Burmese Gen-Z Warriors Fighting Alongside AA!

        (Based on Moe Oo’s article from The MYANMAR NOW MEDIA on 16 June 2024.)

A captured Myanmar Navy ship.

The Burmese Generation-Z resistance forces, first emerged from the Burma’s anti-coup revolution after 2021-Coup, are now learning the valuable warfare-experiences and tactics from the better-organized, more-eperienced, and the battle-hardened AA (Arakan Army) by fighting alongside their AA allies on the Arakan battlefields.

According to one of Gen-Z Burmese warriors from the Middle Burma, Aung Kyaw Myo Htet, they would never forget their devastating shootings from the riverbanks at Myanmar Naval ships coming up on the Kalartan River in Kyauk-Taw Township in the Arakan.

The attack happened at the Ah-pauk-wa Vilage by the River-Narrow at ten-mile-south of Kyauk-Taw Town. Tenty-five-year-old Burmese man got the chance to take part in that battle destroying three Burmese naval ships,

“Everyone of us had our own single foxhole with plenty of ammo from AA and we just blasted at them ships without a single worry of running out of ammo. With 80mm and 110mm mortar shells we didn’t even use the mortar-tubes and just dropping them from the bridge at the ships going under the bridge,” said him.

According to him, compared to their normal hit-and-run guerrila ambushes they used to wage back in his native Wet-let Townhip in Sagaing Division because of the severe shortage of guns and ammunitions there, the fighting alongside AA, founded only in 2009 with a few hundred men but now more than 30,000 strong and well-armed 15-years later, has been the gaining of eye-opening battlefield experiences.

Coastal Arakan is criss-crossed with countless waterways and thus the naval bombardments from Myanmar Navy are much more frightening than the aerial bombardments from Myanmar Air Force back in Middle Burma.

In that battle at Ah-pauk-wa the Myanmar Navy ships were protected by two helicopter gunhips and a fighter jet. Depite that heavy aerial protection they managed to disable and capture all three ships, two warships and a Z-landing ship, and also force two reinforcing warships to withdraw.

Captured Myanmar Army Base at Kyauktaw.

Burmese Warriors on the Arakan Yoma (Range)

Thusands and thousands of Burmese Gen-Z warriors were heavily involved in the hugely-successful Operation-1027 of three-ethnic-armies’ Northern Alliance (Arakan Army AA, Plaung Army TNLF, and Kokang Army MDNAA) in Shan-North in 2023.

Aung Kyaw Myo Htet’s armed group called the GZA (Generation-Z Army) and other hundreds and hundreds of Burmese Gen-Z warriors came to the Arakan about three month before AA’s planned-general-offensive on November-13, 2023. The GZA men were each attached to the companies and platoons of AA to take part in the General Offensive.

Since then the GZA Burmese had participated in that naval battle, the capture of Kyak-Taw Town after the defeat of Myanmar Army’s Ninth-MOC (Military Operation Command) there, and the battle capturing the major town of Kyin-Dway in the Kan-Pet-Let Township.

“For us one of the main reasons we coming here is to become a better-organized fighting force ourself, and of-course to attain battlefield experiences,” said Aung Kyaw Myo Htet, “To fight the mad dictator’s army we have to be better than them, otherwise we will just get killed and we really don’t want to die in vain,” added he.

From Middle-Burma to reach Arakan in the West they had to walk many days from-dawn-to-dusk in long war-columns over the Aakan-Yoma Range. “The long-march was really tough as we had to carry the cooking utensils and in some instances we did have to carry the people who couldn’t walk that long up-and-down the high mountains, we just couldn’t leave them alone on the jungle-trails,” said Aung Kyaw Myo Htet.

“Back home (in Middle Burma) everywhere is level-ground and we were travelling on our motorbikes and vehicles into the battlefields. But their Arakanese and our Burmese languages are very similar, so we do not have any language problem,” added he.

Myanmar Army’s Cuts-4-Cuts

As to prevent the foodstuff, money, information, and new recruits from reaching the Resistance, Myanmar Army has utilized their standard tactic of Four-Cuts campaign and sometimes both AA and GZA had to survive on just rice alone. For them Burmese from food-abundant Middle Burma life in Arakan is really tough foodwise and after a few months here nearly half of GZA men returned home, never coming back.

Apart form the food scarcity they had very few casualities compared to back home. The AA wa well-trained and well-armed and their operations were always well-planned and conducted step-by-step smoothly. Thus their allies GZA Burmese have fewer deaths and wounded than back home.

New Kind of Battlefield

Capturing Myanmar Army’s fortified bases is much easier for AA as the Arakanese took time to block and cutoff the targeted base, and only after the seige they smashed the weakened base. “The AA has been fighting their war like a standard professional army does in a real war,” said Aung Kyaw Myo Htet.

“But back home, we just called out our various groups for an operation without much planning, then we just approached the target-army-base and started shooting all over the place, and then some retreated while the rest stayed on, and ended up shooting at each other,” added Aung Kyaw Myo Htet bitterly.

“Without proper orgazational structure it will be real hard to defeat a battle-hardened brutal army like Myanmar Army in Middle Burma (Proper Burma),” remarked Aung Kyaw Myo Htet. “In the Kyin-Dway Town batte the Myanmar soldiers had withstood our repeated concentrated assaults for more than a month. Only when they completely ran out of food and water, but they wouldn’t surrender, and finally shot out through our blocking lines to escape. We killed so many of them on the perimeter.”

“Also Myanmar Army here in Arakan is so short of troops they couldn’t reinforce their besieged bases with airborne troops by helicopters like they did back home. They just used their fighterplanes to bomb us heavily,” added Aung Kyaw Myo Htet.

GZA men at captured Kyin-Dway Town.

Four-months-long Battle to Capture Kyin-Dway Town

Kyin-Dway Town with nearly 200 households is at 57-miles south of Kan-pet-let Town in Chin Land. And it took more than four months for the Chin Resistance to capture the fortified town with the helps from the AA, GZA, and the YDF (Yaw Defence Force). Yaw is a region in the Magwe Division brodering the Chin Land.

The seige of Kyin-Dway started on last year’s Christmas Eve and the town has fallen on March-7 this year only after a massive AA force had arrived to help the Chins. Ther were many casualitites on both sides.

The town is on the border with Magwe Division, at Saw Town, and North-Eastern Arakan and it is so crucial for the Myanmar Army that 200 Myanmar soldiers died defending the town. According to Aung Kyaw Myo Htet the GZA Commander, neary halfof his troops were seriously wounded but only three were killed there.

“All three were killed by the drop-bombs from the Myanmar Army drones. Only three were killed because the rest of the wounded were timely saved by the AA medics attached to every rifle squad. Back in Wet-Let we used to lose so many just from the excessive-bleedings,” said Aung Kyaw Myo Htet.

According to him GZA has only some still fighting alongside AA in Arakan as most are now in Chin Land and Yaw Region helping the local resistance there. Just recently one GZA member was killed by an enemy sniper on the Nga-pa-Li Beach battle near Thandwe City in Arakan.

Welcoming back home.