An exclusive inside look at the fight to restore democracy in Myanmar

The military regime had installed a drone-jamming system at the Loikaw airfield that kept opposition forces effectively grounded. But the People’s Defence Forces’ team of drone experts overrode the system, allowing them to send in large aerial vehicles to blow up a main ammunition depot on the outskirts of Loikaw, sending a plume of dark smoke into the sky.

An opposition fighter patrols the streets of Loikaw 100 metres from the front line, where his comrades are battling for control of the police station. The sound of gunshots ring out, while behind him stands a hotel that was destroyed by the junta. Most of Loikaw’s 50,000 citizens headed to camps for internally displaced people in nearby forested areas before the fighting began.

A shocked fighter, covered in blood, watches as medics try to save the life of his friend and comrade, who was injured in late November by shrapnel while fighting to capture the police station in Loikaw.

An offensive launched Oct. 27 along the northern border with China, in which opposition forces took several towns from regime forces and blocked vital trade routes, was the biggest challenge to the junta since it seized power in 2021, and it energized resistance groups nationwide. In November, Karenni commanders decide to attack Loikaw, the capital of Karenni State.

Karenni fighters spent days fighting to clear regime forces from the Loikaw police station, which was heavily fortified. Resistance fighters positioned at a hotel 150 metres from the station fire a mix of weapons – including rocket-propelled grenades – at enemy soldiers, while taking heavy fire from the much better equipped military.

This rebel fighter was gravely wounded by shrapnel, amid intense mortar fire during the battle for the police station. He was not expected to survive.

A popular Karenni commander was among the people killed during the battle for the police station. The commander’s wife (middle) had been out of the country for months for work, and had just returned home to see her husband the day before he died.

Two days after arriving in Loikaw, opposition forces headed for the massive University of Loikaw campus, occupied by junta forces. After fierce fighting at the front gate, they cleared out remaining military positions and pinned down the last junta soldiers. Eventually, 30 of them surrendered to the rebels, who also seized a large cache of weapons.

A Karenni fighter fires a rocket-propelled grenade toward the police station from a hotel that has become an opposition base.

This luxurious hotel – whose clientele was largely made up of business people closely affiliated with the junta – was taken over by Karenni forces, who maintain a presence there in case the military tries to take it back.

Ree Du, one of the Karenni forces’ top three commanders, with whom I’d been embedded, was injured by shrapnel on the outskirts of Loikaw. He returned to the front a day or two later – if he wasn’t on the front line with his young fighters, he told me, they lost morale. A few days before I left Myanmar, Ree Du’s younger brother bled to death after stepping on a landmine. Though he said he was sad, especially for his mother, “this is the life we chose, and we know this is the risk we are taking.”

This Karenni base an hour outside Loikaw, in Demoso, was home to a major ammunition depot and to the only Starlink device capable of connecting to the internet. I was here to get online an hour before a pair of junta fighter jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on it. When I returned, the place was destroyed – though the bombs had missed the weapons cache.

That same base in Demoso had housed junta soldiers captured by Karenni forces in the first days of the battle for control of Loikaw.

When the military began to bombard the Demoso base with fighter jets and mortar fire, they injured several prisoners of war from their own side. In the chaos, opposition forces moved the POWs (some of whom had their spouses with them in detention) to safer locations.

A top Karenni commander takes control of a junta truck and passes a truckload of reinforcements sent to the front line in Loikaw.

With opposition forces taking their heaviest losses since the start of the war, commanders are desperate for fresh fighters. These recruits are at a training camp in the countryside outside Loikaw, where the heavy bamboo shielded them from junta aircraft. They should be embarking on a three-month crash course in warfare. Instead, they’ll be shipped to the front line after two months of training.

The situation in Myanmar today is drastically different from my previous two trips into the country. At that time, the military regime was focused on gaining control of Karenni State – considered a key objective because it would effectively divide the resistance forces. But the junta struggled to cut off resistance supply lines and prevent Karenni fighters – employing guerilla-warfare tactics in the countryside and on the outskirts of towns – from threatening the state’s key strategic locations. Above, a steady stream of recruits flow into a main Karenni base, close to the border with Thailand, for training in September, 2022.

While anti­personnel landmines have been banned by most countries since 1997, the military junta has placed mines on a large scale in and around towns, villages, rice paddies and urban areas. Mines have killed and wounded countless fighters and civilians, and will make it impossible for thousands of people to return home. Many fighters at this rehab centre, pictured in October, 2022, and built in a secret location in Karenni State for fear of airstrikes by Tatmadaw forces, have lost limbs, often the lower parts of their legs.

Bullet holes pierce the front screen of a vehicle belonging to a unit of Karenni fighters in April. After a large-scale offensive in March, in which the junta tried to dislodge Karenni fighters from their strongholds and achieved only limited results, the regime began to focus on seizing control of the state main’s roads and strategic junctions to choke resistance groups from fighting.

Karenni fighters look on as flames engulf homes moments after multiple airstrikes hit Daw Nyah Khu in April. With air and artillery support, junta columns attacked from the north and south, destroying several local villages. But a Karenni counterattack inflicted heavy losses on junta units, which were forced to withdraw from the area.

Regime forces conduct punishing attacks, sending units of well-armed soldiers, about 100-strong, to burn villages, attack resistance bases and kill civilians. In April, they attacked the village of Daw Ta Ma Gyi, reducing many homes to ashes.

Ree Du, a top Karenni commander, removes the spent cartridge of a 40-mm grenade from a grenade launcher attached to his AK-47 assault rifle during intense clashes against units of Myanmar’s military in April in Karenni State.

A Karenni fighter, posted less than 30 metres from an enemy position, fires during fierce clashes against units of Myanmar’s military in April. The intense gun fight lasted for more than three hours, until sundown.

Karenni fighters walk past the body of a soldier from Myanmar's military after fierce clashes between the two groups in April.

Karenni fighters display weapons and ammunition taken from the military during the April clashes. That same day, the unit's commander sold the entire cache of confiscated weapons and ammunition to another allied armed group fighting against the military to secure funds to purchase a four-wheel-drive vehicle for his own men.

This fighter was shot during a close-range gunfight with the junta in a forested area, with the bullet piercing his liver. He was treated by paramedics and then transported to a Karenni field hospital.

As the fighting rages in April, displaced civilians flee to the border with Thailand during the night. Their village had been attacked, and most homes burnt by the military.