Myanmar mountain camp the place rebels prepare to combat the junta

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They pour into Camp Victoria, the headquarters of the long-standing ethnic army of the Chin National Front (CNF) in western Myanmar, close to India’s border. They defy attempts by the camp’s leadership to suspend training because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the cusp of adulthood, these volunteers say they demonstrated against the military coup that swept away their civilian government in February. And as the junta’s response has grown increasingly bloody, so they have taken up arms.

But any hope of singing songs of actual victory anytime soon are remote. Their leadership is warning of a long fight.

“Now it’s a kind of an urban guerrilla-type (conflict) but within months it will transform into a conventional civil war,” Suikhar, vice chairman of the CNF, tells CNN.

Chin National Army fighters are seen at their base.

This bleak truth raises the prospect, indeed the probability, that Myanmar will descend into a protracted conflict where no victors emerge, and the country collapses.

In a report on the emerging civil war in Myanmar…

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