Episode #272: Hello from the Other Side
“I was crying every day about [the military crackdown in March 2021]. I hadn't cried before when I saw it happening in Syria and other places, but I just felt like I did not want to watch that happen! I didn't want to be in a world where we have to keep watching people struggling for freedom and then getting suppressed and getting their dreams crushed,” says Michael Sladnick. “It was mostly women and girls who were participating in the protests, even more than men! I prayed at that time… I'm not religious, but I just wished and prayed for some way to help. And from that point on, after that period of those very emotional few weeks, I felt like a changed person.”
Michael is unusual in his advocacy for Myanmar. He had no personal ties to the country or its people before the coup. As a student in Chicago, he began to connect with the Myanmar expat community in early 2021, and their cause resonated with him deeply, politically and personally, and perhaps it could be said, spiritually as well. From that point on, Michael decided to dedicate himself to doing whatever it took to help their cause. Determined not to be the stereotype of a Western university student protester—all talk and no action—Michael began studying Burmese earnestly, and on his own, with whatever meagre resources he could find. “I had to decide if I'm committed to staying involved in Myanmar and doing as much as possible, then what's the involvement going to look like?” he said. “By mid-2023, I felt like my Burmese was at a good enough level that I wanted to try to come to the ground, to more directly work with people from here. So I moved to the Thai-Myanmar border area.”
After he’d established himself here, he was contacted by the Dutch journalist, Thomas van Linge, an experienced war correspondent. They had been connected for some time as part of an online community that revolved around van Linge’s Mideast reporting, particularly the events of the Arab Spring and the war in Syria, which moved Michael very much. Thinking that it could be a great opportunity to leverage Michael’s language skills, knowledge and passion, Thomas pitched the idea of taking an extended reporting trip there. Together, they decided to cross into Karenni state.
Karenni (formerly Kayah) is a small, impoverished state on the Thai border (listeners may wish to hear about the early formation of the Karenni resistance, addressed in a previous episode with Khun Be Du). Neither Michael nor Thomas had ever been to Karenni before, nor could either speak any of its languages. Journalists entering Myanmar usually traveled to the larger and better-known Karen state to the south, or Chin in the country’s west. Karenni had gotten little attention, and this was something that Thomas was keen to rectify. “He was interested in going to Karenni, because that was the area that was closest to being liberated. There‘ve been a number of towns and townships within Karenni that have been liberated in the past few months, and there have been big battles going on for major cities like Loikaw. If Loikaw falls to the resistance, that'd be the first state capitol, the first real town that they control!” Michael mentions another factor in their decision to travel to Karenni: the worsening situation in the town of Kawkareik, in Karen State, where the regime had acquired high-altitude Russian drones that the resistance couldn't shoot down. This resulted in increased bombings and a less stable battlefront compared to just a few months earlier. Consequently, resistance forces there were apprehensive about their ability to ensure the security of foreign journalists; the situation in Karenni State, meanwhile, had somewhat stabilized, with clearer battle lines, making it a safer place to visit.
By this point, Michael had been able to build up a network of friends and contacts on the Thai side of the border, and he began to feel them out about the possibility of establishing contact with a group inside Karenni to host them. According to the plan, Michael and Thomas would cross the border and their contacts would be waiting on the other side. However, the junta had other ideas: “The day before, the regime had launched airstrikes within five kilometers of the border! So on the Thai side, the authorities were understandably alarmed and on high alert. And on the Karenni side, everything was thrown into chaos. They didn’t have regular communications, as their internet and phone lines had been cut off.” Ultimately, they were told the situation had grown too unstable to attempt a visit.
So the pair decided to travel to Chiang Mai, where they met a former 1988 movement activist who volunteered to drive them into Karenni in his truck. Because they arrived three days behind schedule, the local commander they had been in touch with was away on a mission. Stranded, and with no way to alert any of their contacts, the pair connected with local PDF groups in the town and explained their situation. To their good fortune, one group decided to take them in and show them around. What Michael saw convinced him that the military was on the downfall (a view that more than aligns with what analyst Matthew Arnold expressed on a previous episode), yet at the same time, he witnessed the immeasurable destruction it had wrought as it struggled to hold onto power. “Karenni is the state that was the center of the popular uprising in 2021,” Michael explains. “It was the first real battlefront of the war that broke out in May and June 2021. It's been the most devastated state since the coup, with over half the population as refugees. Yet there's so little reporting, even in Burmese, about what's going on there.”
