Myanmar’s Rebels See Possibility of Victory

Asia Pacific|A Ragtag Resistance Sees the Tide Turning successful a Forgotten War

The nighttime Ma Suu Kyi thought she would dice of her wounds connected the beforehand lines of a forgotten war, a crescent satellite hung overhead. A pendant of the Virgin Mary dangled astir her neck. Maybe those augurs saved her. Or maybe, she said, it was not yet clip for her to die.

“When I joined the revolution, I knew my chances of surviving were 50-50,” Ms. Suu Kyi, 21, said of her determination to enlist arsenic a rebel soldier, warring to overthrow the junta that returned Myanmar to subject dictatorship 3 years ago. “I’m an mean girl, an mean young person. I judge successful national ideology and quality rights.”

Ms. Suu Kyi said the words “federal democracy” successful English. There are nary casual words for the conception successful Burmese.

Since the junta successful Myanmar staged its coup successful February 2021, ending a little play of antiauthoritarian betterment and grooming its guns erstwhile again connected peaceful protesters, overmuch of the state has turned against the military. A caller generation, which came of property during the civilian medication of the Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has taken to arms, joining rebels who person opposed subject dictatorship for decades.

The world’s regard has remained focused connected different conflicts connected different continents — to the consternation of galore successful Myanmar who wonderment wherefore the chaos and decease present brings small planetary outcry. Now, aft 3 years of hopeless resistance, the conflict lines are changing fast. The rebels person overrun scores of subject bases and taken implicit dozens of towns. The tempo of triumph has quickened successful caller days, and anti-junta forces present assertion to power much than fractional of Myanmar’s territory, from lowland jungles to the foothills of the Himalayas.

Much of the fighting’s bushed seems syncopated to that of different century: trenches dug into unrelenting mud, the descent of flip-flops down monsoon-soaked hills, the clatter of homemade AK-style battle rifles successful dusty towns. The junta’s aggregate rocket launchers and fighter jets whitethorn bring a modern interaction to the killing, arsenic does the hovering of the resistance’s conflict drones. But this conflict, with its hand-to-hand combat and profusion of onshore mines, feels similar a throwback to the benignant of civilian warfare that was documented successful achromatic and white.