Myanmar Resistance Groups Lure and Aid Military Defectors

Members of Myanmar’s army during a protest against the coup in Yangon in March.

The original article was written by Feliz Solomon on 1 November 2021, and can be found here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/myanmar-resistance-groups-lure-and-aid-military-defectors-11635759001?st=muk1ox9u9yp7t34&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink.

SINGAPORE—One afternoon in late August, while manning a military checkpoint in a central Myanmar city, Sgt. Htet Aung noticed an unusual post near the top of his Facebook feed: an audio interview with an army defector urging others to desert. He clicked.

The clip was part of an activist campaign to lure soldiers away from Myanmar’s armed forces. Defector support groups have had some success winning over disillusioned youths such as Mr. Htet Aung, 23, who says he fled his base three weeks later and joined a rebellion against the country’s military junta.

“I listened to it and realized our beliefs were exactly the same,” he said.

Since the military seized power in a coup on Feb. 1, opposition groups say more than 2,500 police and soldiers have defected. They claim numbers have risen modestly since early September, when a rival shadow administration called the National Unity Government, formed by ousted civilian leaders in hiding, declared support for an armed struggle against the regime.

Defense analysts say defections don’t appear to threaten the military’s cohesion, but they signal weak morale that could frustrate part of the junta’s strategy to gain full control of the country. The military is carrying out an offensive across the country’s northwest, an anti-junta stronghold where the army is trying to uproot suspected insurgents and will have to defend its gains in the long-term with rank-and-file manpower.

So far, defections have occurred as a slow but consistent trickle of individuals with a range of motivations. They include a few officers with ranks as high as army major, but most are lower-ranking noncommissioned officers, foot soldiers and police. Some have expressed opposition to the coup and military violence against civilians, others had personal grievances such as not being allowed to visit ailing relatives amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The shadow National Unity Government is actively urging soldiers to defect and runs a program called People’s Embrace to document their departures and provide them refuge. Another independent group run by defectors-turned-activists, called People’s Soldiers, operates a digital outreach campaign and a network of volunteers offering safe passage, shelter and food.

They say they aim to exploit low morale as conflict goes on, and are encouraging collective desertion.

“Defections only really have broader significance when units defect, what we haven’t seen yet is the key move from disgruntled individuals to entire units,” said Anthony Davis, an analyst with the defense publisher Janes. “That tells you that to date, unit cohesion has remained remarkably strong.”

People’s Soldiers says it has about 50 volunteers working full time and hundreds of others providing assistance, including a team of about 20 dedicated to recruitment. They mainly reach soldiers through their official Facebook page, though several independent activist groups have launched cyber operations that help broaden their reach.

These groups have manually created hundreds of fake Facebook accounts loaded with what looks like pro-military content to befriend soldiers and infiltrate their social-media ecosystem. Once the accounts amass enough followers and gain access to groups popularly viewed by soldiers, they share subversive content including links to information on how to defect.

The groups aren’t expressly dedicated to sharing information about defection, but are a key conduit for linking soldiers with groups such as People’s Soldiers.

Those who are interested are given a crash course in digital security, advised to install the encrypted messaging app Telegram and contact the group’s co-founder, former army captain Nyi Thuta, who defected in late February.

Mr. Htet Aung was one of more than 160 soldiers who fled with the group’s help. He said that after the first time he noticed a post about defection, he laid awake in bed each night for weeks, secretly scrolling through online testimony of deserters on his mobile phone and deleting his browser history before going to sleep. By early September, he had made up his mind.

People’s Soldiers say loyalty to the military is fragile among young soldiers who enlisted over the past decade, while the country was under democratic rule. Some, including Mr. Htet Aung, even supported Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since her government was ousted in February. Mr. Htet Aung said he was shocked and disappointed by the coup.

“I’m the only soldier in my entire family,” said Mr. Htet Aung, who enrolled at a military technology academy at the age of 17 to study mechatronics engineering. “I admired soldiers for their selflessness, I wanted to be dignified and serve my country.”

After graduation, he was assigned to a research unit where he helped develop communications infrastructure for the military. But shortly after the coup, he was reassigned as a security guard outside government buildings occupied by officers, where he was armed and ordered to use deadly force against intruders. He said he never had to, but once fired two warning shots to ward off protesters.

“I didn’t want to do what they said I had to do,” he said.

After contacting People’s Soldiers, they helped him plot his escape from the barracks and sneak him into rebel-controlled territory, a paranoid three-day journey during which he disguised himself as a peasant and changed vehicles several times with the help of anonymous middlemen waiting for him at rendezvous points in towns along the way.

He now lives communally in a bamboo shelter with other deserters in what they call a “liberated zone,” a secret location in the country’s remote borderlands. Some fled with their entire families, others sneaked away without telling relatives, and don’t know when, if ever, they’ll be able to speak with or see them again. A few have taken on new roles advising a coalition of rebel groups known as the People’s Defense Force through videoconference calls, sharing intelligence on military strategy and giving basic weapons training.

“The junta’s worst fear is that the people and soldiers will unite against them,” said Mr. Nyi Thuta, the former army captain who helped found People’s Soldiers.

But the risks of desertion are high, including long prison sentences and possibly death. Soldiers are surveilled and their digital devices checked. The junta has also ordered internet blackouts in areas of heightened conflict, an effort aimed at hobbling communication among insurgents that also makes it hard for defectors’ groups to reach those most likely to break ranks.

Myanmar’s military remains one of the region’s most powerful, with a significant arms advantage over its opponents, and defections are unlikely to alter the balance. But they are increasingly seen by the democratic opposition as an important pillar in their multidimensional effort to chip away at the military’s dominance and stave off a crushing defeat.

“We are opening them a door and sending them a signal that they can join us,” Zin Mar Aung, the chief diplomat representing the shadow government, said in a recent interview. “We are saying to those who don’t want to serve the junta, ‘You don’t have to.’”