The rebel army behind one of the world's major rare earth supplies

Time of India

a day ago

Myanmar
is the world's third-largest producer of
rare earths
and a critical supplier for neighboring
China
. But rebels have recently taken control of most of the country's mines — creating a complicated situation for
Beijing
and for global supply chains.
On today's Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha and reporter Timothy McLaughlin discuss the Kachin Independence Organization's newfound control of a majority of Myanmar's rare-earth mines, how the change is shifting Myanmar's political dynamics and what the group's growing influence could mean for the future of rare earths.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
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K. Oanh Ha:
In the jungles of northern Myanmar, close to the border with China, a town called Pangwa sits in a small valley. It's surrounded by forested peaks that are sometimes dusted with snow. But against this scenic backdrop, a sprawling industrial operation is transforming the hilltops.
Timothy McLaughlin:
So you have these hills, these very, you know, dramatic hill slopes with these pools kind of midway up the hill. So there's like, kind of a lattice work of pipes, that's laid over, bore holes. So yeah it is sort of industrial and, and dystopian, but also set in a very remarkable, very beautiful part of the world.
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Ha:
Timothy McLaughlin is a journalist and a freelance contributor for Bloomberg, based in Singapore. He says Pangwa and the surrounding region of Kachin state have come into the spotlight lately, because the ground there is rich with precious metals – rare earths – that are in high demand right now.
McLaughlin:
Myanmar is hugely significant in the rare earth's industry. It is the third largest producer of rare earths globally behind the US and China.
Ha:
These rare earth elements are worth billions of dollars – they're key components in your iPhone, your electric vehicles and even missiles used by the US military.
And Myanmar isn't just any producer of rare earths. It's a crucial supplier to China, accounting for more than half of the country's total imports last year. But the region around Pangwa has been disrupted by a long-running conflict between Myanmar's
military junta
and a rebel group, the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA.
McLaughlin:
The current junta took power in 2021, and it has been a very tumultuous, bloody period for the country for the past couple years. It's important to understand that Myanmar already had a large number of armed groups who were fighting the central military primarily for greater autonomy for their ethnic groups. And so the past four years have seen a massive surge in fighting. You know, the military has been able to hang on to most of the middle of the country, but their control over the periphery of the country and the borderlands has suffered quite a bit.
Ha:
Pangwa is part of that embattled region. The KIA took control of the area late last year. And that's created a headache for China.
McLaughlin:
So the takeover of these mines by the KIA, a huge complicating factor for Beijing and came at a really inopportune time. Because rare earth became this big global trade issue kind of right as the KIA took these mines. And so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare earths from them, so funding them, but then they're also supporting the Myanmar military, the junta. So they are on both sides of this fight.
Ha:
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Oanh Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region.
Today on the show — How a rebel army in Myanmar became a major player in the rare earths industry, and what its new dominance means for China next door and for global supply chains.
Despite the name, rare earths are really not that rare. They can be found all over the world. But they're almost never found on their own in nature. The minerals are mixed in with other elements in the ground, and often at low concentrations – and that makes mining them a complex process. In Myanmar, rare earths are usually extracted from the soil on hillsides.
McLaughlin:
So you have these very dramatic hill slopes with these collection pools that are sort of at the bottom, midway up the hill. The collection pools, they're lined with tarps. So the water tends to have this kind of turquoise color to it.
Ha:
And to get these rare earth elements into these vast collection pools, a process called in-situ leaching comes in.
McLaughlin:
It's sort of like an IV drip for a hillside, you're dripping this leaching agent into the hillside. So there's like, kind of a lattice work of pipes that's laid over, bore holes, and then there's little taps. And so this is just going down into the ground and then later, towards the bottom of the hill washed out. And what comes out at the bottom is this mixture of rare earths water leaching agent that's collected in large pools, sort of like concrete industrial swimming pools. And the rare earth sludge settles at the bottom. The water is drained off, uh, and that sludge is then baked in the big furnaces that look like massive pizza ovens and the resulting product is a rare earth oxides.
