Myanmar communists take in liberated elephants as battle against junta rages

This handout photo taken and released on September 3, 2024 by the People’s Liberation Army of the Communist Party of Burma shows its members posing for photos with elephants and their mahouts in Thabeikkyin district in Mandalay region.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Communist rebels battling Myanmar’s junta have taken in 138 elephants as fighting rages in the jungles and scrubland around Mandalay.

The tuskers have been coming into the rebel camp in twos and threes since July, many led by handlers fleeing the junta-controlled timber camps that employ them.

Others have been taken as spoils in territory captured by the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) as it battles the military and its 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.

“We were worried that if no one took control of them, these elephants would fall into the hands of traffickers,” said Ni Ni Kyaw, the general secretary of the CPB’s People’s Liberation Army.

“If these elephants reach the black market or are taken by traffickers, they will have a huge problem,” she told AFP on Thursday.

State timber enterprises in Myanmar are thought to employ around 3,000 elephants, the majority dragging freshly cut trees through the dense jungle to transport hubs and mills.

At one PLA camp last week, around a dozen of the animals knelt in a line alongside their handlers before heading off on a march.

A (CPB) soldier clad in camouflage and carrying a rifle stepped up to the wooden platform on one elephant’s back and the small herd rumbled off into the forest.

In olden times Burmese kings fought their rivals on elephant-back and rode the beasts into battle, according to chronicles.

But Ni Ni Kyaw said it was not certain how the communists would use the animals in their battle against the military.

“We are worried that we are going to lose this treasure of our country, therefore, we will take care of them as best as we can,” she said.

The PLA was providing rice and cooking oil to the elephant handlers — known as mahouts — and their family members, she added.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and seized power in 2021.

The resulting military crackdown reignited clashes with long-established ethnic minority armed groups, as well as newly formed pro-democracy “People’s Defence Forces”.

The military has lost swaths of territory in northern Shan state and around Mandalay to an alliance of the armed ethnic minority groups and PDFs battling to overturn the coup.

“Even our human beings have many difficulties due to the current fighting and there are a lot of displaced people,” said Ni Ni Kyaw.

“Elephants have big bodies and they eat a lot, so they need a lot of space in the jungle.”

“When the revolution ends one day, we will have a new government and will hand these elephants to the forest department.”