Hurried hands lift and carry a wounded soldier from a small river boat. The blood pooling on the boat’s steel floor and the soldier’s bandage-covered head—more red than white—indicate that his wound is deadly serious. Medics and willing hands move him from the boat to a narrow wooden bench vacated by waiting passengers. An oxygen monitor is snapped on his finger and his blood pressure is taken. The blood creeping across the white bandage explains the medic’s frantic calls for the necessary permissions to be given to take the soldier to a local hospital.
The injured soldier is a member of a People’s Defence Force (PDF) militia. In eastern Myanmar, there are a number of PDF units operating under the joint command of the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), including the White Tiger, Black Panther, Venom, and Cobra columns.
The PDF was established by the NUG, Myanmar’s shadow government, in May 2021, three months after the military seized power. It was a response to the newly installed regime’s brutal killing of unarmed civilians during anti-coup protests. Now, nearly four years later, PDF groups around the country continue to fight for the restoration of civilian rule.
As medics wait for a vehicle to take the injured soldier to a local Thai hospital, a small group of PDF combat medics begins to load the boat with medical supplies needed by frontline clinics. The supplies are in cardboard boxes and black garbage bags, carefully arranged alongside the boat’s passengers to maintain stability. Some bare feet, unable to avoid the blood, are stained red.
Avoiding submerged logs and rocks, the boatman works the current and engine to manoeuvre his craft to a landing point on the opposite river bank. Once there, passengers and cargo are transferred to one of the many dusty pick-up trucks waiting for supplies, returning colleagues, or villagers. Heavily armed PDF soldiers stand or squat, smoking cheroots or talking. Others are busy directing trucks away from the waterfront. Broken voices mingle with static crackling from handheld radios.
Our truck, now loaded with medical supplies and three combat medics, prepares to leave the riverfront. But before we set off, two young, heavily armed soldiers—Black Panther patches declare their PDF unit—jump into the back of the truck and squeeze themselves in.
Our route crosses jungle tracks and dry river beds strewn with axle-breaking boulders. The narrow tracks make passing impossible. Along the way, we pass the deserted village of Lay Kay Kaw. In early 2021, it was a safe haven for civilians fleeing Myanmar’s cities; but in December of the same year, the State Administration Council (SAC),as the regime calls itself, used heavy artillery and aerial bombardments to batter those escaping its control. Jungle foliage and weeds now cover its wrecked buildings. Landmines, indiscriminately planted, lie waiting to maim and kill.
We stop at a hillside village for lunch and are told the sad news that the young soldier bleeding at the river crossing has died. One of his PDF colleagues, now arranging his funeral, explains that he was hit by shrapnel from a bomb dropped by a drone.
Initially armed only with an assortment of handmade weapons and antiquated guns, the PDF was given little hope by “outside experts” of achieving any success against the regime, with its tanks, artillery, helicopters, and jets. It has since proven the sceptics wrong. Its troops, drawn from many different backgrounds—drivers, architects, artists, students, doctors, nurses, teachers, shopkeepers, digital creators, farmers, and civil servants—have been transformed from enthusiastic but unarmed recruits to hardened fighters operating in effective combat units.
Taken in and trained by the KNLA—widely respected for its guerrilla warfare skills—the new recruits who came to Karen State learned military discipline and how to organise. The training was tough, and living conditions were challenging. Faced with disease—malaria, dengue fever, Covid, respiratory infections—and food and accommodation shortages, the recruits also had to learn how to cope with monsoon floods and energy-sapping heat in a harsh jungle environment that many had never experienced before.
Elsewhere, the Kachin Independence Army and the Arakan Army, among other ethnic armed organisations, provided the same support. But the success of the PDF groups operating around the country owes above all to the determination of a generation unwilling to accept a return to military rule.
United by a common enemy
Brig-Gen Mahn Shar Htoo Waw of the KNLA said the group did not hesitate in offering sanctuary to those fleeing the military’s lethal crackdown, including the many public employees who abandoned their jobs to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) against the regime.
“People came here for our protection—students, activists, people in the CDM, journalists, civilians,” he said. “We fed them all, gave them shelter. Burmese people have been fed propaganda by the junta about how bad the ethnic groups are. After 2021, despite the propaganda, people trusted us and turned up in their thousands seeking our protection.”
