Myanmar Update January 2024

Myanmar Update January 2024
The Arakan Army (AA), an armed ethnic group in Myanmar, said it seized control of a strategic trade town in the west this week, dealing a blow to the generals who led a coup in 2021, and adding to a list of recent army defeats in the country’s continuing civil war.
Paletwa in Chin State lies along the Kaladar river close to the borders of both India and Bangladesh, and is part of a multimillion-dollar sea port project that could soon link India to Myanmar.
 “There is not a single military council camp left in the entire Paletwa area,” the AA said in a statement.
Myanmar’s military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi nearly three years ago, triggering mass protests that turned into armed resistance after the army responded with brutal force.
The Three Brotherhood Coalition or the 3BHA, a collection of armed groups including the AA, launched a major offensive at the end of October, and has since overrun dozens of military outposts and taken control of several towns in the north near the border with China.
Can the alliance overturn military rule in Myanmar?
Operation 1027 has given renewed momentum to the armed campaign to restore democracy to Myanmar.
In one incident in November, soldiers raised white flags, surrendering the township of Kawlin, a district capital in central Myanmar, and allowing PDF forces to take over. It marked the army’s first defeat in a capital district, and also, the first success of resistance groups, which had been largely limited to border areas, in central Myanmar.
The military has responded with force against anti-coup forces, launching air raids indiscriminately, deploying ground troops, and inflicting heavy losses on some of the newly formed resistance cells. Schools, hospitals and displacement camps have not been spared, as it continues a long-held policy known as “four cuts” that aims starve resistance groups of food, funds, intelligence and recruits by going after their civilian support base