KAYIN STATE, Myanmar—Htoo Naw was a commando in the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) for 20 years before retiring due to his health. But when the 51-year-old heard that his old unit was preparing to storm the Myanmar military’s tactical command base in the town of Kyaikdon, he left his rice farm to return to the battlefield.
Kyaikdon, in Myanmar’s southern Kayin state, is nestled in the foothills of a mountain range that extends to the Thai border, some 12 miles east. The state is home to many members of the Karen ethnic minority. Armed groups have fought for political autonomy for the Karen since 1949, soon after Myanmar gained independence from Britain, while other ethnic groups in the borderlands followed suit in the decades afterward.
“The oppression in this area got much worse after 1997, when this base was established,” Htoo Naw said, while walking through the rubble of the outpost. Once, he recalled, a soldier quartering in a civilian home killed his host, who forgot to bring him food. Another time, soldiers arbitrarily executed a farmer after a fierce battle near his field.
Armed with these memories, Htoo Naw was among the first troops to charge the base near Kyaikdon town during the assault last March; eventually, he apprehended the commander.
“My only thought was to capture the base so the people in this area can live freely. I wouldn’t even mind if I died,” he said.
By last November, the thick jungle undergrowth was already reclaiming the concrete and twisted metal that remained of the military base after the KNLA torched it. There were two bomb craters in front of a flagpole, which were from air strikes launched during the battle and that killed one KNLA soldier but failed to stop the Karen national flag from being hoisted overhead.
Htoo Naw, a KNLA commando, stands amid the rubble at the Kyaikdon base in November 2024. The army seized the base last March.
Myanmar’s simmering ethnic conflict intensified dramatically when the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in 2021, pitting the junta against a coalition of ethnic armed organizations like the KNLA, as well as newer pro-democracy forces. The military has lost unprecedented swaths of territory in the borderlands, particularly since October 2023.
Kyaikdon’s capture was part of a broader offensive last spring that saw Myanmar’s military expelled from key areas along the country’s border with Thailand. Fighting in the area has since lulled, with the military managing to cling to some strongholds without reclaiming lost territory. Though momentum is against it, the regime has so far proved resilient, maintaining control over the country’s heartland and major population centers.
The Myanmar military has long contained ethnic insurgencies in the borderlands by using divide and conquer techniques and compartmentalizing the civil conflict. But now it faces opposition from all sides at once and remains unable to project strength into the periphery.
Armed groups in Myanmar’s north have seized all but one official border crossing with China. Last April, the KNLA came close to capturing Myawaddy, the largest border crossing with Thailand, which saw roughly $10 million in trade per day before the COVID-19 pandemic. Control over these border areas is crucial to establishing autonomous enclaves, because it gives armed groups access to international trade and weapons markets and creates a secure back line.
Myanmar’s civil war has continued to decimate overland trade, upsetting the military and the country’s neighbors. Regime figures show that when comparing trade through Myawaddy between April and July 2024 to the same period in 2023, it dropped by 87 percent.
In addition to losing key sources of revenue, the military’s battlefield setbacks have left armed groups within striking distance of Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s heavily fortified capital, and Mandalay, its second-biggest city.
In response, China and Thailand have heaped pressure on the armed groups in the hopes of forcing a cease-fire to secure their borders and resume trade. China has closed border crossings that the northern armed groups, such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, rely on to run their statelets. Meanwhile, Bangkok has seemingly squeezed the KNLA’s access to ammunition, some of which is sourced from Thailand.
Thailand is pushing for talks between the KNLA and Myanmar’s military to reopen the Asian Highway, a major trade artery that runs from Bangkok through Myawaddy to Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, and on to India. The road became a war zone last April, as the military tried to use it to relieve beleaguered forces in Myawaddy by sending a massive column of around 1,500 troops, along with armored vehicles.
KNLA Lt. Saw Kaw (right) pictured at his camp in November 2024 with Kyaw Thet Linn (left), a prominent activist.
