The Myanmar military is escalating its efforts to enlist and arm fighters for the junta’s Pyu Saw Htee militias in Bago Region, according to local residents and resistance groups.
The expanded recruitment efforts started after resistance fighters, especially People’s Defence Forces (PDF) began to carry out more of their own operations in the region earlier this year.
The PDF have become more active not only in townships adjacent to the territory of Karen National Union (KNU), where anti-junta forces are already relatively strong, but also in Bago Region’s western townships.
The KNU, along with its armed wing the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), has stated that it is providing support for the resistance forces’ operations.
Pro-junta village administrators, members of the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and ex-military personnel in Nattalin, Gyobingauk, Okpho and Thegon townships—all part of Thayarwady District in western Bago Region—are seeking new members for the Pyu Saw Htee, according to local PDF members and residents of Bago Region.
A resident of Okpho Township said that people serving in the local administration and USDP members regularly attend militia training exercises, and that the authorities often try to give incentives to young, jobless people to join the militias, promising them a monthly income and weapons after they complete their training.
“They persuade reluctant people to sign up for Pyu Saw Htee training. After completing the military training, the new militiamen become protégés of the local administrators and informants for the military,” he said.
The junta provides military training at the bases for Light Infantry Battalion 6 and Light Infantry Division (LID) 66 in Inn Ma, Pyay Township, a PDF member based in Thegon Township said.
As part of its intensified operations in the area, armed resistance groups have killed four people in western Bago Region in October, including a pro-junta administrator and a former USDP lawmaker.
On October 4, a Thayarwady District-based resistance group fatally shot Zaw Wan, the administrator of Kyoet Koe Pin village in Okpho Township, in his home. Zaw Wan was accused of having completed military training at the LID 66 base in Inn Ma and helped find new recruits for the Pyu Saw Htee.
The PDF warned that members of the junta’s local administration and Pyu Saw Htee leaders should resign without delay to avoid similar retribution.
At the same time, the same administrators and militia members are reportedly under similar pressure and threats of violence from the military to continue carrying out the duties assigned to them.
“There are administrative personnel who have submitted their resignations. But we heard that some others have been threatened with harm to their families,” a PDF member in Thegon Township said.
Resistance forces and locals claimed Pyu Saw Htee forces were also growing in eastern Bago Region’s Waw Township, where militia units are typically made up of 20 to 30 members each.
“They are drawing in personnel any way they can. After that, they give them military training,” said one member of a resistance force operating under the command of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and active in Waw Township.
Pyu Saw Htee militia members are reportedly tasked with providing security for villages, serving as informants, and sometimes extorting money from fellow villagers.
Explosives set by the army near Let Pan to fend off resistance forces are reportedly endangering local civilians. According to a Waw resident, the Pyu Saw Htee militia in the area demanded 30,000 kyat (US $15) each from local farmers as payment for removing the explosives from the fields in time for rice planting. After some 30 farmers made the payments, the militia failed to remove the explosives, the resident said.
As an armed resistance movement arose and spread throughout Myanmar in response to the military coup in early 2021 and subsequent violence against protestors, the junta has needed more armed personnel to fight on a growing number of fronts. The NUG’s resistance fighter said that the military has organised and armed these Pyu Saw Htee units as a buffer against resistance forces that may attempt to cross the Sittaung River and attack regime targets.
On the morning of September 26, the KNLA and PDF carried out a joint assault on junta soldiers at a ferry jetty near Let Pan, Waw Township. A junta soldier and two Pyu Saw Htee members were killed, and KNLA fighters seized a weapon and ammunition.
“They only give arms to their loyalists, weapons are provided at army outposts. But, when they go home, they cannot take the weapons,” the resistance member said.
Citing residents’ first-hand accounts, the resistance fighter in Waw Township said that junta forces and Pyu Saw Htee militia members often beat and demand money from fishermen on the Sittaung River and its tributaries.
“People are afraid to go out to work. Those who can pay them the money are free to go, but those who can’t are threatened or pressured into joining the Pyu Saw Htee,” he said.
In September, Myanmar Now reported that large Pyu Saw Htee units had also formed in Pyay and Taungoo townships, which have become strongholds for the military and pro-junta militia as they established bases and gained effective control of many of the townships’ villages.
Speaking at an October 13 online seminar, Cpt Kaung Thu Win, a defector from the military, commented that the military council is convincing some local people to join the Pyu Saw Htee militias based on hate.
“People are affected by armed conflict, people don’t know which side to support, and they attract and organise people based on certain issues. For example, injured people are accepted at military hospitals. After that, they broadcast about them on their media, they flatter their families, and they try to make them take their side. They also use religion and ethnicity to persuade people,” he said.
Cpt Kaung Thu Win added that, just as resistance groups had persuaded members of the military to defect to the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement, they could persuade the Pyu Saw Htee militiamen to join the resistance.
