The rebel fighters who abandoned Falam in Myanmar in April said they gave up the strategic border town near India only after running out of bullets. The fighters had endured a six-month assault by Myanmar’s military, including more than 2,500 air strikes and a ground assault by roughly 1,000 troops. The fall of the town, which had been under opposition control for a year, marked a strategic victory for the military: Falam is home to the only airport in Chin State and commands a trade route to the Indian border.
Within weeks, three more towns in Chin had fallen, and by late May, the military was claiming control of the entire northern part of the state. The important thing is to preserve our forces, protect civilians and maintain our ability to continue the struggle.” The retreat is part of a broader reversal. Myanmar’s opposition – a loose coalition of militias and ethnic armed organisations fighting the military that seized power in a 2021 coup – has been weakened.
Their gains in 2023 and 2024, when coordinated offensives stripped the military of dozens of towns, have given way to a steady withdrawal from the urban centres the rebels had captured. Analysts say the shift has been driven by several factors: a mass conscription drive that has refilled the military’s ranks with tens of thousands of troops, a devastating air campaign that has killed hundreds of civilians, and backing from China, which has brokered ceasefires between the military and some powerful ethnic armed groups while helping choke off weapons supplies to others. But the military is unlikely to score “existential or politically decisive wins” against the opposition, wrote Su Mon, an analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project.
She warned in a recent briefing note that the country “faces a protracted war of attrition” and a mounting humanitarian crisis in the coming months. The war, which began in the wake of a military coup in February 2021, is now in its fifth year. It began following a brutal crackdown on unarmed protesters, with young people taking up arms and forming militias known as the People’s Defence Forces (PDF).
They were aided by powerful armed ethnic organisations who control Myanmar’s borderlands, some of which have fought for autonomy since the country’s founding in 1948. According to ACLED, deaths in the conflict have now surpassed 100,000, while the United Nations says 3.9 million people have been displaced and an estimated one in three people requires humanitarian assistance. Earlier this year, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 power grab, presided over tightly controlled elections, with major opposition parties barred from participating and voting impossible, or boycotted, across much of the country.
He was sworn in as president in April, completing his passage from commander-in-chief to head of a nominally civilian government in Naypyidaw. Min Aung Hlaing now says his government wants peace talks with armed opponents, including in Chin. The military has opened new operations this year in Chin, Kachin, Kayin and Rakhine States, and according to ISP-Myanmar, an independent think tank, it has now retaken 22 of the 101 towns it lost after the coup.
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