Myanmar youth look to flee conscription or join armed rebels fighting junta: 'the army is losing control'
A conscription order by Myanmar's weakened junta has seeded dread among the nation's youth, with many making plans to flee or join pro-democracy fighters to avoid being drafted into the loathed military.
Fighters from the People's Defence Forces (PDFs) have a simple message for compatriots who have so far not directly supported their resistance against the junta, but are now at risk of being pulled into the violent chaos that has engulfed the country since the 2021 coup.
"Join us," John Paw, 27, of the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), one of the largest PDFs in Myanmar that supports local ethnic armed groups, told This Week in Asia.
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In a truck crammed with KNDF fighters returning along a dusty road from a recent raid on a military base in Shardaw town, Karenni State, John Paw laid out the challenges of restoring local governance and the economy in areas where the junta's writ no longer extends.
"We have many needs, not just for the fighting in defence, but from agriculture to administration, we have so many things to build together and we need your help," he said.
"That's why I want to ask you to join our People Defence Forces."
The junta's February 10 order activated a 2010 conscription law, which had remained dormant on the statute book, requiring all healthy men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 37 to sign up for two years of military service.
It came as a coalition of ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy rebels across the country have inflicted heavy losses on government forces, in a counteroffensive that poses an unprecedented - and possibly existential - threat to the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's vicious military is known.
The junta says it wants 60,000 new recruits to sign up each year - starting with 5,000 every month from April. Anyone who dodges the draft faces up to five years in jail.
For the nearly 14 million people who are eligible for conscription, it's a case of fight or flight.
Mu Mu, a 23-year-old professional in Yangon, didn't hesitate to make her decision as soon as the conscription order was announced.
"I want to leave ASAP," she told This Week in Asia, using a pseudonym to avoid alerting the military. But time is running out to flee.
"They might stop people leaving soon," Mu Mu said. "This conscription law shows that the army is losing control in many parts of the country, the regime is nearing the end. But first they will make the ordinary people carry the consequences. Either I get out or I join the PDFs."
Long queues have built up at the Thai embassy in Yangon in recent weeks as people seek a legal way out, while hundreds of mainly young men have been detained after sneaking over the border into Thailand to escape the draft - a warning of the potential for a larger exodus ahead.
Thailand, a country that does not have an asylum system for the protection of refugees, is under pressure to consider formalising entry ahead of the expected influx.
For now, those pouring across the border illegally are being arrested.
"Thailand needs to give protective legal status to Myanmar refugees or anyone fleeing the country," said Chit Seng, Myanmar human rights associate for Fortify Rights.
"They are fleeing persecution, the junta has proven again and again that they don't have a humane bone in them and civilians are a means to an end for the military."
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has urged any Myanmar people seeking to enter the country to do so by legal routes only.
Thailand has long hosted tens of thousands of people forced out of Myanmar by decades of conflict. It has also broadly turned a blind eye to a hidden community - perhaps already numbering in its millions - of Myanmar exiles pushed out since the February 2021 coup.
The kingdom could also offer legal job opportunities and training to avoid forcing young, driven Myanmar people into the shadow economy, Chit Seng said.
The military's decades-long stranglehold over Myanmar, with junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing at its head, is being challenged like never before.
Over the last five months the armed forces' hold over crucial border areas with China, Thailand, India and Bangladesh - and the legal and illicit trade flows they allow - has been weakened by well armed, and increasingly well coordinated, ethnic armed groups.
They have been backed up by PDF units that vary in size, arms and effectiveness, but which continue to nag at the junta, ambushing military patrols and bases.
Analysts say the conscription law reveals an army that's starting to lose control as it resorts to time-worn methods of violence and coercion of the civilian population to survive.
Unverified reports on Myanmar social media say abductions by the army have already begun, while potential conscripts speculate that bribery will be the only way to avoid being conscripted.
An exodus of Myanmar youth may catch Southeast Asia off guard, experts have warned.
"We urge Asean member states and the wider international community to help provide access, including visas and educational opportunities to Myanmar youth who seek to flee ahead of the draft," said Kasit Piromya, former Thai foreign minister and a board member of the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights group.
As the avenues available to a hollowed-out military narrow, pro-democracy fighters say the time is ripe for those facing conscription to instead help push the junta over the edge.
"Do you want to build up a country where you have the full rights to create your own destiny?" asks John Paw of the KNDF.
"Or do you still want to live under the control of the military and fight your own brothers?"
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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