lines between the military and ethnic armed groups that it has signed a ceasefire with. The UWSA stands out among Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups for its manpower and access to modern weaponry. There have been no direct clashes between junta forces and the UWSA in recent decades since 1989, however, other ethnic armed groups regarded as allies of the UWSA have been engaged in the anti-junta military offensives, including the Kokang MNDAA. An MNDAA spokesperson confirmed to Myanmar Now that UWSA troops had arrived in the town but declined to provide details about the situation on the ground or interactions between the two forces. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r

Powerful Wa armed group enters Myanmar’s embattled town of Lashio

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