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Regardless of heavy preventing in Kawkareik, resistance teams insist they haven’t launched an all-out offensive to grab the Kayin State city, however the battle has led to a rapprochement with an officer beneath investigation for human rights abuses.
By NAW BETTY HAN | FRONTIER
In late November, Daw Pag Po locked her door and left her residence in Kawkareik city in Kayin State, the place she had lived for 70 years. She evacuated to the Mon State capital of Mawlamyine, after resistance forces led by the Karen Nationwide Union warned residents there could be a battle.
“I understood I needed to transfer quickly due to the warfare, as a result of I wasn’t secure, however I assumed that I’d return to my home in Kawkareik the place I had lived all my life as soon as the warfare was over,” she mentioned.
However within the small hours of December 28, these hopes went up in flames, when her childhood residence and 27 others had been destroyed by artillery hearth.
“I wished to return to see the home however I couldn’t due to the preventing. However I noticed it in a video of the hearth that went viral on-line,” she mentioned, including that the house is irreplaceable as a result of it was constructed by her father when she was a woman. “Solely the rubble and ruins stay.”
In response to native sources, almost all the inhabitants of 30,000 has fled Kawkareik and a minimum of 20 civilians have been killed within the crossfire for the reason that newest assault in town started. Nevertheless, Pag Po says she’s not upset with the resistance for bringing the battle to city areas. With nothing extra to lose, she’s now praying for the navy’s swift defeat.
“In 2022, they tried to seize the city however failed. This time, I hope they’ll win as quickly as attainable in order that we will return residence,” she mentioned.
The prodigal son
Regardless of Pag Po’s declare in regards to the preliminary assault, the KNU later denied that they and allied teams had been making an attempt to seize the city. As a substitute, the veteran ethnic armed group mentioned they had been attacking Kawkareik to stretch regime forces and relieve stress elsewhere.
Colonel Noticed Ner Dah Htoo, Brigade 6 commander of the Karen Nationwide Liberation Military, the KNU’s armed wing, advised Frontier the October 2022 battle developed organically after preventing spilled over from the close by Asian Freeway.
“About six months earlier than the [first] assault on Kawkareik city we warned the navy council and BGF to retreat from the villages south of the Asian Freeway close to Kawkareik city,” the colonel mentioned in an interview in January, referring to the junta-aligned Kayin State Border Guard Power.
As a substitute, the regime elevated its presence on the street and close by villages, whereas resistance teams responded by establishing checkpoints to look passing automobiles for enemy combatants. The navy then started to shell the checkpoints from its twelfth Army Operations Command headquarters in Kawkareik, so the allied resistance teams attacked the city to disrupt the artillery barrage.
Ner Dah Htoo mentioned resistance forces entered the city from the north and south concurrently at 7am on October 22, pushing the navy into the south of the city. Nevertheless, they retreated when the regime deployed airstrikes, so as to spare civilians and their property.
“The battle for Kawkareik in 2022 had some good outcomes,” insisted a member of the Lion Battalion who requested to not be named. “There was the profitable assault on the police station and the discharge of political prisoners and Folks’s Defence Power members.”
He added the resistance teams by no means gained full management of the city, however they had been capable of blockade it for just a few days earlier than being pressured to withdraw beneath aerial assault.
For the reason that navy seized energy in 2021, the KNLA has skilled and fought with newly shaped anti-coup armed teams, broadly often called PDFs. Many of those teams, together with the Lion Battalion, had been positioned straight beneath KNLA command.
Nevertheless, a number of months earlier than the primary Kawkareik battle, a video emerged of Lion Battalion chief Captain Eh Say Wah presiding over the execution of prisoners of warfare. The KNU put him beneath investigation, however moderately than cooperating, he took his total battalion and defected to the Kawthoolei Military in July 2022. The KTLA had simply been shaped as a breakaway group from the KNU, after the founder Nerdah Bo Mya admited to massacring over 30 alleged navy spies and equally spurned a KNU investigation.
Nevertheless, like in Kawkareik, the KNLA continued to conduct operations with the Lion Battalion and different KTLA-aligned items, though it has not often cooperated with the KTLA itself. The 2 have even typically clashed farther south in Tanintharyi Area.
As the present assault on Kawkareik bought underway, a picture of Eh Say Wah hiding behind authorities workers housing within the city went viral on social media. The captain was already a social media celeb, and his participation within the operation helped to spice up enthusiasm for it on-line. Amid the preventing in December, the Lion Battalion introduced it had returned to the KNLA chain of command
KNLA commander Ner Dah Htoo declined to touch upon the reincorporation of the Lion Battalion or whether or not Eh Say Wah remains to be beneath investigation for his documented human rights violations. He directed inquiries to the KNU central management, which additionally declined to remark.
However the Lion Battalion supply advised Frontier the KNU had agreed to quickly shelve the investigation within the curiosity of higher navy cooperation in Kayin and Mon State.
A second shot
Ner Dah Htoo once more denied that the present assault on Kawkareik was an try and seize the city, however was additionally not forthcoming in regards to the KNU’s battle plans.
“Kawkareik might be a recurring battleground. It’s on the junction of the outdated street and the brand new Asian Freeway, so it’s a strategic focus,” he mentioned, referring to an older, narrower freeway that additionally runs to the Thai border, and which remains to be used instead route when the Asian Freeway is blocked. He added that the navy is dependent upon the Asian Freeway to tax commerce with Thailand and to move items.
With the city blockaded, he mentioned the regime’s administration there is no such thing as a longer functioning. The navy remains to be entrenched within the city, however it should wrestle to carry out with out dependable provides and reinforcements.
Noticed Bika, a spokesperson for the White Tiger column beneath the KNLA, mentioned when the preventing began in Kawkareik in November, some items had been deployed concurrently to the freeway city of Kyondoe to the west, and to the village of Kya-in on the street south to Kyainseikgyi Township.
“Solely once we lower off the routes for the navy’s reinforcements can we achieve steady management of the city,” he mentioned, suggesting that taking Kawkareik stays the final word purpose.
Like Ner Dah Htoo, Noticed Bika mentioned they need to watch out about marching into Kawkareik with a big pressure, as a result of that can inevitably invite navy airstrikes.
“It’s extra sensible and extra prone to succeed if we strategically destroy the navy forces alongside the best way to Kawkareik after which assault the city as soon as we’re in an general safe place,” he mentioned.
He mentioned some members of the White Tiger column are additionally collaborating within the preventing in Kawkareik, which is being fastidiously coordinated by the KNLA.
“If we’re capable of seize Kawkareik, will probably be due to the strategic planning and systematic battlefield administration of the KNLA,” he mentioned.
An info officer from the Crimson Dragon column, which has been preventing in Kyondoe and Kya-in since November, mentioned they’re taking inspiration from the success of the Three Brotherhood Alliance. The trio of ethnic armed teams launched a shock offensive in late October, seizing a collection of main cities and border crossings with China in northern Shan State, together with Laukkai, the capital of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, which fell to the Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military in January.
“The city [Kawkareik] is surrounded and blockaded, however we’re not but ready to liberate it,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless, if we proceed preventing with this technique, we’ll quickly attain some extent the place we will fully seize Kawkareik, like Laukkai in northern Shan State.”
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