Living ‘day-by-day’ in Myanmar’s rebel camps
An on-the-ground report on the all-in fight to build an enduring democracy in Myanmar.
Feb. 26, 2025
Part of a three-story series on the fight for and rebuilding of Myanmar’s Kayah state following the 2021 coup. Read Part 2 and Part 3. Take a deeper dive with Multimedia.
DEMOSO, Myanmar
The empty two-story homes, steepled churches and open-air markets give a hint of the community that Demoso once was. After four years of fighting here between Myanmar’s military junta and local militia groups, the heart of Kayah state is now being reclaimed by nature. Signs warn of landmines planted by the retreating military but now buried by the growing brush.
The people themselves have moved west, out of artillery range. Dozens of shops of green tarp and bamboo line one of the few paved roads in the township. From it, rutted paths of dirt, mud and stone spread out into Kayah’s forests where rebel bases and camps for internally displaced people form an epicenter of revolution only about 140 miles by road from the Myanmar capital and military stronghold of Naypyidaw.
Myanmar’s short-lived experiment with democracy ended when its top general, Min Aung Hlaing, seized power four years ago in a coup that ousted a civilian administration. The takeover sparked a brutal civil war with junta troops moving quickly to punish opponents, including by arresting and torturing peaceful protesters.
In Kayah, a mix of insurgents led by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Forces, or KNDF – an assortment of teachers, farmers and at least one hot dog salesman – have successfully fought for control of large sections of countryside.
In the space created by the retreating military, insurgents are trying to create a new state government to meet the needs of the residents here, even as they fight military troops just a few miles to the north in shifting front lines.
RFA recently spent 17 days in Kayah state, which sits along Myanmar’s eastern border with Thailand, to see how the twin efforts of prosecuting the war and building a new administrative state are progressing. During our time there, junta forces had renewed offensives to the north, as rebels scrambled to find dependable stores of ammunition and arms. New agencies created to serve displaced Kayah residents were also struggling with limited resources.
And yet, the residents pushed out of their homes and into the array of improvised communities seemed willing to endure the sacrifices in hopes of living freer lives out from under the military’s heavy hand.
“There has been a lot of suffering,” says Khun Bedu, a former youth activist imprisoned by a previous military regime who has become a leader of an interim government in Kayah. “But there is more tangible hope. Everybody realizes the struggle is important.”
A busy thoroughfare in the war’s shadow
Despite efforts by the military to isolate rebel territories, everything from slippers, to fresh flowers to ice cream (the refrigeration for which is powered by solar panels) is for sale along the main road in Demoso township.
Shop owners, most of whom live in small rooms just to the back, say they can still smuggle goods by military checkpoints by lying about their destination or paying their way through.
The junta regime has shut off the power, but there are internet cafes with Starlink and places to unwind with Tiger beer and Johnnie Walker scotch. It all sits in a valley encircled by lush green hills interspersed with cliffs and rock croppings. The commerce and the serene beauty create a strange sense of normalcy, but there are frequent reminders of war.
At one popular spot, Naw Wah Wah, 47, works non-stop cooking over wood fires in the brewing heat of the day for her customers who’ve come for her fried rice, dried pork and steaming garlic and onion broth, washed down with an endless supply of green tea. She and her family rent the space and do a modest business, she says.
“We don’t earn much, but it’s enough to cover our daily needs.”
Outside 4x4 trucks with rebel soldiers packed in the back beds pass by regularly. Junta troops have gone from here, but they remain at bases scattered around Kayah and southern Shan to the north.
“If they can’t fight on the ground, they use airstrikes,” Naw Wah Wah said, as her 10-year-old daughter served customers and her husband chopped wood for cooking behind her. “That’s why I’m still afraid.”
Like other parts of Myanmar, Kayah is a mix of ethnic groups. The word “Karenni” is a catch-all for the 350,000 or so people who live within its borders.
For decades, rebels here have fought a low-grade insurgency seeking the independence promised to them when the country negotiated an end to British colonial rule. In 2012, a ceasefire was signed, bringing a measure of stability.
