Soldier Defections in Myanmar

This article on “Soldier Defection as a Revolutionary Strategy in Myanmar”, published by the Journal of Contemporary Asia, forms part of a special issue on revolution, which focuses on the evolving and creative practices of actors who resist military rule in Myanmar. Rather than studying revolution post-facto, it seeks to explore the ongoing-ness of revolutionary situations. 

In the article on soldier defections, Ah Lynn (independent researcher) and DIIS Senior Researcher, Helene Maria Kyed, similarly explore the ongoing processes of defection in Myanmar, looking at how defection gradually became a revolutionary strategy of the resistance movement, and how the defection transforms individual soldiers – morally and politically. While most scholarship on defections examines the endgame outcomes of popular uprisings or revolutions with a focus on causal explanations and quantitative analysis, this article applies a qualitative narrative approach, taking a point of departure in the voices of defectors themselves and the groups they join after leaving the military. 

The article traces how soldiers’ disaffection with the military’s brutal violence against civilians, prompted them to leave the military and join the ‘people’s side’, but that this shift in most cases relied on important collective actions and narrative changes, including support from the wider resistance movement. 

After leaving the military, many defectors have undergone a significant personal transformation and contributed to co-producing a deeper critique of the military system, based on their first-hand insider knowledge. In that way, defections extend beyond mere reduction of military combat personnel, also feeding into wider revolutionary ideas and narratives about a new society and a new kind of military.

Read here a shorter and updated popular scientific version of the article, published by New Mandala