According to numerous postings on social media, a united front consisting of ethnic resistance armies and Burman resistance groups known as People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, is waging a successful war against the army of the junta, which seized power in Naypyitaw on Feb. 1, 2021. Some foreign analysts have even claimed that the alliance is made up of 100,000 ethnic fighters and as many as 65,000 men and women are under the command of the PDFs, and that they together control most of the country. If those grossly exaggerated figures and outlandish claims were taken at face value, the days of the so-called State Administration Council (SAC) would be numbered and Myanmar could soon become the democratic, federal union that the resistance is said to be fighting for. It may be correct to say that the SAC-appointed government in Naypyitaw is the most incompetent the country has had since independence in 1948. The civil war has also spread from the ethnic-minority inhabited areas in the frontier areas to the Myanmar heartland, and the SAC has been unable to exercise control over some previously peaceful parts of the country.
But the bitter truth is that Myanmar has a long and troubled history of failed attempts to forge pan-ethnic resistance fronts—and the main, divisive issue has always been Burman-ethnic minority relations. And it should be remembered that there are also conflicts between the various ethnic minorities. There is long-standing animosity between the Kachin and the Shan in Kachin State, and Shan, Kachin and Palaung have overlapping claims to territory in northern Shan State. The Wa, now in eastern Shan State, want their own state, which the Shan may not agree to. Rakhine State is torn apart by conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims, and Karen and Mon rebels have been fighting over territory adjacent to the Thai border. Myanmar may not have as many as 135 “national races”, a figure that has more to do with numerology (1+3+5=9, the military’s lucky number) than reality, but the country is nevertheless the home of a multitude of ethnic groups, and successive post-independence governments—as well as forces that for decades have resisted central authority—have all failed to create the shared sense of nationhood and belonging that everyone has been talking about since the Panglong Agreement was signed in 1947.
The very first resistance front was set up in 1949, so only a year after independence. It was called the People’s Democratic Front and comprised the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the Communist Party (Red Flag), the People’s Comrade Party (PCP), the Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA), and the Arakan People’s Liberation Party (APLP). Despite the fact that all of them were leftist and had similar ideologies, it failed to achieve anything noteworthy on the battlefield. The PCP, an offshoot of Aung San’s erstwhile militia, the People’s Volunteer Organization, surrendered in 1958 and so did the APLP, which was set up in 1945 and led by U Sen Da, an Arakanese monk and nationalist leader. What remained of the RBA, pro-communist defectors from the Burma Army, merged with the CPB.
In 1956, four ethnic resistance armies, the Karen National Union (KNU), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the Mon People’s Front and a Pa-O group led by U Hla Pe forged an alliance called the Democratic Nationalities United Front, but it ceased to exist when the Mon and the Pa-O surrendered in 1958.
A broader, pro-communist alliance called the National Democratic United Front was set up in 1959 and had six members: the CPB, the Karen National United Party (KNUP; a leftist Karen faction), the KNPP, the Chin National Vanguard Party, the New Mon State Party (NMSP), and a Pa-O faction. It was dissolved in 1975 over disagreements with the CPB, for which class was more important than nationality. Splits occurred within the ethnic groups as well, as some were still more sympathetic to the CPB and others were not.
In the early 1960s, some of the ethnic resistance armies tried to unite their respective forces under the banner of the Nationalities Liberation Alliance. It consisted of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the KNPP, the Kawthoolei Revolutionary Council (KRC), and Noom Suk Harn, a Shan group. Largely dysfunctional, it was dissolved when KRC chairman Saw Hunter Thwame surrendered in 1963. Two years later, the KNU, the KNPP, the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP; a Padaung group), the Zomi National Front (ZNF; a Chin group) and the War Council of the Shan State Army (SSA) set up the United Nationalities Front, which was dissolved after only a year of existence.
An alliance called the Nationalities United Front was set up in 1967 comprising the KNUP, the KNPP, the KNLP, the NMSP, the ZNF and the Shan State Nationalities Liberation Organization (later known as the Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization, the SSNPLO, a leftist Pa-O group.) The NMSP left the Nationalities United Front in 1969, considering the alliance too leftist. The front was eventually dissolved in 1973. In that year, the more moderate Revolutionary Nationalities Alliance was formed consisting of four members: the KNU, the KNPP, the KNLP and the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), the political wing of the SSA.
