Nerdah Mya (also Ner Dah, Nerdah Bo Mya) is the second son of Saw Bo Mya. He was educated in Thailand and, for six years, in the United States, where he took a liberal arts degree. A Burma Link interview in 2015 says he meant only a short visit home after graduating in 1994. The DKBA split of that year, and the fall of Manerplaw, kept him. He commanded the KNLA’s 201st Battalion around 2000, later rose as a major general and chief of staff of the Karen National Defence Organisation, and spoke for Karen foreign affairs in English. On Karen Revolution Day, 31 January 2015, the Australian federal member for Cowan, Luke Simpkins, was photographed with him after crossing from Mae Sot. The newspaper report does not name Mu Aye Pu.
In the country around this village he is known as a man of the landing and of the forest. KNDO commemorations have been held at Mu Aye Pu. Rangers and wildlife protection are spoken of as one labour, not as a foreign project.
After the 2021 coup he condemned the seizure of power. In 2022 the KNU dismissed him from the KNDO after an investigation into the killing of twenty-five people in May 2021. He said they were military spies. He did not accept the finding. In July 2022 he formed the Kawthoolei Army, a force apart from the KNU. On 5 January 2026 he proclaimed a Republic of Kawthoolei and named himself president. The KNU called that claim nonsense, and said he had had no standing with them since 2022. Both things are public record. These pages do not try the case, and they cannot speak for him.
See History, rangers, and the people of the village.