Fuck the Junta. All my homies hate the Junta.
Hear hear, fuck military dictatorships.
Also, yeesh, that headline… Like, I’m sure if people wanted to do a deep dive into this topic the ethnic ties and traditions that are shared by these different rebel groups are important to understanding them and what’s going on here, but would it have killed the AP to describe them as “pro-democracy guerillas” in the headline instead of saving that one for the article and going with “armed ethnic alliances”? You start telling Americans about armed ethnic alliances and they’ll be demanding airstrikes before you’ve finished your sentence.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BANGKOK (AP) — An alliance of ethnic armed groups in northeastern Myanmar has reportedly achieved one of the main goals it set when it launched an offensive last October by taking control of Laukkaing, a key city on the border with China, according to local residents and independent media accounts on Friday.
The city’s fall to the alliance is the biggest in a series of defeats suffered by Myanmar’s military government since the offensive was launched, underlining the pressure it is under as it battles pro-democracy guerrillas and other ethnic minority armed groups across the country.
A Laukkaing resident who lives two miles away from the headquarters told The Associated Press that it had fallen into the hands of the MNDAA after the soldiers stationed there laid down their weapons.
Another Laukkaing resident, who also asked not to be named for safety reasons, said an officer in the regional command confirmed in text messages with her that it had given up the fight in part because of the burden of caring for many wounded soldiers in the hospital in the headquarters compound.
When the alliance launched its offensive, it cast it as a battle against military rule and an effort to rid the region of major organized criminal enterprises, including cyberscam operations controlled by Chinese investors in collusion with local Myanmar warlords, especially in Laukkaing.
Peng Deren, the MNDAA commander, said in a New Year’s speech published by The Kokang, an affiliated online media site, that the alliance had seized over 250 military targets, five border crossings with China and arrested about 1,000 prisoners of war.
The original article contains 741 words, the summary contains 266 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I listened to an interesting interview with a journalist who’d been embedded with the anti-junta fighters a few weeks ago. It was on Popular Front, if anyone wants to listen.
link it next time you see an article. otherwise people will not see it.
I gave you the name of the podcast in question. Find the ep here:
