All Along the Borderline
Coming Soon…
“I just thought, ‘Someone has to stay and bear witness,’” says Paul Greening, a veteran humanitarian and field worker with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). For decades, he moved from one crisis to another: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and East Timor. But Myanmar— especially Rakhine State and the Rohingya crisis— remains the place that defines his moral and emotional world.
Greening first encountered the Rohingya in 2008 while working for IOM in Aceh, Indonesia, when small boats carrying desperate families began washing up on its shores. He remembers how unprepared local officials were, and that the international community barely noticed. From that moment on, he began investigating their story, sharing it within his professional circles, and trying to make sure that international agencies neither ignored nor forgot the Rohingya’s heart-wrenching situation. This concern eventually pulled him to the wider story of Myanmar itself.
He arrived in Sittwe on August 8, 2017, sensing catastrophe. “It was coming,” he says simply, recalling how local whispers and troop movements told the story. And sure enough, within weeks of his arrival, entire villages were burning to the north. He threw himself into coordination work, field verification, and frantic communication with both local and international networks, but nothing could stop the torrent of the human exodus unfolding. Greening felt both furious and helpless, keeping himself together through routine and exercise. “The gym was my meditation,” he says, describing how physical exhaustion was a way to keep despair at bay. When he did cry, it was in private, usually after long days of meetings or after reading another report of massacres. Earlier experiences in conflict zones had taught him to function amid horror, but Rakhine tested all of his reserves.
In the months that followed, Greening became one of the few international workers to stay engaged across communities. While much of the world viewed the conflict in binary terms— the Burmese military cracking down on the Rohingya— he tracked a complex mix of actors: local militias; Buddhist nationalists; Rakhine ethnics; other smaller, marginalized ethnic groups; and state forces, who were turning neighbor against neighbor. He mapped a pattern of a state-sponsored “model” settler villages, known as “Na Ta La,” that formed part of a deliberate demographic strategy to displace the Rohingya. During this time, Greening also collected rumors, photographs, and testimonies, sometimes at great personal risk. And when the fighting worsened, he worked to protect still-vulnerable populations in central Rakhine from retaliatory violence.
In 2018, Greening’s self-described stubborn independence brought him into conflict with the UN hierarchy. At one point, he bypassed the chain of command by writing directly to the UN Resident Coordinator from his IOM address, warning of escalating Arakan Army activity. Though he did not work directly for the UN, IOM operated within the same humanitarian coordination system, and Greening was expected to share information only through prescribed channels. His direct email was viewed as a breach of protocol—an infraction that could have carried professional consequences within the tight-knit humanitarian community. Months later, when fighting broke out exactly where he had warned it would, no apology came—only confirmation, in his view, that bureaucracies rarely reward honesty. Still, he continues to speak his mind, arguing that outsiders who treat Myanmar as a morality play miss the reality on the ground.
After his IOM contract ended, Greening remained in Rakhine state on his own, and he helped link UN agencies with local civil society groups. He also played a role in supporting the small but powerful “White Rose” campaign in 2019, when young Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians handed each other flowers after another spasm of violence. In 2020, he traveled to Bangkok, only to be trapped there by COVID. He joined the city’s Move Forward rallies, sensing the same undercurrent of resistance that once animated student protests in Yangon. Then, when the Myanmar military staged its coup in February 2021, old friends from Rakhine and Yangon reached out. In response, he decided to cross to Mae Sot, expecting to stay about two weeks… and he hasn’t left.
Greening rents a modest house there now, often crowded with visitors— students, medics, and defectors displaced by the conflict. He also helps networks of exiled youth establish safe houses and communication lines. Among his small triumphs is a bicycle project through which he has distributed more than two hundred bikes to those who cannot risk traveling by car on roads patrolled by checkpoints, where being stopped can have devastating consequences. Greening says his work draws strength from the perseverance of Myanmar’s young activists. “They’re inspiring,” he says. “They’re not giving up.”
His admiration runs deep. Greening credits Myanmar’s youth with giving the movement a moral clarity and energy that older generations lacked. But he also warns that without a unified political council, the resistance still risks fragmentation. Drawing on his experience in East Timor, he notes how early idealism can fracture once victory seems near. The challenge, he says, is to institutionalize the spirit of unity before power politics returns. He highlights figures such as Maung Saungkha and Tayzar San for their integrity and realism; they remind him that the revolution’s future must be led by those who are risking everything, not by former politicians, NGO figures, and self-styled leaders who live safely in Western countries or large Asian cities but still try to control or speak for the revolutionary movement from afar. Greening notes how he saw this same pattern repeat itself in East Timor, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, when exiled elites try to co-opt grassroots movements.
