Rum and coke and automatic rifles: Myanmar’s Gen Z guerrillas

Young soldiers have buoyed the country’s fight for freedom, but at great cost. Irena Long meets them in their jungle hideout

By Irena Long

On a sweltering afternoon in March, three recruits to the Albino Tiger Battalion – a paramilitary group resisting Myanmar’s junta regime – were studying the rules of war. Resting their dummy rifles made of wood and bamboo against their legs, they sat on a fallen tree in the shade of a rubber plantation at the edge of the rainforest. The group was only a few days from finishing six weeks of basic military training; the notebooks in their laps were crammed with diagrams of attack formations and rules of engagement.

From the July 29th 2023 edition

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