Myanmar Spring Chronicle – November 14 Overview
(MoeMaKa, November 15, 2025)
The Lives of People in Myanmar Who Are Paying “Conscription Fees”
For nearly eight decades of civil war in Myanmar, people have faced forced recruitment, rounding up of young men below conscription age, and—in areas controlled by ethnic armed groups—households with youths being compelled to send one (or more) person per family to serve. These long-running problems have persisted for years.
Before the 2021 coup, the national military did not generally require a “one person per household must serve” policy. Instead, its recruitment offices used various methods: small cash incentives; commuting the sentences of those convicted of lesser, non-serious crimes if they joined; and requiring soldiers who wanted to resign to find a set number of replacements before being allowed out. These practices were seen over past decades.
In territories controlled by ethnic armed organizations, villages under their administration have also long been required to provide at least one person per household for service when youths come of age.
By early 2024, these practices had spread even into major cities. In February 2024 the junta activated the Compulsory Military Service Law, requiring men aged 18–35 (and skilled professionals up to 45) to serve two years. Officially, the regime announced a weekly nationwide intake that would total 5,000 recruits per month, though various reports suggest the real number is higher.
Enforcing the draft in non-EAO townships and villages has had a huge impact, which continues to be felt in many places—economically, educationally, through labor shortages, and via abuses of authority. Today’s focus is on the village-level “conscription fees” and cash-for-replacement payments being collected since the law took effect.
At first, families who had not yet “drawn the lot” or been selected were not overly alarmed. But within a few months, that changed: in towns and villages, people were constantly pressured and money was extracted in the tens of lakhs of kyat to avoid being picked.
The amount demanded for finding or paying a substitute varies by location. In some places it used to be 200,000–300,000 kyat, but now the minimum is commonly 600,000–700,000 kyat—covering both the village’s levy to secure a replacement and the payment given to the person who agrees to serve in someone’s place. If someone is detained during travel or daily work, far higher bribes—into the millions of kyat—are reportedly demanded to secure release.
Many people assume that being drafted carries a 70%–90% chance of death. With daily fighting nationwide, even veterans with decades of experience are being killed or captured; for new conscripts sent to the front after only 2–3 months of training to face ethnic armies and PDFs, the risk of death or capture is extremely high.
Now, local administrators in junta-held towns, wards, and villages are collecting monthly “conscription fees”: at least 5,000 kyat per household in some areas and up to 35,000 kyat in others. Countless families across Myanmar struggle each month to scrape together 10,000–20,000 kyat amid war-time roadblocks, soaring prices, and vanishing jobs.
Without regard for households’ shrinking incomes, these ward/village levies—in the tens of thousands of kyat per home—add up to huge sums at the community level. A recent Facebook group post from one township noted that the monthly fee had doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 kyat. Comments poured in saying their areas charge 20,000 to 35,000 kyat, with some suggesting the original post’s amount was “still low.” Beyond the monthly fee, families with draft-age males are in some places charged an additional 100,000–200,000 kyat.
These monthly collections are not stipulated in the conscription law or regulations; they are imposed by ward/village authorities on their own initiative. The whole spectrum—collecting “conscription fees,” paying for substitutes, detaining people and extorting hundreds of thousands to millions of kyat—is unlawful, yet it happens daily. Nationwide, the total sums are enormous—hundreds of billions of kyat—a burden squeezed from ordinary people, who must carve the “conscription fee” out of their meager household budgets just to keep the authorities at bay.