Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is me and
Speaker 1: mar printing The Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms,
Speaker 1: regular people all over the world have had the same
Speaker 1: basic idea, maybe if I made myself a gun, the
Speaker 1: government wouldn't be able to be such a dick to me. Historically,
Speaker 1: this has had little impact on the willingness of governments
Speaker 1: to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun
Speaker 1: manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a
Speaker 1: gun in your home was really no different from making
Speaker 1: it in a shop, as long as you had the
Speaker 1: proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on
Speaker 1: their own and were best fired in a volley by
Speaker 1: a shitload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were
Speaker 1: extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some
Speaker 1: poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a
Speaker 1: threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield
Speaker 1: prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fuel
Speaker 1: lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology
Speaker 1: led to a change in warfare and helped to change society.
Speaker 1: As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle.
Speaker 1: They required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity.
Speaker 1: Nations and peoples without the know how our infrastructure were
Speaker 1: at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came
Speaker 1: into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways
Speaker 1: to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity
Speaker 1: their foes enjoyed. Indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often
Speaker 1: consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in
Speaker 1: South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and
Speaker 1: Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the
Speaker 1: French during the Cochin China Campaign of eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler fortifications in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the months that
Speaker 1: led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the
Speaker 1: men who fought to create the United States busy themselves
Speaker 1: building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities to
Speaker 1: resist the English. This trend has never really stopped in warfare.
Speaker 1: The day before we recorded this, James, my partner in
Speaker 1: this series, sent me a screen grab from a live
Speaker 1: stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for AK forty
Speaker 1: sevens on a three D printer. Firearms manufactured outside the
Speaker 1: arms industry have played a role in every conflict of
Speaker 1: the modern era, but as you probably guessed, they have
Speaker 1: had the greatest influence in the little wars of colonialism.
Speaker 2: European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms ownership in
Speaker 2: their colonies except the individuals and ethnic groups that adopted
Speaker 2: its local enforces. Since most of these places had never
Speaker 2: developed their own industrial base from arms industry, colonial rebellions
Speaker 2: often relied on homemade weapons in their early stages, along
Speaker 2: with modern firearms pilfered by deserting local soldiers. Where domestic
Speaker 2: productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out of their
Speaker 2: way to relocate it, along with the profit it generation,
Speaker 2: to the metropol All were reflected on this in his
Speaker 2: novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century, the Indians
Speaker 2: cast guns that are at any rate up to the
Speaker 2: European standard. Now, after we've been in India one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty years. You can't make so much as a
Speaker 2: brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among the colonizers,
Speaker 2: being armed became almost a synonym for being a man.
Speaker 2: This was particularly true for the colonial police forces and militaries,
Speaker 2: but it was also true domestically. Most people are broadly
Speaker 2: familiar with the u S. Second Amendment the robust gun
Speaker 2: culture that it's spawned, but during the heighther colonialism, English
Speaker 2: citizens are also free to arm themselves. In nineteen hundred,
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne, Cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a
Speaker 2: speech in which he claimed he would laud the day
Speaker 2: when there was a rifle in every cottage. In England,
Speaker 2: firearms were utterly and restricted at this point. The first
Speaker 2: chaine to this came in nineteen oh three with the
Speaker 2: first law that required a permit to carry a handgun
Speaker 2: and restricted children from buying guns. Still, firearms were widely
Speaker 2: available until a red panic gripped the nation in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Across the ocean
Speaker 2: in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly restricted, where
Speaker 2: orwell himself would learn what it was to fire a
Speaker 2: rifle at someone who shot back. Armed unions and working
Speaker 2: people served as the only bullwark to a military coup.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty six, in Madrid, one officer opened his
Speaker 2: armory to the union militias, but another refused to hand
Speaker 2: over for the bolts for the guns they had been issued.
Speaker 2: In Barcelona, where the anarchist left had a long tradition
Speaker 2: of armed political violence, the coup was repelled by workers
Speaker 2: with guns, and a general leading troops there was imprisoned
Speaker 2: and executed. The same pattern played out all across the
Speaker 2: country in July nineteen thirty six, when the military rose
Speaker 2: up to topple the elected government. In the cities where
Speaker 2: the government opened the armories to the people, the coup
Speaker 2: was repelled. In the cities where the government did not,
Speaker 2: the coup succeeded. Reflecting on this in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: or w Wait, the totalitarian state can do great things,
Speaker 2: but there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot
Speaker 2: give the factory work or a rifle and tell him
Speaker 2: to take it home and keep it in his bedroom.
