Small groups with big dreams

Call for democracy: People marching with the federal flag in support of the National Unity Government in Yangon. — Reuters

Sleeping by their makeshift barricades, knots of young men at Tahan in the western Myanmar town of Kale had not expected an attack in the pre-dawn darkness.

Armed with a few hunting guns made by village blacksmiths, catapults, some airguns and Molotov cocktails, they were no match for forces hardened by decades of conflict and equipped with combat weapons.