Brig-Gen Mahn Shar said the coup and subsequent violence helped people understand who their real enemy was: “Burmese people witnessed the SAC killing and jailing their own people. It helped them to understand what ethnic people have endured for decades. It’s united us against our common enemy.”
He added that the anger felt by those forced to leave their homes, jobs, and families for the safety of the jungle has brought tens of thousands of fighters into the revolution, and this in turn has created a heightened political awareness and understanding of what they are fighting for.
“At first, young people wanted a revolution—now they’ve learnt why they need it. I’m proud to see so many young people of different backgrounds join the revolution, but just fighting without a political objective is destructive. This is the big difference between us and the SAC. We are fighting for our country, our freedom, our people, and we cannot be stopped, and we won’t stop until we have won.”
The PDFs brought not only youthful enthusiasm to the military mix, but also a vast range of skills—everything from medical expertise to knowledge of drone technology.
Under the command of the ethnic armed organisations, the PDFs began to operate nationwide. Pushing back against the junta, they defeated its soldiers and overran its bases, seizing weapons, ammunition, and vehicles before destroying everything else that they couldn’t take. They now control vast tracts of territory and towns along Myanmar’s borders with Thailand, China, Bangladesh, and India.
According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, an international monitor group, as of November 2024, anti-regime forces had captured “at least 80 towns across Myanmar and 200 military bases, and one of the military’s 14 key regional military commands in Lashio, northern Shan State.” Since then, another regional military command, in Rakhine State’s Ann Township, has also fallen.
Treating people as enemies of the state
The SAC has responded to its defeats on the ground by increasing its raids and arrests of civilians on trumped-up terrorism charges, while also stepping up its use of airstrikes and landmines in conflict zones, resulting in heavy civilian casualties. And to compensate for the steady attrition of its troops, last year it introduced compulsory conscription, further intensifying pressure on the civilian population.
The SAC sees the people of Myanmar as its enemy and has been waging a savage war against them ever since it seized power. This is clearly shown by data collected by a wide range of credible sources, both local and international. Even liking content critical of the regime on social media can lead to a long prison sentence.
According to the most recent data compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners—Burma, the regime has arrested 28,405 people, including 5,892 women and 594 children, since the coup. It has also killed at least 6,224 civilians—711 of them children. But the real figure is likely much higher, as there are at least 2,900 reported deaths yet to be verified by the group.
Throughout the country, the junta’s troops have scattered thousands of landmines, placing them in areas where they are likely to harm civilians: along walkways and in villages, rice fields, and temples. In 2023, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines listed Myanmar as the world’s worst country for landmine death and injury, with 1,003 casualties.
Driving through a contested conflict area offers abundant evidence of the regime’s indiscriminate destruction. With heavy artillery, jets, helicopter gunships, transport planes, and drones, the military has reduced schools, hospitals, clinics, religious buildings and homes to rubble. None can be classified as military targets.
An investigation by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity, adds grim details and numbers to the intensity, death and destruction caused by the SAC’s relentless aerial attacks on civilians: “In 2024, AOAV recorded 451 incidents of explosive violence in Myanmar, resulting in 3,776 casualties, 89% (3,379) of which were civilians (1,494 killed and 1,885 injured). The military junta accounted for 88% of civilian casualties in 2024, whereas non-state actors accounted for 9% of civilian casualties.”
According to AOAV, the military junta increased its airstrikes by a staggering 2,563% between 2021 and 2024, indicating its growing reliance on a particularly lethal form of warfare that claims a disproportionate number of civilian lives.
Entire villages emptied of people, with roofs torn off of family homes, car-sized holes punched in school walls, and pathways strewn with landmines, stand as proof of the lengths the regime is prepared to go to reassert control. For the generals, ruling over a depopulated wasteland is more acceptable than giving up power.
The SAC’s actions have already forced millions from their homes, and are set to displace millions more. The United Nations agency for refugees, UNHCR, estimated that a staggering 3,235,500 people had been uprooted since the coup as of January 20; this is predicted to rise to nearly five million in 2025. Displaced communities face extreme hardship without adequate shelter to deal with monsoon rains, winter cold, or summer’s extreme heat.
Food insecurity, poor sanitation, and limited access to medical care and clean drinking water leaves displaced people at high risk of catching a range of illness and infections. Education is also severely disrupted.
