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Life

Fighting Myanmar's regime with compassion and military skills

Free Burma Rangers help thousands fleeing brutal attacks by security forces

David Eubank, founder of the Free Burma Rangers aid organization, rescues a 5-year-old Demoa after her mother was killed by Islamists in the battle for Mosul. (Courtesy of Free Burma Rangers)

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- David Eubank, a former U.S. Special Forces officer, believes that some causes are worth dying for. His Free Burma Rangers aid organization, founded to help victims of an earlier Myanmar crisis, has since brought frontline help to many thousands in war-scarred Syria, Iraq and Sudan. Now, it is back in Myanmar helping ethnic minorities to flee escalating attacks by the regime's security forces.

It was a Myanmar military offensive in 1997 that gave birth to the rangers, who rushed in from neighboring Thailand to help some of the 500,000-plus refugees fleeing as Burmese troops shelled their villages, torched their homes and executed entire families.

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