Myanmar rebels liberate territory – controlling it is the next battle | Political news

Karen State, Myanmar – Thaw Hti was a small speck among hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets of Yangon in 2021 demanding a return to democracy after Myanmar. the military seized power.

“We had signs and they had guns,” he said, bitterly recounting the events of March 2021.

In the intervening four years, much has changed for Thaw Hti and his generation in Myanmar.

After military service killed hundreds of people in these bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy protests, the young men fled to areas controlled by ethnic armed groups in Myanmar’s border regions with Thailand, India and China.

Thaw Hti is also gone.

Karen by ethnicity, her choice was clear.

He took refuge in the Karen National Union, Myanmar’s oldest ethnic armed group, which has fought for political autonomy for the Karen people in eastern Myanmar’s Karen State since the 1940s, as well as in Kayin State.

Thaw Hti, speaking recently in an interview with Al Jazeera in Karen State, said he was so angry with the military for taking over that he wanted to become one. rebel soldier.

All newcomers to KNU territory had to undergo a survival course, which included weapons training, long-distance marches in harsh terrain, and basic self-defense.

Thaw Hti, who fired a gun, remembers how his fellow protesters gave him a sense of strength after helplessly watching the military carnage.

Now his face creases into a big smile: “I love guns.”

But being short and light, he struggled to complete even a basic survival course and knew he would not pass the KNU’s actual military training.

“I came here to join the revolution, but as a woman there are more obstacles,” she said.

“I mentally want to do it, but physically I can’t.”

Lessons of oppression

With a background in education and the ability to speak Karen, Thaw Hti and her husband instead opened a KNU-accredited school where they teach more than 100 children displaced by the conflict.

The school is hidden in a forest in eastern Myanmar because the military tends to launch airstrikes against Karen’s parallel public services, including schools and hospitals. The aim of the bomb is to destroy the emerging administrative structures that legitimize Karen autonomy.

Unlike schools under the control of the military regime, Thaw Hti explained that his school teaches children in the Karen language and teaches a Karen-centric version of Myanmar’s history, which has been faced by the Karen for decades and is often left out of the official narrative.

The Karen have been fighting for their autonomy for decades, but as newer, pro-democracy forces have joined forces with ethnic armed groups, the Karen’s long-running conflict with Myanmar’s military – the majority, ethnic Bamar forces – has exploded in intensity.

In the past year in particular, the military has lost large swathes of territory in the border regions, including almost all of Rakhine State in the west and northern Shan State in the east, as well as large parts of Kachin State in the north and more. From Karen State.

But as the fighters take over more and more territory, they face a new challenge: managing it.

Parallel management

Kyaikdon in Karen State, captured from the army in March, has escaped airstrikes that have devastated other major towns won by resistance forces.

During Al Jazeera’s recent visit to Kyaikdon, the city’s restaurants were packed with civilians and Karen soldiers eating Burmese curry. Shops were open and selling household items and traditional Karen fabrics, while the main road was blocked by traffic.

Soe Khant, the city’s 33-year-old KNU-appointed administrator, said he had big plans for the liberated area.

“I would like to complete public works, install electricity and water, clear plastic and overgrown areas,” said Soe Khant, who was officially appointed as interim administrator, with an election scheduled for a year later.

He eventually agrees to be elected by the people rather than appointed.

“If this is what the people want, I will hold this position. “If they pick someone else, I’ll pass it on,” he said.

Soe Khant said the military regime “totally neglects the people of this city”.

Soe Khant, who grew up in Kyaikdon, told how he and his friend would climb to the top of a hill near the city.

From there, they would sketch the dusty main road, the winding river that feeds the farms, and the buildings around the nearby mountain range that forms the border with Thailand.

After he got older, he turned to photography for a living from shooting weddings.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Myanmar in 2020, he answered another challenge and started a social welfare organization.

After the military coup, the situation worsened.

“The health care system was broken, so my friends and I volunteered to help take care of people,” she said.

While Soe Khant is relatively new to running a parallel administration, the KNU has been doing it for decades—albeit usually in smaller, rural pockets.

“We’re going too fast, but we’re not going too far”

Kawkareik Township Clerk Mya Aye served 12 years as village tract supervisor, the third-most senior position in the township, before being elected to her current position.

He told Al Jazeera how the war years and lack of human resources hampered the local economy and undermined the KNU’s ability to provide public services.

“There are no factories, no industries, you can’t work here to support your family,” he said, explaining that because of the conflict and difficulties, young people would move to live in nearby Thailand.

But the brutality of the military regime is often its worst enemy.

He inspired and led a more fervent resistance human resources into the arms of his enemies.

Win Htun, 33, a former Myanmar policeman, joined the KNU rather than follow orders to arrest and harass pro-democracy activists.

Win Htun said: “I have always wanted to be a policeman since I was young.

“I believed the police were good and I was trying to help people,” he said, adding that the reality was a culture of corruption, discrimination and impunity.

Win Htun, who is a member of the Bamars, the ethnic majority in Myanmar, said the police authorities were treating their Karen colleagues very unfairly.

“If they make any small mistake, they are punished very severely,” said one Karen officer, recounting how he returned to the barracks an hour late and was put in a jail cell for 24 hours.

Win Htun said that he has submitted his resignation letter many times during his 10 years of police service. They were rejected every time.

After the 2021 coup, he fled with his wife and daughter to Karen-controlled territory, where he was subjected to extensive background checks and a period of “trust-building” surveillance.

He is now fully integrated into the police force of the KNU.

Reacting to the brutality of the military and sensing that the revolution was on the verge of victory, young educated professionals like Thaw Hti and long-time civil servants like Vinh Htun came to fill the human resource gaps in government management. newly liberated areas.

But most believed that the struggle to overthrow the army would take only a few months, or at most a few years.

Despite a series of defeats and other unprecedented failures, the military managed to stand.

“It’s like running on a treadmill,” Thaw Hti said of the revolution’s gains but continuing setbacks.

“We feel like we’re going very fast, but we’re not going very far,” he said.