Rebels are not backing down in the slightest. About a week ago the rebels pulled out of a town that they had been fighting the security forces for for two weeks due to attacks that where also targeting or at least not trying to avoid civilians. Well this weekend the rebels took over a single police station and killed over a dozen security forces. It will be interesting to see how the armed interactions take place as will the rebels moved to a gorilla warfare strategy against the military junta.
They did seem though to be successful in their three attacks this weekend. Beside this police post that was hit they also launched a gun battle in a town that borders China. I personally think this is key as China and the world itself depends on Myanmar for rare earth metals so issues along the border will get special attention from China and thus the world. The last place hit was a jade mining town. This is significant not necessarily for Myanmar itself but again because the Jade trade is so very important to China.
The town boarding China that was the center of conflict is one of the main crossing points between the two countries. Along with not only causing an issue with rare earth metals and jade both valuable to China one of the main crossing points is now embroiled in conflict. It would be shocking to see the Chinese to do nothing but I have been surprised before. It further shows the delicate nature of this whole thing at hand. Money talks to the leaders of all sides of this conflict and other countries impacted by this issue.
Beside armed conflict other issues have emerged. Over 125,000 teachers were "suspended" for not supporting the coup. This is nothing but trying to continue to force their narrative and erase the issues that the military junta themselves have caused. What is crazy is that Myanmar has only 430,000 teachers so this is a huge chunk. Even worse than the military trying to force their narrative is that they could be trying to keep their citizens "dumb" by preventing education and thus making them more susceptible to whatever the government wants.
Further sowing discord is that the junta is really showing it does not care to listen to the opposition. They have moved to ban the ruling party that beat them so decisively in the 2020 elections. Rather than even try to beat the opposition in the elections they are trying to fragment it. With the rebel government set up and a security force for that it seems rather unlikely that this would even work. The opposition could just rebrand and run again if they so chose or just boycott the elections and continue their fight. This could end very very poorly for the military leaders than as they could end up not even being able to flee the country by the end of this.
