On a busy strip in eastern Myanmar, restaurants with bomb shelters serve sizzling plates of beef washed down with Belgian beer and French wine. Teenagers mingle in snooker halls, women relax in beauty salons and revolutionaries get inked in tattoo parlours.
From dawn, steaming bowls of noodle soup are devoured in teashops and, come dusk, shaky bass echoes from a karaoke club. But unlike the country’s heartland, this settlement has one notable absence: military rule.
The Myanmar junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, has lost most of Kayah state and some of the southern area of Shan state to an anti-coup resistance. Kayah, the country’s smallest state which runs along the border with Thailand, is covered with verdant hillsides, lush forests and thick jungle, split by the Salween river.
No clear line marks where military rule begins, but the regime still dominates the major cities and a vast area, covering the coastline to the central plains
Though struggling with the hardships of war, residents of Kayah state are freed from soldiers lurking in the streets or raiding their homes at night. Business is better in the liberated area, says Hla Win, 31, who moved her pharmacy to the state’s Demoso township which lies just over 200km by road from the junta’s power centre in the capital Naypyidaw.
“It was just one or two shops, not what you see today,” she says, nodding towards a two-storey cafe and dozens of shops selling tech accessories, solar panels, toys, and Tupperware.
As chunks of the country slip from its grasp, the junta has turned to deadly airstrikes, which have become a near daily occurrence. The military is still more cohesive than its fragmented opposition, but the size of resistance forces are thought to match the 70,000 to 120,000 combat troops of the army.
The rebel group Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) operates in Kayah and Shan states, where opposition groups have begun to form viable alternatives to the junta, with the emergence of health, education and legal systems.
In this remote region, shelling and airstrikes are a constant threat, while maimed residents, bomb-scarred roads and abandoned villages are an everyday reminder of the cost of freedom. It is a place haunted by a brutal civil war, but where nevertheless, the daily humanity of its people remains undarkened.
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Halfway up a winding road in Demoso, disco balls light a row of huts in which fighters sing over the backbeat of creaky ceiling fans, or smoke on battered sofas infused with the scent of stale beer and cigarettes. Female employees perform duets with their clientele, mostly frontline fighters, and offer massages in thatched cubicles.
“Their faces are so tired and depressed,” says Maw Meh, 18, who works in the club. “They come here to try and relax.”
Her colleague, Thida, 30, says they help customers “enjoy their life a bit more” and fundraise for those who need prosthetics.
“Some of them have lost both their hands or their manhood when they’ve stood on landmines,” she says. “They don’t have a space to talk about their feelings. Some feel shy, but they don’t get angry. They’ll start talking and get upset.”
Establishments like these are synonymous with sex work, so Maw Meh kept her job from her family. But her service as a soldier on the frontline at just 16, was no secret – her mother encouraged it, she said.
In February 2022 a shell fractured her spinal cord, she says, showing a scarred patch that has made lying on her back painful. Of her two boyfriends since the coup one was killed in mortar fire, and the other was tortured and murdered by junta troops.
“I’m afraid to have any more,” she says. “I don’t enjoy my life so much now, but at least here I can meet different people and reflect.”
Maw Meh plans to train as a sniper and return to battle.
“The sniper stays alone, silently, one shot, one kill,” she says. “I like that style.”
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In Demoso, a local humanitarian worker estimates that only a quarter of local people can support themselves; the rest rely on handouts of rice and cooking oil. Although prices are steep, there is enough money circulating to support a variety of businesses, including a florist and cannabis dispensary.
Shop owner Maung Zaw sources shampoo, hair clips, and batteries from a junta-held town. At military checkpoints, he faces “aggressive” questions about his goods, he says. He pretends he is heading to another town under military control.
“They want money, cigarettes or alcohol,” he says. “If they catch you taking a shortcut to avoid the checkpoint, they confiscate all your goods and sometimes detain you. It’s happened to me twice and I had to pay my way out.”
A large poster of Bob Marley hanging from a hut of woven bamboo and corrugated metal marks one of the townships two tattoo parlours, both opened within the last year.
