Weeks after Myanmar’s military junta announced a nationwide conscription, two young women from a remote area of the Southeast Asian country headed into the jungle and took up arms against the junta.
For two men in their 30s in Myanmar’s two largest cities, the threat of conscription in February prompted them to change their lives and flee to neighboring Thailand.
The four young men’s choice to rebel or flee offers a glimpse into Myanmar’s unrest, where growing military resistance poses the junta’s biggest challenge since it seized power in a 2021 coup.
To enforce a 2010 law, the junta said in February that all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 must serve two years, while specialists such as doctors under 45 must serve three years.
The junta says this means 14 million people, or 27% of Myanmar’s population, are subject to conscription, and calls for about 60,000 people to enlist each year. Estimates of the number of armed forces, rebel groups or those trying to avoid conscription are currently unavailable.
The government is responding to a rebel offensive launched in October that has emerged as the most significant threat to the regime since the coup that ousted the civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
“I’ve made my choice”
“After the conscription law was enacted, all young people had to make a decision,” said one of the 18-year-old computer science students who left Myanmar’s Mon state to join the armed forces without telling her mother. Karen National Union rebel group.
“I’m not afraid of fighting,” she said. “I’ve made my choice.”
In Bangkok, a 32-year-old man who fled Mandalay said: “The other day I was working and with my family. All of a sudden, I’m here.”
All four requested anonymity, citing security concerns as the first batch of recruits enter training and local authorities issue notices to those who qualify.
Pro-government social media channels showed young men entering military training facilities, sometimes flanked by junta supporters holding flowers.
But months of relentless fighting have reduced most military battalions to half their recommended strength, forcing the junta to enforce conscription laws.
Richard Horsey, Crisis Group’s senior adviser on Myanmar, said the disruption “is having a serious negative impact on the economy.” But, he said, “I’m not sure this will affect the regime’s recruitment plans because their target recruitment numbers are relatively small.”
“Young people have no future”
Tun Myint, a political science professor at Carleton College in Minnesota and an expert on Myanmar, said successive crises since the 1960s have led to an exodus of people, especially educated people.
“Those who are or are about to become doctors, professors, engineers, etc. are now abandoning the country,” he said. “Young people have no future.”
For years, a 21-year-old woman from the Bago region in central Myanmar dreamed of taking language courses and becoming a tour guide. The double blow of the coup and the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to work as a shop assistant.
A few weeks ago, she joined the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, whose founder was a poet turned militia leader.
“When the law was announced, my mother told me to join the revolutionary forces and not be taken away by the junta troops,” she told Reuters at the training camp.
The man from Mandalay, who trained as an engineer and raised $2,000 by selling household items to move to the Thai capital, now feels lonely.
“We no longer have goals for our future or our careers,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to survive every day.”
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