(Andrew Nachemson’s article-extract from FRONTIER MYANMAR on 17 May 2024.)
“We need to get permission from Marwi to go to
Loikaw.” It was late December and I had spent months waiting for permission to
visit Karenni State, on Myanmar’s mountainous border with Thailand. Also known
as Kayah State, the country’s smallest state or region with a population of
under half a million, had emerged as an unexpected site of fierce resistance
after the 2021 military coup.
Loikaw, the state capital, had been the site of particularly heavy fighting since anti-junta forces launched an offensive to seize the town on November 11. Likely eager to show off their gains, members of the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force repeatedly told me they would take me to the town, despite my apprehensions.
But the journey
started in Mese Township, in the state’s far south, which had fallen entirely
under resistance control when a military-aligned militia mutinied in July last
year. There, I met the young man tasked with driving me around – known by the
endearing but slightly alarming nickname Bye-Bye. He reiterated the plan to
take me to Demoso, but was the first to deliver what would become a regular
refrain on my trip.
“We need to get
permission from Marwi to go to Loikaw.” The 22-year-old transporter was joined
by two armed guards – one with handcuffs strapped to his waist. “He uses them
on his girlfriend,” Bye-Bye said with a devilish grin, nudging me in the ribs.
Besides
shepherding journalists, Bye-Bye brought weapons and other essential goods to
the front lines. When I asked how he took this cargo through dozens of military
checkpoints, he just laughed. “I brought a lot of beer and cigarettes.”
He also
evacuated wounded soldiers, travelling to and from the Loikaw front 20 times
already. He showed me a picture on his phone of a dead man who looked no older
than Bye-Bye himself. “An air strike blew part of his head off.”
After several
hours on an increasingly bumpy mountain road, we reached the Salween River,
where we boarded a small wooden motorboat that took us to Hpawsang Township, disembarking
in an area controlled by the Karenni Army.
The KA has been
fighting for political autonomy for the Karenni people for decades. It also
helped to train and organise the state’s post-coup resistance armies, although
the newly-formed KNDF’s troops now outnumber those of the veteran armed group.
We spent the
night at a KA camp before resuming the long drive to Demoso the next morning.
While the KNDF can use many of the secondary paved roads in the state, they
still largely avoid the main highway running from south to north through the
major towns. When I asked Bye-Bye if we could take that road, he looked at me
with an already familiar twinkle in his eye. “Do you want to die?”
Instead, we took
a dirt road carved into the sides of towering mountains, with stunning but
terrifying views of the valleys below. Not for the first time, I realised I was
far more likely to die from a mundane car crash than a battlefield shootout.
Into the yellow zone
In Demawso, the
mountains gave way to a plain dotted with toothy limestone hilltops. Trees
burst from their sides at unnatural angles, punctuated by patches of bald rock.
On arrival, I
contacted a Myanmar journalist who helped arrange a trip to nearby Hpruso
Township to report on the 2021 Christmas Eve massacre. The journalist’s house
had a Starlink internet connection, so in the evenings over 20 people huddled
around, shivering in the cold as they checked messages and downloaded movies to
get them through the long nights ahead.
One night, on
December 29, he showed me pictures of himself and other local journalists in
Loikaw’s “red zone”. Wearing bulletproof vests and helmets while carrying
cameras in a fitness centre-turned-bunker, they looked like quintessential war
reporters and I felt a pang of jealousy. “Actually you can go to Loikaw too,”
he told me. “You just need to talk to Marwi.”
Marwi is technically the deputy commander of the
KNDF. As a condition of the group’s alliance with the Karenni Army, the KA
leader also serves as the commander-in-chief of the KNDF. This is meant to
ensure guidance to the newer, largely youth-led KNDF, but it’s clear that the
KA no longer has the ability to constrain or control its junior partner.
My KNDF guides had been telling me they were trying to get in touch with Marwi nearly every day, but so far without success.
