Rebels fighting Myanmar’s junta are doing better than expected

THE BOYS from Pale should be dead by now. Armed with little more than homemade rifles, in June the group of some 2,000 fighters, most of them farmers unversed in war, began attacking soldiers in their rural township in Sagaing state, in north-west Myanmar. The army they were up against, known as the Tatmadaw, last seized power in a coup in February but has been fighting rebels for the past 70 years. It deployed its usual tactics to crush the uprising in Pale. Soldiers looted homes, raped women and set a village on fire, according to Bo Nagar, the rebels’ commander. Yet the militia claims to have ejected the army almost entirely from Pale, killing 400 troops in the process and losing just five of their own. Tatmadaw soldiers “are like walking dead”, says Mr Nagar. “I think they are not willing to fight this war.”