'Why should I kill our own?': Myanmar junta totters as battalions surrender

One night last August, as the monsoon rains poured, Wunna Kyaw and some fellow soldiers walked away from their military base in Myanmar. It was hours before they were due to be deployed to an area gripped by intense fighting, where the military was struggling to control attacks by armed pro-democracy groups. "I believed I would die if I did not defect," says Wunna Kyaw. As the senior officers and commander slept, they crept away from their compound in Kayin, also known as Karen state. It was an act punishable by at least seven years in prison and, potentially, the…