Speaker 2: That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or
Speaker 2: working class flat is a symbol of democracy. It's a
Speaker 2: job to see that it stays there.
Speaker 1: Despite Orwell's please. The years that followed the Second World
Speaker 1: War led to greater restrictions of the ability of the
Speaker 1: public to arm itself. By the nineteen fifties, carrying any
Speaker 1: weapon for self defense was illegal. Semi automatic center fire
Speaker 1: arms were banned in nineteen eighty eight, and pistols were
Speaker 1: banned in nineteen ninety six after a mass shooting killed
Speaker 1: sixteen children in Dunblane. This was all utterly infuriating to
Speaker 1: a man named Philip A.
Speaker 3: Looty.
Speaker 1: Loody, born in nineteen sixty five grew up on a
Speaker 1: farm in West Yorkshire, England. We don't have a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of detail about his upbringing, but by the time
Speaker 1: he was in his early thirties he'd become a committed
Speaker 1: crusader for an unrestricted right to bear arms. A skilled
Speaker 1: machinist with a well equipped shop, Loody began the long
Speaker 1: process of learning how to craft homemade firearms. Soon he
Speaker 1: was building semi and fully automatic weapons. Now these were
Speaker 1: not military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled, which made
Speaker 1: them terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be crafted from
Speaker 1: widely available things like sheet metal, washers and screws. The
Speaker 1: person assembling a looty gun would need to be a
Speaker 1: skilled craftsman, but they would not need access to welding rigs, forges,
Speaker 1: or rather expensive industrial equipment. Loody published a book Expedient
Speaker 1: Homemade Firearms, The nine millimeters Submachine Gun in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight through Paladin Press. In the late nineteen nineties, Paladin
Speaker 1: was one one of the places you could go to
Speaker 1: mail order fringe political literature and guides for stuff like
Speaker 1: trapping human beings or disabling the drive system of an
Speaker 1: Abrams tank in the United States. Nothing about Loudy's book
Speaker 1: was or is illegal, but Phil didn't live in the
Speaker 1: United States. He was arrested several times, starting in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties when a pair of illegal home built
Speaker 1: guns were found on his property. Ludy spent the rest
Speaker 1: of his life, which ended in twenty eleven, operating a
Speaker 1: website where he raged against gun control. His main argument
Speaker 1: was that England was headed for totalitarianism, and like Orwell,
Speaker 1: he believed only public ownership of arms could prevent this.
Speaker 1: Unlike Orwell, Ludy was firmly on the right wing. He
Speaker 1: traced society's problems to quote a combination of political correctness
Speaker 1: and anti freedom of speech laws legislation governing how we
Speaker 1: speak about such subjects as religion or a person's race
Speaker 1: being just two examples. Words and phrases that have been
Speaker 1: used for centuries without malice are now insipid in people's mouths,
Speaker 1: said to cause a fence by those very same speech police, who,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, turned a blind eye to the violence,
Speaker 1: foul language, and sexual references blasted daily through our TV
Speaker 1: sets of phenomenon that really does cause a fence to
Speaker 1: many people. Luti never succeeded in sparking a renaissance and
Speaker 1: civilian arms ownership in the UK, but his ideas were
Speaker 1: adopted by organized criminal groups all around the world. In Brazil,
Speaker 1: looty guns can go for as much as twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. From twenty eleven to twenty twelve, nearly half
Speaker 1: of the submachine guns seized by police in Sao Paulo
Speaker 1: were homemade. Most of these arms were certainly used as
Speaker 1: tools by drug dealers or other gangsters, but some of
Speaker 1: them were surely also the tools of citizens who simply
Speaker 1: sought a way to defend themselves in a place with
Speaker 1: no real rule of law. Looty guns have long been
Speaker 1: popular among motorcycle gangs in Australia, and in October of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, a fascist terrorist carried out the last of
Speaker 1: that year's eight Chan shootings in Hulla, Germany with a lootygun.
