The Kachin Independence Organization/Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA) took complete control of nearly 80 military junta bases and outposts in Kachin State over the past two months. The revolutionary journey of the KIO/KIA, which was founded in February 1961, has seen ups and downs. Although they reached a ceasefire with the military government on 24 February 1994, clashes with the military resumed on 9 June 2011 under the U Thein Sein administration. From then, the KIO/KIA continued to conduct offensives until 2013, but from late 2013 until 2020, the KIO/KIA halted all of its offensives and shifted to a defensive military strategy.
The ethnic resistance group considered the 1 February 2021 military coup led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as “unjust” and declared they would stand on the side of “justice”. KIO Chair General N’Ban La urged that the people must discern between “justice and injustice, truth and falsehood”. After the coup, the KIO/KIA also warned the military junta not to commit violence against civilians. Since then, the KIO/KIA’s military offensives against the junta have been observed. Despite this, the KIO/KIA’s role and political cooperation over the more than three years of the Spring Revolution have been surprisingly opaque.
Burma News International (BNI)-Myanmar Peace Monitor’s Bi-Weekly News Review this week examines the military offensives of the KIO/KIA and the political unknowns surrounding them along the Spring Revolution journey.
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