The KNU, now led by the legendary General Bo Mya, was instrumental in bringing several groups together in the base area the Karen rebels controlled on the Thai border. As a result of his efforts, the Revolutionary Nationalities Alliance was succeeded in 1975 by the Federal National Democratic Front, which a year later changed its name to the National Democratic Front (NDF). Over the years, the NDF became the only alliance that had regular meetings, usually at the KNU’s Manerplaw headquarters on the Thai border. It also managed to maintain at least a semblance of unity among the ethnic resistance armies. But it also experienced splits, as well as disputes within its various member organizations, mainly over the question of whether they should or should not cooperate with the CPB. The communists demanded that other groups should made declarations accepting the leadership of the CPB, a predominantly Burman-led organization. That in turn led to splits within ethnic groups such as the SSA/SSPP and even the KNU went through a sometimes bloody power struggle between leftists and rightists.
The original members of the NDF were the KNU, the KNPP, the SSPP, the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP), the Lahu National United Party (LNUP), the United Pa-O Liberation Organization (UPNO), and the Palaung State Liberation Organization (PSLO). The UNPO resigned in 1977 and was replaced in 1980 by the Pa-O National Organization (PNO). The NMSP joined in 1982 and the KIO in 1983; the Wa National Organization (WNO) in 1983; the Lahu National Organization (LNO) in 1987 (replacing the LNUP, which had resigned from the front in 1984); the National United Front of Arakan replaced the ALP in 1988; and the Chin National Front (CNF) joined in 1989. The KNLP resigned in 1977 but rejoined in 1991. The PNO, the PSLP and the SSPP were expelled from the NDF in 1991 because they had entered into peace agreements with the government. In the early 1990s, the NMSP, the KNPP, the KNLP and the KIO also made peace with the government while the Wa on the Thai border merged with the much more numerous Wa forces of the former CPB, which had collapsed following a mutiny among the mainly hilltribe rank-and-file of its army in April 1989. In late 1989, the combined force became the United Wa State Party and Army (UWSP/UWSA).
Following the collapse of the communist insurrection, a handful of ethnic groups that had been allied with the CPB formed the All Nationalities People’s Democratic Front: the SSNPLO, the KNLP and the Karenni State Nationalities People’s Liberation Force. A smaller Burman group called the Democratic Patriotic Army (DPA), which the CPB had set up after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, also joined the front. But by 1994, the DPA was gone from the scene and the other groups entered into ceasefire agreements with the government.
The ceasefire agreements of the early 1990s led to the demise of the NDF as well, and it was not until 2011 that an attempt was made to form a new alliance of ethnic resistance armies. It became known as the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) and, initially, brought together 11 groups, the most powerful being the KIA, the KNU and the SSA/SSPP, and it even had a unified, armed wing called the Federal Union Army (FUA). But, before long, six of the groups made their own, separate peace agreements with the government. Like all peace agreements before those, they were based on the same principle: the ceasefire groups were allowed to retain their respective armies—and to engage in any kind of business. Fundamental political issues were never on the table, and it was, in effect, nothing more than a divide-and-rule policy from the side of the military. The FUA never became a properly organized armed force, and by 2017 the UNFC had ceased to exist.
In 2016, representatives of the KIA, the Arakan Army (AA), the Kokang-based Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) set up the Northern Alliance, which actually proved to be quite successful on the battlefields of Kachin State and northern Shan State. The AA, whose home base was in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, was included because it had been trained by the KIA and fought alongside the MNDAA in the Kokang region.
That front was enlarged in 2017 as seven groups formed an alliance called the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC): the KIA, the TNLA, the MNDAA, the AA—and the SSA/SSPP, the UWSA and the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA; based in Mong La in eastern Shan State, the NDAA was one of four local armies that emerged from the CPB after it collapsed in 1989). The FPNCC was set up at the UWSA’s Pangkham (Panghsang) headquarters, and it has appealed to China to help find a solution to Myanmar’s civil wars. Parallel to the FPNCC, the TNLA, the MNDAA and the AA—and, off-and-on, the KIA—fight under the banner of the Brotherhood Alliance, sometimes referred to as the Northern Brotherhood Alliance. But the peace agreements of the 1990s and the so-called “Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement”, which the Myanmar military initiated in 2015, have made it impossible for the ethnic armed organizations to establish any united front that could take part in meaningful peace talks. Massive foreign aid to dubious “peace projects” during the period 2011-2021 has also divided the groups, rather than help them unite behind common political demands.
