Inside Myanmar's civil war

In Myanmar (Burma), ethnic rebellions have been fighting central government for decades. But since the coup d'état in February 2021, the country has plunged into a global civil war of unprecedented violence. The military junta now controls just 20% of the territory. The country is completely closed to journalists, and the war takes place behind closed doors. To bear witness to this event, I was smuggled into the country by an armed group several times between 2022 and 2024. This work won the 2023 Lagardère grant in Print media category.

New recruits of the People's defense force (PDF) - the central armed organization uniting the country's various ethnic groups - receive their equipments after weeks of training in a secret rebel camp in eastern Myanmar.

Fighters from the ‘Tiger Battalion’ entered Htee K'pler in April 2024, after several weeks of intense fighting to take control of the village. Inside, the Burmese army maintained a fortified position and fire mortars from a hill in the centre of the town.

A fighter takes a salutary break during an advance through the jungle, in April 2024.

Raising the "Special Ranger Forces" flag. The red, white and blue horizontal stripes mark their karen ethnicity. the red flag with a white star in the center materializes the alliance with the PDF, which unites insurgents from the various peoples of Burma.

Young ones fled the ongoing war in central Myanmar for the relative safety of the Thai border. They play with wooden guns in a refugee camp (on the burmese side). Along the border, many of them remain subject to trafficking.

A commander of the Kawthoolei liberation army (KTLA) - a dissident armed group from the central organization - cleans his weapon in a combat outpost.

A fighter carries wooden training rifles to a training camp through the jungle.

A 17-year-old fighter of the KTLA.

New recruits of the PDF receive their equipments after weeks of training in a secret rebel camp in eastern Myanmar.

Burmese rebels smuggling supplies and medications into Myanmar from Thailand. The border is a trafficking hotspot but also a magnificent environmental sanctuary known for being the place with the largest concentration of wild tigers still alive in the world - now threatened by war.

FIVE Soldiers from the Tatmadaw, Myanmar's regular army, are taken prisoner by KTLA rebels in one of their jungle camps. For several months, they were crammed into this small wooden cage that didn't even allow them to stand upright. They were freed on January 31, 2023, the Karen revolution day.

A PDF fighter patrols near a jungle camp of the armed organization.

A PDF fighter Rests in a jungle camp of the armed organization.

A young combatant in a Buddhist temple converted into an outpost in an abandoned village, on a front line with the Burmese army, in April 2024.

Young insurgents recharge their phones and walkie-talkies during a break in a resistance rear base. Electricity supplied by generators is extremely rare in the region.

A moment of rest on a front line in southern Myanmar, in April 2024.

The fighters have been trying to retake a village from the Burmese army for 28 days.

Four KTLA commanders prepare an assault on a Burmese position, surrounded by their bodyguards. According to Karen chiefs, tattoos protect against enemy bullets.

A 13-year-old child soldier in the ranks of an armed ethnic group in eastern Myanmar. various armed groups claim not to have used minors since the 2000s.

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