Ragtag resistance takes fight to Myanmar’s ruling junta

Until a year ago, 19-year old Nan Htwe thought little about politics, let alone fighting for a revolution. She came to adulthood in a country led by Aung San Suu Kyi — the dark days of the old military dictatorships felt like the distant past.

Now the skinny young woman shoulders a Kalashnikov assault rifle and marches through the jungle in camouflage fatigues as a soldier in a dissident army doing battle with Myanmar’s military junta.

A year on from the February 1 coup that deposed Suu Kyi’s elected government and placed her in detention, mass street protests have given way to an armed uprising that has spread across the country. The junta of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, 65, has burnt and bombed villages, driving more than 320,000 people from their homes, according to the United Nations.

Arrayed against them is a scattered and improvised army of resistance that brings together well-established guerrilla armies fighting for independent homelands, and a loose network of ill-equipped and semi-trained People’s Defence Forces (PDF), many of whose foot soldiers are young people in their twenties or late teens.

They have left their families, careers and everything they once knew to be trained in guerrilla warfare in the mountains bordering Thailand and China. Among them is Nan Htwe (her real name is being withheld to protect her identity).

Myanmar is more violent and divided than ever, and an end to the civil war is difficult to imagine. According to independent monitors, 8,800 people are in detention, including Suu Kyi, 76, who faces as many as 173 years in prison on criminal charges brought by the junta. The latest one came this week – an accusation of fraud in the election in 2020 that her National League for Democracy won by a landslide.

At least 1,500 people have been killed by the junta, often after torture in detention and some in gruesome massacres such as the bloodbath on Christmas Eve when more than 35 people, including two employees of Save The Children, were burnt in their vehicles.

Britain, Canada and the United States announced this week the latest sanctions against the regime and its supporters, this time against judicial officials and businesses supplying arms to the junta.

But China and Russia have blocked substantial action in the United Nations security council. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is divided over how to respond to the coup and has so far only agreed to exclude the junta’s ministers from meetings. The bloc’s leadership passed last month to Cambodia, an authoritarian friend of the generals, which has sought to repeal even this limited measure.

Anti-coup activists in Myanmar called for a “silent strike” to mark the February 1 anniversary; the authorities responded by threatening the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who took part. Two people were killed and 38 injured in a grenade attack on a pro-military rally in eastern Myanmar, providing further evidence that in practice, the peaceful movement of protest against the junta has given way to the armed activities of guerrillas like Nan Htwe.

Nan Htwe grew up on the family farm on the rural outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, and before the coup had applied to join the army. When the soldiers seized power, she joined street protests with her friends. “I thought we’d get our democracy back if we showed them our will,” she said, speaking to The Times by phone.

When soldiers met protesters’ demands with bullets, Nan Htwe contacted a member of one of the PDFs through Facebook. In September, she told her family she was going into Yangon to meet friends and never came back. “I can’t live under a military dictatorship,” she wrote in a letter that she left for them to find. “Please forgive your naughty daughter.”

She travelled for two days to the group’s base in Kayin state near the Thai border. In Nan Htwe’s unit, the 50 volunteers have three guns between them, against an army equipped with fighter bombers and heavy artillery.

Life in the group’s jungle base is harsh, with strict discipline, tough physical exercises, and little more to eat than rice and fish paste. She is one of only two girls in her unit. Despite being 5ft 2in and weighing barely 8st, she prides herself on not having taken time off.

“If the boys can do it, I can do it,” she said. “I don’t think I’m any weaker.”

Conviction and determination are not enough in themselves. In December, the army moved into the nearby town of Lay Kay Kaw. Because they had so few guns, Nan Htwe’s unit were forced to look on from the sidelines as a better-equipped militia from the local Karen ethnic minority drove the military out, but only after soldiers had seized dissidents sheltering in the town.

 “I wanted a gun to kill them,” she says. “Though we all wanted to fight back, we just had to grit our teeth and watch. The situation will get worse next year. When the military comes to the front line, we have to step back because we don’t have enough guns or bullets.

“I will return home when the revolution is won, if I’m alive. I will try to be a good daughter to my parents because I never used to listen to what they said. I was too selfish and stubborn. I want to take care of my parents if they’re still alive.”