In a jungle on the borders of Myanmar, troops were sweating during basic training. They learned how to carry a rifle, pull the pin on a hand grenade, and assemble an incendiary bomb.
These cadets are not Myanmar military personnel, who seized power last month and quickly imposed the brutality of the battlefield on the people of the country. Instead, they are an eclectic body of students, activists and ordinary office workers who believe that fighting is the only way to defeat one of the most relentless armed forces in the world.
“I see the military as wild animals that cannot think and are brutal with their weapons,” said a woman from Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, who was now in the forest for a week of camping. Like others who joined the armed struggle, she did not want her name to be published for fear that the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, would target her.
“We have to attack them back,” she said. “This seems aggressive, but I believe that we have to defend ourselves.”
After weeks of peaceful protests, the front line of Myanmar’s resistance to the February 1 coup is mobilizing in a kind of guerrilla force. In the cities, protesters built barricades to protect neighborhoods from military incursions and learned how to make smoke bombs on the internet. In the forests, they are training in basic warfare techniques and planning to sabotage military installations.
The boldness and despair of this new front is reminiscent of the radicalization of a previous generation of activists for democracy in Myanmar, who traded treaties on political philosophy for weapons. As in the past, hardline opposition is a defensive response to the military’s growing reign of terror. The Tatmadaw repressed peaceful protesters and unarmed spectators, killing at least 275 people since the coup, according to a monitoring group.
Other forms of resistance continued in Myanmar. A mass civil disobedience campaign paralyzed the economy, with a national strike on Wednesday leaving cities without commercial activity. In creative defiance acts, protesters lined up rows of stuffed animals and origami cranes as substitutes for protesters who could be shot.
But there is a growing recognition that such efforts may not be enough, that the Tatmadaw needs to be tackled on its own terms. Last week, the remnants of the deposed parliament, who consider themselves the legitimate government, said a “revolution” was needed to save the country. They called for the formation of a federal army that respects various ethnic groups, not just the Bamar majority.
“If diplomacy fails, if the deaths continue, the people of Myanmar will be forced to defend themselves,” said Sasa, a spokesman for the deposed parliament who is fleeing after being accused of high treason.
Any such movement will have to face an army that ruled Myanmar by force for 60 years and fought for dozens of insurgencies for even longer. Tatmadaw’s bloodlust is notorious. General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief who led the coup, repeatedly ordered the extermination of entire villages, most frighteningly the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
The country shook when the Tatmadaw brought its war machine to the cities, arresting Myanmar’s civilian leaders last month and erasing a decade of political and economic reforms.
Since then, dozens of young protesters have been killed with a single shot to the head. Security forces fired at the houses at random, leaving families huddled in the back rooms. On Tuesday, a 7-year-old girl sitting at home on her father’s lap was shot in the city of Mandalay, in what appeared to be a collateral death. (Hundreds of protesters were released on Wednesday after weeks of detention.)
Tatmadaw is mocking international war rules. Security forces fired at ambulances and tortured detainees. Given the brutality, members of the frontline of democracy in Myanmar say there is no choice but to take up arms.
Almost every day in the concrete conflict zones of Yangon, Ko Soe Win Naing, a 26-year-old sailor, prepares for war: a GoPro camera affixed to his helmet, a balaclava over his head, vials of tear gas in his pockets vest, a sword sheathed in the back and a gas mask ready. His weapon of choice is a firework turned into a kind of grenade.
Mr. Soe Win Naing has not been home for weeks, part of an itinerant gang that tries to protect the looters’ neighborhoods from the security forces. He does not, however, support going into the jungle to train to fight the military.
“Although we are working for the right thing, I have become like a fugitive,” he said. “But even if I get killed, I will fight to the end.”
Frontline fighters piled sandbags and built bamboo barricades, which they defend with homemade fire bombs. The children also got together, wearing pajamas to look harmless as they travel to their battle stations.
“I’m not afraid,” said Ko Moe Min Latt, 15, a member of a defensive line that barely reaches 1.5 meters in height.
The image of resistance in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is often surrounded by an aura of non-violence. In 1988, students discussed political theory in the classroom and marched for democracy on the streets. In 2007, Buddhist monks turned their begging bowls and walked barefoot in silent dissent.
The nation’s deposed civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against the generals who imprisoned her for 15 years. (The award was tarnished for his defense of Rohingya’s ethnic cleansing.)
But most of the struggles in Myanmar involved guns and slingshots. On the mountainous periphery of the country, ethnic armed groups have been fighting for autonomy for decades. After soldiers killed hundreds of protesters in 1988, thousands of students and activists fled to the forests and formed armed groups that fought alongside ethnic insurgencies.
Lately, his tactics have extended to the information war. On Wednesday, anti-coup protesters said they launched hacker attacks on two military-related banks.
For the new generation, the decision to fight arises from the desire to protect what the country has achieved in the last decade. Myanmar was once one of the most isolated countries on the planet, as a xenophobic and economically inept junta separated the country from the international community. Then came attempts at political reform, an Internet link to the world and job opportunities in the private sector.
The notion that Myanmar can return to a frightening past galvanized some protesters. A young woman, who is about to start military training in the jungle, said she remembered huddling as a child with her family and secretly listening to BBC radio broadcasts, an act that could have previously led to arrest.
“I decided to risk my life and fight in any way possible,” she said. “If we are opposed in unison across the country, we will make the military have sleepless nights and unsafe lives, just as they have done with us.”
The security forces, she continued, are following orders and have no greater purpose.
“We have our political faith, we have our dreams,” she said. “This is the fight in which we have to use our brains and our bodies.”
If any armed rebellion succeeds, it will need the support of ethnic insurgencies that have long been at war with Tatmadaw. Last week, the Kachin Independence Army, which represents the Kachin in northern Myanmar, launched a surprise attack on Tatmadaw.
On Thursday, five Tatmadaw soldiers were killed by the Karen National Liberation Army, which fights for the Karen ethnic group. Last year, hundreds of Tatmadaw soldiers died while fighting another ethnic insurgency in western Rakhine State.
“If armed ethnic groups launch offensives, this can help to ease the pressure on protesters in cities,” said Padoh Saw Hser Bwe, secretary general of the Karen National Union.
With Tatmadaw’s most notorious brigades now stationed in cities, focused on anti-coup demonstrators rather than ethnic civil war, the military’s killing continues unabated.
On Monday, in Mandalay, Ko Tun Tun Aung, 14, left his home to get a pot of water. A bullet pierced his chest, killing him instantly, according to his relatives. At least seven other people were also shot dead in the same neighborhood that day. Two were rescue teams.
Ko Thet Aung, a 23-year-old front quarterback, is from the same neighborhood in Mandalay where the murders took place. For three weeks, he commanded barricades and dodged gunfire.
“The more they repress, the more we are motivated to fight back,” he said. “We are from Generation Z, but I would call us Gen-P – Generation Protection. I will die protecting my country on the front lines. “