People's Defence Forces (PDF)
On 1st February, 2021, a coup d'etat took place in Myanmar due to the military’s illegal seizure of the state power. To resist the junta’s military coup, Myanmar people started their strikes on 4th February, 2021. At the same time, the Myanmar military also began brutal attacks against the unarmed civilians who were marching on the streets for peaceful demonstration. As a result of the junta’s suppression, people in Myanmar no longer accepted the military in Myanmar as the official army and demanded an army which would truly protect its people and the country. Therefore, the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) was eventually established.
After the coup d'état on 1 February 2021, which brought the ten-year transition to democracy in Myanmar to an abrupt end, thousands of young urbanites, both men and women, gave up their lives to join the resistance against the junta. Later on, PDF started to fight against Tatmadaw in alliance with various Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) such as the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) which had been active in the region for quite some time time.
As the official government of Myanmar, the National Unity Government (NUG) officially formed People’s Defense Force (PDF) on the 5th of May, 2021 in accordance with the defense policies. People’s Defence Force will collaborate with the Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) to establish the Federal Alliance in order to fight against the dictators, and will integrate in the formation of the forthcoming Federal Union Force (or Federal Union Military)
Myanmar’s borderlands are home to dozens of ethnic armed groups that have fought against the military on and off since the country’s independence in 1948. Since the Tatmadaw toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup, some of these groups have been active in training the People’s Defence Forces [Pyith? Kakweyei Tatmadaw] that emerged to resist the putsch.
“It’s the biggest challenge that the military junta had to face since the coup d’état of February 1, 2021,” said Thomas Kean, a specialist on Myanmar at the International Crisis Group, an NGO that monitors global conflicts. Fighting erupted in mid-November 2023 in Shan, Kachin and Chin states in the country’s north as well as in Rakhine State in the west, where an informal ceasefire had been in place for almost a year until early last week. Armed groups have taken the fight to the Tatmadaw in Kayah State in the country’s east, according to Kean. At least 70 civilians, including children, have been killed since the fighting erupted in earnest on October 27, and more than 90 wounded and more than 200,000 displaced, according to a UN statement.
"Helped by resistance groups formed after the coup, hundreds of experienced and fairly well-armed fighters managed to simultaneously attack key junta sites. They seized several towns and villages in the region, took control of military outposts and cut off important trade routes to China," Kean said, adding that the attack had been “the junta’s biggest setback in the field for a long time”.
By mid-November 2023 the new front of fighting between Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) in northern Shan since late October had expanded to the Northwest, Southeast, and Rakhine with increasing urban areas now affected by intense fighting and aerial bombardment. As of 14 November 2023, more than 200,000 people across these states and regions have been forcibly displaced due to the fighting. Many have also moved towards the border with China in northern Shan.
The People's Defense Forces are organized into the Southern Command, the Northern Command, the Central Command, the Eastern Command, and the Western Command. A Division is composed of at least three Brigades, commanded by a Major General as the Division Commander. A Brigade is similar to the Burmese term for a Tactical Operation Command. A Brigade consists of three Infantry Battalions, one Artillery Battalion, and one Special Commando Battalion, commanded by a Colonel as the Brigade Commander. A Battalion consists of four Companies, commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel as the Battalion Commander and a Major as the Deputy Battalion Commander. A Company consists of three Platoons, commanded by a Captain as the Company Commander. A platoon is composed of three sections, commanded by a major-level officer as the platoon commander. A platoon consists of 10 men, consisting of a corporal, a second corporal, and eight privates, with the corporal serving as the platoon commander.
The defence ministry, alongside the allied Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAO) also have established three military regions.
- 1st Military Region – Kachin, Chin and northern Shan State, Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay Region
- 2nd Military Region – Karen, Karenni and Mon State, Tanintharyi, Irrawaddy, Bago and Yangon Region
- 3rd Military Region – Naypyitaw and nearby areas
The 2nd and 3rd military regions are currently combined into the Southern Military Region and led by the ministry and two EAOs.
On 13 July 2021, NUG's minister of defence Yee Mon stated that the strength of the newly-formed militia was expected to reach 8,000 by the end of the month. Estimates by The Irrawaddy put the PDF's numbers at 65,000 in November 2022. More recent estimates put the PDF's strength at 100,000, even though not all are believed to be fully armed and trained.
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar National Unity Government Ministry of Defence Directive No. 3/2021 of September 7, 2021 stated:
All people’s revolutionary soldiers – PDFs, LDFs and STFs – on the battlefield shall strictly follow the regulations below:
Respective commanders must encourage and monitor their soldiers to ensure they adhere to these regulations.
Militias fighting the military junta in Myanmar have turned to making their own DIY weapons, including rockets and mortars, as they take on a much more heavily armed adversary. But constructing the weapons is dangerous work, with accidents, particularly during testing, claiming the lives of militia members.