Ha:
When demand for these metals began to take off in the mid-2000s, China was by far the biggest miner of rare earths. It accounted for nearly all of the world's mined rare earth supply and was also the biggest refiner. But around 2010, China began shutting down many of its small-scale mines.
McLaughlin:
China started to see the environmental impact it was having, pumping millions of liters of this fluid into the ground had enormous ecological impact, especially in watersheds and riverways.
Ha:
The wastewater that's full of chemicals and toxins is typically directed right back into the nearest river. It can contaminate the soil and the waterways downstream, and cause landslides.
A lot of the mines that China shut down were located in the country's southwest, along the frontier with Myanmar. And as the industry shut down in China, the mine operators looked just across the border to get back to business.
McLaughlin:
You can see that on the ground level, with, you know, Chinese miners arriving. But eventually you can start to see it from space because the mines start to get dug, the pools start to fill up. You could also see the road network getting built and the road network kind of goes not that far. It goes from China into these mines and then, and then the trucks kind of go back out.
Ha:
A geospatial analysis found that, in just about 7 years, hundreds of new mining sites have sprung up in the area where Pangwa is located. China became the biggest buyer of Myanmar's rare earths. It imported more than $800 million dollars by 2021, that's eight hundred times what it bought just a decade ago.
McLaughlin:
They have large deposits of two specific elements, which are terbium and dysprosium. And they are important to making rare earth magnets. And these magnets are now found in a lot of electric vehicle drive trains, wind turbines, and guided missile systems. And these two elements are added to magnets to enhance their capabilities to make them able to work at higher temperatures, without losing the magnetism that they have. And so right now, these magnets are a huge point of contention between the US and China. While these magnets are coming from China, because that's where they are made, the elements that are going into them are coming from Myanmar, in many cases.
Ha:
And what kind of impact then are we seeing of this mining boom on the environment and on local communities?
McLaughlin:
You're seeing people and other groups realize that there is a huge amount of money, huge amount of demand. We're gonna see these mines expand probably outside of Kachin state to places that are controlled by other groups who think that they have similar geology. And they can also kind of cash in on this, you know, rare earth gold rush at the moment.
But I think the environmental impact is probably the most pronounced right now. You're seeing the rivers and streams that are very important to the way of life for small villages and cities and towns in this part of the world getting totally ruined. And it is also becoming a cross border issue because these watersheds run through Southeast Asia. And so some of this stuff is now flowing into Thailand. And so you see the Thai government, Thai civil society becoming concerned about this. There's also concerns about the structure of the mines, the safety. You could imagine, pumping millions of gallons of liquid into the side of a hill makes it inherently unstable. Often people are getting trapped in tunnels or killed by landslides. So yes, overall environmentally and labor regulations wise, very much sort of the wild west at the moment.
Ha:
And while mining companies have been tearing up the ground in search of rare earth minerals, the region around the mines is being torn by a bloody conflict between the government and rebel groups. After the break, the crucial supply of rare earths in the hands of a rebel army – the risks for China and the world.
For years, the town of Pangwa in northern Myanmar was under the control of a warlord allied with the country's military junta. The rare earths mines in the region were operated by Chinese companies, and the shipments of the precious metals ran like clockwork.
Reporter Tim McLaughlin says the Chinese government generally sees Myanmar's military regime as a stabilizing force along its border.
McLaughlin:
Beijing's greatest fear is that the country would splinter apart and there would be some sort of Syria type situation right on a huge border that they have. And so they sat on the fence for a while and then when they saw the Myanmar military started to struggle last year and maybe losing some key strategic outposts, they really kind of, came off the fence and threw their support behind the Myanmar military, not because I think there's any deep love there. I think it's because they really fear the country just crumbling and they think, much like the Myanmar military does, that they are kind of the glue holding this all together.
Ha:
But that changed late last year, when the KIA, the armed ethnic group battling the military junta, advanced on Pangwa.