The population of Mae Sot is now a microcosm of Myanmar’s pluralism: Thai, Karen, Rohingya, Pakistani-Thai, and Burmese exiles intermingle in teashops and clinics. It is a border town that feels closer to the revolution than any capital. Around him is a swirl of NGO workers, guerrilla medics, undercover journalists, and fugitives from both sides of the border. In contrast to the polished indifference of Bangkok or the expat comfort of Chiang Mai, Mae Sot breathes urgency. There is also a growing influx of wounded fighters and displaced civilians as the war intensifies, while airstrikes across Karen State are driving thousands across the Moei River. Greening often visits informal hospitals and field clinics where young fighters recover from spinal injuries or amputations; there, many insist they’ll be returning to the front despite their devastating wounds. “They’ll sit there smiling,” he says, shaking his head, “and tell me, ‘When I can walk, I’ll go back.’” Thai authorities largely tolerate the humanitarian overflow, though clinics are stretched to capacity.
Greening adds that while Thai authorities are generally aware of the makeshift clinics serving Burmese refugees, they mostly turn a blind eye: they know who’s there, but they rarely raid the facilities or arrest the patients. Thailand, he explains, is not immune to corruption, yet forced deportation would technically violate the country’s new anti-torture law. In practice, however, deportations still occur, leaving many of those who fled to Mae Sot in a kind of limbo— without legal status, unable to return home, and living in a state of constant uncertainty.
The border area of Mae Sot, Greening jokes, is an “NGO, militia, and intelligence networking hub,” half chaos, half community. He notes that many kinds of foreigners have made their way to Mae Sot: seasoned aid workers, well-meaning volunteers, supporters of the revolution, and self-styled soldiers of fortune. Greening distinguishes genuine humanitarians, like the Free Burma Rangers who blend faith with fieldwork, from those who arrive chasing adventure. “It’s easy to spot them,” he says, describing how some Western men treat the war like a personal redemption story. Yet he does not entirely dismiss them; even the misguided, he thinks, are drawn by a kind of moral hunger that the world elsewhere ignores.
Meanwhile, new crises have emerged. In Rakhine, renewed conflict has forced Rohingya villagers to flee yet again. And the notorious “scam centers” are flourishing in Myanmar, northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia under the protection of armed groups and corrupt officials. Greening investigates these operations with the same persistence he once applied to human-rights monitoring. He explains that not all scam center workers are trafficked—many go willingly for the money— but the system quickly traps them. Billions of dollars are at stake, he notes, and any crackdown threatens powerful interests. For him, it is another form of exploitation built on statelessness and impunity.
One of Greening’s concerns is the social and cultural inclusion of women and LGBTQ members in the resistance in the opposition movement, as he acknowledges persistent gender-based violence within exile communities. He recalls a conversation with a Burmese artist in France who told him that if women and LGBTQ people are not included now, “You’ll lose it again after the revolution!” In response, he calls for “men’s support” programs, pointing to campaigns like White Ribbon, an international movement of men and boys working to end violence against women that began in Canada. Given that women and gay members of the resistance are fighting a battle on two fronts— with arms against the military, and for their genuine inclusion among their comrades now and in a future, democratic Myanmar—he calls their courage “extraordinary.” He recalls a woman sniper whose discipline and resolve astonished her comrades, and a trans fighter whose death was honored by peers with both tears and pride.
Greening also draws attention to less obvious injustices: for example, Rohingya Christians are persecuted segments of their own (predominantly Muslim) community besides the junta, and refugee youth are being trafficked from camps into forced labor. As can easily be imagined, amid all these challenges, moral exhaustion is a constant companion for Greening, but he finds energy in small victories and the generosity of those with nothing. Even amid cynicism, he continues to believe in connection— the act of listening, sharing meals, giving a phone call when news breaks. These gestures, he says, are what keep revolutions human.
Greening’s overall analysis of the situation is unsentimental. He understands how revolutions often devour their own, and how trauma repeats across generations. Yet at the same time, he believes that something new is taking shape. For the first time, ethnic groups that once distrusted each other are cooperating militarily and politically. “That’s the real revolution,” he says, “ethnic cooperation.” He does have hope, and for him it is not just a feeling, but a practice that must be renewed daily. There is a lot of evidence all around that might challenge hope, but he is sustained by the young people rebuilding schools in the jungle, the doctors stitching wounds under tarps, the laughter that erupts even after air raids. These, he says, are the proofs that Myanmar’s spirit endures.
As the interview comes to a close, Greening returns to his early years in Myanmar. He still dreams about Rakhine— the people he met, the villages he worked in, the families he couldn’t reach in time. But he refuses to remember the Rohingya only through their suffering; he recalls their humor, their hospitality, and their strength even amid destruction. In Mae Sot, he now meets Rohingya youth working side by side with others in mixed-ethnic groups, crossing boundaries their parents never could. For him, that spirit of cooperation is the revolution itself. “The youth are leading,” he says. “The others are following.”
Greening continues his work in Mae Sot, personally cycling through heat and rain to deliver supplies, check on new arrivals and visit the wounded. On reflection, he supposes that overall, he does remain hopeful. “If [the people] can be more united,” he says finally, “then we move the revolution forward again.”