The eighteen CDM participants who generously shared their stories for this special issue come from a range of backgrounds and are contextualized in the issue’s introduction. They face uncertain futures and at least one contributor has already passed away since telling their tale. All CDM soldiers continue to be at risk and the IJBS is very grateful for their contributions.

Helene Maria Kyed is senior researcher and head of the research unit, Peace and Violence at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen and has been engaged in a digital ethnography on defections in Myanmar since 2021. She is an anthropologist by training and has done extensive ethnographic research on, as well as publishing on, security and justice related issues in Mozambique, Swaziland, and Myanmar, focusing on theoretical questions of violence, sovereignty and legal pluralism. From 2015 to 2021, Kyed coordinated a collaborative research project on Everyday Justice and Security in Myanmar (Everjust) and is currently engaged in a project on the climate-conflict nexus in the border regions of Myanmar. Helene edited Everyday Justice in Myanmar: Informal Resolutions and State Evasion in a Time of Contested Transition (2020, NIAS Press) and was the co-editor of the second ever issue of IJBS, “Everyday Justice in Myanmar” (2018).

Michael W. Charney is Professor of Asian and Military History at both the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy and the Department of History at SOAS, University of London. He has worked on the history of Myanmar, and particularly Rakhine State (Arakan), for thirty years and is the author of four monographs on the history of the country. He is also on the Board of Directors of the INGO, Forces for Renewal for Southeast Asia.