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.
“Who will go with me?” Eubank asked a motley crew from the Karen ethnic minority gathered near the Thai-Myanmar border. “I had no plan,” he recalled. “I just thought, ‘I’ll help one person and then they’ll help the…
