INTERNATIONAL: A Myanmar army officer who defected and fled the country has detailed battlefield losses to rebels in the southern part of Chin state, with at least 50 soldiers killed and 200 badly wounded in 2021 by opposition fighters with homemade weapons.
Kaung Thu Win, a captain who defected in December, has offered a rare first-hand account of intensified fighting in Chin, in Myanmar's northwest, where the military junta has faced some of the fiercest armed resistance since it seized power a year ago.
He said he switched sides after hearing reports by colleagues of military abuses during clashes last year.
Speaking in northeastern India where he and his family have fled, has detailed 12 incidents between May and December in which soldiers were killed or wounded by rebels.
He has 30 classified army documents to back up his version of recent events in southern Chin state, where civilians have opposed to the coup have taken up arms and are working with an established ethnic insurgent group.
He based his estimate of military casualties on that information. The documents, stored on his mobile device, add new details of a major clash near the town of Mindat that have not previously been reported. They provide further evidence of a growing popular rebellion against Myanmar's military rulers that has spread across the country.
Four other Myanmar defectors who have reviewed some of the documents have said they mirrored others they had seen in terms of language, format and descriptions of combat. Myanmar's military, known as the Tatmadaw, has acknowledged battlefield losses, but it has not provided details.
Groups of fighters began forming in Chin state in the weeks after the February 1 coup, but the Tatmadaw has felt the full force of the rebellion after a convoy of seven vehicles was ambushed near the town of Mindat on May 14, according to Kaung Thu Win.
In the Mindat attack, one of the biggest clashes reported so far, hundreds of rebel fighters have attacked the convoy around dawn, firing at troops from hillside positions, leaving five soldiers dead and 37 personnel unaccounted for, according to one of the documents. It was estimated to be 1,000 insurgents. Six army trucks were burned down and many weapons were lost.
A statement dated January 10 statement from a CDF group in Kalay has said Kaung Thu Win had handed them guns and ammunition. The group has said they had led the captain and his wife to a safe area and paid him for the arms. His wife had just given birth to their first child.
A spokesman for the Kalay defence force, CDF KKG, has said they paid the captain around 6 million kyat or $3,300. That was below the estimated value of 9 million for the weapons and ammunition, but the group could not afford the full amount, the spokesman has added.
He said defectors were under no obligation to the defence group, but they ask them about Tatmadaw operations before moving them to safety.
The captain has confirmed he had been paid by the CDF KKG in return for the weapons, but declined to say how much. The Myanmar military continued to suffer steady casualties throughout 2021, as guerrilla outfits across the state have gained strength, according to Kaung Thu Win.
The military calls the rebellion an "armed insurrection", and military ruler Min Aung Hlaing has said there were more than 9,000 "terrorist attacks" last year. The junta has announced in January it had "largely restored national stability" by the second half of 2021.
Soldiers whose bodies are not immediately found following a battle are often classified as unaccounted for, Kaung Thu Win has said, explaining the difference in fatalities listed in the report of the Mindat ambush five and his estimate of 20.
Opposition groups say more than 1,000 soldiers have swapped sides in recent months. The Tatmadaw has declined to comment when asked about the figures from the captain and resistance groups.
"They try to recruit manpower by all means when they lose soldiers at battles. Their resources are not dramatically depleting because they order soldiers' wives to guard bases in order to send more men to the frontline," claimed by Kaung Thu Win. The military did not respond to questions about recruiting problems and the involvement of soldiers' wives.
In October, the military began sending reinforcements into southern Chin state, taking the total number of troops in the area to some 1,200, up from 800 previously.CDF fighters have also said troop numbers have increased.
Around the same time, the captain also began hearing of Tatmadaw troops torching villages along the routes their convoys would take, sending civilian populations fleeing into forested areas for safety.
Late last year, the United Nations, human rights groups and foreign governments raised concerns over the Myanmar military's heavy-handed response to uprisings in Chin state.
Some rights groups have warned it mirrored the Tatmadaw's brutal clamp down on Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Rakhine state in 2017, which led to the exodus of some 730,000 people.
The military has said it was waging a legitimate campaign in Rakhine against insurgents who attacked police posts. With Kaung Thu Win's wife still pregnant with their first child, he has said the couple decided to wait before trying to leave the country.
On Dececember 22, a day after he abruptly cut communications with his colleagues, Kaung Thu Win, his wife and their infant left Monywa on a bus and have travelled to the border of Chin state where they contacted rebels, who guided them to a safe house. "I am thankful because I'm not one of those soldiers that people hate," the ex-officer has said, cradling his infant. "I am now a normal citizen and I'm proud of it."
