Myanmar refugees take shelter in Thailand's Mae Sot

The bamboo and leaf-thatch shelter in the middle of a sugarcane field hardly looks like a safehouse.

But that is where 23-year-old Sanjay - his choice of a pseudonym - and eight others have been hiding out since fleeing conscription across the border in war-torn Myanmar.

They are now fugitives in Mae Sot, on Thailand's western edge. They share their rudimentary home with a gaggle of ducks and chickens, and several goats.

"Back home I used to feel afraid every day that they would come to take me into the army," Sanjay says. "Even though we have very little food here - just rice and vegetables - no-one will come to harm me. I feel free here in Thailand."

A narrow, muddy river, no more than a stream in the dry season, is all that separates Myanmar from Thailand.

Across it, tens of thousands have fled since the 2021 military coup, seeking safety in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. The most recent arrivals are young men avoiding the national conscription which has been imposed by Myanmar's military rulers since February - it applies to all men between the ages of 18 and 35. With most of the younger generation strongly opposed to military rule, the law has triggered an exodus of young men.

Over the years Mae Sot has become an uneasy refuge for Burmese on the run. It has the feel of Cold War Berlin about it, or of Casablanca in the famous eponymous movie. It is a town full of exiles, planning revolution, waiting for asylum offers, always fearful of spies and informers, and living in a state of almost constant anxiety.

"I used to be a bad boy," Sanjay says. "I did whatever I liked. I never listened to my mother. I was not interested in politics."

His life, and opinions, changed after the coup when his father was jailed by the military, for helping the resistance. But he never thought about leaving his home until his call-up papers came.

"No way was I going to fight for them against other Burmese people."

In Myawaddy, on the other side of the river from Mae Sot, the Burmese army has just suffered another humiliating defeat.

Hundreds of its troops had to surrender when their bases were overrun by a coalition of insurgents. Reinforcements sent to try to retake the town have been ambushed and bogged down in forested mountains to the west of Myawaddy.

A string of similar defeats suffered by the military in recent months - in Shan and Kachin States to the north, and in Rakhine State to the west - have left the army desperately short of recruits. Thousands of soldiers have been killed, wounded, captured or have deserted.

Sanjay did not want to be one of them. So, his mother helped him escape, travelling with him on the long and perilous bus ride to the border.

With his Myanmar ID card he was able to get a two-week pass to come into Thailand.

That has expired, but he is fortunate to have an uncle already in Mae Sot, who is helping support him.

He is, however, forced to lie low in the fields, risking arrest and possible deportation each time he makes a journey into Mae Sot. But he has no regrets.

Mae Sot is now a warren of safehouses, whole streets accommodating largely undocumented refugees. Some are well-established dormitories, funded by foreign aid organisations. Others are improvised; empty shophouses in the main market, partitioned inside with plywood and plastic tarpaulins to make rooms just big enough for a family to lie down.

In one of the better safehouses, is a family of five that had just arrived a week ago, carrying some clothes, a few blankets, and nothing else, except their five year-old son's favourite toy car.

The eldest son is 19, and the family made the decision to leave their home near Yangon when his military call-up papers came.

"I could not accept my son being forced to fight against other young men," his father said.

They described a gruelling journey from Yangon lasting 15 days, through the Karen State hills and then across the river at night into Thailand. The bribes and fees they had to pay consumed all their savings.

That morning, the father, a former railway worker, had just been out trying to get a job. Wages in Mae Sot are often pitifully low, yet he was unable to find anything.

The town is both a sanctuary and a prison for those who have fled from Myanmar.

Thailand is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention and Protocol on Refugees, and does not give official protection to those fleeing the war in Myanmar. Most of the fugitives have few or no documents.

The Thai authorities largely tolerate the influx - people have been coming over the border for decades, and Mae Sot is now an almost entirely Burmese town. But without papers they are not allowed to travel outside it. Money is a constant problem; the police charge 300 baht (£7, $9) every month for a card which is supposed to protect them from being detained at checkpoints, but many Burmese are still picked up and forced to pay much larger sums for their release.

"There are a lot of mental health challenges," says Nay Chi Win, the co-ordinator of Joy House, an innovative community centre set up last year to help refugees deal with the stress and depression they often feel.

"We hear about a lot of suicide cases, or people talking about suicide. They feel useless. Back in Myanmar they might be an engineer or a doctor, but here they are stateless. They cannot continue their education. They cannot support their families. Sometimes they stop caring about their lives, using drugs or alcohol."

Sanjay has decided to follow the example of many other young men, and go back over the border to fight. At least, he said, he will feel useful. But the brutalities of combat are not for everyone. Getting accepted in one of the volunteer People's Defence Force units requires four months of very tough training by the experienced fighters of the Karen National Union. Many do not make the grade.

Other young men with technological experience are being used in the drone squads, helping to construct, adapt and pilot the drones which are playing an increasingly important role in the war, dropping small explosives with pinpoint accuracy to undermine the morale of the soldiers.

"I miss my leg," said the 27-year-old former PDF fighter, speaking in a Mae Sot back street.

He is a former IT technician who joined the resistance after the coup, but lost his right leg when he stepped on a landmine.

"It was the right thing to do."

His advice to those draft dodgers who want to contribute to the struggle is to think about their skills: "Joining a strike team and fighting is not the most important thing. We need technical people for our drone squads, and we need people to go overseas and do fund-raising."

Meanwhile, Thailand - which for years has pretended it can manage any overspill from the conflict over the border as a localised issue between the militaries of the two countries - has admitted that the military regime in Myanmar may be crumbling, and that it must brace itself to accommodate tens of thousands more coming over the border.

The fighting in Myawaddy has brought a more visible Thai military presence to Mae Sot.

They can be seen doing sentry duty along the banks of the river, looking across to the casinos and scam centres which have blighted this part of Myanmar in recent years, to the now insurgent-controlled border posts, and to a handful of defeated Burmese soldiers who hunkered down for a few days on the opposite bank.

But despite the reminders of Myanmar's fighting on their doorstep, those who have just arrived in Mae Sot are still enjoying a sense of relief.

The father-of-three worries about education for his boys. Undocumented Burmese cannot attend Thai schools, and most of the Burmese language schools in Mae Sot charge fees. He and his wife hope their eldest boy can study online to fulfil his ambition to be a doctor.

But, he says, they are glad they left Myanmar.

"In the past week I have slept better than at any time since the coup."