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Headlines:
Four Down in Sagaing: The Junta's Central Heartland Starts to Crack
Churches, Stores, Villages: Bombing Everything but Combatants
739 Seats for the Generals' Party, Zero Buyers Abroad
Congress Loads the Sanctions Gun
Beijing Buys Loyalty by the Ton
Singapore and China Shovel Cash Into Junta's Grid
Leased to Fly Passengers, Found Dropping Bombs
Four Thousand and Counting on the Moei
Myawaddy Scam City Gets the Wrecking Ball
Rebels Build a Government, Lecture Beijing
Genocide in the Dock, Junta Calls It National Duty
ASEAN's Newest Member Picks Its Biggest Fight
Four Down in Sagaing: The Junta's Central Heartland Starts to Crack
Resistance forces captured four junta bases in Kanbalu and Kyunhla districts in Sagaing Region between December and early February, killing 96 regime personnel and seizing 187 weapons in what is shaping up to be one of the sharpest losses in the military's traditional heartland. The offensive, led by local People's Defence Forces with the Arakan Army, overran camps, including the well-fortified Koetaungbo village base. The junta threw 37 airstrikes, four gyrocopter attacks, and four kamikaze drone strikes at the resistance but couldn't hold the ground. Most striking: 101 soldiers and Pyu Saw Htee militia surrendered as prisoners, showing morale is brittle even in Sagaing, the regime's recruiting base. The Kachin Independence Army, now running a military command out of Sagaing after taking most of the district-level town of Katha, says it's targeting Kawlin, Kanbalu, and Katha as the gateway to Kachin State. For anyone tracking where the civil war is heading, bases falling this fast in central Myanmar, not just border peripheries, is illuminating.
Read more: The Irrawaddy, Mizzima
Churches, Stores, Villages: Bombing Everything but Combatants
A junta air strike killed six people at a Mennonite church in Tlangkhua village, Chin State, hitting the deacon, treasurer, and two youth leaders. The same day, two jet fighters bombed a grocery store in Chet Kan village, Magway Region, killing the shop owner and four customers. General Yawd Serk, who chairs the Restoration Council of Shan State, told reporters the world is ignoring the number of deaths from air strikes. The military, losing ground to resistance forces who don’t have planes, says it's targeting terrorists. In Myingyan and Natogyi townships, soldiers torched 17 villages between February 4 and 8 despite no active fighting, forcing tens of thousands to leave without food or shelter.
Read more: Straits Times (armed leader perspective), Anabaptistworld (church casualties specifics), Mizzima (grocery store attack), Mizzima (women casualty statistics), Mizzima
739 Seats for the Generals' Party, Zero Buyers Abroad
ASEAN foreign ministers wrapped their Cebu meeting in late January without agreeing to recognize the junta's three-phase election, leaving the generals' supposed legitimacy exercise stuck in diplomatic limbo. The Union Solidarity and Development Party was able to claim 739 seats, including 28 that they won uncontested. 26 of 57 parties that ran candidates failed to secure even a single seat. Member states now split three ways: some want to move on and restore summit invitations, others insist on conditions before any thaw, and a few are working quiet bilateral channels. The election was supposed to end ASEAN's five-year freeze on military leaders attending summits, but instead it's deepening the fracture lines.
Read more: Straits Times (ASEAN split camps), SCMP, Asia Times, Mizzima (739 seats breakdown), Mizzima
Congress Loads the Sanctions Gun
The U.S. House passed the BRAVE Burma Act unanimously Monday, handing the U.S. president yearly authority to put blocking sanctions on Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, Myanma Economic Bank, and the jet fuel sector. Unanimous passage is rare these days, and the target list is the junta's main revenue drivers. The bill also gives temporary protected status for Burmese immigrants, overriding a Department of Homeland Security move to end it in January (a federal judge in Chicago already blocked that order while a lawsuit plays out, but the legislation would settle the question outright). The bill will next move to the Senate.
Read more: Woodtv, Eurasiareview
Beijing Buys Loyalty by the Ton
Myanmar provided nearly two-thirds of China's rare earth imports between 2017 and 2024, and Beijing is using that dependence as a leash. The number of mining sites in northern Kachin State nearly tripled from 2020 to the end of 2024, all controlled by Chinese enterprises operating through ethnic militias that are now reliant on the cash they bring. When the Kachin Independence Army pushed toward the city of Bhamo, Beijing closed four border gates with KIA-held territory and threatened to stop imports until the group eased off its anti-junta offensive. The gates reopened at the end of October 2025. India is now trying to court the KIA for its own rare earth supplies, but Beijing's grip on both the mines and the militias makes that a long shot.
