Bangkok, Thailand – Aung, a high school English teacher, thought it was time to leave Myanmar on the day the military generals who took over the country strengthened enforcement of the long dormant collection laws they drove.
It was the end of January, more than 11 months after the general announced plans for widespread conscription to deal with battlefield escape and battlefield losses to armed groups fighting the 2021 coup.
The first requirement for 5,000 drafting into Myanmar’s military began basic training a year ago this week.
Thousands of more people continued, and the military gave even greater strength in January to guide men between the ages of 18 and 35, or women between the ages of 18 and 27 into military service. Those who try to avoid the face of the draft will be in prison for up to five years.
At that point, 29-year-old Aung made the decision to flee Myanmar.
“I decided I had to leave…as soon as possible,” he told Al Jazeera.
That day he threw some clothes, medicines and some of his favourite books into his backpack, catching the next bus heading east from Yangon, Myanmar’s vast commercial capital.
Dozens of military checkpoints, several bribes to the soldiers, three days later he was standing on the muddy banks of the Moet River.
A year after the Myanmar military draft drive, thousands of young men and women did almost the same thing.
Like Aung, they are indiscriminately attacking Myanmar civilians and dragging them into bloody civil wars without an eye, rejecting orders to fight for military rulers accused of explosive campaigns to cement control.
“They are destroying the whole country, killing our civilians, our civilians. I don’t want to be part of the killer. So I don’t want to join the military, so I don’t want to follow the draft law,” Aung recently told Al Jazeera from a safe house near the Thai-Myanmar border.
“They don’t want to serve… like slaves.”
The military has not announced official draft amounts.
The Myanmar military, which called the 11th condition of conscription in March, could be approaching its goal of drafting 60,000 new soldiers in the first year of the program, analysts told Al Jazeera.
Analysts said recruiting is a welcome relief for battalion commanders of administrations across the country. They have not moved their troops completely into force after fighting four years of Civil War, which is estimated to have killed tens of thousands on every side.
Richard Horse, senior adviser to Myanmar’s International Crisis Group, said new conscriptions are becoming increasingly difficult to round up.
Some were happy to answer the draft in the first few months of last year, but that changed.
“As time passed, authorities had to resort to harsher measures than ever before to obtain conscription, such as acquiring young men from bus stops and other public places,” Horsey said.
“Local officials are forcing money from potential records to avoid drafts. Some officials were killed when they entered a community that was trying to edit draft lists or enforce draft orders,” he said.
And, as originally intended, instead of being posted on security missions around military bases and other posts behind the frontline, many of the draft tees are said to have acquired the most dangerous battlefield allocation.
“There are many reports of the most difficult and dangerous obligations being collected by experienced soldiers, such as dropping the air behind enemy lines, and they have been incredibly unsuccessful at these tasks.
Conscriptions are also rushed to battle with much less training than the soldiers they are participating or trading.
“For example, when are they? [the military] Enter a new area [send in] These kinds of conscripts as the first army, and the actual soldiers, may follow later, [as] Line 2,” he said.
“Human Shield”
Just weeks after the draft was announced last March, Ko Ko, 24, who fled Myanmar in March to avoid drafting, spoke about how he was echoing Kyaw Htet Aung.
“On the battlefield, they use it [conscripts] Like a human shield – stepping on a bomb, to dismantle a bomb, to dismantle it,” he told Al Jazeera in northern Thailand.
“So no one wants to go to the army. They don’t want to serve like slaves,” he said.
Coco says her parents paid for family friends. He has a high position in the administration’s immigration department, and for around $300, he can leave the country and avoid military drafts without halting through the immigration counter at Yangon International Airport.
My friend wasn’t that lucky, Coco said.
Instead of serving the army after receiving the draft, he took his own life, Coco said.
Despite the mandatory call, analysts say the draft failed to change the tide in a crushing civil war that saw a string of losses in the army.
In December, months after the conscription of thousands of recruits, the army lost another regional headquarters to the second rebel force since the 2021 coup in Rakhine State.
Some estimates say the military may have full control over less than a quarter of the country, but it still holds tight to major cities such as Yangon, Mandalay and the capital Napidau.
The draft drive provided some relief to the battalion’s decline, boosted morale among police officers, and allowed several defensive battlefield operations.
“But that certainly isn’t a silver bullet for an army experiencing historical weakness,” said the Crisis Group’s horse.
Fighting stagnantly with recruits
Kyaw Htet Aung said, despite the thousands of new forces, the troops only launched a few new attacks or anti-offensive to seize the lost ground.
Mainly, the administration continues to rely on long-range artillery and air force attacks for most of its offensive combat operations. At best, he added that the draft helped the military minimize losses.
That could be the administration’s goal, he added. Using drafted soldiers, they will hold as many positions as possible, and with the help of China, the general’s main supporter, they attempt to end the civil war at the negotiation table.
“I think this is [conscription] The law has become part of that strategy,” he said.
The armed groups that opposed the military killed more than 3,600 people after the devastating earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28th. The military initially ignored the call for a ceasefire and carried out air raids near the epicenter around Sagar, but later said it would comply.
Since then, each side has accused others of breaching the contract.
Recent local news reports have stated that one of the armed groups, the Myanmar National Democratic Union Army (MNDAA), will hand over Rashio, the largest city in northern Shan Province, to Myanmar’s military after being pressured by China.
Mndaa seized the town last year, home to the military’s Northeastern Command, which was a major blow to the administration.
In the relative safety of Safehouses in the far west of Thailand, Ang continues his job as a teacher and directs Myanmar students about uneven internet connectivity due to the parallel school system set up by groups opposing the military.
Illegally crossed the border, he lived in fear of being arrested by Thai authorities and was sent back to Myanmar.
“I [have] I heard there were a lot of people who were deported to Myanmar, detained and arrested and sent to the military,” he said.
“It’s very clear that I’ll be there if I’m forced to Myanmar. [treated] That’s how I don’t want to be. ”
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