Bangkok, Thailand – Aung, a highschool English trainer, figured it was excessive time to go away Myanmar the day the army generals who took over the nation stepped up enforcement of a long-dormant conscription legislation that they had dredged up.
That was on the finish of January, a bit of greater than 11 months after the generals introduced plans for widespread conscription, with a view to address their army’s mounting desertions and battlefield losses to armed teams preventing again in opposition to their 2021 coup.
The primary contingent of 5,000 conscripts into Myanmar’s army began their fundamental coaching one yr in the past this week.
Hundreds of extra conscripts adopted, with the army giving itself even larger powers in January to press-gang any man aged between 18 and 35 or ladies between 18 and 27 into army service. Those that attempt to evade the draft withstand 5 years in jail.
At that time, 29-year-old Aung made the choice to flee Myanmar.
“I made a decision I need to go away…as quickly as doable,” he advised Al Jazeera.
That very day, he tossed some garments, remedy and some of his favorite books right into a backpack and caught the subsequent bus heading east out of Yangon, Myanmar’s sprawling business capital.
Dozens of army checkpoints, a number of bribes to troopers and three nerve-racking days later, he was standing on the muddy banks of the Moei River, the place, on a rickety wooden boat organized by native smugglers, he crossed over into Thailand.
A yr into Myanmar army’s conscription drive, 1000’s of younger women and men have performed a lot the identical, both heading for rebel-held borderlands out of the army regime’s attain or leaving Myanmar behind altogether.
Like Aung, they’re refusing the order to struggle for army rulers accused by the United Nations and numerous human rights teams of waging a brutal marketing campaign to cement their rule, by indiscriminately attacking civilian populations throughout Myanmar and dragging the nation right into a bloody civil warfare endlessly.
“They’re destroying the entire nation, they’re killing our folks, our civilians. I don’t wish to be a part of the killers. That’s why I don’t wish to enter the army and I don’t wish to obey the conscription legislation,” Aung advised Al Jazeera lately from a secure home close to the Thai-Myanmar border.
‘They don’t wish to serve … like slaves’
The army has not launched official conscription figures.
Having referred to as up the eleventh contingent of conscripts in March, the Myanmar army could also be near hitting its goal of drafting 60,000 new troopers within the first yr of the programme, analysts inform Al Jazeera.
Analysts mentioned the recruits can be welcome aid for the regime’s battalion commanders throughout the nation, who’ve fallen effectively wanting manning their models to full power after 4 years of preventing a civil warfare that’s estimated to have killed tens of 1000’s on all sides.
Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the Worldwide Disaster Group, mentioned new conscripts are getting tougher and tougher to spherical up.
Whereas some answered the draft willingly within the first few months of it coming into pressure final yr, that has modified.
“Over time, the authorities have needed to resort to ever extra draconian measures to get conscripts, together with abducting younger males from bus stops and different public locations,” Horsey mentioned.
“Native officers have been extorting cash from potential conscripts with a view to keep away from the draft. Some officers have been killed once they entered communities making an attempt to compile draft lists or implement conscription orders,” he mentioned.
And as a substitute of being posted to protect obligation round army bases or different posts behind the entrance traces as first supposed, most of the draftees are mentioned to be getting a few of the riskiest battlefield assignments.
“There are a lot of experiences of conscripts being given essentially the most troublesome and harmful duties that extra skilled troopers are reluctant to do, equivalent to being airdropped behind enemy traces. They’re unsurprisingly failing at these duties – both being killed, defecting or fleeing if they’ve the prospect,” Horsey mentioned.
The conscripts are additionally being rushed into battle with far much less coaching than the troopers they’re becoming a member of or changing, in some instances as little as three months, and handled extra like cannon fodder than fighters, mentioned Kyaw Htet Aung, who heads the battle, peace and safety analysis program at Myanmar’s Institute for Technique and Coverage, an impartial assume tank.
“For instance, once they [the military] enter the brand new … space, firstly they only [send in] these sorts of conscripted individuals as the primary troops, after which the precise troopers might be in a while, [as] the second line,” he mentioned.
‘Human shields’
Ko Ko, 24, who fled Myanmar to evade conscription in March final yr, solely weeks after the draft was introduced, advised a narrative that echoes Kyaw Htet Aung.
“Within the battlefield, they use the [conscripts] like human shields – to step on bombs, to dismantle bombs, one thing like that,” he advised Al Jazeera from northern Thailand.
“That’s why nobody needs to go to the army; they don’t wish to serve … like slaves,” he mentioned.
Ko Ko says his mother and father paid a household buddy, with a excessive place within the regime’s immigration bureau, about $300 to rearrange for him to cross by way of the immigration counter at Yangon Worldwide Airport with out getting stopped in order that he might go away the nation and keep away from the army draft.
A buddy was not so lucky, Ko Ko mentioned.
Somewhat than serve within the army after receiving his draft papers, he took his personal life, Ko Ko mentioned.
Regardless of the obligatory call-up, analysts say the draft has failed to show the tide in a grinding civil warfare that has principally seen a string of losses for the army.
In December, months into the conscription of 1000’s of recruits, the army misplaced one other regional command base to insurgent forces, its second because the coup in 2021, in Rakhine state.
By some estimates, the army could solely be in full management of lower than 1 / 4 of the nation, although it nonetheless has a agency grip on main cities equivalent to Yangon, Mandalay and the capital Naypyidaw.
The conscription drive has given some aid to diminished battalions, boosted morale amongst officers, and allowed for some defensive battlefield operations.
“However it’s actually not a silver bullet for a army that’s experiencing historic weak point,” the Disaster Group’s Horsey mentioned.
Combating to a standstill with recruits
Even with 1000’s of latest troops, Kyaw Htet Aung says, the army has managed to launch only some new offensives or counteroffensives to retake misplaced floor.
Primarily, the regime continues to depend on long-range artillery and air assaults for many of its offensive preventing operations. At most, he provides, the draft has helped the army minimise losses.
Which may be the regime’s purpose, he added: Use drafted troopers to assist maintain as a lot floor as doable and play for time whereas the generals attempt to finish the civil warfare on the negotiating desk, with assist from China, their predominant backer.
“I believe this [conscription] legislation has turn into a part of that technique,” he mentioned.
The armed teams arrayed in opposition to the army referred to as for a truce following the devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar on March 28, killing greater than 3,600 folks. The army at first ignored the decision for a ceasefire, finishing up air raids close to the epicentre round Sagaing metropolis, however later mentioned it might comply.
Either side has since accused the opposite of violating the settlement.
Latest native information experiences say one of many armed teams, the Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military (MNDAA), can be turning over Lashio, the biggest metropolis in northern Shan State, to the Myanmar army after coming beneath strain from China.
The MNDAA seized the city, residence to the army’s northeastern command base, final yr in what was a serious blow to the regime.
Within the relative security of a safehouse in Thailand’s far west, Aung continues his work as a trainer, instructing college students again in Myanmar over a spotty web connection for a parallel faculty system arrange by teams against the army.
Having crossed the border illegally, he nonetheless lives in concern of being arrested by Thai authorities and despatched again to Myanmar – and immediately, he believes, into the army service he fled to keep away from.
“I [have] heard there are various people who find themselves deported again to Myanmar, are detained and arrested and despatched to the army,” he mentioned.
“If I’m pressured again to Myanmar, it’s very, very clear that I can be [treated] like that, and I don’t wish to be.”
