Life and death on the front lines of fighting in Myanmar

Demoso, Eastern Myanmar – The rebel commander studies a chicken bone in a search for clues as to the fate of his coming attack against the Myanmar military.

Scraggly bearded Reh Du, 27, frowns. The signs from the bone are mixed.

Nevertheless, his underlying confidence in the plan of attack against Myanmar’s military in the hills of eastern Kayah state is steadfast.

“I believe we will win,” the shrapnel-scarred fighter says after his act of divination – a practice these ethnic Karenni fighters embrace in uncertain times.

“Today or tomorrow,” he says.

Around Reh Du and his prophecy ritual, villagers in the conflict-torn township of Demoso celebrate Karenni new year, dancing under totem poles to the beat of traditional drums and the distant thunder of artillery shells.

Like the other ethnic minorities of Myanmar’s borderlands, the Karenni have fought against persecution by the military for decades in Kayah state, which is located between Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw and the border with Thailand to the east.

Kayah has also witnessed one of the most coordinated rebellions in the country since Myanmar’s military seized power from an elected government in February 2021.

The brutality of the crackdown on those protesting peacefully against the military’s power grab evoked outrage, which has since boiled into a nationwide revolt.

Ethnic armed groups, such as the Karenni, have provided military training to everyday protesters who have risen against the military under the banner of the People’s Defence Force (PDF).

A striking feature of the uprising has been the range of people leaving from Myanmar’s cities – baristas, fitness instructors, marketing managers – to take part in combat training in the jungle.

As a result, the military government has lost control of most of Kayah, the smallest of Myanmar’s seven states, along with western border areas and even swaths of the military’s traditional recruiting grounds in the Magway and Sagaing regions.

Sporting a fresh tattoo of a Kalashnikov assault rifle on his forearm, ethnic fighter Reh Du is a leading figure in the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) – an ethnic armed group.

Interviewed earlier this year, Reh Du tells Al Jazeera he fights to protect Karenni identity and to maintain the independence of their way of life free from domination by Myanmar’s military and the authorities of the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group.

He spent eight years in a refugee camp, he says, before being jailed under the previous administration of Noble laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for protesting against the construction of a statute of her father and founder of the military, Aung San, in Kayah’s capital Loikaw.

Now Aung San Suu Kyi is herself detained by the military, recently being placed under house arrest and her 33-year jail term on corruption charges reduced by six years.

Reh Du told of worrying that if Aung San Suu Kyi was released, she might call off the uprising and the PDF’s armed operations.

“In Myanmar, the cult of personality is very strong,” he says. “If she says stop, they will stop.”

He also sees a difference in the commitment of fighters with financial means and other options in life compared with those who were grass-roots recruits to the struggle.

Urban recruits to the resistance often drop out, Reh Du says, leaving combat after a time to pursue other paths, such as educational and employment opportunities.

“Not only are rich people afraid to die, but our determination is not the same,” he says, telling how working-class Karenni people drive the revolution in Kayah state.

He has lost close friends in battle and he no longer sees his family because he believes the sight of their poverty will weaken his resolve to continue with the armed struggle.

“If you are a revolutionary, you cannot go back home,” he continues, explaining to Al Jazeera how being a fighter had required sacrifice in every aspect of life.

“You will see your family have nothing and you will never get strong. If you are fighting you must stay strong,” he says.

Formed in response to the Myanmar military’s 2021 coup, the KNDF has about 8,000 fighters, though only about one-third are armed, with many of the rifles sourced from other ethnic armed groups in northern Myanmar.

The groups field more serious weaponry as well at times, including at least one heavy machine gun, which Al Jazeera saw fastened to a truck.

The KNDF often fights alongside the Karenni Army (KA), which was formed in the 1950s, and more recently, PDF fighters.

A collection of local forces formed since the coup, PDF fighters mostly come under the command of the National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel administration of elected politicians removed by the military in 2021 and who want Myanmar to be a federal democracy one day.

To gain support from the more powerful ethnic armed groups, the NUG is working to overcome the mistrust sown by decades of broken promises by Myanmar’s majority ethnic Bamar-dominated administrations regarding self-determination for the country’s minority ethnicities.

