(Antonio Graceffo’s post from the GEOPOLITICAL MONITOR on 14 November 2024.)
As of late October, pro-democracy resistance
fighters in Myanmar had advanced to within a few kilometers of Mandalay, the
country’s second-largest city.
This marks a significant shift in the Myanmar civil
war, a conflict that has hitherto been concentrated in the jungles and
mountains of ethnic states, where groups like the Karen National Liberation
Army, Karenni Army, and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) initially focused on
reclaiming territory in and around their ancestral homelands.
The scope of the fighting expanded dramatically in
October 2023, when several major ethnic armies joined together to recapture
sweeping tracts of the Myanmar countryside, gradually narrowing the zone of
Tatmadaw control to major urban centers.
The approach on Mandalay represents a new phase of the Myanmar civil war. For one it sends a powerful message to the ruling State Administration Council (SAC) that the rebels remain united and determined to take the fight to the country’s economic and political heartland.