The agreement was part of a larger series of democratic reforms rolled out nationwide, which paved the way for the historic 2015 elections, in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a parliamentary majority.
That, of course, fell apart with the fall of the democratic government and the junta takeover.
Today, for the most part, various factions in Kayah have set aside differences to form an alliance against the military regime, joined by pro-democracy militias whose fighters come from outside Kayah. The KNDF itself says it now has more than 8,000 members. More than 400 have been killed in battle, one source said.
Where once Karenni rebels dreamed of independence, now the goal is to build a federal system of government that can accommodate Myanmar’s ethnic groups but allow locals greater autonomy. This would be a first in a country that has been ruled centrally, and by the Bamar ethnicity, since its independence in 1948.
But the path there is steep.
While insurgents now control most of the state, the military holds the regional capital of Loikaw and scattered pockets of territory. The few paved roads remain disputed, increasing traffic on rough back roads originally built to ferry truckloads of teak and other timber to market. Residents say they saw little benefit from the trade, and controlling the resources around them is another motivation to fight.
As the military lost ground, the junta’s air forces targeted IDP camps and nearby schools in an effort to reduce support for the war. Locals joke that when they drive they keep one eye on the road and one eye toward the sky, but the threat is real.
‘3D’ and makeshift drones
The man who is trying to even the score in the skies works in a hidden dirt camp off Demoso’s main road. “3D” emerges from his tent with the disheveled look of a student, which in a sense he is.
He had studied computer science in college, but after the coup he taught himself the intricacies of UAVs, believing even before their utility was shown in the Ukraine-Russia war that they could help less well-equipped forces fight. He now leads the KNDF drone unit.
3D and his team are among the shining examples of the improvisation the militias fighting the junta have relied on. Parts of commercial drones smuggled in through Thailand are cobbled together into versions that can monitor and attack junta military positions.
As 3D showed off his camp, he held a new weapon: a small drone he and his team were modifying to carry RPGs that he called “the kamikaze.”
“We are a lot less supplied compared with the enemy, right? They have an ammunition factory, they have an arms factory, they can get anything they want,” he said. “We have to rely on drones.”
Battalion commanders say the military is now using new drones from China that can evade rebel jammers, helping government soldiers to make small gains in their push effort to retake an important supply road into Loikaw.
When RFA visited, two local villages in southern Shan had to evacuate under artillery fire. Commanders said they were short of ammunition and harassed by the new drones. 3D and his team have been trying to solve how best to jam them. Sometimes it works; sometimes not, he said.
“It’s like a mouse and cat,” 3D said. “We upgrade our system, and then they upgrade their jamming system, and then we upgrade.”
Creating a new government
The fighting and attacks from the air have pushed an estimated 150,000 people from their homes into the hills of Kayah, where the forest canopies offer greater protection. Meeting the needs of these displaced communities is, besides the war itself, the biggest challenge facing rebel leaders.
Last year, Kayah leaders formed the Interim Executive Council to fill the administrative vacuum created by the junta’s retreat. There are departments overseeing home affairs, education, health, human rights and finance, among others.
“When you are a rebel, you are just known as militias or insurgents,” said Khun Bedu, the leader of the IEC. “But when you become the state too, you become legitimate and respected among the people.”
The IEC recently began taxing imports and businesses to raise money to support the people here. The truck that carried us over a bumpy road to Demoso also carried a fertilizer bag stuffed with about 3 million Thai baht, or $88,000, in tax revenue. About 70% of that will be dedicated to the militias fighting the junta, with the reminder split among social service programs.
Maw Ree Re, deputy director of the IEC department that oversees the IDP camps, says after three years of war, it has gotten harder to raise money. With the council only able to handle about 30% of the needs of the IDPs, there is a growing gap between needs and resources.
Like many other Karenni, Maw Ree Re wears a number of hats, all in service of the revolution. She owns a laundromat on Demoso’s main drag that employs IDPs. She also operates a non-profit that among other things sells t-shirts online that in English promote democracy for about $9 each. “To Karenni Federal Democracy,” reads one. She said she’s sold about 1,000 of them.
