[alephnerd]

> Do policy people see any light at the end of the tunnel for Myanmar

Depends on where those policy people are from.

I'm American but my extended family is in the Dogra Regiment (IYKYK - and also why I haven't been nominated as an [or is it "a", me fail Eng.i.mean.phonetics after a couple Blantons] SES for US-India relations over the past 15ish years), so I have absolutely no hope. Myanmar has become yet another battlefield for China and India to flex, and it's millions of innocent civilians who face the brunt of this little d** syndrome.

My friends who haven't been purged by DOGE or are doing the purging on behalf of DOGE don't know these intricacies.

And this pisses me off. There are millions of innocent civilians facing rape, human trafficking, murder, and ethnic cleansing because a couple limp d**s in Naypawday, Kunming, Imphal, and Bangkok couldn't care enough to negotiate a true path to peace.

> I feel like we just need to give intelligence + a couple billion in weapons to a Burmese version of Dostum

There are like 50 Dostums in Myanmar. If you ever followed a "true" history of the Afghan Civil War, you'd see the same situation arise in the 1990s. Both Pakistan and India would fund their favorite warlords with weapons and rupees (my mom went to college with Hamid Karzai), and give their families asylum (if you want Ahmad Shah Massoud's [0] family's address in Delhi-3 I gotchu).

China, Thailand, and India are doing the same thing in Myanmar (and did the same thing 30 years ago).

> Then get some highly decentralized federalism in place (draw the rest of the owl).

And then Cls like my Phuphar in the Dogras would bribe (or put a bullet in) them to make sure they don't flip to the Chinese, and it becomes Libya or Congo 2.0 because the equivalent in China or Thailand is 100% doing the same.

> Form a coalition with other EAOs that matter, sort of like the Northern Alliance, and take over Tatmadaw controlled cities one by one.

Some EAOs are funded by China. Others by India. And others by Thailand. For all intents and purposes, none of these countries view Myanmar as a "real" country, and are working on splitting it up amongst the EAOs they are funding (or honeytrapped).

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

[which]

I see what you mean. I feel like it's a collective action problem. If Myanmar had its security situation together, the incentive to meddle would be much lower. No one funds rebel groups just for the sake of it, except maybe Gaddafi. But there are way too many parties to way too many tables, so chaos just continues because reaching a deal never seems possible.

I read a book about Dostum and I vaguely remember they actually had multiple candidates in mind originally. There was Rabbani, Dostum and I think some others, but they chose Dostum cause he had the least baggage and ties to Iran. Problem is in Myanmar might not be anyone with real power who is even defensible. You don't hear too many bad things about say the TNLA, but that might just be a function of them not being important enough to make headlines in English news. I get the impression the KNLA is the most legitimate EAO in the eyes of Western governments yet their leaders are on tape negotiating heroin deals and brokering uranium [1], so maybe my hope for a unifier to come out of these armed groups is a bit unrealistic.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57...