Read RFA coverage of this story in Burmese.
Two brothers fighting on opposite sides of Myanmar’s civil war were reunited on the battlefield when one — a junta soldier — was captured by rebels with the other.
Taik Maung, 30, hadn’t seen his 38-year-old brother Thein Htay Aung since he was drafted into the military 18 years ago.
“I felt happy and sad at the same time, to see my elder brother like this,” said Taik Muang, a fighter with the rebel paramilitary group Danu People’s Liberation Front, or DPLF. “But I didn’t shed a tear.”
It’s a bittersweet tale from the front lines of Myanmar’s four-year conflict that erupted when the military overthrew the civilian government in a February 2021 coup. Ever since, ethnic armies and paramilitary groups made up of ordinary citizens like Taik Maung have been battling — and mostly pushing back — junta forces across the country.
The elder brother was captured on Feb. 4 after DPLF fighters had overrun junta positions in the village of Tawng Hkam, in Shan state’s Nawnghkio township, to the northeast.
“When the soldiers captured him, they asked me if he was my brother,” he told RFA Burmese. “He said he was from Taung Hla village,” Taik Maung’s hometown.
“When he saw me, he immediately asked about the health of our mother,” the younger brother said. “I showed him a photo of her on my phone.”
‘Just shoot’
At the time of his capture, Thein Htay Aung was serving as a Lt. Sergeant in the military’s 902nd Artillery Battalion, based in Tawng Hkam.
According to Taik Maung — the youngest of six siblings — his older brother had “suffered from mental illness,” but nonetheless was forcibly conscripted in 2007 by the then-ruling military junta under Senior Gen. Than Shwe.
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After three to four years of no contact, Thein Htay Aung reached out to their mother, “telling her about his battalion in the Myanmar regime,” Taik Maung said.
And while Thein Htay Aung was finally communicating with his family, the two brothers hadn’t been able to meet meet again — until this month.
Taik Maung and his family were originally from Sagaing region’s Butalin township, but they moved to Nawnghkio, a township some 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Mandalay which is currently under the control of another rebel group, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA.
They fled the area last year when the military launched airstrikes on the town.
As a displaced civilian, Taik Maung said he was even more at risk than other young men of being conscripted by the junta, following its enactment of a military draft last year.
Rather than wait for recruiters to find him, Taik Maung decided to join the DPLF as a form of resistance and out of “consideration for the common people.”
He said he knew there was a chance that he could end up fighting against his sibling, but his mother advised him to “never consider brotherhood at the frontline — just shoot."
Desperate conditions
Thein Htay Aung and other prisoners of war have reported desperate conditions in Myanmar’s military, suggesting that junta soldiers will be increasingly ready to surrender, DPLF officer Tun Naing told RFA.
“According to the prisoners of war, they were forced to consume drugs before they were made to carry out offensives,” he said.
“When they ran out of food at the frontline and it was dropped by planes, they had to rush to collect it,” he said. “But no matter what, most of the rations went to the officers, so they never have enough to eat.”
Attempts by RFA to contact Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun, a spokesperson for the junta, for comment went unanswered by the time of publishing.
Taik Maung said that his brother likely decided to surrender because in addition to the lack of food and other hardships, the junta had stopped paying his regular salary, leaving him with a monthly stipend for small expenses.
Thein Htay Aung and the other prisoners of war are now in need of medical treatment for malnutrition and fatigue, he said, although on the frontlines, access to healthcare is limited.
In the meantime, Taik Maung said that he plans to continue fighting with the DPLF until “the junta is uprooted.”
“We want people to live well and peacefully, and we want a swift end to this political crisis,” he said.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.