In January 2022, the PDF launched its own small arms manufacturing operations. It began to mass-produce the FGC-9 PCC through 3-D printing, a semiautomatic carbine that operates on 9mm cartridges. Over 70 workshops were manufacturing rudimentary weapons by April 2022. the arms manufactured by the People’s Soldier Production Team (PSPT) — a group of defectors that include graduates of the Defense Service Academy and military officials from the Directorate of Artilleries — represent a first in self-produced weapons by insurgent forces in Myanmar. While the research required to manufacture a gun typically costs up to 1 billion kyats (U.S. $540,000), the cost to produce them outside of a factory is as much as four times cheaper than those on the market. He gave the example of a PSPT-produced submachine gun, which costs only 1.3 million kyats (U.S. $700) compared to 5 million kyats (U.S. $2,700) from a retailer.
Over half a million people have been displaced in Myanmar amid a surge in fighting between the military and armed groups that stated in late October and had spread to over two-thirds of the country, the UN humanitarian affairs office reported on 08 December 2023. Among those fighting the military are a loose coalition of well-armed ethnic militias, as well as the People's Defence Forces (PDF) - the armed group supporting National Unity Government (NUG) and opposed to the February 2021 military coup, according to media reports. In a flash update, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that more than 578,000 people are estimated to have been displaced since 26 October but cautioned that figures are difficult to confirm given undocumented returns, repeated displacements and telecommunication blackouts.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of the National Defense and Security Council in the capital Naypyitaw a day later, Min Aung Hlaing stressed the urgency of putting an end to the northern offensive. “The three ethnic alliance attacks in northern Shan state near the China-Myanmar border will break the country into pieces,” he said. "Min Aung Hlaing will search for scapegoats and purges and reshuffles will follow as the military grows desperate. Revolutions always eat their own. Will the assembled brass put Min Aung Hlaing out to pasture before he comes for them?"
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, which includes the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, (TNLA) the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Arakan Army had swept across northern Shan State, taking control of over 126 of the military’s forward operating bases. The Brotherhood Alliance claimed to control or partially control 13 towns.
Casualty figures are very hard to confirm and any claims should be taken with a large dose of salt, but Brotherhood Alliance forces controled much of Highways 3 and 34 to the key China border towns of Muse and Chinshwehaw. One cenral government light infantry battalion (LIB) laid down their arms without putting up a fight. That in itself was very telling. On paper a LIB was supposed to be roughly 200 men per battalion, though a September 2022, order called for a floor of 185 men. The battalion that surrendered had only 41 men. Other militia forces likewise surrendered.
The return of urban guerrillas was an important milestone that demonstrated both a decline in the military's control over the cities, and the growing confidence of the PDFs to conduct operations. While there have been significant opposition gains in the countryside, within the cocoons of Mandalay and Yangon, the military regime had gone to great lengths to project a sense of normalcy, so that the population would acquiesce to military rule. Restaurants and bars are open, life goes on.
Reports from the ground suggest that the military was building up its defenses in Naypyidaw, Yangon, and Mandalay, with increasing shows of force and patrols of armored vehicles. Naypyidaw was already a fortress city that would be hard to attack. But the capture of heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems should give opposition forces the ability to now target the city. Likewise, greater proximity would allow the small drones and quadcopters that the opposition had used to drop mortar shells the ability to strike targets. Even symbolic strikes in Naypyidaw would sew fear among regime loyalists, undermine morale, and sap the would to resist.
The military understands the importance of maintaining a sense of security in the cities. There's always been violence in the borderlands, but once violence hit Yangon and Mandalay, people questioned the military's hold on power. To that end, they began deploying Chinese-made CCTV cameras with artificial intelligence. Urban guerrilla networks that were active in 2022, were systematically taken apart. The arrest and torture of one member, often led to the rest of entire cells.
That was now changing, with more attacks by opposition People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) in the cities in December 2023. The most notable recent attack was the Dec. 1 assassination of the chairman of the pro-military New National Democracy Party, Than Tun. He had been a National League for Democracy (NLD) member before defecting to a pro-military party that was established by a senior advisor to the State Administrative Council (SAC). the junta’s formal name. These assassinations are meant to convey good operational intelligence on the part of the PDFs, and at the same time, serve as a warning that if they can hit someone so close to the SAC, then the military was unable to protect anyone.
On 29 November 2023, PDFs attacked a compound of the military-owned conglomerate, Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd, in Yangon’s Insein Township. This was an important symbolic target, as the conglomerate was one of the most important sources of revenue for the military. On Nov. 30, local PDFs used drones to drop bombs on a police station and two military posts in Yangon, while PDFs in North Okkalapa Township bombed forces encamped at a local high school. There have been bombings, more recently, in Dagon township.
In short, the war was coming to the cities. With each week, there would be more assassinations, more drone attacks, and more bombings that target security forces and symbols of military rule. This would shatter any false pretense that the military was still in control and empower more civil disobedience. It’s no wonder that Min Aung Hlaing had suddenly called for a political solution, before it all came crashing down.
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