As the year 2024 winded down, the junta, under the leadership of its most destructive leader Min Aung Hlaing, faced the most humiliating defeats in its 83 years of existence.
The junta has lost two of its military headquarters and the entire Northern Shan State as well as its Western military headquarters and almost all townships in Rakhine. Also, the entire Chin states, on the Indian border to the hands of ethnic resistance groups.
Added to the junta’s woe is an arrest warrant issued against Min Aung Hlaing by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last November after the court found the junta head bears criminal responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya, committed in Myanmar, and in part in Bangladesh.
In several instances during the year, many of the junta’s top senior military officers up to the rank of general were captured by the ethnic groups and they were paraded in front of the media. Despite these humiliations for the Myanmar military, Min Aung Hlaing survived yet another year as the head of the regime and the Myanmar military. It tends to indicate that the junta is likely to be untied until its last day and likely to crumble if its leader flees the country like in a recent incident in Syria.
Even though the junta’s defeat is welcomed across the country, however, human suffering associated with the conflict is immense, according to some estimates more than 3 million civilians are displaced due to the conflict and nearly 15 million are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
Naturally, the events that unfolded in Myanmar are shocking for the international community, especially for its neighbours China, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh.