Kayah State, Myanmar – When the military took power in February 2021, Dr. Ye had a life that many young people in Myanmar only dream of – he worked as a doctor in London. Since he came from a family that supported the military, he had hardly given much thought to politics until then.

“Before the coup, I was brainwashed by them,” the 32-year-old told Al Jazeera during an interview in southern Shan State in December. “The coup enlightened me.”

But it also left him reeling from survivor’s guilt. From a distance, he watched as hundreds of people his age and younger were shot in the streets during peaceful pro-democracy protests. Soon these protests turned into an armed uprising, with the military carrying out mass retaliation against the civilian population.

“I donated money for a while, but I wasn’t happy with it. Every morning when I woke up, I was depressed as I saw news about the killings, the bombings and the villages being burned down,” he said.

At his lowest point, Dr. Ye even attempted suicide.

“I decided I had to come back and physically participate in the revolution,” he said.

He traveled to in April 2022 Kayah State, which shares a mountainous border with Thailand. A coalition of armed anti-coup groups has seized significant territory there and in the neighboring southern Shan Mountains.

Dr. Ye’s decision to move to this “liberated area” caused a split in his family, as his father is a regime official Prison Department in the state capital Naypyidaw.

“We have completely separated, we don’t talk at all anymore,” he said, adding that his father had even threatened him with arrest. “I don’t think he’ll ever change his mind.”

His background as a pediatrician made Dr. Ye has become a valuable helper in treating the many children displaced by the conflict, but like all medical professionals in Kayah, he is also a temporary war medic.

“I have to stabilize vital signs, check blood pressure and heart rate,” he said of patients admitted after injuries in the conflict.

It’s raining bombs

When a resistance fighter was brought to her clinic in the east of Demoso with a serious injury to her right leg caused by an air raid, Dr. May got to work despite the buzz of fighter jets overhead.

“We could hear the sound of a fighter jet flying overhead but had nowhere to run because we had to revive the soldier. So we just had to stay there and accept whatever came,” said the 33-year-old, who worked as a general practitioner at a private hospital in Mawlamyine before the coup.

“I could go back to work in a private hospital or go abroad, but if I did that, I would feel like I was not fulfilling my duty to my country and my people,” she said.

In the first half of 2023, East Demoso was one of the worst conflict areas in the country, and Dr. May began sleeping in a bomb shelter.

“Every day when I woke up I would hear the sound of artillery, and sometimes at 2 or 3 a.m. we would hear a fighter jet flying over our heads,” she said. “We literally lived underground in the bunker. We had to sleep there, we had to eat there because we no longer felt safe on the surface.”

When Al Jazeera visited East Demoso on January 4, it was eerily quiet. The fighting had now moved to Loikawthe state capital, but few civilians had returned home, leaving the area largely deserted.

Dr. May said that Military attacks on health facilities because it knows that resistance fighters are treated there, even though ordinary civilians also rely on them for life-saving care.

“Because we took care of our comrades, including those injured in the war, and that’s not good for them…” she pauses and thinks about the right word. “Those dogs.”

Since the coup, people in Myanmar have often referred to the regime’s soldiers as sit-kway, or “military dogs.”

The Geneva Convention states that health facilities and mobile health units “shall not be attacked under any circumstances.”

After months of near misses, the hospital was opened by Dr. May was hit by an airstrike in May 2023.

“It felt like I was suddenly on a battlefield, in my own coffin, everything flashing before my eyes,” she said. Fortunately, no one was killed, but the residential treatment buildings were destroyed.

The hospital of Dr. May has since moved to a more stable area of ​​the state, and Dr. Ye said his facility also moved three or four times. Dr. Oak, who performed the autopsies on the victims Christmas Eve massacreHe said he also had to move twice. A rocket once landed next to his hospital in Nanmekhon, Demoso township. For the second time, an airstrike hit his facility in the northern township of Loikaw. Dr. Oak was taking a break and using the internet in the city, but four of his medics were killed.

For this reason, most hospitals in Kayah are not only hidden but also equipped with bomb shelters.

On the front lines

When Al Jazeera visited one of these secret hospitals in late December, a member of the Demoso People’s Defense Force (PDF) was moaning in his bed.

“It hurts so much I can’t sleep,” he said. The PDF is a pro-democracy armed group with units spread across the country. The fighter’s legs had been seriously injured in an air raid in Loikaw; Doctors had already amputated one of his feet.

Half of the 12 patients were in the hospital injured by landmines in Moebye, a town in southern Shan that is largely controlled by the resistance. The military apparently equipped it with explosives before withdrawing in September 2022.

A 20-year-old woman who worked as a nurse at the clinic was a trainee nurse at Loikaw Hospital before the coup. She spent six months as a frontline medic for the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), another post-coup armed group, before being hospitalized.

“I want to help in any way I can,” she said, declining to give her name for fear of reprisals. “Nothing is too difficult for me, to help people, to save people.

Another 20-year-old KNDF medic, who was a high school student when the military seized power, said he had to rush into the battlefield unarmed to rescue wounded soldiers.

“Our rule is medics, no guns. “I see the military shooting my comrades and I really want to shoot them, but I can’t,” he said.

In the town of Loikaw, the KNDF battalion commander overseeing the medical response told Al Jazeera that three of his medics had been killed since the resistance launched an offensive to confiscate the capital in the last months of last year.

“They send aerial drones to survey the area and when they find us they send an airstrike so we have to move every few days,” he said.

He continues to pray for a peaceful resolution to the crisis but is ready to fight to the end.

“We always pray for their compassion, that they will see the truth, turn to us and surrender, but they never do,” he said. “So we have to wipe them out once and for all.”

Despite the hostile and frightening environment, Dr. Ye for finding unexpected fulfillment and understanding in Kayah.

“I didn’t know much about all the difficulties that exist in the border areas because I chose not to, I think,” said Dr. Yes. “Before the coup, I wasn’t the only one. Most Bamars have chosen not to think about the conflict.”

For decades, Myanmar’s ethnic minorities struggled under military occupation and repression, while armed conflicts rarely occurred in the Bamar-majority areas. But today is it Uprising against military rule has also taken root in the central Bamar heartland, and many Bamar youth have joined ethnic armed groups in the border areas.

Dr. Ye said it was his “steadfast hope” that there would be greater ethnic unity after the revolution. When asked about his plans after the war, he says he needs to help “rehabilitate” Myanmar.

“I used to have so many dreams in London, but I don’t want to think about that because this is my life now,” he said. “My country needs me. Even if the revolution were over tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to return to London immediately because my people will need me for a while.”