A ray of sunshine for Myanmar’s wounded rebels as civil war rages - chof 360 news

Mae Sot, Thailand - Within an old wooden house in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, wounded revolutionary fighters lie side by side.

Many are amputees missing legs, hands, and arms. Some have serious head wounds, and others have suffered debilitating spinal injuries. Some are blind, and others are unable to walk.

These young fighters have been wounded by landmines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and sniper fire, burned by the flames of bombs dropped by warplanes and scarred by shrapnel.

They have journeyed to this border town through the jungles from neighbouring Myanmar, seeking medical attention for injuries suffered in an intensifying civil conflict that is one of the longest and most vicious globally.

Yet their place of recovery - Sunshine Care Centre - does not boast the sleek, sterile environment of a white-walled hospital equipped with sophisticated medical equipment and staffed by qualified surgeons.

Instead, the estimated 140 war-wounded fighters at this centre are recovering in rudimentary conditions, mostly resting in wood and steel cots arranged under a traditional Thai stilted house.

They are cared for by volunteers, who themselves have fled from Myanmar.

Unable to continue fighting, most cannot return home for fear of violent reprisal by the Myanmar military, whose coup they have been resisting for four years.

On February 1, 2021, the army removed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which ignited an unprecedented uprising against military rule in the nation of 54 million people.

The coup – and the violent crackdown on peaceful protests that followed – is said to have propelled Myanmar’s Generation Z, the demographic of young people born between 1997 and 2012, to take up arms.

This generation went into the jungles and highlands to join ethnic armed groups and newly formed civil defence militias – known as the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) – as well as participating in support roles such as nursing wounded fighters.

One of those who joined the fight was Ko Khant, 23, who had his hand blown off at the wrist and lost sight in his left eye when an unexploded RPG rocket fired by military forces detonated in his hands.

Resistance fighters often collect bombs and rockets that fail to detonate as their forces lack adequate weapons and ammunition, Ko Khant told Al Jazeera, though on this occasion the rocket exploded, causing grievous injuries.

"When the RPG dropped from the [military] side, I went to pick it up, and it just exploded," he said. "Sometimes when the RPG drops they don't explode. My wrist was injured and my eye was injured with gunpowder."

Before the military takeover, Ko Khant was a chef in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, specialising in European cuisine. After joining pro-democracy street protests and experiencing the violent military crackdown, he fled to Karen State, bordering Thailand, to join PDF fighters.

He received some training and soon found himself on the front lines, where, in January 2022, he suffered injuries, becoming partially disabled.

Smuggled across the border and treated in Thai hospitals, Ko Khant then came to Sunshine Care Centre to recover, and now he helps run the centre's day-to-day activities.

He was offered a prosthetic hand while in recovery, but he declined, telling Al Jazeera there were other amputees in greater need.

"There are people who are in need, a lot more than me," he said.

"It doesn't feel like I have no hand."

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) organisation reports that Myanmar’s ongoing civil conflict is the third deadliest globally, reporting more than 50,000 deaths since the 2021 coup, including civilians.

ACLED also reports that at least 2,600 different “non-state actors” are participating in Myanmar’s conflict, accounting for a whopping 21 percent of all non-state armed groups worldwide.

A plethora of acronyms for those groups abound: CDF (Chinland Defence Force), KNA (Karen National Army), NDAA (National Democratic Defence Army), PNLA (Pa-O National Liberation Army), PREPAK (People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak), to name but a sprinkling.

These groups are largely directed towards one purpose - overthrowing the country’s military rulers, a longstanding and tight-knit clique of generals operating from their purpose-built capital, Naypyidaw, in central Myanmar.

Before the 2021 coup, Myanmar was already beset by decades-long borderland fighting with Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs).

As a former British colonial outpost - which is still known as Burma to many - the country saw independence in 1948 after which the military, dominated by the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group, seized power in 1962.

Inter-ethnic rivalry and fighting against the military since then have been a constant. However, the 2021 coup triggered a nationwide armed uprising on an unprecedented scale and involved very different participants.

The conflict has now spread to at least 321 of Myanmar’s 330 townships and many civilian casualties have been caused by the military’s air strikes on villages suspected to be cooperating with resistance forces.

Myanmar’s conflict only continues to escalate.

By 2023, Myanmar’s military rulers had imported more than $1bn worth of arms, largely from Russia, China and Singapore, the United Nations reports.

In contrast, resistance forces are vastly under-resourced, often fashioning homemade weapons and risking desperate actions such as Ko Khant collecting unexploded rockets fired by the army for reuse by the rebels.

All sides are engaged in the domestic manufacture of weapons, including rifles, mortars, attack drones and, increasingly, landmines.

In particular, landmines are manufactured by the military’s Directorate of Defence Industries, which produces at least five types of antipersonnel mines, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The indiscriminate use of landmines has affected civilians as well as fighters, with HRW recently reporting that Myanmar had the highest annual civilian casualty rate for landmines globally, and the number is likely to rise.

Many of the fighters convalescing in Sunshine Care Centre have been injured by landmines, resulting in amputations.

Mae Gyi lost his leg after stepping on a landmine in April 2024, while fighting with the PDF in Karen State.

A former member of the military, Mae Gyi left the army in 2016 and joined the resistance after the 2021 coup, lending his soldiering expertise to emerging PDF forces.