The next
morning, perhaps wanting to give me a thrill, they suggested we go to the
“yellow zone”, on the outskirts of Loikaw town, which at the time felt like a
good middle ground between my desire to get closer to the action and my desire
to survive the trip. They had to deliver something to the KNDF Battalion 12
commander, the older brother of one of the logistics officers. That’s how I
found myself driving up a road lined with the blasted rubble of destroyed
houses.
At the KNDF
camp, about 20 kilometres north of the capital, I interviewed a 19-year-old who
had been injured in the fighting for Loikaw and the Battalion 12 commander,
before we headed to a village to drink beer and eat fried fish at the
commander’s home.
When a gruff,
grizzled rebel officer hands you a beer, you don’t say no. A widespread boycott
of military-linked products means you won’t find Myanmar Beer in Karenni, but
people there had embraced an alternative – ABC Stout, beloved for its 8%
alcohol content.
The next
morning, I woke up to a pounding headache and the now-familiar sound of
artillery, but this was closer than ever. “Is that okay?” I asked Bye-Bye. “Yes,
it’s okay,” he said with a reassuring smile, in what had become something of a
call and response for us.
He took me
around the village before we left, in what turned out to be a tour of around a
dozen burned down houses. Nearly all of them, apparently, were homes of
resistance fighters, leading the KNDF to conclude that a military spy had given
them away.
There was one
other torched building – the village’s main grocery store, allegedly targeted
so that resistance fighters couldn’t buy supplies. But this had also cut off a
main source of food for civilians, prompting them to desert the village.
On New Year’s
Day, back in Demawso Township, Bye-Bye asked if I had gotten everything I
needed from the trip. I hesitated, knowing he was probably keen to get me back
across the border and breathe a sigh of relief at another press tour done with
no dead foreigner. I told him I was still eager to interview Marwi, but I was
starting to come to terms with this not happening.
The next morning
he woke me up even earlier than usual. “Come on,” he said, like it was the most
natural thing in the world. “We’re going to meet Marwi.”
It wasn’t until
later that I realised somebody much more important had arrived, and they were
just letting me tag along. Ko Pauk is a comedian-turned-documentary maker who
makes short films on his iPhone from resistance-controlled territory,
interviewing some of the most prominent rebel commanders and politicians.
Everywhere we
went, Ko Pauk was stopped by crowds of adoring fans asking to take a picture
with him. To his credit, he always took the time to joke with his fans, ask
them questions and pose for endlessly reconfigured group shots.
Meeting Marwi
After breakfast
with Ko Pauk – huge steaming bowls of
mohinga – we arrived at Marwi’s hidden headquarters. Marwi was shorter than Ko
Pauk, but broad-shouldered and muscular, and had just as big of a stage
presence. He was quick to laugh, even when, or perhaps especially when, talking
about the war and his near-death experiences.
I introduced
myself and asked a few general questions, which Marwi responded to with a calm,
practiced authority that both impressed me and made me think oh shit, this is
the interview. I fumbled out my phone to record and take notes, knowing I was
leapfrogging Ko Pauk in the pecking order, but figuring there was no point in
backing off now for the sake of decorum.
Born and raised
in Kayah but of the Bamar ethnic majority, Marwi has a unique perspective on
the ethnic tensions that have plagued Myanmar’s modern history. Resistance
groups in the area these days prefer the term Karenni State, for reasons that
Marwi was eager to explain.
“It’s simple – Kayah is one single ethnicity,
Karenni covers every ethnicity in Karenni State,” he said. Like in many other
ethnic states, there are actually nine Karenni subgroups and the Kayah are just
the biggest.” But Karenni seems to go even beyond that. “I’m a typical Burmese
guy,” Marwi said, meaning Bamar. “But I myself feel Karenni. If you stay in
Karenni you are Karenni, like in America.”
The region was
historically a collection of small principalities, known as the Karenni States.
Britain allowed them to govern themselves in exchange for large mining
concessions. Called Karenni State at independence in 1948, the central
government renamed it Kayah State in 1951, in what local leaders considered a
crude divide-and-rule tactic.
“A long time ago
Karenni had autonomous power. It was managed by its own people, and right now
we are fighting for the same thing,” Marwi explained. Marwi kept referring to
himself as “typical Burmese”, but there’s seemingly nothing typical about a
geology student turned environmental activist turned rebel commander.