The Karenni resistance is now focused on flushing out the military’s presence from their areas and establishing a federal state in a future Myanmar.

Their task is formidable.

They face a military equipped with fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and drones, mostly imported from Russia and China. The only way to overcome such a technological gap is bravery, Reh Du says.

Charging at the enemy, he says.

“If we can push within 50 to 100 metres, they never shoot the big mortars or use jets,” he explains.

KNDF fighter Aung Kyaw Minn, whose aspiration to attend university was put on hold by the turmoil in Kayah, is an example of that doctrine.

The 20-year-old former online gamer who counts Avatar and Transformers among his favourite movies, told how he barely survived a mortar shell that ripped through his stomach last year.

“If my battalion or commander give me any situation or instruction, I will do it, if I can,” he says.

“I’m trying my best,” he said of his soldiering.

“I hope it’s helpful for my Karenni state and my country.”

Young Karenni Army (KA) fighters admit to feeling nervous when speaking with Al Jazeera. Some are on operations that will be their first taste of battle.

Sheltering in a dried-out ravine after being spotted by a surveillance drone and then bombarded with shells, the KA fighters sip energy drinks from cans, smoke Burmese cheroot cigars and play pop music from their phones. Now and then, the chop of a military helicopter snaps them out of their malaise as they wait for the operation to start.

The young fighters have time to tell Al Jazeera how their families were languishing in camps for Myanmar’s internally displaced. They tell how only a trickle of humanitarian aid had reached the displaced, about 100,000 in the region according to United Nations estimates, which is more than a third of the total population of Kayah state.

About 1.6 million people have been displaced nationwide since the coup.

After passing a gorge strewn with crimson leaves, KA commander Khu Oo Rey crosses paths with two refugee mothers clutching their babies on a jungle trail. The muffled cries of scared children creep out of the dark as their mothers negotiate slippery rocks and creeks. At the tail-end of the dry season, flames from forest fires lick either side of the trail, which, in the coming weeks, will turn to sludge in the heavy rains.

Some civilians seeking to escape the violence take their chances on the gruelling hike towards Thailand and which takes days – or weeks if there are young children, disabled or elderly relatives. The route crosses mountains and traverses thick jungle.

“It would be easier if the Bamar army left them alone to plant rice,” Khu Oo Rey says of the displaced villagers.

“Now they may be walking into hunger,” he adds.

Residents who remain in Kayah have built and removed their villages using bamboo and tarpaulin over and over since the coup, each time moving further away from the fighting and the front lines.

Their homes move with the fighters around Kayah’s rebel-held areas and the makeshift combat-hardened communities have cafes, shops and hairdressers. Everyday life is overseen by a Karenni resistance-led council with its own growing health, education and legal systems.

But such places are always in the crosshairs of Myanmar’s military. Artillery shells can light the night sky like firebugs and residents have learned to tell the difference between thunder and incoming shells and their explosions.

As a fighter jet roars overhead, customers who queue at a rudimentary hair salon in the Karenni camp rush outside to look skywards.

Without running water, a resistance fighter refills a black plastic tub so that his stylist wife can wash hair. The owner, Caroline, 29, almost abandoned her trade when she fled fighting with the military in May 2021.

“But after a while, I needed to do something,” she tells Al Jazeera.

“I’d like to go back home, but I don’t even know if my house is still there.”

Between ochre hills dappled with pagodas and churches, down a dirt lane to a secluded police station in Southern Shan state – approximately 40 kilometres (some 25 miles) from Demoso – about 15 prisoners sing and chop wood as police officers kick around a rattan ball nearby.

The station is run by the Karenni State Police, a resistance-aligned force made up of officers who defected from military-controlled forces.

Karenni officials say the prisoners have been detained for various crimes: drug offences, spying or, in one case, alleged rape. Their guilt, innocence and verdicts are decided by Karenni community leaders acting as magistrates who use a mix of customary law and the Myanmar penal code.

Some of the prisoners – who gather on the floor of their large cell and chant their loyalty to the public and gratitude for donated food of rice and pickled mango curry  – are unsure about the length of their sentences.

