Tun Myint | ယခုဆောင်းပါးကို မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုရန် ဤနေရာတွင် နှိပ်ပါ

Cite as: 
Tun Myint. (2025). Introduction to the Special Issue. Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 5. https://ijbs.online/?page_id=5182

This special issue is a result of a workshop I held on the Thailand-Myanmar border in conjunction with a Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM)¹ soldier organization on 23 July 2022. The journal’s Managing Editor and I met with a dozen brave young CDM soldiers who at that time had only recently left the sit tat²—the Myanmar military that is still killing hundreds of civilians every month.³ Earlier in their lives they believed a career in the sit tat was a ticket to success and respect. Some of them came from military families, with parents and grandparents also serving in the military. But the violence of the 2021 military coup had shaken their faith in the army. They had all made the same choice to refuse to kill their fellow countryfolk and flee from military rule, and now they were free, each pursuing different paths, struggling to earn a living and contribute to the revolution in their own ways.

The contributors to this special issue are not researchers or professional writers. They are CDM soldiers who differ widely in rank and department. They have experience in the artillery corps, the infantry, even the air force, and bring their direct knowledge of the sit tat to bear in this collection of articles focused on the weaknesses of that institution and the likelihood of its collapse. They share their personal knowledge and reflections about the condition of the sit tat as they experienced it. After escaping military bases and moving to areas of relative safety, these contributors then wrote their articles without the aid of computers, which they did not own and could not afford. Most wrote on smartphones. All their articles were drafted in Burmese first, then translated into English for this bilingual special issue. Very few of the contributors are proficient in English. Their contributions are not in the typical academic style, and are not research articles in a strict sense, but they are valuable for their candor and inside knowledge of the sit tat, a once-resilient institution now under threat.

The workshop the contributors attended that generated this special issue was truly one of a kind. In all my years as an academic, I have never experienced anything like it.  While all seated cross-legged on a tile floor, over the course of eight hours, each CDM soldier read their printed drafts aloud as if they were reporting to their superiors in the military. It was a traditional Burmese format of submitting a report (tinpya) to one’s superiors. However, the participants’ faces and voices were resonant with liberation from the military institution. They were passionate about what they had written.

In some ways, this special issue is a successor to the journal’s previous special issue from 2022, Memories of Leaving the Myanmar Military.⁴ In that issue, eighteen individual soldiers that fled military service following the 2021 coup detailed how and why they did so, providing rich and immediate narratives of their time in the military and the challenges they overcame to free themselves of it. Those memoirs are raw and emotional, reflecting the intense feelings held by the soldiers who struggled to escape the military institution they felt disaffected from.

But what comes next for a soldier that joins the CDM? There are now thousands of service members that have been “reborn” into freedom and that number is still growing. Not all choose to participate in the revolution.

Some CDM soldiers want to avoid it entirely, live a life of pacifism, and raise their families away from trauma and terror. Others immediately join new armed resistance groups and fight back against the corrupt sit tat they despise. Others work within resistance organizations away from the frontlines, providing expertise and helping when and where they can, including on the defection movement, which has grown as a strategy of the Spring Revolution since the coup, as detailed by Yucca Wai and Andersson in this issue.

Whether still focused on the revolution or not, whether actively fighting back or not, the CDM soldiers that attended this issue’s workshop decided they had things to say; they wanted to inscribe their knowledge of the sit tat in the historical record, inspired by their faith that the military institution is on its last legs. Their views have only been further validated since they first penned their articles in 2022, as the military has only weakened further. At the time of publishing, the sit tat is at its lowest point since the founding of the independent Union of Burma.

As resistance organizations have taken more territory from the military and forced it further onto its knees, it has more intensely lashed out against civilians. Retaliations against civilians and air strikes on tea shops, weddings, concerts, and other public gatherings particularly increased since resistance groups’ successful Operation 10/27 in late 2023 and 2024.⁵ Even the tragic 28 March 2025 Sagaing earthquake, the biggest in Myanmar for over a century, levelling the city of Sagaing and most of Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw cities, did not prevent the sit tat from continuing its atrocities and offensives throughout meaningless “ceasefires”.⁶ In the 28 days following that earthquake, the military killed at least 246 people and injured 512 according to the Democratic Voice of Burma’s data team.⁷

The sit tat only retains the power it still has because of two reasons. The first is the support of Russia, Belarus, China, and Thailand, and the second is the fact that it has an air force.⁸ The army’s recent return to Lashio, presented as some kind of victory by military propaganda, only occurred under the direct auspices and sponsorship of China.⁹ But while powerful foreign nations can shield the sit tat from the international community and back up the regime’s brutality to further their own national interests, the people of Myanmar are not fooled. The military is on its knees. It may enforce stricter conscription policies, cede more sovereignty to China, and horde increasing amounts of international aid meant for the people, but the trajectory of collapse is assured—so long as the people of Myanmar continue to nurture the spirit of revolution.

