Myanmar Royal Dragon Army

Myanmar Royal Dragon Army
(2022-Sep 2023)
Burma National Revolutionary Army
(Sep 2023-present)
မြန်မာ့တော်ဝင်နဂါးတပ်တော်
(2022-Sep 2023)
ဗမာအမျိုးသားတော်လှန်ရေးတပ်မတော်
(Sep 2023-present)
LeaderBo Nagar
Foundation1 January 2022 (2022-01-01)
Active regionsPale Township, Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region
Size1000+[1]
Allies

Myanmar National Defence Force

Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army
OpponentsNUG(National Unity Government)
Battles and warsInternal conflict in Myanmar

The Myanmar Royal Dragon Army (MRDA; Burmese: မြန်မာ့တော်ဝင်နဂါးတပ်တော်), also known as Myanmar's Royal Dragon Army, was an armed resistance organisation based in Pale Township, Sagaing Region. It was founded on 1 January 2022 by its leader, Bo Nagar, and was under the command of the National Unity Government.[3][4][5][6] The Myanmar Royal Dragon Army was reformed and renamed as the Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA; Burmese: ဗမာအမျိုးသားတော်လှန်ရေးတပ်မတော်) on September 9, 2023.[7]

History

In February 2022, the MRDA announced it had attacked two bases near the villages of Ziphyugone and Einmahti alongside another resistance groups. The MRDA claimed that around 40 junta troops and Pyusawhti militia members had been killed.[8][9]

In late April 2022, the MRDA attacked a number of outposts in Pale held by the Tatmadaw and Pyusawhti, a pro-junta militia. The MRDA also ambushed junta forces which it claimed were raiding villages and burning civilian homes.[10]

Reorganization

On 14 March 2022, MRDA troops from Yinmabin District were restructured into Yinmabin District People's Defence Force battalions- specifically Yinmabin PDF Battalions 3 through 6. The battalation were also additionally funded by the NUG on top of existing financial support from donations totaling around eUSD 260,000 to date.[11]

Renaming

Later on 9 September 2023, Bo Nagar announced that the remaining parts of MRDA was to be renamed as the Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA) and stated that their group would not be under the NUG's chain of command.[7] Political analysts Than Soe Naing remarked this change as a step towards creating a Bamar EAO.[12] BNRA claimed that they intend to work together with the National Unity Government, with whom they met on September 12, 2023 to discuss NUG’s chain of command as well as the cooperation of BNRA with NUG’s administrative and defense mechanisms.[13]

Tensions with the National Unity Government

On 9 January 2026, PDF forces under the National Unity Government of Myanmar raided four BNRA checkpoints in Pale Township, Sagaing Region.[14] NUG claimed that locals complained about the BNRA extorting money at these checkpoints.[15] A day before, the BNRA alleged that NUG planned to attack them and stated that they will be considered an enemy.[16] On 17 January 2026, the BNRA raided a NUG tax office and checkpoint in Pale Township. Bo Nagar denied ordering the attack.[17][18] On 17 February 2026, the PDF attacked three camps with artillery and drones. Ni Ni Kyaw, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Burma's armed wing PLA appealed to both sides for negotiations.[19]

Surrender of Bo Nagar

On 18 February 2026, State Security and Peace Commission media reported that Bo Nagar, his family, and his associates surrendered all weapons to the military. Multiple reports noted that they were picked up by Tatmadaw helicopters.[20] 150 other BNRA members were taken into PDF custody. NUG registered 7 criminal cases against Bo Nagar and other BNRA members including charges of rape and killing PDF fighters. The day after, NUG's Ministry of Defence stated that arrangements will be made for innocent BNRA members who wish to join PDF or PDO units. The Yinmarbin PDO also requested rebel units to report any weapons supplied by BNRA, and stressed proscriptions against destroying, selling, caching, or renting out such weapons.[21] However, no official announcements specified the formal dissolution of the BNRA.