One inmate, who was arrested in February for alleged involvement in the construction of a telecommunication network for the military, is serving “five or six months”, a police officer says, adding that the prisoners could call their families by phone once a week.

A 56-year-old prisoner tells Al Jazeera that he was being looked after at the prison.

“I’m happy to stay here, but I’m not sure how my family would feel about that,” he says.

A room next to the male prisoners has been designated for female prisoners. It is empty.

On the return journey to Demoso, some 20 women can be seen gathering to pray underneath the sagging roof of a bombed-out church. No priest is present.

Blast holes run across the house of worship and all the windows are broken.

Right beside the church, a large hole five or six metres deeper than a shallow grave indicates where a bomb dropped by a military aircraft had landed.

Many of the young residents in Demoso have lost lives and limbs while fighting to liberate this area.

With long, clipped-up hair and a handsome, big smile, one resident sips on rice wine as he watches a shaky phone video of himself after he was wounded in action.

The video is of KNDF fighter Philip Lin Maung in the back of a truck; his left arm is pulverised, with the bone protruding, and what remains of his left leg is mangled.

“When I was hit, my eyes filled with dust,” the 21-year-old says.

“I thought, if I don’t die now, when will I?”

He spent four months in a hospital run by resistance health workers in the jungle.

“I had decided that if I join the battle, this may happen someday,” Philip Lin Maung tells Al Jazeera.

“I had built the strength to get ready for it,” he adds.

Now, he jokes, he was free of laborious farm work because of his life-changing injuries.

“That released the stress a bit,” he says, of no longer being able to do heavy work.

“I water the plants, not much more. I’ve always liked to drive, and I can still do that,” he continues.

Four days after the Karenni new year, a rebel offensive had begun.

A contingent of KA and KNDF fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, M16s and AK-47 assault rifles descended on Daw Nyay Khu village. They were backed up by drone pilots from the PDF who sheltered under a bridge from Myanmar military air attacks while releasing bombs on military positions around the village.

Anticipating the rebel’s assault, the military had deserted Daw Nyay Khu and taken up positions in the surrounding hills.

About 300 rebels were pitted against roughly 200 troops in the battle with the military that lasted days, recounts KNDF fighter Min Min Than.

“They’re not good at fighting,” the 28-year-old former truck driver says of the military forces who fought at Daw Nyay Khu.

“Most of them were reinforcements from eastern Shan. They don’t know the land,” he says.

But even the military’s reinforcements can still inflict damage on the rebels.

Min Min Than saw one comrade shot in the stomach, another in the ear. One survived a sniper’s bullet to the head, he said. The wounded were evacuated and taken to a jungle hospital.

Despite military air attacks, the Karenni successfully advanced in three lines and the troops retreated to a base on the other side of a mountain, leaving land mines behind them as they withdrew.

The military also left a stockpile of guns and ammunition behind, along with some of their dead, the bodies strewn among rocks and jungle trails.

The total number of military personnel killed was unclear, perhaps more than a dozen, the Karenni fighters estimated.

The rebels suffered just one casualty: KA fighter Sabio Thay Reh. The 22-year-old was later buried in a Catholic ceremony where holy water was sprinkled on his body and a volley ball, spicy snacks and his phone were placed in the grave as hymns rang out across the nearby hills.

The slain fighter’s comrades also placed a letter in his coffin officially relieving him of his duties for the KA, which he had joined in November 2021.

“Why did you leave me?” a friend of the slain fighter cried, burying his face into his hands as he walked towards the nearby forest.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me. We will meet again.”

The slain fighter’s father, Phe Buu, 68, and mother Htai Mo, 58, had fled their village in December 2021, days after their neighbour was killed by the military along with at least 34 other civilians.

Those killed included women and children, and their bodies were burned.

Phe Buu recalls his late son’s hopes of working overseas one day – to provide for the family – once the struggle against the military was won.

He saw his son for the last time a week before he was killed, he says.

“He always says goodbye when he leaves, but this time he didn’t even say goodbye because his friends called him straight to battle,” Phe Buu says of his late son.

Nearby, the young man’s mother, Htai Mo, sits in silence.