Contributions to this Special Issue

In addition to this introduction, the special issue features nine contributions originally drafted in Burmese by CDM soldiers and their families, and two research articles by others, which were first drafted in English. The research articles aim to further contextualize the Myanmar sit tat—what it stands for, and how it stands in the way of democracy—as well asprovide more concrete data on the phenomenon of defection since 2021. As mentioned, the workshop that generated this special issue was held in 2022. All the contributions by CDM soldiers were written in 2022, however, the research articles were finished only in 2023 and 2024, with this introduction finalized in 2025.

In the first article, “The Collapse of the sit tat and the End of Burmanization”, I argue that Burmanization is the central ideology of the Myanmar military, with roots in the Bama Buddhist monarchy of centuries past. Given the diversity of peoples, languages, cultures, religions, etc., in Myanmar today, Burmanization as an ideology and a governing prerogative is outdated and harmful. Polycentric federal democracy is the best political system for Myanmar, as it allows all stakeholders to participate in and grow a more prosperous and equitable society. The sit tat is misguided, beyond prospect for reform, and must be abolished, along with Burmanization, for this polycentric federal democracy to take root.

In “Leap into Freedom: The Disintegration of the sit tat Through Defections”, Yucca Wai and Joseph Andersson present an impressive research project using mixed methods to argue that defection efforts by revolutionary stakeholders need to strengthen further. While defection strategy has improved since 2021, assistance provided to defectors is still inconsistent, hampering defections from being more of a factor in the revolution against military rule. They argue that if defection strategies receive adequate technical and material support from regional and international actors, they could decide the future of the sit tat—and of Myanmar. This article is impressive for its large-scale survey of 50 defected soldiers, detailed data, thorough approach, and for its list of recommendations to stakeholders.

With the broader context staked in and firmly established, the third contribution to this special issue, and the first by a CDM soldier, is “Brainwashed Soldiers in a Terrorist Military” by Chan Min, previously sergeant at the Military Science and Technology Research Command. He argues that the reason low-ranking soldiers commit atrocities against civilians and resistance forces alike is because they are brainwashed with fear. The military institution demeans soldiers and pushes them to exhaustion as a matter of course. According to Chan Min, military leaders are the most responsible, as they “intentionally shape low-ranking soldiers to carry out everyday violence and kill unarmed civilians”.¹⁰ However, other factors are also at play, such as the isolation of living within the institution. Soldiers are encouraged to swallow military propaganda and are restricted from freely using smartphones and the internet. The terms used by Chan Min are candid and forceful: military trainees and low-ranked soldiers are demoralized, shamed, abused. He claims the sit tat is going down in history as a pariah that not only terrorizes the public, but also its own personnel.

In the next article, “Weakening and Attrition in the Myanmar Military”, Aung Myo Htet gives a sober and candid assessment of the decline of the sit tat as a professional army. Based on his experience as a captain in Light Infantry Division 80, Aung Myo Htet divulges the low standards for admission into the sit tat and its remarkable attrition rates. Writing before the army’s widespread conscription drive began in 2024, he lists the reasons why soldiers are desperate to get out, including insights into how soldiers’ wives and children are integrated into the institution. For Aung Myo Htet, this emphasis on “quantity over quality” is what will ultimately lead the sit tat to its “eventual demise”.

Sergeant Yay Khal focuses even more than Aung Myo Htet on the recruitment processes of the sit tat, arguing in “How the Myanmar Military Recruits its Soldiers” that the “rotten fundamentals” of the sit tat cannot improve without the army changing its policies and methods of recruitment. This includes scams, kidnappings, incentives, and propaganda. Yay Khal goes through four of the main problems with military recruitment and speaks directly to soldiers, and even their children, who are still stuck in military bases:

… Try not to limit your thinking by only listening to what the military is telling you and believing wrong is right—you must think critically and listen carefully to what is going on in the outside world. The military machine is not only using your father, but it is also using you—it is sending all of you off to die.¹¹

Htun Zaw Myat takes a different tack to Aung Myo Htet and Yay Khal, focusing on the control that is exercised over individual soldiers in the military. For him, being part of the military means being under its domination. “Control Over the Lives of Soldiers and Their Families” outlines the corruption involved in the hierarchy of the sit tat and the lack of empathy displayed by officers. The ethos of ‘divide and conquer’ is not only used by the military in its politics and its war campaigns to rule the country; it is practiced within the army against new recruits, pitting all classes of soldiers against each other. This article is valuable for its sensitivities to the human relationships that soldiers have, and how they are abused and manipulated by the military institution for control over its members.

