Karen State, Myanmar – Thaw Hti was a small part of the march of hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Yangon in 2021, demanding a return to democracy after Myanmar. the military seized power.
“We had banners and they had guns,” he said, bitterly describing what happened in March 2021.
Over the past four years, a lot has changed for Thaw Hti and his generation in Myanmar.
After the army they killed hundreds in bloody clashes at pro-democracy demonstrations, the youth ran away to areas under the control of military forces on Myanmar's borders with Thailand, India and China.
Thaw Hti also went.
For Karen, her choice was obvious.
He fled to the Karen National Union – the oldest military group in Myanmar, which has been fighting for political rights for the Karen people since the 1940s in Myanmar's eastern Karen State, also known as Kayin State.
Speaking to Al Jazeera in Karen State recently, Thaw Hti spoke of how he was so angry at the military for usurping power that he wanted to become a soldier. rebel soldier.
All newcomers to the KNU sector had to undergo survival training, which included weapons training, long-distance marches in difficult terrain and self-defense.
After firing the gun, Thaw Hti remembers that it gave him strength to watch helplessly as the army massacred the protesters.
Now, his face is shaking with a big smile when he says: “I like guns”.
But, being short and thin, he struggled to complete the training necessary to survive and knew he would not pass the KNU's actual military training.
“I came here to join the gang but as a woman, there are many obstacles,” she said.
“Mentally I want to do it but physically I can't.”
Studies in oppression
With a Karen education background and speaking skills, Thaw Hti and her husband instead opened a KNU-approved school where they teach more than 100 children displaced by conflict.
The school was hidden in the jungles of eastern Myanmar because of the military's habit of launching airstrikes on Karen government facilities – including schools and hospitals. These bombs aim to destroy the emerging organizations that give Karen independence.
Unlike schools controlled by the military, Mr. Thaw Hti explained that his school teaches children the Karen language and also teaches the Karen history of Myanmar's history, which includes many years of Karen oppression, which is often left out of the government's news.
The Karen have been fighting for their independence for years, but as new, pro-democracy forces have joined forces, the Karen's long-running conflict with Myanmar's military – the Bamar militia – has exploded.
Especially in the last year, the army has lost a lot of territory along the border – including almost Rakhine State in the west and northern Shan in the east – as well as large parts of Kachin State in the north, among others. in Karen State.
But as the fighters take on more and more space, they face a new challenge: surveillance.
Equal authority
After being seized by the army in March, Kyaikdon in Karen State was spared the casualties that have devastated other major towns that have been overrun by opposition forces.
During Al Jazeera's recent visit to Kyaikdon, the town's restaurants were packed with Karen civilians and soldiers eating Burmese curry. Shops were open and selling traditional Karen home goods and textiles, while the main road was lined with traffic.
Soe Khant, a 33-year-old town manager who was appointed by the KNU, said he had big plans for the liberation phase.
“I want to finish public works, to have electricity and water running and to clean plastic and larger areas,” said Mr. Soe Khant, who was appointed as the interim administrator, with the election scheduled after one year.
He finally accepts the popular choice, not the nomination.
“If it is what the people want, I will take responsibility. If they choose someone, I will deliver,” he told Al Jazeera.
Soe Khant said the military government “completely ignored the people of this town”.
Growing up in Kyaikdon, Soe Khant said how he would climb to the top of a mountain near the town with a friend.
While there he photographs the many buildings surrounding the main dirt road, the meandering river that feeds the farms, and the neighboring mountains that form the border with Thailand.
When he grew up, he started taking pictures, earning money for wedding shoots.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Myanmar in 2020, she answered another call, starting a humanitarian organization.
After the war, things got worse.
He said: “Hospitals were disrupted, so my friends and I volunteered to take care of people.”
Although Soe Khant is new to the business of running similar services, KNU has been doing this for years – albeit often in small rural pockets.
'We're moving fast, but we're not going far'
Kawkareik Town Clerk Mya Aye served as a village tract leader for 12 years before being elected to his current position, the third largest in the town.
He told Al Jazeera how years of war and deprivation had disrupted the local economy and hampered the KNU's ability to deliver public services.
“There are no factories, there are no factories, you cannot work here to support your family,” he said, explaining that because of conflicts and problems, young people will move to live near Thailand.
But the tyranny of military rule is often its worst enemy.
It has encouraged more resistance and control human Resources in the hands of his enemies.
Former Myanmar policeman Win Htun, 33, joined the KNU rather than comply with orders to arrest and torture pro-democracy activists.
“I always wanted to be a police officer since I was little,” said Win Htun.
He said: “I believed that the police were good and tried to help people,” and added that the reality is a culture of corruption, discrimination and impunity.
Mr Win Htun, who is a member of the Bamar tribe in Myanmar, said the police treated his fellow Karen unfairly.
“If any of them made a small mistake they would give them a very severe punishment,” he said, recounting how a Karen police officer returned to the prison an hour late and was put in a cell for 24 hours.
Win Htun said he sent in several resignation letters during his 10 years in the police force. Each time they were rejected.
After the 2021 terrorist attacks, he and his wife and daughter fled to a Karen-controlled area, where they were given a “faith-building moment”.
He is now fully integrated into the KNU police force.
In the face of military brutality and the assumption that the revolution is about to succeed, young academics, such as Thaw Hti, and people with years of civil service, such as Win Htun, have come to fill the gaps in the public administration. newly liberated areas.
But many thought that the military conquest would take a few months or, at best, a few years.
Despite heavy losses and unprecedented obstacles, the army has managed to persevere.
“It's like running on a treadmill,” Thaw Hti said of the transition's successes but outweighing the failures.
“We feel like we're moving very fast, but we're not going very far,” he said.