“We don’t have enough money,” Maw Ree Re said. “There are more people who are hungry than before.”
Leaders at IDP camps that RFA visited said adults have started to take only one meal a day to save more food for their children. The U.N. food agency warned last month that about one-third of Myanmar’s 60 million people will need humanitarian assistance this year.
There are dozens of these camps in Demoso, most of which are buried in the dark hills surrounding the valley. Monsoon rains turn the dirt roads to a sucking mud and create a constant heavy pattern on the green plastic sheets. Shade offers the only relief from the hot sun of summer.
At the Bangkok IDP camp in southern Shan, northwest of the busy maindrag from Demoso, Mu Bawu’s young son Francisco was quietly reading a book in the upstairs of their temporary home when the family heard a jet approaching this September.
Just 12, he had talked about possibly becoming a doctor or a teacher when he grew up. But he wasn’t able to make it to safety before the bomb hit.
“Whenever I hear the plane, my heart races, and I feel like I can’t live,” Mu Bawu, 44, told us. “I am not mindful of my body. I just feel overwhelmed and frightened.”
When RFA visited the camp in November, two months after the attack, it looked as vulnerable as ever. It is close to food and water, however, so villagers are building new homes, bunkers first, beside the detritus of broken bamboo and torn clothes that remain from the strike.
Near them, students learn in classrooms with thin walls that stop about two feet above the ground. The open space allows the kids to scramble down into surrounding trenches should they hear another plane approaching. They giggle through a practice exercise, but one resident told RFA that they are traumatized enough that the sound of a motorbike can send them scurrying for cover.
A deadly attack
Most of the IDPs come from targeted areas in the region, but Kayah has also become a refuge for others from farther away who have voluntarily relocated here.
Tint Za Hein is among the hundreds of new residents from Burmese-majority communities in Myanmar’s interior. Many have arrived in recent months, fleeing conscription the military imposed to replenish its diminishing ranks.
With a tweed touring cap set snugly on his head, Tint Za Hein darts around on the same stretch of road on his motorbike checking on his various enterprises. There are several.
Before the coup, Tint Za Hein’s love of research had led him to journalism and a job at the BBC. But after the elected civilian administration was ousted, he decided he wanted to participate in the resistance, not cover it.
In Kayah, Tint Za Hein founded FederalFM, a radio station that broadcasts music and educational tips like what to do in an airstrike or how to apply first aid. The station also delivers news but it is careful to adhere to the revolutionary narrative. (FederalFM received money from USAID. RFA also is funded by the U.S. government.)
The information FederalFM reports “will be good for the community,” he said.
Tint Za Hein also manages a non-profit that operates two barber shops, two tattoo shops, a beauty salon, a rice mill and a gas station. The money the businesses make “goes to the revolution.”
His mother, he said, had once dreamed he would become a soldier, one of the few opportunities he said were available in the poor town near Mandalay in the center of the country where he grew up.
“But I’m afraid of guns, so I don’t want to be a soldier,” he said. “I cannot do the fighting, so I do for the family. I do for the hospital. I do for the school and humanitarian (aid) and the media.”
As he talks, a team of early 20-somethings mill around him, preparing a broadcast. They live and work from the same undisclosed location. If the junta knew where it was, they would bomb it.
The day before video circulated of an 8-year-old girl who had been killed in a drone attack near Pekon, in southern Shan state. A man was also killed.
Typically upbeat and energetic, Tint Za Hein said he had spent a night in tears, watching the useless effort to revive the young girl. It was a reminder that for all the activity and progress here, junta troops remain a lethal and indiscriminate threat.
The resilience of Kayah residents is readily apparent too. But even as they put their heads down and try to make do, there’s no clear sign how it will all turn out or what’s left to endure.
“It’s still dark,” Tint Za Hein said. “We cannot claim what will be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. We just live, day-by-day.”