[Tee tiong huat]

Myanmar, and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has
Imposed martial law on parts of Shan, the largest state in Myanmar, and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has said military will do anything it takes to “counter these acts of terror.”

Beyond Shan state, military’s rout there has inspired new offensives across country, by ethnic militias and People’s Defence Forces, or PDFs, linked to the parallel National Unity Gov formed by members of the deposed administration. In statement after Oct. 27 offensive, the NUG said, “moment has arrived for all ethnic revolutionary organizations forces Spring Revolution people to fully engage to elimination of the military dictatorship and wholeheartedly commit to establishment of a Federal Democratic Union.”

“Military operations around country interconnected,” NUG defence minister U Yee Mon said, adding that revolutionary forces were engaged in a “whole country strategy.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/ar...civil-war/
Myanmar’s civil war reaches Chinese border, mark significant change.

While the NUG and anti-junta forces have been pushing for just such an offensive since the coup, many ethnic groups that have fought successive Myanmar governments for autonomy or independence had avoided fighting the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s experienced, well-equipped and notoriously brutal military is known. Parts of Shan have long been essentially independent from government control, most notably territory held by the United Wa State Army, or UWSA, the largest and most professional ethnic military in the country, with some 20,000 troops.

So far, the UWSA is still maintaining neutrality, but the Brotherhood’s successful offensive seems to have inspired another ethnic militia, the Arakan Army, to break its ceasefire with the junta and strike positions in western Rakhine state.

An outbreak of full conflict in Rakhine would “open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched,” said Richard Horsey, senior Myanmar adviser with the International Crisis Group.