He told Al Jazeera that resistance leaders were initially suspicious of a former regime soldier but soon learned to trust him.

"When I first arrived, some suspected I was a spy," Mae Gyi said. "But after we soldiers live together, eat together and sleep together, they trust me."

The 30-year-old now lives in an "overflow" house for Sunshine patients with his wife Su Pan, an ethnic Karen journalist, where he is learning to walk again using a prosthetic leg.

Despite his wife being pregnant and him having lost a limb, Mae Gyi wants to continue fighting.

It is a goal his wife supports, telling Al Jazeera that it is her husband’s duty to support the revolution – even if it means giving his life for it.

"He believes in this revolution," Su Pan said.

"It is his duty. If he dies, he will be free from this war."

Much of Myanmar’s resistance efforts are undertaken by volunteers and without large-scale international funding.

That includes Sunshine Care Centre, which was started as a simple shelter for wounded fighters by Myanmar woman Ah Naw.

Ah Naw moved to Thailand's Mae Sot from Myanmar after the 2021 coup and began taking injured fighters fleeing across the border into her home.

Since then, the centre has grown to assist more than 800 injured rebels.

Funded predominantly by humanitarian organisations and donations from Myanmar’s diaspora, the care centre is staffed primarily by young volunteers, most of whom have also fled Myanmar and are unable to return due to their involvement in the revolution.

Fighters with serious injuries are initially treated at other hospitals and then Sunshine Care Centre aids with recovery, including a daily routine of physiotherapy conducted in a small gym.

Those with spinal injuries and amputations are put through a series of strengthening exercises in preparation for prosthetics in the hope they may one day walk again.

Amputees must pass several physical tests before they can be fitted with a prosthetic to ensure they can support their body weight.

Fighters who are able can also join afternoon classes in subjects such as art, writing and barbering, which are part of their therapeutic recovery, and also provide skills development.

Yu, a volunteer at the centre, previously worked in the hospitality business in Yangon. She first started fundraising for the centre, then decided to travel to Mae Sot to volunteer in a hands-on role.

"Because of my fundraising movement, it is not safe for me to be back in my home because my family is in Myanmar," Yu told Al Jazeera. "So I just stay here and support the people who are here."

The only medication Yu knew about before volunteering was paracetamol. Now, 12 months on, and with training from nongovernmental organisations, she assists with both medical and physiotherapy treatment.

One of Yu’s patients is Pan Pan, a 30-year-old former welder turned fighter, who was shot in the head by a sniper.

After initial treatment, he was brought to Sunshine, where he lay in bed unconscious for six months.

Yu told how Pan Pan regained consciousness and can now function with limited mobility, though he has lost vision in his right eye and is prone to fainting.

Pan Pan’s injuries are more than physical though.

Yu said he expresses suicidal thoughts and is resistant to the daily therapeutic training.

"We have to console him a lot, and we have to give him much encouragement to do the physiotherapy," she said. "He harms himself and says, 'Kill me - it's better if you kill me.'"

Yet, Yu persists in working with Pan Pan, telling how she motivates him each morning to conduct physiotherapy to assist with his recovery.

"I'm not in the medical field, so this is all new for me," she said.

"But the main thing to be here is to have heart. Even the people who have medical experience, if their heart is not here, it may not work. But for me, I work with heart."

As the war in Myanmar enters its fifth year on February 1, the complexity involved in reaching a resolution is increasingly evident.

Diverse resistance groups have made significant gains and military forces have lost key positions, with western Rakhine State nearly completely overrun now by Arakan Army fighters.

Amid battlefield losses and mounting casualties, the military last year began enforcing conscription for men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27, a move that forced more people to flee and join the revolutionary movements instead.

In northern Shan and Wa states, ethnic armed groups are also involved in the international drug trade, which has seen Myanmar emerge once again as the top producer of opium worldwide and a leading manufacturer of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine.

Other forms of transnational crime – such as cyber-scam centres – have flourished in border cities such as Tachilek amid the nationwide instability, and Myanmar’s economy has spiralled downwards, with essential services suffering and food prices becoming more expensive and supplies harder to find.

While the overarching goal of the various ethnic armed organisations and revolutionary forces may be to overthrow the military, there appears little coordination between the many fighting groups to achieve this common goal.

In early 2024, a combined operation between the Three Brotherhood Alliance – made up of the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – managed to overrun military forces.

However, internal fragmentation and competing interests have proven a barrier to greater coordination on the battlefield and planning for future peace and stability.

The National Unity Government (NUG) – formed in exile after the coup by National League for Democracy members and others – has achieved political gains and is recognised as the legitimate representative of Myanmar by several governments and on a number of international diplomatic forums.

Yet, whether the NUG can win the support of the powerful ethnic armed groups to formulate a national political solution remains to be seen.

The International Criminal Court has called for Myanmar's military leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to be prosecuted for the Rohingya genocide in 2017. But there appears little interest from the outside world in getting involved in Myanmar’s complex conflict, and international intervention remains unlikely.

As long as peace in Myanmar remains out of reach, the Sunshine Care Centre will continue to be a crucial refuge for injured fighters - and its volunteer helpers - such as Ko Khant, Pan Pan, Mae Gyi, and Yu – and for the many others that will need its services.