Myanmar Military Military Thousands in the first year of recruitment military news

Bangkok, Thailand -Aung, a high school teacher at high school, composed that it was time to leave Myanmar on the day when the military generals who seized the country enforced the long recruitment law that they were filled with.

This was at the end of January, a little more than 11 months after the generals announced plans for widespread recruitment, in order to overcome the migrations of the army’s escalation and the battlefield losses against armed groups fighting against their coup for 2021.

The first unit 5000 recruits in the Myanmar army Their basic training began one year ago this week.

Thousands of recruits followed, while giving the army itself more capabilities in January to pressure any man between the ages of 18 and 35 years or a woman between 18 and 27 years in military service. Those who try to evade the draft face up to five years in prison.

At that point, 29 -year -old Uung made a decision to escape from Myanmar.

“I decided to leave … as soon as possible,” he said to Al -Jazeera.

On that particular day, he threw some clothes, medicines and a few of his favorite books in a backpack, and the following bus heading to the east of Yangon, the sprawling commercial capital in Myanmar, caught.

After dozens of military checkpoints, several bribes of the soldiers and three days of nerves, he was standing on the banks of the Moy River, where, on a dilapidated wooden boat arranged by local smugglers, he was I crossed to Thailand.

A year after the recruitment campaign in Myanmar, thousands of young people and women made the same, either heading to the border controlled by the rebels from the reach of the military regime or left Myanmar completely behind.

Like Ong, they reject the matter of struggle for military rulers accused by the United Nations and countless human rights groups in launching a brutal campaign to support their rule, by indiscriminate attacking the civilian population throughout Myanmar and withdrawing the country into a bloody civil war without end on the horizon.

“They are destroying the entire country, and they kill our people, and our worlds. I do not want to be part of the killers. For this reason, I do not want to enter the army and I do not want to obey the recruitment law,” Aung told a island recently from a safe house near the Thai border.

“They don’t want to serve … like slaves”

The army did not issue official recruitment figures.

After the eleventh unit of recruits was summoned in March, the Myanmar army may be about to reach its goal of drafting 60,000 new soldiers in the first year of the program, as analysts told Al -Jazeera.

Analysts said that the recruits will be welcome to the leaders of the battalion in the regime throughout the country, who did not say about directing their units to their full power four years after a civil war estimated that it killed tens of thousands of all sides.

Richard Horusi, Senior Adviser in Myanmar, told the International Crisis Group, that the new recruits get The most difficult and difficult to assemble.

While some answered the draft of Tayeb Khater in the first few months of its entry into force last year, this changed.

“Over time, the authorities were forced to resort to more procedures than ever to obtain recruits, including kidnapping young people from bus stations and other public places,” Horsi said.

He said: “Local officials have extorted the money from potential recruits to avoid the draft. Some officials were killed when they entered societies trying to collect draft lists or impose recruitment orders.”

Instead of being deployed to guard the duty around the military bases or other functions behind the front lines in an intended manner, it is said that many parts get some of the most dangerous battlefield tasks.

“There are many reports that recruits are given the most difficult and dangerous duties in which the most experienced soldiers are emerging, such as exposure to air behind enemy lines. They fail in these tasks in an unbearable manner – either they are killed, defected or fleeing to them if they have the opportunity,” said Horsy. “

The recruits are also transferred to a battle with much lower training than the soldiers they join, in some cases, and they treat more like artillery fodder more than fighters.

“For example, when they enter (the army) to the new area … First, only (they send) these types of recruitable people as first forces, then actual soldiers can later, (as) in the second line,” he said.

“Human Shields”

Ko Ko, 24, who fled from Myanmar to evade recruitment in March last year, just weeks after the announcement of the draft, told the story of Kyu Hitt Ong.

“On the battlefield, they use (recruits) like human shields – to cross bombs, to dismantle bombs, something like that,” he said to a island from North Thailand.

“For this reason, no one wants to go to the army; they don’t want to serve … like slaves,” he said.

Ko Ko says that his parents paid a family friend, with a large position in the Immigration Office in the system, about $ 300 to arrange for passing through the migration table at Yangon International Airport without stopping so that he can leave the country and avoid military draft.

“”

Ko Ko said that instead of serving in the army after receiving his papers, he took his private life.

Despite the compulsory summons, analysts say the draft has failed to transform the tide in a civil war of grinding that often witnessed a series of losses to the army.

In December, months after the recruitment of thousands of recruits, the army lost another regional leadership base for the rebel forces, the second since the coup in 2021, in the state of Rakhine.

Through some estimates, the army may be in full control over less than a quarter of the country, although it still has a strong grip on major cities such as Yangon, Mandalay and Capital Naypyidaw.

The recruitment engine gave some relief to decreasing brochures, promoting morale among officers, and allowed some defensive battlefield operations.

“Certainly, it is not a silver bullet of an army with a historical weakness,” said the Group of Crisis.

Fighting to a dead end with recruits

Even with thousands of new forces, Kiao Heth Ong says of the launch of a few attacks or new anti -attacks to restore the lost land.

In the first place, the system continues to rely on the attacks on artillery and air migration for most offensive fighting operations. He adds that the draft helped the army at least reduce losses.

He added that this may be the goal of the regime: the soldiers used fishermen to help retain the largest possible land and play for time while the generals tried to end the civil war at the negotiating table, with the help of China, their main supporter.

“I think this law (recruitment) has become part of this strategy,” he said.

Armed armed groups against the army called for a truce yet The devastating earthquake that struck Myanmar On March 28, more than 3,600 people were killed. The army initially ignored the call for a ceasefire, as it made air strikes near the earthquake center around the city of Sagaing, but later said it would agree.

Each side has been accused since then by violating the agreement.

Modern local news reports say that one of the armed groups, the National Democratic Alliance Army in Myanmar (MNDAA), will hand over to the largest city in the northern Shan state, to the Myanmar army after being pressured by China.

Mndaa seized the city, the home of the northeastern leadership base of the army, last year, in what was a major blow to the regime.

In the relative safety of a safe profession in the far west of Thailand, Ong continues to work as a teacher, as he directed students to Myanmar about intermittent internet connection to a parallel school system created by army opposition groups.

After illegally crossed the border, he still lives for fear of being arrested by the Thai authorities and sending him to Myanmar – and he is directly believed, in the military service that he fled to avoid.

He said: “I heard (I heard) that there are many people who are deported to Myanmar, being arrested, arrested and sent to the army.”

“If I am forced to return to Myanmar, it is very clear that I will be treated like this, and I do not want to be.”