Bo Nagar
Bo Nagar | |
|---|---|
Bo Nagar in 2022 | |
| Native name | ဗိုလ်နဂါး |
| Born | Sagaing Region, Myanmar |
| Service years | 2021–2026 |
| Rank | Commander |
| Unit | Myanmar Royal Dragon Army (2022–2023) Burma National Revolutionary Army (2023–2026) |
| Commands | Burma National Revolutionary Army |
| Conflicts | Myanmar civil war Clashes with military junta forces |
Bo Nagar (Burmese: ဗိုလ်နဂါး) is a former Burmese revolutionary and the commander of the Myanmar Royal Dragon Army (MRDA).[1] He was a prominent figure during the Spring Revolution and most recent stage of the Myanmar Civil War before he surrendered to the military in February 2026.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
Revolution
He commanded the Pale People's Defence Force, which has been inflicted on military troops in 2021.[8][9] Amid rising resistance in Sagaing Region, he has risen in prominence and the junta has attempted to capture him. He has commanded the MRDA, which is under the NUG's command, since its formation in January, 2022. Under his leadership, 180 soldiers have killed in ambushes.[10][11][12] As retaliation, the military troops raided a village for searching Bo Nagar, killed 20 people, and his cousin was beheaded.[13] In January 2022, the military council used four helicopters to capture Bo Nagar, but did not succeed.[14] On 9 September 2023, Bo Nagar founded the Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA) and assumed the role of its chairman.[15]
In early January 2026, NUG defense forces removed four toll gates/checkpoints operated by the BNRA in Pale Township. Following these incidents, Bo Nagar accused the NUG of initiating attacks against his group. On January 9, 2026, he stated that if attacked, he would regard the NUG as a hostile force and retaliate in self-defense.[16]
There had been tensions between Bo Nagar's force and the NUG PDF units since last year. These tensions reportedly reached a boiling point last week when,by its own admission, the BNRA fatally shot a PDF fighter in a dispute over a weapon. On Tuesday, the PDF retaliated by raiding positions held by the BNRA.[17]
On 18 February 2026, Bo Nagar surrendered and collaborated with the military. According to multiple reports, Bo Nagar was extracted from his operational area by a military helicopter.[18][19]
Controversies
Bo Nagar claimed that the establishment of the Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA) was discussed online with the NUG interim president, Duwa Lashi La, and NUG Defense Minister Yee Mon. The President's Office issued a statement asserting that the matters discussed during the Defense Minister's conversation with Bo Nagar did not include any content related to the formation of the BNRA.[20]
Bo Nagar claimed the BNRA was established in collaboration with local people's defense forces that do not operate under the NUG's Chain of Command (COC), including MRDA battalions. He emphasized that the formation of the BNRA is not meant to create a separate faction and that they intend to work in cooperation with the NUG.[21][22]
References
- ^ "PDF ခေါင်းဆောင် ဗိုလ်နဂါးဒေသမှာ စစ်ကောင်စီက လေကြောင်းကပါ ဖိတိုက်နေ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 16 January 2022.
- ^ "ပုလဲ PDF ခေါင်းဆောင် ဗိုလ်နဂါး ဘယ်မှာလဲ". BBC News (in Burmese). 13 January 2022.
- ^ "ပုလဲနယ်တွင် စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်ကို ရှေ့နောက်ညှပ်တိုက်ရာ ၂၂ဦးသေဟု ဗိုလ်နဂါးပြော". Thit Htool Lwin (in Burmese). 24 December 2021.
- ^ "အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်သူပုန်များကို လူထုကိုယ်တိုင် တိုက်ခိုက်နှိမ်နင်းရန် ဗိုလ်နဂါးနှိုးဆော်". DVB. 19 April 2022.
- ^ "တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေးရေး စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်ကမ်းလှမ်းမှု ထွက်ပေါက်ရှာလှည့်ဖြားခြင်းဖြစ်ဟု ဗိုလ်နဂါး ပြော". DVB. 25 April 2022.
- ^ "ဗိုလ်နဂါး ဦးဆောင်သည့် စခန်းသိမ်းတိုက်ပွဲ စစ်ကောင်စီ လေကြောင်း အင်အားသုံး". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 5 March 2022.
- ^ "ပုလဲ PDF ခေါင်းဆောင် ဗိုလ်နဂါးကို စစ်ကောင်စီရှာနေ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 13 January 2022.
- ^ "Dozens of Myanmar Regime Troops Killed in Clashes in Four Regions, States". The Irrawaddy. 11 January 2022.
- ^ "Bo Naga says Pale People's Defense Force has not yet joined a 12-group alliance". Mizzima. 25 January 2022.
- ^ "Rebel Group Demands Increased Attacks on Myanmar Junta and Collaborators". The Irrawaddy. 20 April 2022.
- ^ "The Revolution Will Succeed if the Myanmar People Are United". The Irrawaddy. 17 January 2022.
- ^ "Rebels fighting Myanmar's junta are doing better than expected". The Economist. 30 October 2021.
- ^ "Myanmar's rebellion, divided, outgunned and outnumbered, fights on". Washington Post. 30 March 2022.
- ^ "စစ်ကောင်စီက ဗိုလ်နဂါးအား ဖမ်းဆီးရန် ရဟတ်ယာဉ် ၄ စီး အသုံးပြုသော်လည်း ဖမ်းမမိ". Mizzima (in Burmese). 10 January 2022.
- ^ "Formation of Burma National Revolutionary Army is an encouraging situation: U Than Soe Naing". CNI. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ^ "NUG နဲ့ ဗိုလ်နဂါးဦးဆောင်တဲ့ BNRA တို့ကြားက ပဋိပက္ခတွေ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 24 January 2026.
- ^ Press, The Associated (19 February 2026). "A resistance leader in Myanmar turns himself in to the army after clashing with rival force". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
- ^ "ဗိုလ်နဂါး စစ်အုပ်စုနဲ့ ပူးပေါင်းကြောင်း စစ်အုပ်စုဘက်က ထုတ်ပြန် - New Day Myanmar". New Day Myanmar. 18 February 2026.
- ^ "A resistance leader in Myanmar turns himself in to the army after clashing with rival force". Associated Press. 19 February 2026.
- ^ Now, Myanmar (12 September 2023). "ဗိုလ်နဂါးဦးဆောင်သည့် တပ်သစ်ဖွဲ့စည်းရန် NUG နှင့် ညှိနှိုင်းခြင်းမရှိဟုဆို". Myanmar Now.
- ^ "No discussion on formation of BNRA led by Bo Nagar: NUG says". Thanlwin Times. 13 September 2023.
- ^ "Formation of Burma National Revolutionary Army is an encouraging situation: U Than Soe Naing". CNI. Retrieved 21 November 2025.