Called the Aung Zeya (“Successful Victory”) column, the operation has been anything but. In a camp set in a grove of bamboo and banana trees, Saw Kaw, a KNLA lieutenant, recalled initial engagement with the Aung Zeya column. “They were marching in two rows on either side of the highway,” he said. “On the second day, we shot their commander with a sniper, they all scattered, and we seized an armored vehicle.”
Saw Kaw said that the military soldiers tried to progress through the jungle instead, slowing them down considerably and leaving them open to guerrilla ambushes. “Starting [last] April, they tried to send this column to Myawaddy within four days, but they still haven’t got there,” he said. “In the beginning, they used a lot of force, but now the column is on the defensive and we’re attacking them.”
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Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that the Aung Zeya operation wasn’t a complete failure. “It succeeded in expelling the Karen coalition from the key town of Kawkareik,” he said, which made it “significantly more difficult for Karen fighters to project force into regime-held areas in Mon state and Bago region.” The Bago region extends to the outskirts of Naypyitaw and Yangon.
Michaels said that the KNLA had also expended a lot of soldiers and ammunition in the fighting, resulting in a “seven-month lull” that allowed the military to turn its attention to areas on the Chinese border instead. “A sort of stalemate has persisted along the highway since,” he said.
KNLA soldiers look at a downed helicopter at the Thin Gan Nyi Naung base in November 2024. The helicopter was shot down last January.
On the highway between Kawkareik and Myawaddy lies Thin Gan Nyi Naung, a town that fell to the KNLA last spring after a nine-month siege. A KNLA officer, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said that he was given one hour’s notice that he would need to send 150 soldiers to the battlefield in Thin Gan Nyi Naung last March. “My forces are always prepared,” he said. “I told them where and when we would meet, and they all just responded, ‘Okay, we are ready.’”
The sprawling military installation in Thin Gan Nyi Naung was really four bases put together. The officer said that soldiers’ families lived with them in the cantonment, which he considered a form of human shield. The KNLA steadily pushed the regime troops and their families into one base against the side of a mountain, where they were surrounded, according to the officer.
At the beginning of April, the military soldiers said that they were ready to surrender—but before they could, the regime launched a massive barrage of airstrikes. “I think it was intentional to undermine the efforts to surrender,” the officer said, adding that it was likely also to force its own troops to fight to the death. Ultimately, that didn’t happen: The 600 surrendering regime soldiers and their family members were evacuated.
The remains of the Thin Gan Nyi Naung base in November 2024. The sign translates to “spirit and discipline.”
Nonetheless, the KNLA has been unable to replicate the total victory of the armed groups in the north. With an ammunition shortage, clearing the regime forces from Kawkareik and Myawaddy may prove challenging. Michaels suspects that the shortage is due to stricter Thai border controls. China has also reportedly pressured the UWSA, the most powerful armed group in the north, to stop selling arms and ammunition to other groups in an effort to stabilize the border and prevent the military regime’s collapse.
Despite these obstacles, a sense of optimism still pervades the Karen armed movement, while morale within the Myanmar military plummets. At a KNLA riverside camp in November, Way Pweh Ah, 41, pounded chilis with a mortar and pestle as he recalled a game of cat and mouse with the military during the battle for Thin Gan Nyi Naung. A chef before the coup, he now serves in an artillery unit and happily doubles as the camp cook.
Way Pweh Ah is ethnically Karen but was living in Yangon when the military seized power in 2021; he joined the tens of thousands of people taking to the streets in mass peaceful protests. During a crackdown that February, security forces beat Way Pweh Ah within an inch of his life, he said, fracturing his skull, neck, and back.
The chef left the city for the jungle, following a family legacy: Both his grandfather and uncle were killed while fighting against the military with the KNLA. Way Pweh Ah believes that his fate will be different. “My grandfather couldn’t defeat them, my uncle couldn’t defeat them, but now it’s our turn,” he said.