#ATTACH i-s-international-solidarity-for-the-aif-anti-fasc-2.pdf
#title Anti-Fascist Perspectives on Revolutionary Struggle in Myanmar
#subtitle Dispatches from the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front
#author International Solidarity for the AIF
#date 2025
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-07T08:27:51
#authors Anonymous
#topics Burmese Revolution, feminism, armed struggle, Myanmar
#language English
*** Combat Medic Baran
The AIF follows a long tradition of anti-fascist internationalism
from Spain to Rojava, upon seeing the people’s war in Myanmar
internationalists took it upon themselves to form an
internationalist front against the fascist government just as they
did in 1936 and 2014. The revolution has brought together all
sectors of society, urban and rural, Burmese majority and ethnic
minorities, old and young.
For much of my time in Myanmar I have lived amongst the local
comrades and learned much from them, their bravery knows no
bounds and their hearts no fear. Before the revolution, our
knowledge and professions in the medical field were used for
profit, now perhaps they can be used for the benefit of the
people. Like the
comrades I met in
Kurdistan, they
are infinitely
hospitable and
welcoming, and
selfless in their
devotion to the
revolution. I strive
to be more like
them every day,
and to make
proud all those
who fell martyr
fighting for this
cause.
The sheer human cost of the fascist violence is apparent all over,
many of the medics I am privileged to serve with left behind
everything to join the revolution at immense risk to themselves
and their families. Many are displaced, many towns and cities lay
in ruin from fascist bombs, and the wounded never stop
streaming in. In the course of the battles we’ve been a part of,
dozens of comrades have come to the medic team with varying
degrees of injuries. We treat all the comrades to the best of our
ability, at hours of calm as well as under bombardment — to us it is
a reality we accepted when we joined the revolution.
I have always seen the practice of medicine for the benefit of the
people as revolutionary, taking inspiration of the noble
revolutionaries like Che Guevara or Alina Sanchez. The medics,
nurses, and doctors here seek to heal the wounds inflicted by the
fascists and in a literal physical sense to right the wrongs wrought
by 2021’s attack on democracy. But above all, our goal is to
communalize our knowledge with our comrades and to use this
for the service of the people and the people’s revolution.
*** Interview with Infantry Internationalist Hêlîn
**Why did you travel to Myanmar to join the anti-fascist
internationalist front?**
I’ve followed the struggle in Burma against the military coup since
it reignited 4 years ago, and saw similarities and felt connected to
the struggle when people were using sticks, hard hats and
slingshots to fight fascism in self organised groups that brought
people together from across society. I saw the AIF as a chance to
take part in that resistance which has transformed into a full scale
revolution, which is closer than ever to toppling the historic
power of the military, a power that has been present ever since
the colonisation of Burma in the 1800s. If the movement for
freedom wins here, we can use it as the inspiration in the fights
back home against rapidly intensifying fascism.
**How have you adapted to life in the AIF?**
Since coming here and being a part of the unit
I’ve been living communally with other Anti-fascists, waking up and training together every
day and going on missions regularly. We brace
together on the floor when airstrikes come, and
joke about how inaccurate the pilots are. It’s
been a lesson in communal living and being a
more active revolutionary than I can be back
home. One of the comrades spoke of how we
can act and think in a revolutionary way even
when relaxing and doing dishes, and I’ve felt this
as a change in my thinking which I hope to take
this back home. You adapt very quickly to life
near a frontline, shots ringing overhead become
normal and airstrikes become routine although
never comfortable.
As a European, walking around with a gun was strange but
grabbing breakfast armed is now normal.
**Have there been highs and lows?**
I would say the highs have been being welcomed so warmly by so
many of the local revolutionaries who are glad we’re here fighting
with them, as well as this delicious locally grown coffee, which
hits hard after a busy period or before an intense mission. I’ll be
trying to find a way to take some coffee back with me when I
leave.
For lows, obviously airstrikes are never fun but also rarely
accurate either. Mainly though I obviously miss home, I chat with
my comrades back home regularly and while I do miss friends,
comrades and comforts of home I also feel like I’m on a different
frequency here and will return to friends a significantly stronger
revolutionary, Anti-fascist and person.
**Anything you want to say to Anti-fascists in the west?**
The main message I’d want to get across is that revolutionary
change is real and possible: in Burma this revolution has been
started, maintained and soon may be won entirely by normal
people, most who had never fired a gun and many who’d barely
left school. Whether it’s revolutionary struggle in your country or
going to support a revolution as an internationalist, it’s all
possible and you can take the steps yourself or with your
comrades without waiting for permission from anyone.
