Paul Greening works as a political analyst and a specialist consultant covering the conflict in Myanmar from his base in Mae Sot on the Thai border and is a regular guest with Beyond the Mekong, sharing his insights into the troubled country.
He spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about Thailand’s crackdown on criminal syndicates who are running the human trafficking networks just across the border and the prospects for Myanmar’s embattled military rulers in western Rakhine state.
The crackdown enabled hundreds of people to be repatriated home over the weekend, among them, 84 Indonesians were flown to Jakarta from Bangkok while 12 Malaysians and 119 Thais were repatriated home out of Cambodia.
A deal to repatriate another 5,000 Chinese at the rate of 1,000 a week over the next five weeks has also been struck, at a meeting between Thai, Chinese and Myanmar junta officials over the weekend.
Meanwhile, nearly all of Rakhine State has fallen to the Arakan Army (AA), which has redeployed around the state capital, Sittwe, and Greening says a long, drawn out and bloody battle for the city with a population of about 120,000 could be in the offing.
Should they succeed, the AA will be in a position to establish its own sovereign territory, thus signaling a break-up of Myanmar, with other states potentially to follow.
Importantly, the AA’s relationship with the National Unity Government (NUG) is far from perfect and the NUG, Greening says, needs to tread carefully if it is to remain the political umbrella for the 20-odd Ethnic Armed Organizations and the People’s Defense Force at war with the junta.
He also says the AA has opened talks with India over trade and with China, given the fall of Sittwe would leave the army in control of Beijing’s 771km oil and gas pipeline, which traverses the state.