Military personnel stand guard as hundreds of refugees crossed over the river frontier between Myanmar and Thailand on Friday, following the fall of a strategic border town to rebels fighting Myanmar's military junta, in Mae Sot, Tak province, Thailand, on April 13, 2024. (Photo: Reuters)NAYPYIDAW - Myanmar's ruling junta has lost control over vast tracts of territory, including access to much of its international borders, allowing ethnic armed groups to expand and consolidate regions under their control, two reports assessing the conflict said on Thursday. The street demonstrations, which were met with a brutal crackdown, morphed into an armed resistance movement that has combined with many of Myanmar's ethnic rebel armies to pose the most significant challenge to the military in decades. "The junta has abandoned significant territory and has been forced into a defensive posture in most parts of the country where it remains present." Operation 1027, a coordinated offensive last October led by three ethnic armies, marked a key moment that exposed a weakened military, which ceded swathes of borderlands in Myanmar's north.
