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Junta Goes Shopping for Dysprosium
New military chief Ye Win Oo is running a three-front war in the borderlands, and the prize on the northern shelf is worth more than the territory. The army retook Tonzang in Chin State on May 21 after ten days and Mawtaung near the Thai border a day earlier after two weeks of effort. Regime forces are pushing into northern Kachin toward the clay deposits around Chipwi and Pangwa townships that produce roughly half the world's heavy rare earths, including the dysprosium and terbium needed for EV motors and wind turbines. The Kachin Independence Army, which took the mining belts in October 2024, isn't moving. "We will welcome them with the barrels of our guns," spokesperson Naw Bu said. On the highway front, fighting continues along the Mandalay-Myitkyina corridor despite the military's May 5 claim of control. Resistance forces have lost 24 of the 104 towns they held since the coup; 80 remain in rebel control.
Read more: AP News (Tonzang, Mawtaung timeline), Nation Thailand (Chin State capture), The Irrawaddy (highway ambushes, civilians), Daily Sabah (three-front scope), Rare Earth Exchanges (China's rare earth role)
Delhi Toasts the Generals While Chin State Burns
Indian Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi spent four days in Naypyidaw, meeting the junta's new Commander-in-Chief Ye Win Oo, Defense Minister Htun Aung, and Chief of the General Staff Ko Ko Oo to pencil in joint naval exercises and hydrographic surveys in the Bay of Bengal. Two Indian warships pulled in at Yangon's Thilawa Port with more than 500 personnel aboard for what New Delhi billed as a goodwill mission. Delhi also opened a two-week U.N. peacekeeping course for 30 junta officers for civilian protection and convoy security, even though the military continues to pound Chin State with what local monitors say are cluster munitions and indiscriminate carpet-bombing. Tens of thousands of Chin civilians have fled into Mizoram, India already.
Read more: DVB (civilian casualties), Narinjara (fuel ban)
Beijing Calls Time on the Brotherhood
At Kunming talks on May 12-13, China leaned on the TNLA to hand back four towns, including Nam Kham and Mong Long, and shrink back to the two-township footprint it last held in 2008 within the next month. It was the 11th meeting of the type since Operation 1027 began, and the TNLA arrived having already tried to soften the junta up with a public statement recognizing the Min Aung Hlaing regime, plus the handover of more than 100 POWs in Kyaukme at the beginning of this month. The junta seems to be seeing the overtures as weakness, not goodwill. The Three Brotherhood Alliance, once the war's most effective fighting coalition, isn’t what it used to be, and the Arakan Army is now the only member still gaining territory with any authority.
Read more: Shan Herald
ASEAN Chooses Not to Notice
The 48th ASEAN Summit's May 8 statement described the junta's December-to-January vote as "the conclusion of the three phases of Myanmar's general elections." This despite the fact(s) that an estimated 10.5 million people were excluded completely, another 11 million boycotted, and the military's proxy party swept the civilian seats as the generals kept their constitutionally guaranteed 25 percent of unelected slots. The number of votes cast came to roughly half of the number counted in the 2020 election the military spent five years trying to overturn. The summit also welcomed the release of more than 4,000 "prisoners," of whom 292 were confirmed political detainees. On the Five-Point Consensus the junta signed in April 2021 and has ignored ever since, ASEAN said "minimal progress" had been found.
Read more: Mizzima
Twenty Million in Need but No New Resolutions
UN OCHA's latest access snapshot puts about 20 million people in need. That’s about one in three Myanmar residents. The report also counts 3.6 million displaced (1.7 million of them in the Northwest, Rakhine, and Southeast). The Security Council's last action was UNSCR 2669, a non-binding resolution that was adopted in December 2022 with China, Russia, and India abstaining. That resolution demanded an end to all violence and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint. None of that has happened, and there’s been approximately no real progress on the ground since.
Read more: ReliefWeb (scale-up urgency), Modern Diplomacy (food insecurity)
Junta's Preferred Target Features a Red Cross
Regime forces account for more than 70 percent of nearly 2,000 attacks on healthcare facilities in Myanmar since the coup, according to an Insecurity Insight tally. The report also counts 173 health workers killed, 930 arrested, and more than 500 facilities damaged. The remaining 30 percent is spread between ethnic armed groups, PDFs, criminals, and other “unidentified” actors. The biggest threat is the almost daily airstrikes, according to a CDM doctor in Mindat who has managed to survive two strikes on his own hospitals. The parallel National Unity Government says there are currently 106 hospitals, 808 clinics, and 192 mobile clinics running in resistance-held areas, staffed by about 5,000 workers.
Read more: The Irrawaddy
Fertilizer Famine Before the Monsoon
The EU is sending EUR 8 million to the World Food Programme as one in four people (more than 12 million), are staring down acute food insecurity. Farmers are cutting back on fertilizer in advance of this year’s monsoon planting season. Fuel prices have tripled since late February, forcing the cost of a basic food basket up almost 40 percent in Magway Region, the steepest rise in the country. A 50 percent reduction in fertilizer use could shave up to 15 percent off national agricultural output, with the pain continuing well into 2027.
Read more: UNRIC
Year Nine, $710 Million
The UN and Bangladesh say the price tag for another year of the Rohingya crisis is $710.5 million. That’s what they think it will cost to reach about a million and a half people in Cox's Bazar, Bhasan Char, and the host communities of Ukhiya and Teknaf. The 2025-26 Joint Response Plan, launched in March 2025 as a two-year plan with a one-year budget cycle, unites 98 partner organizations, half of them Bangladeshi national groups, to deal with the problem. Early, voluntary, and lasting repatriation to Myanmar stays at the top of the five objectives. The $710.5 million needed is expected to cover costs for the full 12 month 2026 calendar year.
Read more: ReliefWeb
Tatmadaw's Minsk Errand
Myanmar's defense minister, Htun Aung, landed in Belarus for meetings with his Belarusian counterparts, a tour of the Military Academy, and visits to military units and "enterprises with various specializations," according to the Belarusian Ministry of Defense. Few other details are available at the present time.
Read more: Nasha Niva
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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