If you want to follow, support through sharing and donating or get
in touch with the Anti-fascist Internationalist Front you can find
us on:
Instagram @AIFMyanmar
YouTube at YouTube.com/AIFMyanmar
Email at AIFMyanmar@Protonmail.com
*** Feminist Perspectives on Revolutionary Struggle in Myanmar
**** Drone Specialist Rachel
The task of describing the experience and works of women in this
revolution is a challenging one. I can of course speak to my own
time here so far as a woman in our internationalist unit, and
describe the many other incredible women I’ve fought with here,
but I can’t claim to have a complete picture on the matter: this
revolution is vast and complex, and my experiences in the narrow
sliver I’ve encountered to date cannot begin to encompass the
range of paths women have walked in the many battles against the
SAC.
There’s no reason or need to sugar-coat things: Chinland, where
we fight, is a socially conservative place with deeply entrenched
gender roles, and the revolution here is no exception. The rigid
post-colonial social structure here poses a constant threat and
hindrance to the opportunities women can access, including
within the forces opposing the SAC. (Note: the SAC, Tatmadaw,
Junta, Dictatorship etc. are all terms for the same ruling force. It
will be referred to as the SAC throughout).
The rights of women form a critical terrain of struggle here, and I’m
honored to say this is a terrain in which we are rapidly gaining
ground as an organization. All specialized trainings we have
offered to our allies have required at minimum an equal gender
split, a policy in which we have stood firm despite the excuses of
local commanders. We may only be a small group, but our impact
on the local fight is very broad due to the skills we bring. It’s
important that we approach this wider impact with intention, and
so far I think we’ve done this quite well.
A strong ally in this push, and of our team overall, is one of the
leaders of a friendly revolutionary army and political organization.
Well respected by her peers and feared by the powerful military
men she commands, she has encouraged and backed our
insistence on gender equality in our works at every step.
In my own experience, teaching drone warfare classes to local
soldiers, I’ve found that women in the revolution are eager to
grasp at any tool, any literal or metaphorical weapon they can
get their hands on in their struggle for equality. As a result, the
women are consistently my best and most dedicated students.
At the start of this training, many of the boys already had
relevant experience and believed they might have a leg up, an
easy ride through the course. Not only did this experience
hamper them in some ways, requiring them to un-learn bad
habits, it also laid the foundation for ego to hinder their ability to
pick up the necessary skills.
By contrast, the girls have been voracious learners. Every
opportunity they get, they utilize the simulators and training
equipment to hone their technique, gathering in a huddle around
whoever might be practicing at a given time. There is healthy
competition between them, to be sure, but far more than this I
see a deep camaraderie, a shared joy in any of their sisters’
success.
A local woman, the leader of the Women’s unit, has also
integrated into our unit for all our recent combat missions. Acting
as an infantry soldier, radio operator and translator, she fills a
critical role on our team and has excelled on every mission we’ve
executed to date. She’s already experienced more enemy contact
and “hot” combat than many soldiers in the force, and each time
we go out I see the rapidly changing way the men interact with
her.
The first mission, everywhere we went at the front the men
gathered to stare at her, swapping muttered jokes I couldn’t
understand but which turned her face hard. Not long before this
mission, a boy going to the front had taken her armor, and none of
her superiors lifted a finger to stop it, so she uses mine. Her battle
belt is a spare I had in my bag, her IFAK and pouches are all
cobbled together from what we each weren’t using or could give
up.
The rifle she carries (a result of our insistence that she be armed) is
a different story. The MA series rifles here in general are heavy,
unreliable, and half-broken, a poor SAC-built clone of the already
goofy Israeli Galil. Hers, though, is a status symbol: a short-barreled, lightweight variant with a stamped receiver and a folding
carbon fiber stock, she carries it with pride and expertise and oh,
how the boys look on with envy. Like all of her (and our)
equipment, it stays in our unit armory. No soldier would dream of
taking anything from us, the way they unfortunately feel
emboldened to from the women’s unit.
Since that first mission, she has played a pivotal role in multiple
effective combat missions, using high tech equipment and modern
tactics to strike at the enemy. She has been in the trenches,
literally and figuratively, and you can see this in both the way she
sees herself, and the way she is seen by others.
My dear hope is that as she
and other women gain
combat experience,
confidence, and social
capital through their
training and service with
us, they can act as the
respected leaders the
women in this revolution
deserve and bring further
change by their own hands.
For now, these highly
trained, highly capable
women are seen by their
peers as the exception.
Only they can make their position the rule, and the standard, by
which all revolutionary women are viewed.
Zooming out, or maybe in, this question has caused me to reflect
on my own experience of gender, in a very familiar way. “Woman”,
while a critical part of who I am, and a lifelong part of my
experience, is not my entirety. Being both intersex and nonbinary,
I wonder if and how this revolution could serve to improve the
rights and position of people like me throughout Chinland,
throughout Burma.
