For years, sein win's job in the burmese army was to guard citizens who had been forced into hard labor, building the nation's roads, railways, helipads and barracks. "We threatened them with guns to make them work," says Sein Win, now 20, who recently deserted from the military. "No soldier would dare be kind to the villagers because the officers would beat us if we showed them any mercy."

Burma has long been a pariah state—a target of human rights activists worldwide after the military junta slaughtered democracy protesters in 1988 and voided the 1990 election. Increasingly isolated economically, the regime has dramatically expanded its reliance on forced civilian labor for infrastructure and revenue-generating projects. By 1996 an estimated 3% of Burma's GDP was the fruit of conscripted gangs. In an additional, cruel twist, many of the soldiers themselves—part of a mobilization that expanded the army from 185,000 troops to nearly half a million today—were little more than child slaves. Sein Win was press-ganged into service at age 12. He wasn't allowed to contact his family and never once was granted leave. When he initially tried to escape, he was roughed up. "Soldiers in my battalion were beaten every day," he says.

Kyaw Aung, who was kidnapped by the military at age 14, says his company once tied a Karen elder suspected of being a rebel sympathizer to a post. His sergeant ordered Kyaw Aung to gut the prisoner from neck to groin. "I had no choice," says Kyaw Aung, another recent deserter. "If I hadn't done it, the sergeant would have had the other soldiers tie me up and cut me open."

Such abuses continue to haunt the lives of both victims and those forced to persecute them. Says Sein Win: "I have nightmares about what we have done."

Reported by Robert Horn/Karen state, Burma