Speaker 1: His weapons, thankfully did not work well. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: looty guns were never going to be of much use
Speaker 1: to anyone besides organized criminals. They aren't great in a gunfight,
Speaker 1: but you can use them to spray bullets into a
Speaker 1: room or a vehicle at close range pretty well. The
Speaker 1: year after Phil Loudy died twenty twelve, a fellow named
Speaker 1: Cody Wilson decided to carry on his work. Cody felt
Speaker 1: three D printing carried the possibility of eventually manufacturing arms
Speaker 1: of a quality that might rival traditionally produced guns. He
Speaker 1: started simple with a single shot three eighty handgun based
Speaker 1: around the old Liberator pistol from World War II. The
Speaker 1: Liberator had been a single shot forty five caliber handgun
Speaker 1: meant to be dropped into Nazi occupied territories and used
Speaker 1: by insurgents to stealthily kill single German soldiers and take
Speaker 1: their guns. Cody Wilson described himself as a crypto anarchist,
Speaker 1: and when his ideas began to draw attention, he dropped
Speaker 1: out of law school to create Defense Distributed. This organization
Speaker 1: was dedicated to the development and distribution of plans to
Speaker 1: craft three D printed weapons. It used a platform called
Speaker 1: deaf Cad to allow users to develop and share blueprints.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, the first CAD gun file became available
Speaker 1: online to everyone. It was downloaded more than one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand times in two days. I'd like to quote now
Speaker 1: from an article on the website three D Natives. This
Speaker 1: prompted the US government to demand that Defense Distributed remove
Speaker 1: the file from their site. What followed is a legal
Speaker 1: battle between Cody Wilson and the US government, consisting of
Speaker 1: back and forth lawsuits. It lasted five years until in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, the Trump administration legalized three D printed guns.
Speaker 1: The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual assault of
Speaker 1: an underage girl and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: the organization did not cease to exist without Cody. Today
Speaker 1: for a yearly fee of fifty dollars. Users of the
Speaker 1: DEFCAD website can access the files containing different designs of
Speaker 1: three D printed guns. And I should note here that
Speaker 1: it's probably more accurate to say the Trump administration legalized
Speaker 1: sharing the plans and printing the files and whatnot of
Speaker 1: three D printed guns, not legalized three D printed guns.
Speaker 1: Home made firearms have been federally legal in the United
Speaker 1: States since forever. The fighting in the courts over all
Speaker 1: this has continued ever since, and in twenty nineteen, a
Speaker 1: federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD. This sparked the
Speaker 1: creation of a new group, de Terence Dispensed, which was
Speaker 1: even less centralized. The basic idea was that this would
Speaker 1: make them harder to take down via lawsuits or police action.
Speaker 1: Not stated was that this might also protect their reputation
Speaker 1: from a Cody Wilson's situation. The debate over the legality
Speaker 1: of three D printed firearm plans continues on to the
Speaker 1: present day, but the development of these arms has continued
Speaker 1: at an ever faster pace. The best modern three D
Speaker 1: printed arms can even rival conventional guns. It's worth emphasizing
Speaker 1: that these are not purely plastic tools. The Liberator pistol
Speaker 1: used a metal nail, and the better three D arms
Speaker 1: have metal barrels rifled using other craft methods that require
Speaker 1: some knowhow, but arguably less than it took to manufacture
Speaker 1: a looty gun. Three D printed arms have been confiscated
Speaker 1: by police around the world, but in recent months they've
Speaker 1: begun to crop up somewhere new in the arms of
Speaker 1: revolutionaries fighting against a military coup.
Speaker 2: Me and mah Berman before that said relatively strict gun
Speaker 2: control laws for decades. When George Orwell was a policeman
Speaker 2: there in the nineteen twenties, he may have carried a gun,
Speaker 2: but the people he was policing did not. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, the British leaders allowed tat organizations similar to
Speaker 2: militias to form and drill, but they weren't allowed to
Speaker 2: carry guns. Gun licenses under the dictatorship were issued primarily
Speaker 2: to party members, but most were revoked after nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight failed Pro democracy uprising. The only civilians who were
Speaker 2: permitted to own arms through the Chin, the nation's poorest
Speaker 2: ethnic group, who allo on guns to hunt for food.
Speaker 2: In many cases, these guns were flintlocks that would not
Speaker 2: have looked that out of place on the battle Fill
Speaker 2: two centuries before. In practice, though, things are very different.
