In Hpa-An, the capital of Myanmar’s southern Karen state, young and able-bodied people have grown increasingly reluctant to go out after dark, fearing they could be seized and forced into military service.
But 26-year-old tuk-tuk driver Zaw Min, whose real name has been withheld for his safety, cannot afford to stay indoors.
“I worry, but I have to go out to work,” he says. “My family call me all the time and remind me not to drive passengers too far; to be careful who I take as a passenger... I have to be vigilant all the time.”
“People are panicked and frightened,” he adds. “Some people I know have been taken.”
Residents say plain-clothes members and supporters of Myanmar’s military regime have been roaming Hpa-An, arbitrarily arresting people in their teens, 20s and 30s and forcing them into military service.
Leaked documents seen by BBC Burmese indicate that authorities have been ordered to meet military recruitment quotas aggressively across administrative areas, as the army battles ethnic militias, pro-democracy groups and civilian-led resistance forces.
Zaw Min is the only one among his siblings of conscription age. Many other young people have fled to Thailand or sought refuge with relatives elsewhere, he says. Those who remain are often under strict instructions from their parents to return home before dusk.
Myanmar has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since February 2021, when the military seized power in a coup and ousted democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In 2024, following a series of military setbacks, declining morale and rising desertions, the regime enforced a compulsory military service law requiring men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve for at least two years. Those who refuse face up to five years in prison.
Maj Naung Yoe, a military affairs official at the Myanmar Defense and Security Institute (MDSI) and a former military officer who defected to the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement, described the law as one of the most consequential measures imposed on civilians since the coup.
Hpa-An is the latest area to face a recruitment drive that has reportedly ensnared an estimated 100,000 young people over the past two and a half years, many through coercion, extortion and abduction.
“Security forces track young people's movements to arrest them, force them into service under the pretext of statutory military eligibility, extort money through threats of detention, and arrest individuals during guest-list inspections,” Naung Yoe says.
The BBC contacted Myanmar’s Central Body for Summoning People's Military Servants about allegations of forced recruitment and abductions in recent months. The body declined to comment.
The conscription law has provided the military with a system for replenishing its ranks. Observers say the arrival of reinforcements has helped the regime regain territory in some areas, leaving resistance forces on the back foot.
The war, however, continues. As more young people evade conscription, either by joining the resistance or fleeing military service, recruitment methods have reportedly become increasingly coercive.
International rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Fortify Rights, have accused Myanmar’s military of abducting civilians and forcing them into service.
In July, open-source research organisation Myanmar Witness said it had analysed hundreds of missing-person notices posted on Facebook between 2021 and 2025. The number of notices in January rose from four in 2021, before the coup, to 82 in 2025, after the conscription law was introduced.
“In practice, much of [the Myanmar military's] recruitment appears to be carried out through detention, coercion, and disappearance rather than formal call-up, and often without notice to families,” the researchers concluded.
Men and boys accounted for most of the reported missing persons.
“They are spreading rumours all over the neighbourhood that I sold my husband.”
Ma Moe San Pan breaks down as she recalls the disappearance of her husband, Phyo Wai, 33, whom she last saw at their home in Yangon on May 8, 2025.
“We had an argument, and afterwards he left home,” she says. “I was upset and told my cousin about what had happened.”
Her cousin worked at the local ward administration office. Ma Moe San Pan asked him to bring her husband home. Two days later, Phyo Wai called her from a military recruitment centre on the other side of the city.
According to Ma Moe San Pan, her cousin had taken Phyo Wai to the ward office, which then transferred him to another ward for 4 million kyats, equivalent to about $900, to help meet that ward’s recruitment quota. The BBC was unable to reach the cousin for comment.
Desperate to secure her husband’s release, Ma Moe San Pan was subsequently cheated out of another 4.5 million kyats by people who falsely promised to arrange his release.
U Maung Maung Lwin, the administrator of the ward where Phyo Wai was taken, later acknowledged to the BBC that he had played a role in sending him to the military recruitment authorities.
Asked about allegations that people were being conscripted outside their home townships, he said transfers between townships occurred when local authorities could not meet their recruitment quotas.
He denied, however, that money was involved in such transfers or in Phyo Wai’s forced conscription.
“[Phyo Wai] told me they said they would help him and made him sign documents,” Ma Moe San Pan says.
“If my husband had been legally selected for conscription through the normal process, I could have accepted that. What I cannot accept is that our own ward administration office allegedly sold him to another ward.”
Since her husband was taken, she has filed police complaints over his alleged sale into military service and the money she lost to scammers.
The police accepted her complaints, she says, but refused to include human trafficking charges, claiming such a case could only be registered if a person had been sold abroad.
She still does not know where her husband is.
Her case illustrates how pressure to meet recruitment quotas may be creating incentives for local officials to exploit people eligible for military service.
With demand for recruits rising and the number of willing candidates dwindling, an illicit market has allegedly emerged. Naung Yoe says security personnel and others have arrested young people at road checkpoints, tracked workers during their commutes, lured them through fake job advertisements and forcibly entered homes.
“Under the guise of the conscription law, these coercive arrests and recruitment drives have effectively transformed into a modern-day slavery and human trafficking enterprise,” he says.
In late August, police in Yangon arrested a member of the Fire Services Department, which falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and his son-in-law over the alleged abduction of four young men for sale into military service.
The reserve fire brigade unit commander allegedly lured the men to his home with promises of employment and confined them in specially built detention rooms. Police raided the property and arrested him on August 25.
He has since been charged with kidnapping or abducting people to wrongfully confine them, an offence carrying a potential prison sentence of up to seven years. BBC Burmese made several attempts to contact the police station where he is being held but received no response.
“Lower-level administrative bodies, military personnel and local criminal gangs employ diverse tactics to press-gang and arrest young people,” Naung Yoe says.
“They sell these individuals to military units and regional commands facing manpower shortages, or traffic substitute recruits on behalf of wealthier individuals seeking to buy their way out of service.”
Although recruitment quotas are formally allocated to villages, wards and townships according to population, wealthier people can reportedly pay to avoid service, leaving poorer residents more vulnerable to forced recruitment.
Naung Yoe says the practices are escalating because authorities are struggling to meet monthly quotas and because trading recruits offers lucrative financial rewards at the local level.
The increasingly coercive recruitment drive also reflects the military’s growing need for manpower, analysts say.
“It seems to be another step in the junta's efforts to enlist unwilling youth in a conflict that underscores its embattled position in the civil war,” says Dr Sandeep Singh, a research fellow who teaches military studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
The threat of abduction has added to the hardships facing young people and their families after years of conflict, he says.
Beyond the daily insecurity of life in Myanmar, many young people now fear being forced to fight in a war they oppose. The threat has contributed to internal displacement, labour shortages in an already struggling economy and an exodus to neighbouring countries.
After years of fighting its own population, the military regime is using compulsory service as another means of control, observers say.
As the MDSI stated in June: “The generals have benefited by using military law to make the citizens fight against each other.”