A fight to the finish
The early days of the conflict, when PDF soldiers expressed their bravado and celebrated their victories by sharing video clips online, have been pushed back by the reality of the toll taken by years of battlefield death and injury.
In 2024, the KNU recorded that allied resistance forces had engaged in 3,229 battles with SAC troops in Karen State, killing 3,136 regime soldiers and injuring another 2,225. Over 100 KNU and allied troops had been killed in the same period, and another 325 injured, the group claimed.
Those on the frontlines—the soldiers, doctors, and medics who have witnessed the carnage firsthand—say they want the war to end. But none expressed any doubt about the need to continue with the struggle to oust the regime. All agreed that they must remain united until that goal is achieved—and that politicians must not accept any compromise that would allow the military to continue oppressing Myanmar’s people.
The common refrain of PDF soldiers who spoke to Myanmar Now for this article—including those who had suffered life-changing war injuries and had lost close friends in battle—was that there was no choice: they had to keep fighting until the junta accepted defeat.
This determined attitude was strongly evident in Kyaw Zaw, a 24-year-old former university student who is now the top sniper for the Black Panther Column. Despite suffering a bout of malaria, he wanted to talk about how he ended up on the frontlines, and how he has managed to maintain his commitment.
“I was a third-year university student. I had plans to go abroad and finish my studies. I had a good social life, many friends,” he said. But like countless others of his generation, he saw the coup as a threat to his future. And so he decided, against the opposition of his parents, to go to the jungle and join the fighting.
Now, he said, the only thing that matters is winning the war: “My life has changed. I don’t want to think about the past or the future, just the present.”
He also speaks of the closeness of death without any hint of posturing. “My daily life is now life or death. I can’t afford to plan too far ahead. Right now, I’m not afraid of death, but I do wonder when will it be my time.”
Kyaw Zaw is well aware of the lethal price that he and his friends could pay for their involvement in this conflict. But it’s all worth it, he insists, as long as the politicians do their part and show they’re also willing to make sacrifices and demonstrate their commitment with action and not just words.
“Our revolution will be successful. I have faith in my comrades, but it will depend on how our leaders behave. They can’t be anything like the military junta we’re trying to replace. They have to remain responsible, stay committed and united, and show they’re prepared to suffer with the people.”
Meanwhile, he continues to do what he does best—take out enemy targets, one by one. As the unit’s number one sniper, he knows what is at stake every time he goes out in the field.
“We have to remain alert, no smoking or movement, as they also have snipers watching us. We’re more effective, but they have drones they use day and night,” he said, adding that aerial assaults remain the “last hope” of the regime as it continues to lose territory to resistance forces on the ground.
Returning to the subject of what keeps the revolution going, he adds: “Our strength is that we have right on our side. And our Karen leaders, with their tactical awareness, are awe-inspiring.”
‘Dying is not beautiful, living is’
Not able to match the tenacity or commitment of the PDFs, SAC soldiers have surrendered or deserted in massive numbers. Facing manpower shortages due to its inability to find new recruits, the regime introduced compulsory conscription in February 2024 for men aged between 18 and 35 and women between 18 and 27. Retired soldiers were also targeted through the Reserve Forces Law, ordering them to re-enlist.
A group of young Black Panther soldiers, showered and out of uniform, huddle around a small headlight. It’s explained that two of the men are studying for their grade 12 exams set by the NUG’s education department and administered by CDM teachers. Rang, 26, is running questions past the two students, whose education was disrupted by the coup.
Despite his age, Rang has the looks and slight build of someone who should still be in middle school. His hair flops over one eye as he breaks away from the group to talk.
“When the coup happened, I was a first-year uni student. I joined the street protests. Then I tried to have a normal life, but I couldn’t. The universities were closed,” he said, describing his situation prior to the introduction of conscription.
Like many others, he had stayed away from the conflict due to his parents’ objections. But that changed when it looked like he could end up on the frontlines, anyway.
“They insisted that I run when the conscription law was announced,” he said.
Rang’s parents were not wrong to fear that their son might be among those scooped up to serve as unwilling conscripts of the regime. According to NUG research, as many as 23,250 people have been forced into the army since the law was activated.
Before the coup, Rang was studying to become a commercial artist. But after coming to the jungle, he trained for a very different role, as a combat medic.