Speaker 2: The current conflict is best seen as a flare up
Speaker 2: in violence, so it has been ongoing since Britain left
Speaker 2: the country in nineteen forty seven. The Tatmador has consistently
Speaker 2: used violence against marginalized ethnic groups in the country and
Speaker 2: they have consistently taken up arms in response. But unlike
Speaker 2: civil wars in the Middle East, wealthy nations in the
Speaker 2: West have not been flooding me and Mihle with weapons
Speaker 2: for decades, and the various EAOs or ethnic armed organizations
Speaker 2: have had to turn to much more unorthodox roots to
Speaker 2: arm and equip themselves against the government. To get a
Speaker 2: better idea of what things are like on the ground,
Speaker 2: we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial
Speaker 2: volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought
Speaker 2: with the Korrenn people in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: Yes, so the ammunition is a constant problem.
Speaker 4: The shortage is absolutely permanent, and yes, there is two
Speaker 4: sources for the for the for the weapons, there is
Speaker 4: the black market, and the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive.
Speaker 4: This is why I would like to have my notebook
Speaker 4: here with me, because I think I wrote down the
Speaker 4: conversation I had with some leaders of the kind at
Speaker 4: the time, asking them why we didn't do more persons.
Speaker 4: But we just can't afford it, you know, we just
Speaker 4: can't afford it. Like strictly, we we don't well, we
Speaker 4: don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of of
Speaker 4: operation we need to. So all the operations we did
Speaker 4: were always focused on if we could capture some ammunition,
Speaker 4: if we could get you like weapons, but especially ammunition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there is you know that that's the second
Speaker 3: source of of course, of of weapons.
Speaker 4: Uh, let's say source is the it is the captures
Speaker 4: of course, then the black markets. The black markets used
Speaker 4: to be huge in Cambodia. I don't know, it's the
Speaker 4: situation now. That was in the nineties. It was it
Speaker 4: was a bit of the Albania of some Systizia at
Speaker 4: this time, right.
Speaker 5: And so there is also the other ethnic groups that
Speaker 5: receive sometimes say a lot of.
Speaker 4: Of of arms and ammunition from sponsors, like some of them,
Speaker 4: like the Western term is our sponsors by chin that
Speaker 4: sort of like the supply of nation. It's pretty good
Speaker 4: of webons. I think it's even cartolony and stuff. Then
Speaker 4: there is also groups that also produced locally quite good.
Speaker 3: They are on arms, light arms.
Speaker 4: Usually, so yeah, these are the different sources of what
Speaker 4: comes the OK in the time I was there.
Speaker 2: In the early weeks of the protests. Once it I
Speaker 2: claimed clear that non violent demonstrators were going to be
Speaker 2: met with state violence, protests began to fashion weapons. First,
Speaker 2: they thought soldiers with assault rifles, using catapults and bows
Speaker 2: and arrows. It was incredibly brave, but it wasn't very effective.
Speaker 2: By the twenty eighth of March, protesters have taken a
Speaker 2: step fo A group calling itself the Klay Civil Army
Speaker 2: set up barricades. I defended them using pressurized air rifles
Speaker 2: that fired marbles and bicycle wheel bearings. The rifles all
Speaker 2: used the same design and the same components. They were
Speaker 2: based on a video someone found on YouTube, but they
Speaker 2: weren't lethal. They helped protesters defend their space, albeit at
Speaker 2: great cost. In that first clash, four protesters and four
Speaker 2: soldiers were killed. The protesters in Calais were able to
Speaker 2: hold out a few days using old hunting rifles and
Speaker 2: air guns. The ambush military patrols and they took four
Speaker 2: police hostage. Then they exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters.
Speaker 2: But in early April, the Tapmador returned to the protest
Speaker 2: camp in Calay with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns
Speaker 2: and killed eleven people. We must fight back against them.
Speaker 2: If not, our generation will face a worse situation than us.
Speaker 2: They have no laws, a neighborhood villager who battled the
Speaker 2: regime's forces told The Irrawaddy, a local paper. The air
Speaker 2: guns spread around the cuntry trey quickly to avoid surveillance.
Speaker 2: Protesters talked about cooking up berryani on telegram channels, and
Speaker 2: what they meant was desperately scouring the Internet for a
Speaker 2: way to fight back and finding a way to make
Speaker 2: an air rifle out of a buttane canister, a pipe
Speaker 2: and a cigarette lighter, combined with fireworks and smoke bombs
Speaker 2: made of potassium nitrate. The air rifle gave protests just
Speaker 2: enough cupboard to escape police charges, but they also gave
Speaker 2: the hunter an excuse to further escalate the violence.
