<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Under an awning in a bamboo thicket in northern Myanmar, an anti-coup fighter following instructions from YouTube welds scavenged steel into crude mortar rounds and shells to be fired at junta troops.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Almost two years after seizing power, the military has been unable to crush local militias that have sprung up to fight the putsch with hit-and-run tactics.</div><div><br></div><div>In turn, these People's Defence Forces (PDF) remain massively outgunned by the military's artillery strikes, Chinese and Russian-made jets and Israeli-patterned rifles.</div><div><br></div><div>Captured weapons and expensive purchases on the black market have provided patchy boosts to PDF firepower, analysts say, but many militias have turned to risky trial-and-error operations to churn out their own rockets, mines and mortars.</div><div><br></div><div>"We just learn how to build weapons from the internet or YouTube," said Nay Min, an anti-coup fighter from the northern Sagaing region.</div><div><br></div><div>"We search how to cook saltpetre (potassium nitrate), how to combine it to get gunpowder, how to build rifles. We haven't received any training," he told AFP.</div><div><br></div><div>Those with engineering or mechanical backgrounds, like his comrade Nay Myo Win, experiment and come up with prototypes or copies of captured weapons, he said.</div><div><br></div><div>Blowtorches in hand, they sweat for hours in makeshift workshops powered by generators that are frequent targets of junta raids.</div><div><br></div><div>Nay Myo Win mixes saltpetre to make the gunpowder needed to fire mortar shells filled with lead and scrap metal that he claims have a range of just over two kilometres (1.2 miles).</div><div>- Crude armaments -</div><div><br></div><div>Laid out on a tarpaulin ahead of a mission in October, the mortars are unimpressive -- little more than construction pipes welded to bipods.</div><div><br></div><div>The shells require two charges to detonate -- one to fire the shell and the other to explode on impact -- a method first used at the beginning of the 20th century.</div><div><br></div><div>But the damage is substantial, Nay Min said -- "around 15 feet from the target it will hit people and they will die or be wounded".</div><div><br></div><div>One batch of shells was made from a telecoms tower owned by a firm close to the military, which was sabotaged by PDF fighters some months ago.</div><div><br></div><div>"We just wanted to destroy their business," Nay Min added.</div><div><br></div><div>"But, after we had started making homemade weapons ... we needed more stainless steel and we thought of the tower."</div><div><br></div><div>Nay Min's group is one of dozens of PDF militias in Sagaing making their own weapons in a bid to turn the tide in the fighting.</div><div><br></div><div>Many upload footage of successful tests of mortars, rockets or mines to social media, with joyous shouts accompanying each loud bang.</div><div><br></div><div>But the work can be deadly.</div><div><br></div><div>"It's more than dangerous," said Bo Shaung, an anti-coup fighter and rocket maker from another group operating in Sagaing.</div><div><br></div><div>"When we cook gunpowder, if we add too much saltpetre, it's dangerous. If we add too little, it's also dangerous."</div><div><br></div><div>One video obtained by AFP shows a new mortar being tested. The shell explodes in the barrel, killing the fighter who had just loaded it.</div><div><br></div><div>Thu Ya, another anti-coup fighter, said he lost his sight six months ago when the explosive he was handling went off too soon.</div><div><br></div><div>"I got injuries on my hands and feet which have recovered now but I... still have blurry vision," he said.</div><div><br></div><div>In the absence of machines like lathes and voltage regulators, each shell is made by hand.</div><div><br></div><div>And for all the risk that comes with producing them, the homemade munitions are often more bark than bite.</div><div><br></div><div>- 'Drain on morale' -</div><div><br></div><div>Once a target has been selected, preparing ammunition for an attack can take up to 10 days, Nay Min said.</div><div><br></div><div>His group relies on information from locals to gauge troop positions.</div><div><br></div><div>To guide their fire they have little more than Google Maps to measure the distance from the target.</div><div><br></div><div>"We normally attack them in our own areas and we all know the locations and distance," he said, insisting that most attacks were accurate.</div><div><br></div><div>Assessing the effectiveness of these weapons is "extremely difficult" in the absence of impartial reporting from the field, said Bangkok-based security analyst Anthony Davis.</div><div><br></div><div>Both sides regularly inflate or play down their casualty figures, analysts say.</div><div><br></div><div>But Davis said the spread of locally made mortars and rockets "indicates that these systems are far from simply window-dressing".</div><div><br></div><div>"They inflict real casualties but perhaps as importantly are a constant drain on the morale of often isolated army units on the receiving end."</div><div><br></div><div>The junta has labelled all PDF groups as "terrorists". It blames anti-coup fighters for the deaths of more than 4,000 civilians.</div><div><br></div><div>Nay Min sees his group's fight as justified.</div><div><br></div><div>"We are satisfied with what we have done," he said.</div><div><br></div><div>But "we need everything. Especially we need weapons."</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>