Final month, a categorized presentation of inside stories from the Yangon department of Myanmar’s Workplace of the Chief of Army Safety Affairs (OCMSA) was leaked and printed by the native media. The leaked doc was printed alongside information a few January 22 ambush by the Bago Folks’s Protection Pressure (PDF), an anti-junta resistance group, that killed a lieutenant-colonel and sergeant of the Myanmar armed forces, together with two PDF double brokers. In consequence, the leaked doc obtained comparatively little consideration from the general public.
The partial paperwork, which include 32 PowerPoint slides dated September 16 of final yr, cowl intelligence operations carried out in 2021 and early 2022. Particularly, they reveal particulars in regards to the investigation that led to the November 2021 arrest of former Nationwide League for Democracy parliamentarian Phyo Zeyar Thaw, who was subsequently executed in July of final yr. Extra importantly, the stories supplied particulars on a lot of army counter-intelligence missions, together with sabotage operations, the set up of double brokers contained in the anti-junta resistance, and even the formation of city underground networks designed to function as pretend PDFs.
Three points stand out on this report. The primary is that army personnel from the OCMSA have overseen the administration of small arms for assassination and concrete warfare missions. The army intelligence liaison on OCMSA additionally serves as a scout workforce member for the Particular Activity Forces throughout its numerous operations, which embody pretend assaults on army safety checkpoints.
Second, it confirmed that OCMSA operatives have infiltrated the ranks of the city guerrillas, controlling entry to weapons shops and offering them with low-intensity IEDs produced by none aside from the Myanmar Armed Forces’ Directorate of Protection Industries, that are supposed merely to make a big noise reasonably than trigger any substantial harm. Third, the OCMSA has created two pretend PDFs, named the “Human Rights Defenders” and “Generation Z Defense Force,” to hold out full-fledged spoof missions.
In keeping with the leaked paperwork, a vital a part of OCMSA’s technique is putting in arrested PDF members as double brokers. Because it occurs, these double brokers performed a job within the aforementioned ambush carried out by the Bago PDF final month. The extent of their involvement within the ambush stays unclear, as each people have been killed after they have been captured by the PDF. The PDF claimed in a later assertion that they tried to flee. As evidenced by the leaked doc, the report for the third quarter of 2022 steered that these double brokers had already managed to infiltrate mission-critical positions within the anti-regime motion, implying that an intelligence community is already in place inside PDFs and the resistance extra broadly.
For the reason that purge in 2004 of Gen. Khin Nyunt and the highly effective Directorate of Protection Companies Intelligence (DDSI) that he headed, Western analysts and even ex-intelligence officers have repeatedly acknowledged that the Myanmar army’s intelligence capability has been lowered as a result of restricted human assets and expertise. Nonetheless, these leaked paperwork point out that that is clearly not the case.
Nonetheless, in contrast to throughout the DDSI period, OCMSA is just not in full management of the state of affairs. The opposition has additionally obtained a number of leaked paperwork from the safety equipment, together with mission briefings which have been leaked by army sources and directors generally known as watermelons (inexperienced representing the army; pink representing the resistance). All of those have demonstrated that the army authorities remains to be struggling to determine and keep its management of the nation.
There are a couple of questions that should be addressed. First, how far has the OCMSA succeeded in infiltrating the opposition for the reason that interval lined by the leaked report, which confirmed that it had already established a major foothold at that degree in 2021? Certainly, the paperwork present that the arrest of Phyo Zeyar Thaw was a direct results of these infiltration operations. Second, is there one other strategic objective at play apart from infiltration and arrest? Undoubtedly, merely arresting and offering intelligence for army operations is just not the first intent.
One case to contemplate is the bombing of a small Arakan Military (AA) outpost in Karen State on July 4, 2022, simply meters from the Thai border. Despite the fact that a number of PDFs and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) are based mostly in bigger camps within the surrounding area, as decided by numerous safety analyses and simply seen from satellite tv for pc photographs and reconnaissance flights, the Myanmar air power ignored them and focused solely the hidden AA camp. Finding the smaller AA camps in Karen State would have been tough with out intelligence, doubtlessly together with double brokers within the resistance.
This additionally affords clues as to why the State Administration Council (SAC) has up to now largely kept away from launching air strikes on the bigger PDF and EAO camps in Karen State and elsewhere within the nation. Provided that the army junta clearly had intelligence on the smaller secret AA outpost that it bombed final July, it’s laborious to consider that SAC forces are unaware of the existence of different bigger camps. Certainly, dependable EAO sources have associated to me that the shortage of air assaults is just not as a result of an absence of intelligence, however reasonably displays a tactical choice geared towards the pursuit of bigger, and as but unclear, strategic objectives.
Additional proof on this course was offered by the junta’s current focused bombing of houses belonging to leaders of the Democratic Karen Benevolent Military (DKBA) close to Three Pagodas Cross on January 21 of this yr. The DKBA is an EAO that has signed a ceasefire settlement with Myanmar’s authorities and has in any other case good relations with the army. It’s possible that this assault on the leaders of one of many regime’s few pleasant EAOs was carried out based mostly on intelligence displaying the leaders’ involvement with the anti-regime resistance. This reinforces the above argument that the army has held again on bombing EAO and PDF camps not merely to keep away from burning its bridges with the EAOs, because it has each the intelligence and capability to pinpoint goal the homes of EAO leaders, however for an additional cause.
Precisely what this cause is perhaps stays unclear. One potential rationalization for the SAC’s restraint is the notion of containment, during which the junta could also be deliberately holding again on its assaults for a bigger objective. The motivations for the SAC’s conduct stay opaque, and you will need to proceed to critically analyze the state of affairs and consider potential explanations.
The OCMSA might need a grand technique for containment of the resistance forces, as DDSI did within the early Nineteen Nineties. DDSI performed a major position in reaching a ceasefire with the EAOs in northern Myanmar, which was vital in bringing in regards to the collapse of the Communist Occasion of Burma and the rise of robust EAOs alongside the China-Myanmar border. This subsequently allowed the Myanmar army to launch a serious offensive in opposition to EAOs in southern Myanmar within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
Whether or not the OCMSA will comply with within the footsteps of its predecessor will depend on its means to flex its political muscle tissues and whether or not the army’s excessive command will permit it to broaden to the extent that DDSI did beneath Khin Nyunt’s management. The DDSI episode continues to overshadow the management of the Myanmar armed forces, and will forestall the army intelligence equipment from attaining its former attain and energy. Nonetheless, two years after the coup, there’s rising proof that it’s clearly time to re-evaluate the Myanmar army’s intelligence capabilities.
#asiannews #asian_news