But long before the peace agreements of the early 1990s, which led to the demise of the NDF, and more recent events, splits had also occurred between the ethnic groups and what should have been their Burman allies. In 1969, a number of prominent Burman politicians formed what was called the Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP), whose aim was to resist General Ne Win’s military dictatorship. Led by former and ousted prime minister U Nu, it included several of the legendary Thirty Comrades who had gone to Japan with Aung San during World War II and later went back to drive out the British. The PDP’s Patriotic Liberation Army (PLA) was led by one of them, Bo Let Ya. They set up bases on the Thai border where they in 1970 signed a pact with the KNU and the NMSP called the National United Front. The SSA was invited to join as well, but declined when U Nu made no firm commitment to federalism. The movement began to dwindle when U Nu left Bangkok for India in 1973, and those who remained became the People’s Patriotic Party (PPP), led by Bo Let Ya. But they soon fell out with the KNU, also over issues related to federalism, and Bo Let Ya was killed by the Karen in 1978. Nearly all remaining members of the PPP surrendered during a general amnesty in 1980.
After the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, about a dozen Burman and ethnic groups set up the Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), but it became defunct when the KIA began to negotiate a separate peace deal with the government in 1993, which was finalized in 1994. Members of the National League for Democracy, who had been elected in 1990 but prevented from taking up their posts, also fled to the Thai border area, where they formed the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) and an expanded front called the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) with KNU leader Bo Mya as the official president. But the Burmans and the ethnic groups never agreed on any political issues and the DAB, the NGCUB and the NCUB soon faded into oblivion.
Those who have had the patience to read this far must find the clutter of acronyms of major, middle-sized and small and insignificant groups, shifting alliances, splits and surrenders truly bewildering, and it all seems like an absolute mess only very few outsiders would even want to try to make sense of. But it reflects the complexities of Myanmar’s ethnic resistance and its complex relationships with Burman groups, whether leftist or rightist. Even so, it has not prevented foreign peacemakers from coming up with easy solutions based on suggestions of “dialogs” and talks about “reconciliation”.
In this regard, the Swiss and the Norwegians have been especially destructive, dealing only with people they know and pouring vast amounts of money into what they call “the peace process”, which isn’t and never was a genuine effort to solve Myanmar’s decades-long civil wars. Nor do we need those more recent, extravagant accounts of the situation on the battlefield today, but sober assessment of the strength and policies of the various groups, realizing that there is no nationwide entity comprising Burman outfits as well as ethnic armed organizations. Three of the main ethnic armies, the UWSA, the NDAA and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), have substantial investments in commercial enterprises in SAC-controlled areas and are not even involved in any fighting with the Myanmar army. Instead, the RCSS has fought fierce battles with the TNLA and the SSA/SSPP. And the PDFs are local forces that are not under any effective, common command.
This is a war that neither side can win. The anti-SAC forces are not well-equipped enough to defeat the much more heavily armed Myanmar army, which, in turn, is stretched out on too many fronts to be able to crush the resistance. Besides, the Myanmar army has tried to do precisely that for more than 70 years, and not succeeded. What has been lacking is a genuine analysis of what has caused the never-ending civil wars, and how the ethnic issue that is at the heart of the problem should be addressed. But that can be done only by the peoples of Myanmar themselves and, if outsiders want to play a role, they should refrain from giving bad advice based on poor insights into the history of Myanmar’s civil wars, failed alliances and misguided peace efforts as well as insufficient understandings of the intricacies of the country’s ethnic politics. Westerners especially must rid themselves of their “White-Messiah Complex” and start listening to people who matter instead of patronizing them. Only then can we, to paraphrase what Winston Churchill said during World War II, see not the end and not even the beginning of the end—but, perhaps, the end of the beginning of a process that could lead to peace.