In a similar theme to Htun Zaw Myat, contributor Htet Myat highlights how soldiers are subject to indoctrination within closed information systems in the military. In “Indoctrination: A Potent Weapon”, Htet Myat draws on his work as a captain and chief officer, third class, at the No. 21 Operations Command Headquarters, to detail eight different messages propagated by the military to its soldiers. He claims the “terrorist military has weaponized indoctrination” and that revolutionaries need to understand how powerful it is in order to counter it. This article is a masterclass in the narratives the military tells itself and its soldiers, and is a valuable historical record, as well as useful for those in the resistance working on helping and deprogramming defectors.

The next article in the special issue is a detailed discussion of one particular organ of the sit tat. In “Corruption Under the Medical Services Directorate”, Thet Paing argues that the military is “a scheme” benefiting military leaders at the expense of the country. He forensically lists the different medical organizations under the directorate, including their bed capacities, and describes the army’s three major medical training institutions. The main point here is how corruption is rife throughout the directorate, and while it may look good “on the books”, in real life it is a mess. Rules and regulations are openly violated by officers and substandard medication is routinely substituted for the real thing.

The two penultimate articles are explicitly about armaments and equipment. In Naung Yoe’s “The Training Aircraft Used to Bomb Civilians”, the author goes into detail on the K8-W aircraft that he has experience working with. While the sit tat has stock of many different jet aircraft, from FTC-2000G trainers, Russian SU-30s, to Pakistan JF-17s, and more, it is likely that the K-8 twin seat trainer, branded as K8-W in Myanmar, is the most numerous. The sit tat is steadily relying more on unmanned aerial vehicles and low-altitude paramotor buggy systems to conserve fuel and provide strategic advantage at low cost, but for its most destructive attacks on civilians, the K-8W and Y-12 aircraft are still used. Ko Naung Yoe describes the technical specifications and capabilities of the K-8W aircraft and goes into detail on the entrenched systems in place for air force personnel to siphon jet fuel and enrich themselves. He emphasizes that with these airplanes, the pilots always make a preliminary circuit of a target area before dropping their payload—so civilians can seek shelter if they are fortunate enough to hear the planes coming.

Maw Kun similarly details the armaments he is most familiar with in the following article, “Problems with the Military’s Artillery Corps”. He outlines how artillery is crucial to battlefield successes of the sit tat—and yet the institution fails to prioritize its artillery corps. The corps has insufficient recruits, poorly maintained equipment, and ill-trained personnel with low morale. Maw Kun claims that military officers willfully ignore these deficiencies and instead focus on their own corrupt activities and efforts at promotion. He also thoroughly evaluates the different artillery he is familiar with, including mortars, howitzers, and their ammunition. The level of detail is impressive and shows the author’s disillusionment with the military institution and willingness to assist the anti-coup resistance movement at great personal risk.

In the special issue’s final article, Ma Su Thit, a woman deeply involved in several defection and CDM soldier organizations, writes on the difficulties faced by soldiers who leave the military. In “The Importance of Family in Soldiers Deciding to Join the Civil Disobedience Movement”, Su Thit interweaves her own personal experience as the wife of a CDM soldier with a broader perspective on the obstacles faced by soldiers wanting to flee the army. She spends considerable time on the issues of livelihoods and security, noting how fearful soldiers are of losing their pride, income, and meaning in their lives. Ma Su Thit and her husband, “were able to join the CDM and stand on the side of the people because of the strength of our parents and family”.¹² She concludes the article, and this special issue, with six anecdotes from CDM soldiers who directly told her their stories, noting the importance of family in these soldiers’ decisions to leave—or stay—in the sit tat.

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Ma Su Thit for her help keeping this special issue alive over the last three years, and for liaising with the CDM soldier contributors, as the journal’s editorial team and I worked to develop, edit, and finalize this special issue throughout many turbulent events. The tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing mass atrocities of the military, and the 2025 Sagaing earthquake all presented delays. Without the capable hands of this journal’s editors, this issue would not be in your hands, so I would like to thank them also.

Endnotes

¹ Soon after the 2021 coup public servants refused to work for the new military regime, launching the Civil Disobedience Movement. While most of its participants are healthcare workers, teachers, and bureaucrats, many soldiers also joined the movement after escaping military service (Kyed, 2022).
² In this special issue the term sit tat (စစ်တပ်) is usually used for the Myanmar military as it is more accurate than tatmadaw (တပ်မတော်), more commonly in use before the 2021 coup. The particle daw (တော်) can be read as denoting royal authority and reverence, something the Myanmar military certainly does not possess.
³ See the daily updates on conflict and civilian deaths and arrests by Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, an independent, non-partisan organization previously based in Yangon (Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, 2025).
⁴ Kyed, 2022.
⁵ ACLED, 2025.
⁶ Su Mon, 2025.
⁷ DVB Data Team, 2025.
⁸ Abuza Nyein Nyein Thant Aung, 2025.
⁹ What’s Happening in Myanmar, 2025.
¹⁰ This issue, pp. 273-274.
¹¹ This issue, p. 343.
¹² This issue, p. 533.

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