Michael explains the sad situation facing civilians in that area now. On the one hand, there is some overarching good news. “The regime has been defeated in these areas! The last remaining bases have been conquered by the PDF and the EAOs.” But what remains is devastating. While battles and territorial gains make for exciting headlines, the reality of life in so-called “liberated areas” most often goes unnoticed, and is often quite grim. As Michael discovered, “liberated” is a rather misleading term: “I'll take the example of Ywarthit which is a major town in eastern central Karenni. It was ‘liberated’ in December,” he says. “I say it's ‘liberated’ because at that time, the Thai government and the outside world decided that it was ‘liberated,’ and forced tens of thousands of refugees from these huge refugee camps on the Thai side of the border back into Myanmar.”
But what awaits them once they return to their newly “liberated” homes? Michael continues, “The situation on the ground is still totally unsafe and far from normal! In Ywarthit itself, there's PDFs and a small number of men there. But most of the civilians have still not been able to return back, because when the regime was there, they planted mines in people's houses. So when people do try to go home, they're often blown up by these mines!” Tragically, there were numerous cases of people having been killed by hidden explosives when trying to return home, a topic that expert and activist Yèshua Moser-Puangsuwan recently addressed. Just about every village in Karenni has been bombed, with many completely burned down or partially destroyed; and to make matters worse, most of these villages continue to lack a civilian population, as the land is so riddled with mines.
Contrasting the placing of landmines with the military’s actual fighting prowess, Michael flatly states that Burmese soldiers are well know for their cowardice. “They are afraid to fight the actual PDF and resistance! We went to Hpasawng, which is one of the two towns remaining in southern Karenni, where there's still some regime bases holding out, but Hpasawng is largely destroyed. The regime just has one hilltop base overlooking the town and a small presence in the southern part of the town. But we were able to walk far into the town, directly into the line of fire, even within view of the regime's hilltop lookouts. They're afraid to open fire during the day, because the PDF is watching them. If they start shooting, it will reveal to the PDF where the regime’s positions are, and the PDF will fight back, so they try to avoid conflict as much as possible.”
But as has been said, the military avoids any semblance of a fair fight, Michael describes their actions as being akin to terrorists. In lieu of conventional warfare, the junta deliberately goes after civilians to sow fear and attempt to destabilize support for the resistance. “They just want to terrorize civilians and punish them for protesting and supporting the revolution,” he explains. “When we asked [our hosts], ‘Why was this village targeted?’ They said, ‘There's no reason but to purposely target civilians and civilian infrastructure.” For example, the night before Michael and Thomas entered Hpasawng, they stayed in a small nearby village which had been leveled by artillery strikes. That night, there were massive artillery explosions and heavy gunfire throughout the night, and this was also the case in Ywarthit. Both of these towns are far from the front, and no military purpose was served by the shelling.” Michael further describes the challenges facing civilians who just want to return home and re-start their lives. “It's not just the mines that they have to spend time clearing out. Because the regime still has four bases in the southern part of Karenni, they continue to launch drone strikes, and long-range artillery strikes from those bases targeting Ywarthit and other civilian areas. So it's a big priority for the resistance, the PDFs, to try to take these last bases, because that will allow the civilians to return home.”
He found the specter of the now-ghost towns and ruins dotting Karenni state to be truly haunting. “It's just eerie, because there's very few people around,” he says. “It's these very beautiful, picturesque villages, at least when there's something left to them. There's lots of animals running around everywhere: goats, pigs, chickens, some cows; but no one's taking care of them. No one's picking up after them.” In one town, they encountered only a handful of men living there, and many of the remaining houses have been taken over by the resistance. Other homes were totally burned down or had parts of their roofs blown off by artillery strikes, with extensive shrapnel damage. There was no electricity, except for solar panels, which are used sparingly. “Most of the land is fallow,” he continues. “You see very little agriculture, and after two or three years of people not being able to plant, it's hard to even see where fields were. So it really feels like a wilderness, and it's interspersed by burned down villages, and a few bombed out ghost towns.”