“I came here in July of last year. I enjoyed the training, but it’s so tragic to see all the pain and trauma. I’ve worked on as many as 20 amputations cases. It’s hard, devastating. Last night we operated on a young man—he lost his right leg below the knee and his left arm below the elbow.”
But Rang takes the positives where he can find them and reflects on the soldier’s chance of survival: “He’s strong-willed, tough… He’s lost so much, but he’s now stable and talking. He should be okay.”
Rang explains that his duty as a combat medic takes him close to the frontlines. He speaks of his feelings as he describes a recent day spent near the fighting.
“I’m both excited and scared. The fighting started at 8am. They [SAC troops] kept charging towards us. Many died. Then they fired artillery, then the drones came, then they charged again. All day long it kept rotating like this. I was there as a medic, but we were made to wear helmets and vests. It was hot and heavy and made it hard to work or even walk up the mountain.”
He reflects on what he has learnt from his life as a trainee combat medic.
“Dying is not beautiful, living is. Maybe this situation is right for our generation to fight and end the oppression. We have only two choices… to die by the military or die for the revolution. This war is for our freedom, our rights… We can’t endure 30 more years of military control.”
He confesses that death is a constant fear. “I feel 50% I will die in this jungle. It’s only luck that we are still alive.”
Rang has trouble understanding why SAC’s soldiers keep fighting when they are treated so badly.
“They don’t even get proper food. Only Mama [instant noodles] and ya ba [amphetamines] to eat. But they need to choose—die for nothing or surrender to us and live. We know most of them don’t want to fight, the ones that do only keep going because of the drugs. What they’re experiencing is a living hell.”
Rang maintains that most Myanmar people don’t want the military in control of the country.
“We want rid of them. We’ve had enough of their generations of corruption and abuse. They don’t even care about their own soldiers—they don’t care how many of them are killed. SAC are like those Mafia gangsters you see in a movie.”
‘I just want to go home’
A wooden stockade built to house the many prisoners of war taken by the PDF troops is shaded from the midday sun by tall trees. It is dug deep into the dry earth to protect it from airstrikes. The dark interior is cool. Cigarette smoke hangs in the dank air. In the shadows, two captured SAC soldiers sit smoking. Their backs are turned, and it’s clear they are reluctant to talk. Three older men shuffle out of their plastic hammocks and approach, uncertain what our visit means for them.
Corporal Hla Soe, 63, and Sergeant Than Soe, 65, are both army veterans, with 28 years and 37 years of service, respectively. They look their age. Both men explained they had tried to retire from the army many times, but were always denied. Than Soe straightens, his bare feet snapping together, and explains SAC’s lack of regard for their welfare.
“They don’t care about us. The frontline fighting is intense and brutal. We’ve lost many soldiers. They raised our retirement age to 62. We’re both older than that, but as we’re still healthy and could hold a gun, we were put on the frontline.”
It’s not surprising, considering what they’ve been through, that both men say they are happy to be out of the fighting. Than Soe is quick to add: “If I were young, I would join the PDF and fight against the SAC.”
Backed into the shadows, Private Win Aung, 47, peers out from the gloom, living proof that the regime is prepared to sacrifice not only its healthy soldiers, but also those who are old and disabled.
“I had a stroke. They kept me on to do manual work around the camp, and then they sent me to the frontline. The officer said, ‘If I could stand and hold a gun, I could fight.’”
Win Aung’s hands tremble and his watery eyes catch what little light there is in this dark, confined space, as he reveals his fear.
“I’m not well. I’m scared I won’t have time to meet my mother before one of us passes. I was a farmer. I never wanted to be a soldier. I just want to go home.”
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‘Our future generations deserve better’
Dr Drit runs Cobra Column’s busy frontline clinic. He says that the resolve that he observes on a daily basis from the PDF and Karen fighters has convinced him that the SAC is losing on the battlefield. This is why the junta is increasing its airstrikes—because it no longer has any faith in its ground troops.
He notes that the regime is now routinely using Chinese-made Y-12 transport planes, designed to carry as many as 20 passengers, to manually drop 120mm mortars on nearby villages.
“This is a sign that the SAC has failed. It’s almost impossible to hit your target when manually pushing shells out. They’re hitting villages, they don’t care who they kill or maim, even their own soldiers are collateral damage.”
