Karen State, Myanmar – Thaw Hti is just a speck among hundreds of thousands of people who have meandered through the streets of Yangon in 2021 to demand the return of democracy to post-independence Myanmar. The army seized power.

“We had signs, they had guns,” she recalled painfully of the March 2021 incident.

In the past four years, a lot has changed for Thaw Hti and her generation in Myanmar.

After joining the army Massacre hundreds of people In a bloody crackdown on those pro-democracy protests, young man fleeing Territory controlled by ethnic armed groups in Myanmar’s border areas with Thailand, India and China.

Thaw Tie also went.

As part of the Karen tribe, her choice was obvious.

She sought refuge with the Karen National Union, Myanmar’s oldest ethnic armed group, which has been fighting for political autonomy for the Karen people in Karen State, also known as Karen State, in eastern Myanmar since the 1940s.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera in Karen state, Sohti recounted how she was so angry at the military’s seizure of power that she wanted to become a Rebel soldiers.

All new arrivals to Karen National Union territory are required to undergo survival courses, which include weapons training, long-distance marches in rough terrain, and basic self-defense.

Soti recalled that the shooting gave her a feeling of power after helplessly watching the army massacre her fellow protesters.

Now, she has a huge smile on her face when she says, “I like guns.”

However, due to her short stature, she struggled to complete even basic survival courses and knew she would not be able to pass the KNU’s real military training.

“I came here to join the revolution, but as a woman, there are more obstacles,” she said.

“Mentally I want to do it, but physically I can’t.”

Lessons from oppression

With her educational background and ability to speak the Karen language, Thaw Hti and her husband opened a school accredited by the Karen National Union and taught more than 100 children displaced by the conflict.

The school is hidden in the forests of eastern Myanmar because of the military’s tendency to launch airstrikes against Karen’s parallel public services, including schools and hospitals. The purpose of the bombing was to destroy the emerging administrative structures that provided legitimacy to Karen autonomy.

Unlike schools under military regime control, Soti explained that her school teaches children in the Karen language and teaches a Karen-centered history of Myanmar, including the decades of oppression the Karen people faced, which Oppression is often left out of official narratives.

The Karen have fought for decades for autonomy, but a long-simmering conflict between the Karen and Myanmar’s majority-Bamar military has intensified as emerging pro-democracy forces join forces with ethnic armed groups.

In the last year in particular, the military has lost large swaths of territory along the border—including nearly all of Rakhine State in the west and northern Shan State in the east—as well as large swathes of Kachin State in the north, and more. of Karen State.

But as militants seize more and more territory, they face a new challenge: managing it.

Parallel management

Kyaikdon in Karen state, seized from the military in March, has survived the devastating air raids that have hit other major cities held by the resistance.

During Al Jazeera’s recent visit to Kyaikdon, the town’s restaurants were packed with civilians and Karen soldiers eating Burmese curry. Shops are open, selling homewares and traditional Karen fabrics, while traffic is gridlocked on the main road.

Soe Khant, 33, the town’s administrator appointed by the Karen National Union (KNU), said he had big plans for the liberated territory.

“I want public works to be completed, electricity and water supplies to be restored, and areas to be cleared of plastic waste and overgrown weeds,” said Soe Khant, who was officially appointed as interim administrator and plans to hold elections in a year’s time.

He agreed that ultimately it would be popular suffrage rather than appointment.

“If this is what the people want, I will take this position. If they choose someone else, I will pass it on,” he told Al Jazeera.

The military regime “completely ignored the people of this town,” Soukant said.

Soe Khant, who grew up in Kyaikdon, told how he hiked with friends to the top of a mountain near town.

From there, they would sketch the complex of buildings surrounding the dusty main road, the winding river that feeds the farm, and the nearby mountains that border Thailand.

When he grew up, he turned to photography and made a living by photographing wedding dresses.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Myanmar in 2020, he answered another call and founded a social welfare organization.

After the military coup, the situation further deteriorated.

“The health care system was broken, so my friends and I volunteered to help take care of people,” he said.

While Soe Khant is relatively new to running parallel governments, the Karen National Union has been doing so for decades – albeit usually in smaller rural areas.

“We went too fast, but we didn’t go too far”

Kawkareik Town Secretary Mya Aye served as village chief for 12 years before being elected to her current position and is the third most senior person in the town.

He told Al Jazeera how years of war and a lack of human resources had hampered the local economy and undermined the KNU’s ability to deliver public services.

“There are no factories, no industry, you can’t work here to support your family,” he said, explaining that young people move to nearby Thailand because of conflict and hardship.

But the brutality of military regimes is often its biggest enemy.

It inspires greater resistance and drives human Resources into the arms of the enemy.

Win Tun, a 33-year-old former Myanmar police officer, joined the Karen National Union rather than follow orders to arrest and torture pro-democracy activists.

“I’ve wanted to be a police officer since I was a kid,” Wen Tun said.

“I believe the police are good and trying to help people,” he said, adding that the reality is a culture of corruption, discrimination and impunity.

Win Tun, a member of Myanmar’s majority Bamar ethnic group, said police authorities treated their Karen colleagues unfairly.

“If any of them make a small mistake, they give them very severe punishment,” he said, describing how one Karen officer returned to the barracks an hour late and was put in a cell for 24 hours.

Wen Tun said he submitted letters of resignation many times during his 10 years with the police. Got rejected every time.

After the 2021 coup, he fled with his wife and daughter to Karen-controlled territory, where he underwent a thorough background check and a “confidence-building” observation period.

He is now fully integrated into the KNU police force.

In response to the military’s brutality and the sense that the revolution was on the verge of victory, young educated professionals like Thaw Hti, and those like Win Htun with years of government service, have begun to fill the human resource gap in government administration. New liberated area.

But most thought the fight to overthrow the military would take only months, or at most, years.

Despite a string of defeats and other unprecedented setbacks, the military persevered.

“It’s like running on a treadmill,” Thaw Hti said of the revolution’s gains but still shortcomings.

“We feel like we’re going fast, but we’re not going too far,” she said.