MAE SOT, Thailand -- He was taught how to hold an assault rifle and aim it at an enemy. He was taught how to pull a trigger, aim at the next enemy and pull the trigger again. He learned all this, he says, by the time he was 12, when he was officially declared a soldier of Burma and sent to the front lines of a long-running civil war.
Now 14, the taciturn boy Kyaw Zay Ya lives in a rebel-held village in Burma near the Thai border, one of the few places in the country willing to protect him from service in what human rights monitors call the largest child army in the world.
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, Burma's army of 350,000 includes as many as 70,000 youths under 18. A study the group issued last October found that rebel groups fighting the army also use child soldiers, though in far smaller numbers.
The numbers would make the military-ruled Burma, also known as Myanmar, the worst violator of international laws against using children in armed conflicts, Human Rights Watch contends.
The Burmese government has denied that its army takes in recruits under 18, and says that its force is all volunteer. But people interviewed in safe houses and camps along the border disputed those contentions.
In a two-hour talk here, Kyaw said he was press-ganged into the army at age 11, took part in combat repeatedly and felt "afraid and very far from home."
Another young man, Naing Win, said he was 16 when he was ordered into a nasty firefight. To fuel the soldiers, he said, the commander made them take amphetamines, washed down with whiskey. The troops, Naing recalled, "got very happy."
In the encounter, each soldier was ordered to lob five grenades at the enemy. Naing, whose forehead bears a shrapnel scar, said he was sufficiently high on the drugs that at one point he was throwing stones. With one grenade, he forgot to remove the pin that allows it to explode. Then he was ordered to run forward exposed to enemy fire, retrieve the grenade, take out the pin and throw it again. The battle killed his best friend, 15.
Another time, after his unit had won a battle against ethnic Karenni rebels, his commander wanted the area cleared of mines. About 40 Karenni villagers were made to walk through the mined zone, he said. In the ensuing explosions, some died and some lost their legs. Those who survived were lined up. Naing said he and several other soldiers were ordered to shoot them. They did.
"I'm very sorry," he said.
For much of Burma's history since it gained independence in 1948, the national army has been fighting guerrilla armies fielded by ethnic groups that want control of their own affairs and regions. Currently, army operations consist largely of low-intensity conflicts against a handful of opposition groups, notably the Shan State Army, the Karen National Liberation Army and the Karenni Army.
The army has a major advantage in numbers over these groups, none of which has more than 15,000 troops, according to Karen and Karenni officials and Human Rights Watch, but they say the army still employs underage soldiers.
"Children are picked up off the street when they are 11 years old," said Jo Becker, child advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "Many have no chance to contact their families and see their parents again. Everyone that we had talked to had been beaten during the training. Most were desperately unhappy."
The Burmese government denies the charges. "I am totally flabbergasted at the assertions in the Human Rights Watch report," said Col. Hla Min, deputy head of the Defense Ministry's international affairs department in the capital, Rangoon. "The Myanmar Defense Forces does not recruit underage and, in fact, MDF is a voluntary army. Today, after 98 percent of all the insurgents have made peace with the government, there is not much need for recruitment as accused by certain quarters."
In a faxed reply to a query, he stated that Burmese troops are now engaged in work similar to that of the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
U Kyaw Tint Swe, Burma's ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 14 that "there is no credible evidence of the use and recruitment of children by the Myanmar armed forces."
U.S. policy is that people can enlist in the military at age 17, but must be at least 18 to serve on front lines.
In an interview, a 19-year-old named Aung, who asked that his full name not be used, said he was taken into the army in 1998 at age 14 after seven years in an army-run prep camp, named Ye Nyunt. There he and others learned to march in straight rows, clean guns and recognize land mines. Aung was 9 when he first picked up a gun, a standard army-issue G-3. The gun was taller than he was, he recalled.
Aung thought that after he finished his studies, he would become an army captain. But one June day in 1998, when he was 14, a general showed up at the school. All boys older than 13 who had not finished the 10th grade were pulled aside. He and his schoolmates thought they were just being sent to another class. Instead, they were trucked to a holding center in Mandalay. "I got to the army by force," he said, "not voluntarily."
Aung said he first saw battle at the age of 15, and he was sick for three days afterward. But he grew used to it: In the following two years, he took part in seven major firefights and countless minor skirmishes, he said.
The worse battle lasted from early morning into the evening, in the village of Loi Lin Lay in 1999. The fighting began at the back of the village and by afternoon had moved to the front, where he and his friend, another 15-year-old, were deployed. By nightfall, most of his Burmese counterparts were dead.
"During the fighting, you don't have time to think," he says. "Only shoot."
He said he felt powerless to resist. In the army, "if a bad person gives an order, you have to follow it. If he says burn the village, you have to burn it. If he says kill a person, you have to do it."
Naing Win, the boy soldier who recounted use of amphetamines, said in an interview that he was picked up at a train station near Mandalay when he was 15. Authorities found he had no identification card and gave him a choice: Join the army or go to prison. He was forced into a truck with 40 other people, 16 of whom were boys. They were taken to an army base, then to a holding camp for recruits.
If a boy refused to eat his food, was late or missed a task, the other soldiers would often be forced to beat the victim with bamboo strips or a whip, Naing said. There were other forms of punishment, the former soldiers said, such as jumping in the sand like frogs for 10 minutes, or lying flat on the ground and staring at the sun.
One boy was stripped naked, his hands and legs tied, Naing recalled. After 20 or 30 blows, his skin was bloody. An officer rubbed salt into the wounds on his back. The boy screamed in pain. Hours later, he was dead.
But not all officers were harsh, said Kyaw, who recounted being plucked for military service from a bus stop near Rangoon at age 11. One officer let the boys watch videos, including James Bond movies. Others would arrange surreptitious meetings between a youngster and his parents.
In the field, they had duties that included rounding up villagers in rebel areas to serve as porters, the former soldiers said. Those who balked or could not keep up were beaten or killed. Naing said he also witnessed Karenni villagers being raped. A general told the soldiers that raping women serves "to give the soldiers energy."
"Some of my friends said, 'It's okay. They're not Burmese. They're Karenni.' " Once, he said, he saw a teenage girl being raped repeatedly in an open field in the evening. First came the battalion leader, then a bodyguard, then ordinary soldiers. She was screaming and crying. She was left to die, he said.
All three of the former soldiers said they eventually deserted.
Naing fled in 1995, after six years in the army. He married a Karenni woman and joined the Burma Patriotic Army, a group of 30 fellow deserters whose aim is to oppose the central government in Rangoon. He said he has pretty much abandoned hope of seeing his family in Mandalay province again, unless there is a change in government. He still dreams about his friend who was killed.
Aung escaped in May 2001. Today, he lives in a Thai town near the border and works odd jobs. He is waiting for the political situation to change, so that he can return home to Rangoon province. The only way he expects that to be possible is if "people in the outside world put a lot of pressure on the government."
And last September, after three years in uniform, Kyaw was bathing alone in a stream near a waterfall. No one was watching. He bolted. After walking for four hours, he reached a Karen village, where soldiers tied his hands and punched him, thinking he might be a spy. After he convinced a Karen officer that he was a true deserter, he was given refuge in a border village.
He does not dare to go home. "They will put me in prison," he said. He has no desire to resume studying. His only desire is to be a kickboxer one day, like his favorite Burmese boxers Shwe da Win and Wan Chai. He says he does not think much about the army. He has no nightmares. "I don't dream," he said.