“After 2018 I
developed a small organic farm because I wanted to start a life with my own
ambition to build a community that creates a sustainable lifestyle,” he said,
reminiscing about this wholesome time with a pistol strapped to his hip. “We
grew healthy food, we ate healthy food, everything we did is to not harm the
environment or local people or local culture.”
He said his only
experience with weapons before the coup was with BB and airsoft guns. When I
asked if he ever imagined this would be his life, he had a simple answer. “C’mon
man. Fuck no.”
After a second
breakfast that Marwi washed down with an ABC, we headed to Loikaw, where we met
with the battalion commander in charge of the medical response. We had been in
contact for months via the messaging app Signal, so it was a treat to finally
put a face to the source.
“It’s a little
quiet now,” he said. “You should have come in November.” I was glad I hadn’t.
Next, they took us to Loikaw University, now truly in the red zone, where Marwi famously led the KNDF in a fierce battle. He eventually convinced dozens of military troops to surrender, but not before a number were killed. Two months on, the black and bloated carcasses of dead soldiers were still littered across the campus, some no more than skeletons in uniform.
Marwi grew up in Loikaw, which he said was “like a village back then”, and graduated from the university. “We’re on the streets where we did our peaceful protests. We’re back to our homes, back in our city,” he said proudly.
After the coup,
Marwi helped organise mass peaceful protests in Loikaw – although he rejects
the term “protest leader”. He said he knew the military would never listen, and
even anticipated the violent crackdowns that followed, but argued it was
important to stick to the principle of peaceful dissent – at least until the
military struck the first blow.
“They try to
bully with weapons, so they can only be talked to with weapons. Now we’re
talking with guns; we’re not talking with our mouths anymore,” he said. Marwi
has become famous for regularly joining his troops on the front lines, and has
been injured three times in battle – once severely.
“A lot of people ask or suggest that I don’t go to
the front lines too much. They say, stay behind, you’re too important,” he
said. But given his lack of prior conflict experience, he said this was never
an option. “My belief is that if you want to lead you should at least have
experience. If you don’t know how to fight, how are you going to command?”
His worst injury
came last year, when he stormed a military outpost in Pekon Township in
neighbouring southern Shan State. He said he became separated from his troops,
and was facing off against two soldiers shooting at him from different
locations.
“When I looked at the first one, the second one shot
me in the leg and hit the artery. I lost a lot of blood,” he said, laughing. “I
almost met god.”
Marwi’s been
injured twice more since the KNDF launched its assault on Loikaw. In both
instances he was struck with fragments from artillery or a bullet. He said the
military has unleashed such a heavy bombardment that nearly every fighter in
Loikaw has bits of metal embedded in their skin.
“Getting hit
isn’t a story anymore. If you go to Loikaw and don’t get hit – that’s a story!”
I hoped that was an exaggeration.
As we left the
university campus, Marwi kneeled down to pick up an unexploded shell from the
city street – his city street. It’s unclear if he had any way of knowing
whether it was safe to handle. I looked at Bye-Bye and asked as I had asked so
many times before, “is that okay?” “Yes, it’s okay.”
As we walked,
Marwi used the explosive in his hand like a lecture pointer, gesturing at
various objects of interest. The dead bodies floating in the town’s lake. A once-famous
hotel that had collapsed under heavy weapons fire. The part of the city, not
too far away, where military troops were still holed up.
At one point, I
casually mentioned 2021 as the beginning of the war, and Marwi gently but
firmly corrected me. Fighting has been raging since before Burma was granted
independence in 1948, now more than 75 years ago.
In some ways the
Myanmar military has never been more powerful. It has access to modern weapons
and aircraft that ought to make its poorly equipped opponents tremble with
fear. But despite being able to unleash remote destruction at the snap of a
finger, the regime has failed to halt the march of ethnic minority-led forces
across Karenni, Shan, Rakhine and Chin states.
For Marwi, the
explanation is obvious. “We are more frightened of dictatorship than the
fighter jet.”
