With or without bilateral ceasefire, Tatmadaw offensives could always occur, due to the decision and mood of the top brass, or should we say Commander-in-Chief’s Office Command. For it is here, where all the moves that would strengthen the Tatmadaw’s political position is being mapped out.

When the Tatmadaw is feeling to lose its political decision-making power and inferiority complex sets in, in the avenue of “soft power” parliament, it will accelerate the war on ethnic armies just to show that its “hard power” is to be reckoned with.

The unnecessary war with the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA) – a signatory of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) – has happened because the Tatmadaw decided to do so. And in the same vein, the heightened offensives on the Kachin Independence Organization/Army (KIO/KIA) are designed to show on who is calling the shots, in the real sense of the words. To put it differently, it is to show that policy concerning the ethnic states and ethnic armies are its domain to decide and not the NLD regime.

Tatmadaw’s maneuver is to portray itself as being under the civilian government, while trying to project itself as being the defender of multi-party democratic system and thereby accumulating legitimacy and white-washing its crime against humanity that it has committed in ethic areas for decades, when in fact it is only more concerned for its “group survival” undertakings and also its military supremacy and implementation of Bamar ethnocentrism.

The Tatmadaw has never liked the RCSS for its staunched Shan nationalism and the recent attacks by its troops on RCSS positions have nothing to do with its accusation of RCSS gathering new recruits, but just to show that it could attack any ethnic army whenever it chooses to do so for any reason.

The offensives on the KIA is also more to do with exercising its hard power and also economic interest in natural resources extraction.

The Tatmadaw and KIA do have an agreement, even if it is not exactly a bilateral ceasefire. But it is simply not used, for the Tatmadaw wants the war flames to be on, to show its influential decision-making power and also to protect its own political benefit.

An agreement was signed on 30 May 2012 between the Tatmadaw and the KIA. It was not a formal ceasefire, but contained inter alia a commitment to “efforts to achieve de-escalation and cessation of hostilities”.

But as all know, it was just a piece of paper that has never been implemented earnestly and as Sithu Aung Myint argues, that a bilateral ceasefire would resolve the war between both warring parties is a really doubtful position and hard to imagine that if it is going to work.

Link to the article: The Tatmadaw and the KIA: It’s not about the ceasefire