References

  1. ^ "တရုတ်နယ်စပ်က ရိုင်ဖယ်များနှင့် အားမာန်ပြည့်လာသည့် တပ်ဖွဲ့သစ်များ" [Armed groups rejuvenated by rifles from Chinese borderlands]. Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 6 June 2023. Archived from the original on 27 June 2023.
  2. ^ "Pyusawhti militia". Myanmar NOW. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023.
  3. ^ "PDF ခေါင်းဆောင် ဗိုလ်နဂါးဒေသမှာ စစ်ကောင်စီက လေကြောင်းကပါ ဖိတိုက်နေ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 16 January 2022. Archived from the original on 30 April 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  4. ^ "မြန်မာ့တော်ဝင်နဂါးတပ်တော်(ရန်ကုန်)နှင့် မြန်မာ့အမျိုးသားကာကွယ်ရေးတပ်မတော် မဟာမိတ်ဖွဲ့စည်း". LuduNwayOo. 27 April 2022. Archived from the original on 6 March 2024. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
  5. ^ "Guerrilla force ambushes Myanmar military convoy and base in Sagaing". Myanmar NOW. 13 May 2022. Archived from the original on 1 September 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  6. ^ "Interview | Myanmar Resistance Leader in Sagaing Says Monsoon Will Bring Victories". The Irrawaddy. 13 June 2022. Archived from the original on 6 August 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  7. ^ a b "Resistance commander forms new army; UN states war crimes increasing in Burma". Democratic Voice of Burma. 13 September 2023. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023.
  8. ^ Thu, Kyaw; Din, Tha (31 March 2022). "Myanmar Royal Dragon Army attacked the Junta-Pyusawhtee forces in Pale, 9 killed and many injured – Tha Din". Thadinn. Archived from the original on 11 September 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  9. ^ "45 Myanmar junta soldiers killed in ambush near Sagaing's Pale Township". Mizzima. 4 June 2022. Archived from the original on 10 July 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  10. ^ "Rebel Group Demands Increased Attacks on Myanmar Junta and Collaborators". The Irrawaddy. 20 April 2022. Archived from the original on 6 August 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  11. ^ "Statement on Yinmabin District Battalions No. (3), (4), (5) and (6)". National Unity Government of Myanmar. 14 September 2023. Archived from the original on 26 December 2023.
  12. ^ "Formation of Burma National Revolutionary Army is an encouraging situation: U Than Soe Naing". CNI Myanmar. 12 September 2023. Archived from the original on 26 December 2023.
  13. ^ "No discussion on formation of BNRA led by Bo Nagar: NUG says - Thanlwintimes". 13 September 2023. Archived from the original on 31 December 2023.
  14. ^ ဗိုလ်နဂါးအဖွဲ့ရဲ့ ဂိတ်တွေကို PDF တွေ စီးနင်းထိန်းချုပ် (ရုပ်/သံ). The Irrawaddy. January 10, 2026; via YouTube.
  15. ^ တရားမဝင် ငွေကြေးတောင်းသည်ဟု ဆိုကာ ဗိုလ်နဂါး၏ စစ်ဆေးရေးဂိတ်၂ခုကို NUG စီးနင်း . January 9, 2026.Myanmar Now.
  16. ^ NUG က ဗိုလ်နဂါး၏ BNRA ကို တိုက်ခိုက်ရန် PDF များကို ညွှန်ကြား၊ အစွမ်းကုန်တုံ့ပြန်သွားမည်ဟု BNRA စာထုတ်. January 8, 2026. Myanmar Transparency News.
  17. ^ ပုလဲနယ်က NUG အခွန်ဂိတ်ကို ဗိုလ်နဂါးတပ်ဖွဲ့ ဝင်ရောက်စီးနင်းကာ ပလဖအဖွဲ့ဝင်နှစ်ဦးကို ဖမ်းဆီး၊. January 17, 2026. Mandalay Free Press.
  18. ^ ပုလဲနယ် NUG ဂိတ်ကို ဗိုလ်နဂါးတပ် ပစ်ခတ်စီးနင်း၊ ဂိတ်တာဝန်ခံ ဖမ်းဆီးခံရ. Myanmar Now. January 17, 2026.
  19. ^ ပုလဲနယ်ရှိ BNRA ဂိတ်စခန်းများကို PDF ခရိုင်တပ်ရင်းများ ဝင်စီး. February 17, 2026. Myanmar Now.
  20. ^ "A resistance leader in Myanmar turns himself in to the army after clashing with rival force". Associated Press. 19 February 2026.
  21. ^ "'ဗိုလ်နဂါးတပ်ဘာဆက်ဖြစ်နေလဲ' – ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁၉ အခြေအနေ" [What's going on with Bo Nagar's Forces? February 19th Situation] (in Burmese). Myanmar Now. 19 February 2026.
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