That said, between bombardments and barrages, Michael feels that the overall prognosis for Karenni is actually quite positive. “We were really surprised by what we saw there,” he admits. “as well as how close the bulk of the state is to liberation.” Of course, “liberation” remains a relative term, and the possibility for civilians in “liberated” areas to lead normal lives is still a distant dream. “[The civilians are] living in extremely dire conditions,” he notes. “And yet, they are continuing to support the resistance. The local PDFs that brought us around are almost completely dependent on this local population, which itself is suffering and sacrificing greatly for the revolution.”
Travelling through these rural villages, Michael had the chance to talk to a few locals who had chosen to return, presumably in places where the military hadn’t laid landmines. One woman who ran a food stall said she felt she had no choice but to do her duty to come back and support the revolution. An elderly woman whose entire village had been torched told them that she had no idea how her home could be rebuilt, and lamented the lack of any support for her community—but was unwavering in her confidence that the revolution would succeed. This sentiment was echoed by dozens of refugees living in camps all of whom expressed faith that the military would ultimately be defeated. Many of those living in these camps have family members fighting on the front lines. Indeed, as Helene Buchholz also reported to us, PDF members are highly motivated to continue on, since many are literally fighting to protect their families and loved ones, who are still in Karenni and at the mercy of the military.
This situation highlights for Michael why the PDF and EAOs have taken on the responsibility of caring for the refugees. As previously mentioned, thousands were forced back over the border by Thai authorities and now lack shelter and food, making them almost entirely dependent on the PDFs for support. For their part, the refugees assist the PDFs in any way they can. However, the PDFs are already stretched thin and can offer the displaced peoples little more than plain rice. “In one camp full of women and children and elderly, we showed up on a child's birthday,” he recalls, “All they had to serve at the birthday was boiled rice, because they had nothing else, and still, they gave that boiled rice to us! This camp had no cooking oil, no onions (like we saw almost everywhere), and with the rainy season bearing down on them, they have no rain covers, no malaria medicine or other medicine, they have nothing set up for education for the children. Yet it's not because they don't want to, or that they're not trying to do something, but that their resources are just so limited! Most of the population is living in these types of conditions, and they're not getting the support they need to be able to properly support that type of refugee population.” Incredibly though, he still found that few were giving in to the misery of their situation, and that dreams of freedom and democracy keep them going, driving them to sacrifice further for the revolution. “The thing is, they weren't hopeless! It wasn't this depressed atmosphere. However bad the conditions were, whoever we talked to: refugees, PDF fighters on the front, whoever we talked to; they all were totally committed to this revolution! They said, ‘This revolution is to win democracy, and to get our rights back. We're going to fight for that for as long as it takes, and we do not regret what we've had to sacrifice for that.’ Over and over again, that's what we heard.”
Michael reports witnessing a surprising level of cooperation and goodwill among resistance groups in Karenni, contradicting assumptions of rivalry and competition. He finds the entire situation inspirational, from the refugees’ perseverance and heart, to how this diverse state has united. Whether traveling by car or boat, visiting battlefronts, or seeing resistance soldiers recovering from battles, Michael observed different combat and political groups, as well as ethnicities, all working and living together harmoniously.
Yet despite the optimism clearly evident in Michael’s voice, he keeps returning to the dire humanitarian needs that are going unattended. “A parish priest was saying to us that he has been looking for help from international Catholic organizations on the outside, but has not been able to find any,” he says. “He asked us to try to help them and to communicate, if we found any organizations that could help. Even after people are able to return back to Ywarthit, they're going to need eight months of support, which is the time that it will take to reestablish their crops and to get the economy going.”
With Karenni state being so close to real liberation, Michael and a comrade from his network have started a project called Final Step: Karenni to Naypyidaw, to funnel support and resources to Karenni, and help them take that last step. He is dedicated to his mission to raise funds to help alleviate the present financial pressures on the PDF and EAOs in their support for IDPs and refugees; he encourages anyone who can to please consider helping. They can be contacted through their Facebook page, Myanmar Solidarity.
“I firmly believe that the ‘above-ground revolution’ and public activism is just as important as the PDFs, especially for building international support,” he says in closing. “So we want to use this campaign to build something sustained to support those type of people as well as to support the humanitarian needs of refugees in all other parts of Myanmar. We're hoping that this is just the first step of that.”