Read more: Jamestown
Singapore and China Shovel Cash Into Junta's Grid
The junta rolled out the welcome mat at its first investment meeting of 2026, and regional neighbors showed up with checkbooks. The Myanmar Investment Commission approved $62.9 million for 20 projects on January 26 in Nay Pyi Taw, with Singapore, China, and Thailand leading the foreign contingent. Power took the biggest slice with almost a third of investment total, followed by oil and gas at almost a quarter. The four foreign ventures and 16 local ones are expected to create 3,382 jobs in everything from EV assembly to garments.
Read more: Nation Thailand
Leased to Fly Passengers, Found Dropping Bombs
Denmark's OECD contact point found Nordic Aviation Capital failed to meet human rights standards after ATR aircraft leased to Air KBZ and the KT Group ended up in the hands of the Myanmar Air Force. The ruling, in response to a Justice For Myanmar complaint filed in June 2024, found NAC didn't run enough due diligence on downstream buyers and failed to react to the armed conflict context. Four aircraft that were commissioned as commercial planes are now carrying military designations 0005, 0004, 0003 and 0011. NAC was acquired by Dubai Aerospace Enterprise in May 2025, so the findings will land on a the new owner's desk.
Read more: Mizzima (NCP investigation findings), Scandasia (Dubai acquisition), Mizzima
Four Thousand and Counting on the Moei
Fighting between the resistance and the junta around Myawaddy Township has pushed more than 4,000 civilians to the Thai-Myanmar border, overwhelming Palawtapo (refugee) camp and pushing people into temporary shelters along the Thaungyin River. Junta airstrikes hit Wawlay and Hteethebale villages, injuring civilians, while Infantry Battalion 275 has been sending hundreds of troops on daily ground operations south of Myawaddy Town. Aid workers say rice stocks are running short, the displaced keep coming, and the fighting continues. The blasts have rattled Mae Sot (Thailand), where the Thai military has tightened security.
Read more: BNIonline
Myawaddy Scam City Gets the Wrecking Ball
Chinese authorities say they've finished repatriating more than 1,500 telecom fraud suspects from Myawaddy, wrapping up a joint operation with Myanmar and Thai police that flattened more than 630 buildings connected to the scamming. The three countries set up a ministerial-level coordination system in early 2025 specifically to tackle the Myawaddy operations. China's Public Security Ministry says it will keep pushing joint operations to break apart other criminal hubs and hunt down remaining suspects, a sign that Myawaddy may be cleared but the regional cleanup isn't finished yet.
Read more: The Star
Rebels Build a Government, Lecture Beijing
The National Unity Government and the K3C alliance (KIO, KNU, KNPP, and CNF) are negotiating a collective "Steering Council" to unify military and political leadership, a step up from their January 2025 joint position statement calling for federal democracy. The talks, disclosed by KIA vice chairman Lieutenant General Gun Maw at a Texas ceremony marking 65 years of Kachin rebellion, remain conceptual but signal the opposition is building institutions, not just burning outposts. Gun Maw also revealed he pushed back hard when a Chinese official questioned whether the resistance could actually win, reminding Beijing that Mao's forces prevailed without U.S. or Russian backing while the superpower-supported Nationalists fled to Taiwan. The Chinese official went quiet.
Read more: The Irrawaddy (China history rebuke), Mizzima
Genocide in the Dock, Junta Calls It National Duty
The ICJ began hearing the merits of The Gambia's genocide case against Myanmar, more than six years after the filing and four years plus since the coup. In Naypyidaw on February 8, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing threw a dinner for the legal team, praising their work as defending national honor against a "politically fabricated label" tied to the 2017 Rakhine crackdown that sent more almost three quarters of a million Rohingya running for their lives to Bangladesh. A UK-based Rohingya group, BROUK, has filed a separate civil claim in Argentina to try and get reparations from senior military leaders and military-owned conglomerates like MEHL and MEC, adding another legal front while the junta waits for The Hague's ruling.
Read more: Mizzima, Theowp, Trtworld (Argentina lawsuit)
ASEAN's Newest Member Picks Its Biggest Fight
Timor-Leste appointed a prosecutor this week to investigate Myanmar's military leadership for war crimes and crimes against humanity, just four months after joining ASEAN. The Chin Human Rights Organisation, representing Myanmar's Chin minority, pushed the case through Timor-Leste's courts under universal jurisdiction, the legal principle that allows domestic courts to prosecute international crimes regardless of where they happened. Authorities are now weighing whether to charge junta chief Min Aung Hlaing directly. It's believed to be the first time an ASEAN member has made a move to prosecute another member's leaders. The ICC has been sitting on an arrest warrant request for Min Aung Hlaing since late 2024, with no decision yet.
Read more: Dy365Live (ICC frustration), Newsgram (Chin focus)
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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