Myanmar Military Suffers Shortage as Recruitment Staggers, Desertions, Defections Rise.
Myanmar military is suffering from a shortage of personnel posing challenges for the junta which has suspended all democratic activities in the southeast Asian nation, Nikkei Asia reported.
The military remains engaged in a conflict with armed pro-democracy resistance groups and the report signalled that the balance of power is shifting towards the latter.
“The Myanmar military is in fact shrinking from a severe — and rapidly growing — shortage of personnel,” Ye Myo Hein, a visiting scholar at the United States Institute of Peace said in a report released in May. The report revealed that the Myanmarese army suffered 13,000 battlefield deaths and 8,000 defections and desertions since the coup.
The report comes shortly after the junta dissolved Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The report pointed out that if one adds the Myanmar air and naval forces along with other auxiliary corps, the total number of personnel in the Myanmar Sit-Tat (armed forces) is about 150,000.
Earlier, analysts predicted that there were 300,000 to 400,000 troops in the Myanmar military but the recent report suggests that it has not recruited enough troops to fill vacancies.
Other analysts also told Nikkei Asia that the “traditional estimates are seriously overstated”.
The report attributed the recruitment issues due to a sense of resentment among the young population who cannot accept the highhandedness exhibited by the military.
The military’s cruel approach towards curbing dissent also discouraged the youth who only got to experience democracy post-2021. In April, the junta bombarded a village in Sagaing and killed more than 160 people who gathered there to open an office run by the shadow National Unity Government.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s nonviolent resistance has also failed and rebel corps insist on meeting violence with violence. The People’s Defence Forces have launched guerrilla attacks against the junta as well.
Analysts told Nikkei Asia that even though these rebels once fought with hunting rifles and homemade firearms, weapons from “ethnic armed organisations, Thailand, local production” and the military are now available and are being used widely.
The violence between the rebels and the junta continues to increase. The Human Rights Watch says the junta’s security forces killed at least 2,400 persons till November 2022 and arrested more than 16,000 pro-democracy supporters.
The National Unity Government is spearheading the pro-democracy movement in collaboration with ethnic minority insurgent groups engaged in long-standing conflicts with Myanmar’s military and says regardless of Suu Kyi’s views it wants a revolution.
Source: News18
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