US opens direct talks with Myanmar junta over scams and rare earths largely held by its armed opponents

Mizzima

The United States has opened direct talks with Myanmar’s military regime, with a senior State Department intelligence official meeting junta leader Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw last month, Reuters reported on 8 October. The meeting was the highest-level contact between Washington and the generals since the February 2021 coup.

According to Reuters, which cited seven current and former officials and others familiar with the policy shift, Michael Vance, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, joined talks with the junta leader on 15–16 September. The outreach has centred on shutting down scam centres that target Americans, and US officials have also raised access to Myanmar’s heavy rare-earth deposits.

The Naypyidaw visit was aimed at securing the release of Adam Castillo, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar who was detained at Yangon airport on 11 June. He was deported on 16 September, and state media said he had been freed in consideration of “friendly relations” between the two countries.

One person told Reuters that Myanmar asked for nothing in return except an official engagement with the US government at the right level.

The September talks followed a June meeting between US and Myanmar officials in Tokyo that also involved Vance, according to Reuters. Vance has also met the democratic opposition and ethnic armed organizations fighting the military, both in person and online, and the FBI has had direct contact with Myanmar authorities on cyber scams, the news agency reported.

The State Department said it engages with all groups in Myanmar on issues affecting US interests, and presses for an end to violence and the release of political prisoners. “You don’t solve problems by ignoring them,” spokesperson Tommy Pigott said. A spokesperson for the regime did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

The junta chief remains under US sanctions for human rights abuses, including the 2016–2017 military operations against the Rohingya that Washington formally declared a genocide in 2022. Twelve days after the Naypyidaw meeting, a military airstrike on a crowded market in Kyauktaw Township, Rakhine State, killed at least 50 people and injured at least 58 on 28 September, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The rare-earth deposits Washington is interested in lie mainly in territory held by ethnic armed organizations fighting the regime, US officials acknowledged to Reuters. Much of this mining is concentrated in Kachin State along the Chinese border, where the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) took control of the Pangwa mining hub from a junta-allied militia in 2024.

Meanwhile, filings under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Myanmar’s Ministry of Information paid the Washington lobbying firm DCI Group $1.5 million between late January and late February this year. Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, registered in April as a consultant on the account at $50,000 per month.

Representative Gregory Meeks, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized the shift, saying that engaging the junta leader while congressionally mandated sanctions and democracy funding go unimplemented hands the regime greater international legitimacy.

The talks come as the regime seeks recognition abroad after elections widely criticized as a sham. Min Aung Hlaing met Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Putrajaya on 8 October, his first visit to the country since the coup, following a trip to Thailand in August. The focus of the visit appeared to revolve around the repatriation of Myanmar migrants and refugees held in confinement in Malaysia.