Myanmar’s rebels liberate territory – administrating it is the next battle | Politics News

Karen State, Myanmar – Thaw Hti was just a small speck amid a march of hundreds of thousands of people that snaked through the streets of Yangon in 2021, demanding a return to democracy after Myanmar’s crisis. the military took power.

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

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

After the army hundreds of people were massacred in the bloody repression of these demonstrations in favor of democracy, young people fled to territory controlled by ethnic armed groups in Myanmar’s border regions with Thailand, India and China.

The Hti thaw is gone too.

Ethnically part Karen, her choice was obvious.

She sought refuge with the Karen National Union – Myanmar’s oldest armed ethnic group, which has fought for political autonomy for the Karen people since the 1940s in eastern Myanmar’s Karen State, also known under the name Kayin State.

Speaking recently in an interview with Al Jazeera in Karen State, Thaw Hti recounted how she was so furious with the military for seizing power that she wanted to become a rebel soldier.

All new arrivals to KNU territory were required to complete a survival course that included weapons training, long distances on foot over rugged terrain, and basic self-defense.

Firing a gun, Thaw Hti recalls, gave her a sense of strength after watching helplessly as soldiers massacred her fellow protesters.

Today, her face creases into a huge smile when she says, “I love guns.”

But, being small and frail, she struggled to complete even the basic survival course and knew she would not pass real KNU military training.

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

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

Lessons of Oppression

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

The school is hidden in the forest of eastern Myanmar due to the military’s tendency to launch airstrikes on the Karen’s parallel public services, including schools and hospitals. The bombings are aimed at destroying the emerging administrative structures that provide legitimacy to Karen autonomy.

Unlike schools under the control of the military regime, Thaw Hti explained that his school teaches children the Karen language and teaches a Karen-centered version of Myanmar’s history that includes the decades of oppression the Karens have faced , which is often left out of official accounts.

The Karen have been fighting for autonomy for decades, but as new pro-democracy forces join forces with ethnic armed groups, the long-simmering conflict between the Karen and the Myanmar military – a predominantly ethnic force Bamar – exploded in intensity.

Last year in particular, the military lost large swaths of territory in the border areas – including almost all of Rakhine State in the west and northern Shan State in the east. – as well as large parts of Kachin State to the north, as well as more territories. of Karen State.

But as fighters seize more and more territory, they face a new challenge: administering it.

Parallel administration

Recaptured by the army in March, Kyaikdon in Karen State was spared the devastating airstrikes that hit other major towns conquered by resistance forces.

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

Soe Khant, 33, a KNU-appointed city administrator, said he had big plans for the liberated territory.

“I would like to complete public works, run electricity and water and clean up plastic and overgrown areas,” said Soe Khant, who was officially named acting administrator, with elections scheduled in a year.

He agrees with the idea of ​​eventually being popularly elected rather than appointed.

“If that’s what people want, I’ll take the job.” If they choose someone else, I will pass it on,” he told Al Jazeera.

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

Growing up in Kyaikdon, Soe Khant recounted how he would hike to the top of a hill near the town with a friend.

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

As he grew up, he turned to photography, making a living from wedding shoots.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Myanmar in 2020, he answered another call by launching a social welfare organization.

After the military coup, the situation became even worse.

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

While Soe Khant is relatively new to running a parallel administration, the KNU has been doing so for decades – although usually in smaller, rural pockets of territory.

“It’s going so fast, but we’re not going very far”

Kawkareik Township Clerk Mya Aye served as the village’s area head for 12 years before being elected to his current position, the third longest serving in the township.

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

“There are no factories, no industry, you cannot work here to support your family,” he said, explaining that because of the conflict and hardship, young people went to live in neighboring Thailand.

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

He inspired more fervent resistance and pushed human resources in the arms of his enemies.

Former Burmese policeman Win Htun, 33, joined the KNU rather than follow orders to arrest and abuse pro-democracy activists.

“I always wanted to be a police officer since I was young,” Win Htun said.

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

Win Htun, a member of Myanmar’s Bamar ethnic majority, said police authorities treated their Karen colleagues very unfairly.

“If one of them made a small mistake, he would give him a very severe punishment,” he said, recounting how a Karen officer returned to the barracks an hour late and was placed in a prison cell for 24 hours.

Win Htun said he submitted resignation letters several times during his 10 years of service in the police force. Each time, they were rejected.

After the 2021 coup, he fled with his wife and daughter to Karen-controlled territory, where he was subjected to an extensive background check and a period of observation to “establish trust “.

It is now fully integrated into the KNU police force.

In response to the brutality of the military and the feeling that the revolution was on the verge of victory, young, educated professionals, like Thaw Hti, and people with years of government service, like Win Htun, came to fill the lack of human resources in the administration of newly liberated areas.

But most thought the fight to overthrow the army would take only a few months or, at most, a few years.

Despite a series of defeats and other unprecedented setbacks, the army managed to hold on.

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

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