The soldier was hungry and strung out on meth. Rebel fighters were attacking his base, just as a military helicopter had dropped food and ammunition for his battalion. After one package landed outside the garrison walls, he was ordered to go retrieve it.
However, the rebels got there first and seized the soldier, Cpl. Thein Htay Aung of the Myanmar Army, and four others with him, along with rice, instant noodles, cigarettes and bullets.
Their hands tied, the prisoners were marched to the rebel camp. The corporal expected the worst. Instead, he was shocked to see his little brother standing among the rebels.
“I thought they were going to kill me right there on the road,” Thein, 38, said after his capture in February. “But when I saw my younger brother, I felt a huge sense of relief. I suddenly felt so happy, because I wasn’t going to die after all.”
In a video of the brothers taken that day, the corporal’s hands are still tied, and he appears dazed by his sudden change in circumstances. His brother, Ko Tike Moung, 30, a rebel fighter, drapes his arm over him and beams with joy. He does the talking.
“Meeting like this makes me happy but also sad,” he said. “Still, it’s fortunate that we’re both alive and we can talk to each other like this.”
For more than four years, a brutal civil war has consumed Myanmar, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing millions. The conflict, set off by a military coup, has torn apart many families with combatants on both sides. But it is rare for brothers to come face to face amid the fighting.
Thein was captured by the Danu People’s Liberation Army. Its founder and commander, U Tun Tun Naing, recognized the panic on the corporal’s face as he reached the rebel camp.
“Our soldier’s brother was shaking with fear, worried that we might harm him,” he said. “This is because in their army, prisoners of war are usually executed, so they assume we will do the same. But we don’t treat prisoners of war that way.”
Despite lacking a central command, resistance forces have seized large stretches of territory, overrun numerous military bases and taken tens of thousands of junta prisoners. They say they treat captives humanely, as laid out by the Geneva Convention. Though there have been reports of rebels executing P.O.W.s, defectors from the military say the junta does so far more commonly.
Forced to Enlist
Thein, the third of six children and the older of two boys, never wanted to be a soldier.
His father died when he was young. His mother made a living selling fruits and vegetables in the town of Budalin in central Myanmar. Thein left school after the fourth grade. His brother, Tike, the youngest sibling, made it through the eighth grade.
When Thein was 18, he stayed out late one night. Soldiers grabbed him off the street, threw him into a truck and drove him to a military camp 80 miles away. There, they forced him to enlist.
He deserted twice, he said, but was recaptured both times, spending a total of a year in prison, where he was beaten and kicked as punishment. He was frequently ordered into combat against armed ethnic groups the military has long fought and kept looking for a chance to surrender without being killed.
Trained to fire artillery, he was transferred to a base in Shan State in the territory of the Danu people, one of Myanmar’s smallest ethnic groups.
On top of his combat duties, he was given the smelly job of tending to the pigs his unit raised for food.
Ultimately, he spent 20 years — his entire adult life — in the army.
“I was never happy in the military,” he said by phone from the prison camp where he has been held since his capture.
When Thein was first nabbed by the military, his mother, Daw Shwe Mi, and siblings searched for him. Three years passed before they received a letter from him saying he had been forcibly conscripted and was stationed at a base in the town of Naung Cho.
A few years later, his mother and the two youngest siblings moved there to be close to him. Tike was about 15. Thein started sending them money every month.
Then in 2021, the military, which has ruled Myanmar for most of its post-colonial history, seized power back from a newly elected civilian government that had won in a landslide.
Millions took to the streets in protest, and millions more joined a nationwide civil disobedience movement that crippled government institutions and disrupted the economy.
Tike joined the protests and begged his brother to desert the army and join, too. Their mother also urged him to switch sides. But Thein refused.
The brothers didn’t speak again. The monthly payments stopped.
After the military crushed peaceful demonstrations by killing hundreds of protesters, many opponents of the regime fled to the countryside and joined armed groups. Clashes between junta troops and rebel forces erupted in many parts of the country, including Shan State.
Tike, his mother and youngest sister fled from village to village to escape the fighting. In 2022, he enlisted in the newly formed Danu People’s Liberation Army, one of about 500 rebel groups fighting to overthrow the regime.
Before Tike left home, his mother told him, “If you ever meet your brother in battle, do what you must.”
High on Meth
In Naung Cho, not far from the Danu rebels’ camp, Thein was stationed at Artillery Command Headquarters 902.
Since September, the base has largely been cut off by resistance forces, making delivery of supplies by road risky. Military helicopters airdrop food and ammunition, but supplies often land outside the base, creating opportunities for the rebels.
The rebels got one such opening in early February. They were attacking the garrison when Thein and four other soldiers were sent to retrieve the parcel just outside the garrison’s wall. Not realizing how near the rebel fighters were, the soldiers ventured out without weapons and were seized by Danu guerrillas.
That day, Thein said, he was high on meth, as he was most of his time in the army.
Meth was plentiful in the military, he said. Senior officers regularly sold soldiers meth tablets, known as yaba (“crazy medicine” in Thai), or “WY” after the lettering on the pills. Before a battle, officers would hand them out free.
It helped turn the soldiers into ruthless killing machines.
“When we use yaba, we lose our sense of awareness and just follow orders without question,” Thein said. “Even when people were dying right in front of me in battle, I didn’t feel fear. I just pushed forward over the dead bodies and kept fighting. Looking back now, it’s terrifying. It’s clear that I wasn’t in a normal mental state.”
‘How Is Mother?’
Tike didn’t know that his brother had been captured until the prisoners were brought into camp.
After their reunion, he helped treat superficial wounds Thein had sustained.
“Even though he’s an enemy soldier,” Tike said, “he’s still my brother.”
At the time, Thein had few words for him.
“When we reunited, I asked him about his army, but he didn’t say anything,” Tike said. “He only asked, ‘How is Mother?’”
But having now spent time among the rebels, Thein respects his little brother’s decision.
“He made the right choice in joining the resistance,” Thein said.
He is one of about 40 prisoners of war being held at a former military base the rebels captured in September. Some captives have joined the Danu army to fight against the junta, the rebel commander said.
Thein, who remains a captive, said his living conditions are much better now. He is housed in a brick building and required to work about three hours a day tending eggplants, mustard greens, roselle and cabbage. The prisoners take turns cooking for themselves.
“Here, they feed us properly, just like they eat, so I’m eating well now,” he said. “In the army, there were days when we only ate if the officers had leftovers. Sometimes we didn’t eat at all.”
His mother, Ms. Shwe Mi, 72, has come to visit twice, and the camp doctor has been helping him overcome his meth addiction.
“I no longer use meth, but I’m experiencing extreme fatigue, sleep disturbances, and anxiety,” Thein said. “The worst part is feeling emotionally flat and being unable to sleep.”
Many of his former comrades in the army want to surrender, he said. They fear death, even though the military trains soldiers to believe that dying in battle is noble.
“My wish to surrender has come true,” Thein said. “I never wanted to be a soldier. I feel ashamed of ever having been one.”
Richard C. Paddock has worked as a foreign correspondent in 50 countries on five continents with postings in Moscow, Jakarta, Singapore and Bangkok. He has spent nearly a dozen years reporting on Southeast Asia, which he has covered since 2016 as a contributor to The Times.
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