Rebels celebrate the capture of a key border town and Thailand is left in fighting

Thailand is bracing for a crisis on its border amid fears that Myanmar’s brutal military junta is about to launch a counteroffensive to recapture a strategic city it has lost to resistance forces.

The complete capture of the city by Karen National Union forces and their allies on Thursday was one of the most significant achievements by armed resistance groups inside Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in February. 2021 that overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. .

“You can think about it in two ways,” Morgan Michaels, a Myanmar analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said of Myawaddy’s fall. “There is the material and strategic value, but also the symbolic value. And symbolically, it is huge.”

“This is the last major international border gate that the military controls. It makes them look weak and will galvanize opposition forces.”