Speaker 6: Attitudes are hardening among the protesters too. In Mandalay, they
Speaker 6: took air rifles to the barricades on Saturday, hardly a
Speaker 6: match for the weapons of war they face, but now
Speaker 6: they know this is a fight to the death and
Speaker 6: more destruction. After a fire raged in pg Dagon township overnight,
Speaker 6: people living there but kept away by security forces returned
Speaker 6: to find sixty homes burned to the ground. Now all
Speaker 6: they can do is picked through the ashes, trying to
Speaker 6: save anything from the military's policy have scorched a.
Speaker 1: Even the top Madaw makes its own weapons, a highly
Speaker 1: unusual move for a relatively small nation. Top Mada troops
Speaker 1: and police can be seen with a bewildering array of
Speaker 1: indigenously produced copies of M sixteen's ouzies and even five
Speaker 1: to five six Galil pattern AK style rifles, as well
Speaker 1: as M three light machine guns, which are slightly updated
Speaker 1: copies of the MG forty two used by the Nazis
Speaker 1: in World War Two. After the failed eight eight eight
Speaker 1: eight uprisings in nineteen eighty eight, the military offered concessions
Speaker 1: to China in return for more advanced weapons. They got them,
Speaker 1: but it didn't stop China from also supplying ethnic armed organizations.
Speaker 1: EAOs don't have access to the same munitions factories that
Speaker 1: the government does, but there is a long tradition of
Speaker 1: homemade weapons in Myanmar. In more remote parts of the country,
Speaker 1: home made air rifles and shotguns seem to have been
Speaker 1: relatively commonplace before the start of the conflict, and they
Speaker 1: were mostly used for hunting. The country is also covered
Speaker 1: with land mines, which the EAOs used a great effect
Speaker 1: against the topmat Aw. We spoke to Pierre, a former
Speaker 1: combatant with the KRIN who no longer lives in me
Speaker 1: and Maar. His experience is not that recent, but it
Speaker 1: helps us to understand the way this conflict has been
Speaker 1: fought for decades.
Speaker 4: What we used to to produce a lot of land mines,
Speaker 4: that's that's produced at the base.
Speaker 3: Yes, with like you know, very systems. Is a little
Speaker 3: bit of.
Speaker 4: One type of plastic explosive, a couple of BOMBOO for
Speaker 4: contactors and.
Speaker 3: Battery. That's it.
Speaker 1: Pellet guns are not good for combat, and EAOs mostly
Speaker 1: relied on weapons imported from Thailand, India or China. Overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: these were ak or In sixteen pattern rifles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, mostly in my in the units have been there
Speaker 4: is probably a majority of platforms.
Speaker 3: In this time.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, definitely, I mean it's more reliable and you know,
Speaker 4: simple to part. It's very adapted to the to the to.
Speaker 3: The type of guerrilla it was. It was quite correct,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: From the moment that I switched to a case at
Speaker 4: least because at first I tried to use this Sucreparency
Speaker 4: M sixteen and it was a nightmare of malfunctions. So
Speaker 4: I switched back to a case. What I best know
Speaker 4: used doesn't have this. I never really had any any
Speaker 4: malfunction music case. Maybe one time it's a qulty lot
Speaker 4: of communition, but that's it. Not really the rightful inlude.
Speaker 1: The fight, Pierre says, has never been restricted to the
Speaker 1: battlefield for the top of the door. Violence against civilians
Speaker 1: is part of their four cuts doctrine that cuts off funding, food, intelligence,
Speaker 1: and recruits for the EAOs. Now they are moving that
Speaker 1: same outlook to the cities.
Speaker 3: Like literally.
Speaker 4: Literally a bye by absolutely no rows of wall of hers.
Speaker 3: I mean, like one of.
Speaker 4: The first things that I saw when we went going
Speaker 4: patrolling in the in the Karen villages, huh around the
Speaker 4: houzone of operation, is that there was absolutely no girl
Speaker 4: between the edge of eleven to the age of seventeen.