I don’t test the possibilities of this often in my daily life here. For
many reasons, it’s easiest and safest to simplify my position here
down to just “woman”. No need to further complicate an already
challenging terrain of struggle. It’s not solely for external or
cynical reasons, either: here, in the hyper-masculine world of war,
highlighting my fierce and dangerous femininity is just more
important to me than exploring every detailed nuance of my
gender.
In such a place of extremes, I can be deeply content to choose a
limit of my being and embody it with severity.
While combat’s intense polarity has helped to “binarize” my
personal experience, Revolution and its shattering echoes can,
for many, open new terrain in which to explore and occupy
stranger and more unique forms of human experience. I see this
in the way the women here interact with one another: Partially as
a result of their newfound role and gender of “Soldier”, they
uphold a wider, more expansive form of womanhood than I saw
available to the women in the villages and towns where peace
allows the structures and guard-rails of daily life to remain
calcified.
Here, at the front, in a battle already so fierce as to carry a badge
of honor for those who take part in it, the lines are not so clear.
Certainly, there remain forces, hidden or overt walls of propriety
and place which urge the women into their expected behaviors.
But these walls, like the walls of so many old brick structures
here, are battered and beaten by bombs, bullet and the decay of
an abandoned city.
With each air strike the SAC throw at us, each tragic pile of rubble
where once proud buildings stood, so too do the social walls of
“woman” fall away, providing newly open fields of fire from which
the brave girls here can take aim at a brighter, more dangerous
way of being.
I hope they find their targets.
Rachel, AIF
**** Interview with Women’s Unit Commander Par Te
**Why did you join the revolution?**
Why I joined is because when I was in the village there was
fighting between the SAC and Revolutionary armies and we had
to flee the fighting to run away from the bullets, my younger
brothers and sisters do not have any chance to run away from
these dangerous things and I want this war to be finished so I
joined this revolution to work as much as I could for that.
Before I joined this revolution I can’t imagine that things would be
so difficult. After joining this revolution I have faced some
difficulties and desperate moments but I think about my younger
brothers and sisters back in the village and I want them to have a
good life after this revolution and I want them to get education so
they can lead their village when the war is over. This is why I put
this revolution first instead of sitting back at home.
**How have you found life at the front compared to back home?**
At home I can eat whatever I want when we have it and my family
is around so I feel a lot more safe, I didn’t think much back home I
just stayed comfortable with my family. In revolution I have to
take care of myself and my health because when I get sick no one
will take care of me like back home, it’s a huge difference between
when I was back home and being a revolutionary. When I was back
home I could get up whenever I like, in revolution I have to be
disciplined and I have to follow orders when they’re given,
sometimes when it is very cold I don’t want to get up early but I
have to and I can’t eat what I like. I have to do my work to support
this revolution and I have to follow the discipline even though
sometimes I don’t want to work under the hot sun but I have to.
**What do you hope for Chin state and Myanmar?**
I expect the younger generation to have a good education so that
they can think better, and they can live better in the future and I
want them to have a simple life without hearing explosions or
gunshots. I expect the new generation to lead us to better
communities and a better environment.
**What do you hope to do personally after the revolution?**
Since I was young I wanted to be a doctor and help sick and
unhealthy people and if I cannot do that now I want to be a nurse
too, what I want is to help suffering people. Back home in the
village we had very poor healthcare and the people who are sick
don’t have good medicine, so I want to be a doctor and help them.
**What were you doing before the revolution?**
I was studying and once the
coup happened, I couldn’t study
anymore. I lived in an IDP camp
and some other places here and
there and I also had to work
instead of studying to help my
father to feed us.
**How do you feel about the AIF?**
To me, I respect AIF members a lot because they come from
countries that are developed and have some freedoms, but they
come here to fight alongside suffering people. Before anyone
asked them, they came to participate in the revolution and I’m
very thankful for them. They give us training on what they know,
share their knowledge and capabilities and they develop our skills
to fight the Junta. Being around them we have new experiences
and new knowledge and skills which we never knew about, I’ve
learnt many things from them. For example, not just military skills,
but also how revolutionaries should live and act in our daily lives.
**Any extra comments to readers?**
I am very encouraged by AIF, whatever kind of difficulties we may
face in our country, they come here to share our difficulties.
When I feel down I look at AIF members, I know they came here to
suffer with us, so we have to complete this revolution. Our
country is being destroyed, and we have to work hard to get our
freedom – we will take Myanmar back from the dictator and lead
this to be a better country, we will build our country back even if
it will be very difficult, we will do it and we will do our best. We
need support from everyone, support from civilians and any
friends and allies to do this, we will be encouraged and stronger if
we work together hand in hand, please support the revolution in
Myanmar as much as you can.
THIS ZINE WAS DOWNLOADED FROM THE ANARCHIST LIBRARY; THE
PRODUCERS OF THIS ZINE ARE SUPPORTIVE OF THE REVOLUTION IN
MYANMAR AND THE AIF BUT HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE GROUP OR
ITS ACTIVITIES