Inside Myanmar's civil war

In 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 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 in 2022. 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.

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, Burma'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.

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