Speaker 4: I was, like, I asked you know, my my commander
Speaker 4: about it, and he says, yeah, like obviously if they
Speaker 4: if they stay us, they will be rapped by the
Speaker 4: tapmado and the first patrol like the first time they
Speaker 4: will will come.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: So this this gives you a little bit of the
Speaker 4: tone of what they are about. They constantly ransom civilians
Speaker 4: when they don't model them, like you know, shell villages
Speaker 4: for norrision or because there had been an operation of
Speaker 4: the kind of a and they take revenge and who
Speaker 4: they can take revenge.
Speaker 3: And with the civilians. You know, this is this is
Speaker 3: how they be. This is who they are basically.
Speaker 1: The Topmadaw is a large army in many of the
Speaker 1: conscripts are hardly high speed operator types, but that hasn't
Speaker 1: stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Speaker 4: I mean they have as many army, different units with
Speaker 4: different military value. Let's say, uh, you know, many times
Speaker 4: the units that they stuck on hilltop in the middle
Speaker 4: of rebel zone are not like the most combative let's say,
Speaker 4: but sometimes you will get surprised resistance. But yeah, except
Speaker 4: for that, when.
Speaker 3: They do.
Speaker 4: An operation in in a place, they bring in like
Speaker 4: more elite troops let's.
Speaker 1: Say, by contrast, the k n l A, the Karnean
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army and other e aos relied on civilian
Speaker 1: support to survive.
Speaker 4: The CAN operates in in Karen territory and the civilians
Speaker 4: are karent. I mean, uh pretty much when we when
Speaker 4: we arrive in uh in a village as medics, you
Speaker 4: know that with us that take care of the population,
Speaker 4: distribute medicine.
Speaker 3: Uh No, like I don't know what to tell me.
Speaker 3: Is like quite it's quite a funny accusation coming from
Speaker 3: the technolo.
Speaker 1: This attitude has helped them, Per says, and they have
Speaker 1: always been open to non current recruits.
Speaker 3: First of all, it is not absolutely not.
Speaker 4: Let's say, some kind of ethnicist organization or ethno nationally
Speaker 4: it's like, you know, with some hate for I think group,
Speaker 4: including the Obama I think group that like traditionally you
Speaker 4: know are the leaders of the Tamadel that have been
Speaker 4: oppressing them for seventeen years. But they have absolutely no resentment.
Speaker 4: They are extremely open to work with Democrats, democratic forces
Speaker 4: from from every In fact, yes.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen eighty eight, Per said, the k in l
Speaker 1: A had been willing to link up with democratic rebels
Speaker 1: providing them with training and shelter in order to further
Speaker 1: their shared goal of a federal and democratic country that
Speaker 1: treated all ethnicities with respect.
Speaker 3: So PDFs.
Speaker 4: So these rebels, let's say, also trended by the Karrents
Speaker 4: and also by people I know very well since it
Speaker 4: was my commander then Neda. So I've seen I've seen
Speaker 4: the Karrents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the Bama opposition,
Speaker 4: meaning the Bamara, the main ethnic group are I'd say
Speaker 4: this for you of people that might not know the difference.
Speaker 4: And so the Karens always add representation and they took
Speaker 4: like you know, political refugees, let's say, from inside the
Speaker 4: Boma in the territories. The control manor prose was like
Speaker 4: the student association, which exact na my cantricle right now.
Speaker 4: But all these our organization of position. And so now
Speaker 4: they keep this tradition by helping the these new rebels
Speaker 4: of the PDF to get military training.
Speaker 1: And yes, by the summer of twenty twenty, young people
Speaker 1: had fled into the jungles and many of them, even
Speaker 1: the ones of Burman ethnicity, were fighting alongside the Karin
Speaker 1: and Karni rebels. They'd previously seen as troublemakers and terrorists.
Speaker 1: Just a year or two before, we spoke with one
Speaker 1: of these people, Zahlin, who left his home in May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7: There was students, friends, but also young people from just
Speaker 7: the neighborhood. Most people were just above twenty, a lot
Speaker 7: of somewhere single. You know, there's women as well, people
Speaker 7: who knew technology, young people from the from the technology
Speaker 7: computer coologists why Caauk University. A lot of these people
Speaker 7: who knew modern technology went into the jungle to go
Speaker 7: in the jungle to train and be able to overthrow
Speaker 7: the men online government. So there, it was very tiring.
Speaker 7: We had to go up and down on lots of hills.
Speaker 7: It was two days of walking get there, so up
Speaker 7: and down the hills and back down, up and down
Speaker 7: until we got to the training plan.
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Speaker 4: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources, thanks for listening.