An ex-British soldier and an American fighter are among a small but growing number of foreigners training and fighting alongside anti-coup forces in the war against Myanmar’s military regime.
The volunteers say they were inspired by Myanmar’s resistance, which has stood up to one of the most brutal and well-equipped militaries in Southeast Asia since the generals seized power and killed peaceful protesters more than three years ago.
An infantryman in the British army for four years from 2009, with a seven-month tour of Afghanistan, Jason said he returned from eastern Myanmar in late April after eight weeks on the front lines.
Ethnic armed groups, mainly in the country’s border areas, have been fighting the military for decades, sometimes with the assistance of foreign volunteers.
But since the coup on February 1, 2021, atrocities have spread from the peripheries to the central regions. The military, with a largely Russian-made fleet of fighter jets, has been accused of indiscriminate air strikes against civilians and had burned villages to the ground in what the United Nations and human rights groups have described as possible war crimes.
But the generals have been unable to quell the uprising. The resistance has inflicted huge losses and made large territorial gains, initially using slingshots and air rifles against a military wielding a billion-dollar arsenal supplied by Russia and China.
Ethnic armies, public donations and weapon seizures partly as a result of last year’s Operation 1027 offensive have opened the door to better equipment for the resistance, which, even without foreign military assistance, has challenged the military’s staying power.
