Why I left the US Deep South to fight in Myanmar’s brutal civil war
Nine months ago, Azad said goodbye to his family and travelled 8,000 miles across the globe, where he swapped America’s rural south for a mountainous stronghold of poets, doctors, tattoo artists and engineers resisting south-east Asia’s most brutal and well-resourced military.
The 24-year-old US citizen, who speaks with an American accent and a revolutionary fervour, went to northern Myanmar to join the anti-regime groups gaining ground in a protracted civil war, inspired by the courage of those “who never imagined themselves holding a gun”.
And although he does not draw the comparison himself, unlike in Ukraine, this underdog movement of disparate forces increasingly appears to have a hope of winning.
“It’s the story of a people who are rising up and fighting for dignity, and who, at the end of the day, just want to go home and live their normal life,” Azad, whose name is a pseudonym, told The Telegraph, as he sipped coffee at his base in Chin state while chickens clucked in the background.
“I’m not here because I’m motivated to go to war, I’m not here because I’m a person looking for a conflict or an adventure tourist,” Azad added. “[Mine] is very specifically a solidarity which says, not that I’m here to help you with your fight, but it’s my fight also. These fights we’re fighting all around the world, for democracy, for freedom, for dignity, are very much interconnected.”
Azad is one of a small but growing number of foreigners sneaking into Myanmar to join resistance groups battling to overthrow the military – which plunged the south-east Asian country into chaos when it launched a coup in February 2021, before ruthlessly cracking down on peaceful dissenters. The UN estimates that at least 5,350 civilians have since been killed and 3.3 million people displaced.
Now, as the military lashes out after a year of unexpected losses, foreigners have for the first time formed a small unit: the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front (AIF).
“It’s strategically an important time [to launch],” said Azad, a co-founder of the AIF. “There’s a good alignment that didn’t exist before, of both revolutionary victories… and the logistic ability for people from the outside to come in. Until now, this wasn’t super feasible at scale.”
Azad added that he has no formal military training, but fought for four years alongside Kurdish forces in Syria.
After two months back in the US visiting family, he travelled to Chin state in north-west Myanmar in February, where he has been fighting on the front lines and running combat courses, particularly in sniper skills.
While this is not the first time that foreigners have fought in Myanmar, Azad said he wanted to establish the AIF to help more people with an “internationalist mindset” but without direct connections to join.
Unlike Ukraine or Syria, there has not been a coordinated effort to recruit foreigners in Myanmar and their numbers remain small.
Azad is cagey about sharing updated figures, nor would he reveal how many people have been in touch to join the effort; he would only say that a fundraising effort launched on Thursday raised $1,000 (£785) within 24 hours.
Before the AIF began, Nikkei Asia reported that about a dozen foreigners were fighting in Myanmar, including a former British army infantryman in his 30s.
“The political dynamics in Ukraine are really different,” he said, comparing the challenges of the two conflicts. “Here in Myanmar, the people who are fighting, it is the people. But in Ukraine, on some level you can say the people, but largely it’s also the Ukrainian state.
“I support the Ukrainian defence, it’s just a fight I don’t see myself attaching too, even though I have friends and comrades who are there.”
Myanmar, known as Burma until 1989, has struggled with decades of repressive military rule, civil war and poor governance since it became independent of the British in 1948.
But the latest conflict comes after the junta removed the hugely popular leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest following mass protests.
Her release in 2010 signalled a gradual transition to democracy and her party won the first openly contested election in 25 years in 2015.
But within six years, the period of power-sharing between the military and civilians had crumbled.
Now, the latest complicated, protracted civil war is entering a critical new phase, with the junta lashing out as it seeks to claw back lost territory.
David Eubank, the leader of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a humanitarian relief organisation, said: “It’s the heaviest fighting since World War Two, and by far the highest we’ve seen in 31 years of serving here – the Burma military is coming at us with a speed and a force we’ve never seen.”
Mr Eubank added that the junta – supported by jet fighters, attack helicopters and missile systems from Russia, China and North Korea – is “unleashing a systematic killing and destruction of their own people, civilians, hospitals, schools, churches, monasteries”.
He told The Telegraph: “We’ve seen this before episodically, but now we’re seeing it systematically.”.
According to Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, a group monitoring war crimes, the military launched 820 air strikes between May and August – killing 455 people, including children and pregnant women – with more aerial strikes in August than any other month since the coup.
The junta is also taking a leaf out of the rebels’ playbook and ramping up its use of drones, backed by supplies and training from Russia.