McLaughlin:
The Kachin Independence Army is fighting a larger, decades-long struggle against the Myanmar military for greater autonomy for the Kachin ethnic people. Late last year, The KIA started fighting their way towards this point looking to capture not just Pangwa, but capture all of Kachin's special region one and kind of take it as their own.
Ha:
The KIA took control of Pangwa, along with the hundreds of valuable rare-earth mines. Overnight, that made the rebel army one of the largest players in the rare earths industry.
But Tim says this change of control in Pangwa has put China in a difficult position. Its border with Myanmar is long, so it needs to secure the cooperation of the military junta. But it also needs the rare earths that are now controlled by the rebels.
McLaughlin:
The KIA is complicated because they are fighting the Myanmar junta, and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare earths from them, so funding them, but then they're also supporting the Myanmar military, the junta. So they are on both sides of this fight. And they, they have voiced their displeasure to the KIA. They've also closed the border on occasion to try to sort of force their hand. So we did see the mining shut down and saw the border close for a long time. It is since reopened, because we could see the exports going out of Myanmar into China now. So an agreement of some sort between these companies, between the KIA, between China has been reached for now. But like many things in Myanmar at the moment, how long it will last, how steady it is is an open question.
Ha:
By purchasing the rare earths mined in Myanmar, China is effectively funding the KIA – perhaps the military junta's greatest and most long-standing enemy. This puts China in a pickle, and that's why it's now looking for other suppliers of these in-demand elements.
McLaughlin:
You'll see much more coming from Laos. You'll see, mining start up in parts of Myanmar where Beijing has better relations with the armed groups, that have closer relations to Beijing. And so you know the big official Chinese companies could go in and operate. You're not relying on this kind of ragtag middlemen to kind of do this stuff.
Ha:
As China tries to find other places beyond Myanmar for rare earths, the US is also scrambling to find its own alternative to China. Last month, a rare earth mine opened in Wyoming – the first in the US in more than 70 years. At the same time, the US is also tentatively eyeing Myanmar for rare earths.
McLaughlin:
There's been some interest from State Department and other groups about kind of sussing out and getting a feel for the current situation and what it's like on the ground. Right now the US has very limited engagement with, uh, Myanmar. Myanmar is massively unstable at the moment. You know, you have the junta fighting armed ethnic groups. You have them fighting smaller pro-democracy groups that popped up after the coup. The Junta is starting plans for an election, which I think could be very destabilizing. And then of course you see the military running a really horrific campaign against its own citizens.
Ha:
And Tim says there are more than just political and humanitarian considerations for the US to factor.
McLaughlin:
There's just really, really, really huge logistical issues. I mean it would take moving tons of rare earths material from a sort of undeveloped, far remote corner of the country, and then you'd have to move it across a country that's covered with hundreds of warring ethnic groups and, uh, armed groups to a point of exit. Then the question is, where do you bring it to refine it? And the answer to that question is you bring it to China.
Because China's the only place that has the capability to refine this stuff. So now we're back where we started. Right? And that is, assuming that Beijing would allow this. Why would China allow any US firms or companies or linked people, come into their own backyard and take what they have obviously deemed a national security asset from them? So there's a myriad of issues. There's obviously the sort of moral issues of the country and, and dealing with various militaries, but just the logistics, the geopolitics of it alone, makes it sound almost inconceivable.
Ha:
And now you have this rebel army added to the geopolitical mix – it's such a wildcard.
McLaughlin:
Yeah, I mean I don't think there's another situation that ever reached sort of the geopolitical tension that we're seeing now between the US and China with rare earth in the middle. And so you have these big superpowers and these big tech companies and huge investments. And then when you drill down, one of the key players here is this group that really was born out of a anti-colonial struggle against the Myanmar government. And then I think the other thing, kind of wild card here is, technology and the advancements. Maybe, rare earth magnets will be innovated out of existence. You already see some companies touting that they're running their EV motors with batteries that don't have rare earth in them. Maybe we're not talking about them in the same way, whether it's in 10 years or 15 or 20 years. So there's also this other kind of unknown as to kind of where this whole industry goes.