Inside, Salai Latheng, 38, sits beside a printer that was smuggled in from a military-held city hours before. AK 47 and M16 tattoos are in vogue, he says, with a matchbox-sized depiction of the assault rifles costing 5,000 kyats (£1.90). He also offers gentler choices, like a panda holding a balloon, but more common are requests for sak yant, Thai-style art believed to imbue protective powers.
A former waiter with a knack for drawing, Salai Latheng practices on his own skin while remaining an active fighter. He splits his monthly earnings of about 300,000 kyats (£115) with his family and his battalion.
“One of my comrades died instantly, shot in the head. I’ve seen a lot of things like that,” he says. “People who have been through a lot are getting tattooed as a release. Before there was a stigma to tattoos around here, but that no longer exists.”
“Now we hear bombs every day,” says his 37-year-old wife, breastfeeding one of their four children in the corner. She runs a fried chicken stall next door to boost their income. Salai Latheng says he keeps a steady hand during the explosions.
“When I hear them and I’m working, I’m not afraid. I’m in the zone.”
It’s the scarcity of drinking water at their displacement camp which worries them more than bombs. The wind rattling the tarpaulin keeps them awake. The days are too hot, and the coming monsoon, though cooling, threatens to destroy their makeshift home.
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In beige sandals with painted toenails, Angelic Moe, 26, adjusts her poncho and scans the long grass through oversized designer sunglasses. In the west of Kayah state, her all-female unit defends a vast expanse of territory.
Angelic Moe was working as a primary school teacher in February 2021, when Myanmar’s military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, ordered troops to detain civilian leaders after their landslide election victory, before baptising himself chairman of the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself.
The crackdown on peaceful protesters, using counter insurgency tactics including torture and arbitrary arrests, inspired a new generation, like Angelic Moe, to take up arms against the military.
“We had a Facebook page and Bamar [Junta] soldiers made sexually abusive comments under our posts,” she says. “They thought a women’s unit would be useless. They only know about orders; they can’t differentiate between good and bad.”
Angelic and her 38 female fighters believe that however the revolution ends, the battle for gender equality will continue for some time. Serving as scouts, medics, and fundraisers, they are fighting an enemy accused of using rape and sexual violence as a tactic of war.
“I need to be much rougher and stronger now,” says Angelic Moe. “Sometimes I feel like a mother, having to scold the girls and soothe them other times.”
Her soldiers face pushback from their families and communities.
One of them, Bwey Bhaw Htoo, 22, has heard the gossip: church and marriage are for women, not war. She says her neighbours told her father to keep “at least one” of his three daughters behind “to do the house chores”, but they all joined the revolution, and she became the unit’s second-in-command
Their male comrades doubted them too, says Angelic Moe, but despite some unwanted comments and touching, the unit’s respect is now audible in the applause they receive at rebel checkpoints and outposts.
“A family cannot have only a man,” says Angelic Moe. “It’s the same for a revolution. There are parts of a revolution for which women are needed.”
Most days, she orders two soldiers to scout along a stretch of the front.
“When we see the enemy we shoot, and if not, we just come back,” says one of the scouts, Wei Nan Syar, 22.
She chats to her partner, Katrina, 21, a former clothes shop worker armed with an M4 carbine, about “things other than the war to [relieve] the stress”.
“When we go to the toilet, we go together,” she says. “Even when we’re angry at each other, we’re still good. If she’s afraid, she will say it.”
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The bravery of the all-female unit inspired Jue Aung, 19, to return to battle, even after a landmine blew off half his leg in February 2022.
“The girls scout on the frontline; some even go into battle,” he says from his unit’s camp. “So, I decided I must go back to the battle as a medic.”
Beyond that, he finds it too painful to think about his future.
As a dog digs itself a spot in the cool dirt beneath him, Jue Aung reflects on the moment he stepped on the landmine; a hot jolt through his body while he was returning from helping a wounded comrade.
“I tried to run but fell to the ground. I looked at my foot and felt afraid,” he says.
When his mother saw him, she said it was pride that was making her cry.
“But I looked at her, she was sad,” he says. “But now I’m trying my best. I’ll fight the Bamar [junta] army again. We fight for our people and for freedom.”
Eighteen days later, Jue Aung survived a shell strike that targeted a camp, killing a 24-year-old fighter.