The night before, he said, the planes dropped 25 mortars near the clinic. “They landed 50m from where we are now. My wife and daughter were in the bunker and I was outside, still working on patients. I was lucky—four bombs landed near us. A villager was not so lucky. He survived, but was hit in the face by shrapnel.”
He explains that a single 120mm shell has an estimated kill radius of around 25 metres, while the range of the blast and shrapnel extends beyond this, causing destruction and severe injury.
He adds that the SAC uses drones and informers to scout out the PDF positions and then randomly drops the mortars without any regard for who they kill when they land.
Dr Drit is aware of the risks he is taking, but is more worried for his team’s and his family’s safety.
“I made my decision, and decided to sacrifice my life for the revolution and for my daughter’s future. With SAC in power, we can’t plan for the future or even think we have a future. Our children deserve much better than this. Our future generations deserve better. We have to be the generation that ends it.”
His eyes tear up as he reflects on what his and his family’s life could have been.
“I trained as a General Practitioner. I never expected to be operating in the jungle on so many young people—to deal with so much serious trauma or see so many young people die. After the revolution I will never be a doctor again… The trauma, the deaths, takes so much emotion. There’s no time to rest, we have to be on standby all the time. The boy you saw in the boat was my patient. He got hit by shrapnel… He wasn’t wearing his helmet when he went to the toilet.”
The frontline carnage is not the only distress Dr Drit has had to deal with since the coup. Separation from his wife and eight-year-old daughter for three and half years also took its toll. His eyes fill with tears again as he relates how his wife had to convince his daughter of who he was when they were finally reunited.
“It was so sad for me to hear my daughter ask my wife, ‘Is that my father?’”
Dr Drit’s radio crackles and drags him back to the present moment. A frantic voice confirms a truck with two landmine casualties is on its way. The doctor hurries to get his team ready.
The team prepares a stretcher, a truck arrives. The more serious injured of the two young soldiers is carried, still conscious, to an outside table. Morphine has yet to dull the man’s pain. His leg below the knee has been reduced to bloodied ribbons of tendon and ligaments. He’s prepared for amputation and taken to small basic operating room.
As the operating door closes, the veranda bed is wiped clean of blood and disinfected. The second landmine casualty is lifted onto the bed. Shrapnel from the mine has torn through his lower leg breaking bone and tearing muscle. His uniform is cut from his body, a torniquet is left in place. He’s given pain killer injections, as the medics start to clean and work on his leg. The soldier’s screams and grasping of his colleagues holding him, indicate the liquid antiseptic used to clean the leg is felt before the painkillers kicked in. The brave face contradicts the pain in his eyes.
The clinic’s team, wrapped in layers of winter clothing against the morning chill, cleans the table and organises a tray of surgical instruments, rolls of bandages, and disinfectant for the rest of the day’s expected frontline casualties.
Other patients requiring ongoing care arrive. The first is a PDF soldier wearing shorts and several T-shirts, who lays his crutches against the bed.
Dr Drit explains that the soldier is lucky he didn’t need to have his foot amputated. He had been hit by shrapnel and has an open fracture of the tibia, exposing the bone, as well as a foot wound. Both his leg and foot are carefully cleaned. A splint is applied to the back of the leg, which is then wrapped in white gauze and bandaged.
The soldier is soon replaced on the table by another. A dirtied bandage covers what remains of his foot, now reduced to a stitched-up stump.
The soldier grips the side of the bed and his friends hold him as antiseptic liquid is poured over his foot. He grimaces and shouts in pain as the doctor removes stitches and begins to cut off the dead, blackened flesh. The stump is sewn closed with new stitches and he’s helped off the bed.
As the soldier hobbles from the clinic, a small hatchback car arrives. A thin man is extracted from the car’s luggage space by his female companions. Dr Drit explains the villager had fallen out of a tree while collecting coconuts. His upper thigh had a gaping fist-sized wound that needed cleaning and repacking. The villager is one of many the busy clinic will treat. Dr Drit estimates that from January 6 to 30, there have been 60 casualties and 10 deaths from airstrikes, drones and landmines.
As a doctor, Dr Drit says his understanding of the Hippocratic Oath influences what he does.
“It is extremely important for me. It guides everything I do. As a doctor I’m supposed to use my skills to help the sick and, most importantly, never use it to hurt them in any way. Our Cobra Column commanders agree and we treat villagers, our soldiers, and even the enemy soldiers.”