Analysis from ACLED, a non-profit that collects data in conflict zones, shows the military launched 15 drone strikes in 2022, 24 in 2023 – and 138 so far this year.
“That’s the bad news,” Mr Eubank said. “The good news is that there’s a unity we’ve never seen before, which cuts across social, political, economic, tribal, racial, religious and ideological lines.”
This unity has helped the disparate network of anti-junta forces – from decades old ethnic armed organisations, to the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) formed since the coup – grow stronger and gain ground, especially since a coalition of groups launched an unexpectedly successful insurgency called Operation 1027 last October.
“They’re slowly winning,” said Mr Eubank, adding that anti-regime forces now control roughly two thirds of land.
Although this does not include any major cities or industry, the recent fall of the north-eastern town Lashio was symbolic; it was the first seizure of a regional military command in Myanmar’s history.
Now, once fanciful conversations about assaults on Mandalay – the country’s second largest city and considered a “gateway to the capital” – seem feasible.
Richard Horsey, a Myanmar analyst at Crisis Group, said: “Mandalay is an exceptionally difficult target for anti-regime forces to try and capture… but the fact it is being talked about as a potential target for another rebel attack is a an indication of just how much the conflict landscape has shifted against the regime.”
He added: “Right now, things don’t look very good for the Myanmar military. The last 12 months have been a continuous, steady slide of one embarrassing defeat after another, and the defeats are getting bigger.”
He said that there are growing signs of low morale and dissent inside the military as these losses mount – not only among the rank and file, including those forcibly conscripted since April, but also among top commanders.
“Certainly the churn in the top ranks, and in the regime’s cabinet as well, has been absolutely unprecedented. That can’t be helpful,” said Mr Horsey.
“Also, the fact that senior military commanders have been prosecuted for insubordination, dereliction of duty, failure to carry out orders… that’s very new.
He added: “It’s one of the symptoms of the rot at the heart of the military, which has led it from this institution that was seen as being fearsome and impossible to dislodge, to one which looks like it’s getting pretty ropey. It’s not only about military capability, it’s also about loyalty.”
Still, the junta is unlikely to fall in the near future, especially because of China – which Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military leader, visited last week for the first time since the coup.
Although the superpower did not initially step in to stop Operation 1027, Beijing has since been alarmed at the rapid degeneration of the military.
It still considers it to be the best guarantor of stability, and reportedly does not want its neighbour to end up controlled by the Western-backed parallel National Unity Government.
“China’s shifting political position vis à vis Myanmar over the last few months is perhaps more important than anything else, and will shape how the trajectory evolves from here,” said Mr Horsey.
“It’s not that China is wholeheartedly backing the regime… but if the regime falls, they’re worried about what could happen next.”
Against this backdrop, foreign fighters may offer a morale boost, but are unlikely to tilt the odds, and could even prove a hindrance because of language barriers or inexperience.
“It’s still relatively small numbers of people. This isn’t an international brigade, this isn’t the Spanish Civil War, this isn’t even Ukraine,” said Mr Horsey.
“And if you’re a new PDF [fighter], you don’t necessarily need an American or European to teach you to use a gun. There are plenty of people in Myanmar who know that.”
Others are more circumspect, including Mr Eubank’s FBR, which has included foreign and local volunteers since the 1990s.
Although its aim is to provide healthcare and aid to displaced communities, it has acknowledged that its members sometimes carry weapons for self-defence.
“We’re grateful for anyone that comes and helps,” Mr Eubank said. “For those who feel they should join the armed resistance and fight the dictators, I think that’s a personal decision, and it’s obviously a very dangerous and risky one… It’s not what we do.”
In Chin state, Azad has no intention of leaving soon, and although he says his enemies are far more cruel than his previous opponents in Syria, he is convinced the rebels will eventually come out on top.
“[This is] an enemy that is in every way sadistic and inhuman and, on a daily basis, commits tragedies,” he said.
“But it’s almost unbelievable, the degree to which the Burmese army is bad… in my experience, I have yet to see them hit what they’re aiming at.”
Azad added: “Even three years ago [the junta] was assumed to be one of the most powerful militaries in south-east Asia. The fact is that this military giant is now being defeated by, essentially, a people’s army of different groups.
“Authoritarianism, dictatorships can be defeated, as long as people are willing to resist.
“That’s a very big inspiration for me personally… Hopefully by this time next year, we’ll be drinking tea in Yangon.”