He’s one of hundreds of people living in rebel held areas that have been left seriously maimed by the fighting.
Khin Htay Myint, 54, fled the junta, but then her husband succumbed to a bone disease. In September 2022, when neighbours returned to check on their homes she went too and seeing the grass around her outdoor toilet was overgrown, reached down to cut it.
In that moment she was flung back four metres and when she landed, her right leg was blown apart. Half the calf muscle on her left leg was shredded as well and she was missing a finger. It was probably a military landmine, she says.
“Almost every night it’s itchy,” she says. “It’s hard to get sleep.” When asked about where her strength comes from, she pauses, and her mother, Yin May, fills the silence while her daughter weeps.
“She tries to pretend and be happy,” says her mother, with eyes buried deep in wrinkles. “Friends come round to encourage her and say don’t worry; you have a beautiful boy beside you.”
The boy, Khin Htay Myint’s son, Aung Than Nic, 31, says his mother laughs when friends come round.
“But when she’s alone, you can see she gets very upset,” he said.
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From a hilltop, soldier Aung Kyaw Minn, 20, takes in the planes and shattered churches of Demoso. A huge scar running down his belly tells the story of a mortar that almost killed him in March 2022. He credits a surgeon with dyed hair for saving his life in three operations, carried out in a hospital hidden in the forest.
“Because of him, a lot of lives have been saved,” he says.
The surgeon, Myo Khant Ko Ko, 37, has cycled through a variety of hair colours from bleach blonde to blue green. His latest is a worn-out burgundy.
“I like to live freely,” he said. “I want beauty, and [the hair] is no problem for my patients. The most important thing is to be in good health, with a good mind.”
In overcrowded wards, patients, friends and relatives sleep in five bomb shelters carved into the earth around the hospital’s cluster of small buildings. The centre moved to a new, guarded location after fighter jets bombed the previous site in February; in late April, airstrikes also damaged another abandoned clinic nearby as well as a hospital in southern Shan state, which the resistance claims killed two doctors.
“If there are no hospitals, then no patients injured in the war can be treated, so they target the hospitals and medical staff,” says Myo Khant Ko Ko. “Mostly we get trauma patients: landmines, mortars, brain injuries.”
Shunning salaries and offering free treatment, the hospital gets by on charity, for which Myo Khant Ko Ko must sometimes go to his colleagues who work under the junta’s health system for.
“I don’t want to talk with them, but we need donations, so we have to speak,” he says. “Some stand on both sides.”
Bladder stones and infections are among the most common ailments, he says, citing a lack of filtered water. Child amputees are also frequent, he adds, and infections caused by E coli bacteria are rising.
“We’re most useful here,” he says. “We must face so many dangerous things, but our mind feels free in this area.”
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Occasionally, the doctors treat prisoners of war (PoW), some of whom are then jailed in small prisons run by police who defected from the junta’s force. These 120 officers, known as the Karenni State Police (KSP), were formed in August 2021 and now staff eight stations across the territory.
“If there’s no KSP, there’s no place of detention for dalan [junta informers] and PoWs, and they may be killed instead,” says Bobo, 32, one of the KSP’s founders.
Bobo was a second lieutenant in a neighbouring state when anti-coup rallies erupted. At the time, demonstrators had plastered images of military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, over the streets so it would be stamped on when people walked. But the orders soon came for the police to remove the pictures.
“At that moment, the public looked at us clearing the photos,” he said. “I felt so embarrassed. They didn’t like us; I could feel it in their eyes. I felt ashamed of myself too.”
In that moment, Bobo decided to give up a job with a guaranteed income to join the hundreds of other who were unable to live under the oppressive heel of Myanmar’s junta.
“Even though I wasn’t sure how to survive without a job, after that it didn’t matter for me. So, I joined the CDM and left the station.”
Public support for the revolution is vital, according to local Karenni politician Khu Plu Reh, 47, who says the exorcism of military rule will protect their culture and language.
He has a prepared speech for when he encounters displaced people who have tired of the war.
“This is the last time we will fight against a military coup,” he says. “If we don’t fight, we will not see what we want our country to be. This is our big chance, one that we have never had before. We must fight.”
