After a year of brutal armed conflict, the insurgent Arakan Army ( AA ) appears to have almost complete control of the region from the border with Bangladesh to the Irrawaddy Delta, prompting a humanitarian catastrophe in the state of Rakhine, which is ravaged by the war-ravaged state.
The anti-military AA is now under siege in the main town of Ann, which is home to the Western Command of the Myanmar military, and is still fighting fiercely in Maungdaw to overrun Border Guard Police Camp 5, the last installation following months of bloody street fights and devastating device warfare.
The fighting has gotten longer as a result of the military junta from the coup-installed State Administration Council ( SAC ) military junta, which has been dropping reinforcements and supplies via helicopter and parachute into both locations.
In a few weeks of terrible battle, the AA seized more than ten settlements. The state funds, Sittwe, is essentially surrounded, forcing hundreds of citizens to flee north to Yangon by ship.
The port and airports are still functioning, but property routes are officially closed. In order to prevent an AA abuse from coming, SAC safety troops are fortifying the city. A long-standing online blackout exacerbates the situation inside the city, as new photos from Sittwe reveal deserted streets.
This may be an extraordinary victory for insurgents in Myanmar’s history of armed conflict, but it has been done so at a bad price, with the consequences already being felt for years.
The year-long offensive has increased the number of internally displaced persons ( IDPs ) to over half a million, including ethnic Rakhine, Rohingya Muslims and smaller groups such as the Mro, Daignet and Hindus, which are often ignored but are suffering just as profoundly.
The global humanitarian aid operation is failing to meet the immediate need for food, shelter, and medicine because of the extreme restrictions in the environment.
The conflict-induced movement comes after the disaster of Cyclone Mocha in May 2023, which pummeled system and housing, especially in Sittwe, and destroyed 85 % of existing IDP tents.
The limitations of the support efforts over the past year are revealed by a late-October United Nations evaluation. In Sittwe, just 10, 634 of 76, 090 Citizens received some help, or were “reached”, as the support business language goes.
Angry fighting and large fire during the war for Buthidaung from April to May left 85, 223 individuals displaced, with just 27, 839 reached, according to the UN analysis. An estimated 150, 000 residents displaced in Rathedaung, Ponnagyun and Pauktaw have received no aid.
In the north of Rakhine State, districts like Ann, Taungup, Thandwe and Gwa have not been usually defined conflict zones and, consequently, have had little access to emergency help.
Since the AA has seized control of almost all of these locations, the SAC has increased its use of marine airstrikes, artillery bombardment, and other airstrikes against human settlements, causing displacement and halting financial activity.
Rakhine state is in danger of widespread famine, according to the UN Development Program ( UNDP ), where two million people could be forced to eat. According to a recent report, only 20 % of domestic food generation needs will be met by March 2025.
” Internal rice production is plummeting due to a lack of seeds, fertilizers, severe weather conditions, a steep rise in the number of internally displaced people ( IDPs ) who can no longer engage in cultivation, and escalating conflict”, the UNDP report says.
A siege of the majority of the country’s roads and coastal routes has made this remarkable food security worse, with merely shipping to Sittwe, the state capital, and Kyaukphyu’s port. Myanmar state is losing control, and the SAC has been strangulating it.
The AA, its political wing, the United League of Arakan ( ULA ), and its public administration in particular have been burdened with more protection and aid as a result of the conflict.
The large efforts being made by Rakhine professor Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, including the Rohingya, to “establish legitimacy among various areas in Rakhine condition, including the Rohingya,” have just been highlighted.
The AA now has to “govern” while also fighting a state-control battle after steadily expanding its public service as it expanded its place and” control” over a larger proportion of the population.
The Center for Arakan Studies ( CAS ) has analyzed the AA’s burgeoning judicial system, which clearly illustrates the armed groups” seeing like a state” approach.
The incomprehensible agreement between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army ( ARS A ) armed groups to cooperate with the Myanmar military and jointly wage war against the AA has made the conflict in Rakhine even worse.
It was ARSA’s strikes against Myanmar safety power troops in 2016 and 2017 that sparked the government’s large ethnic cleansing battle that forced some 700, 000 Rohingya across the frontier into Bangladesh.
The AA has repeatedly fought with Rohingya extremists and raided their alleged military installations in northeastern Maungdaw. In Maungdaw and Buthidaung, the teeming Rohingya migrant camps in Cox’s Bazar and among the native populations are recruiting soldiers from some militants.
The Myanmar government has even forced, or accepted freely, thousands of Rohingya men to take up hands. The AA is also accused of abusing the Rohingya through forced labour and other methods.
In Rakhine state, fight dynamics have changed significantly in the past year, which could lead to a multifaceted issue. This makes the Rohingya’s return to Bangladesh’s Myanmar position even more risky than it was a year ago, and it’s good impossible in the near future.
Unheeded calls for a charitable corridor between Bangladesh and AA and government areas. Bangladeshi security forces have restricted supplies from entering Rakhine state and blocked Rohingya immigrants from entering, a significantly different view from the new Muslim Yunus administration’s commitment to aid the Rohingya.
After ferocious fighting broke out in Maungdaw in the middle of 2024, this disengage was particularly obvious. There is also popular rumors that Bangladesh’s government is providing training and arms to the RSO.
However, items from India are even restricted. In January, the AA suddenly took control of a number of nearby Chin state’s Paletwa, capturing one of the area’s numerous Myanmar Army firebases.
This, which is effectively significant for the AA, opened up the possibility of increasing food and fuel supplies from India, along the Kaladan River, and by path.
But, barricades are being imposed according to inter-ethnic animosity. Food and fuel supplies from India’s Central Young Lai Association, an ethnic Chin business with a base in Mizoram, have been stopped from India’s Paletwa and finally Rakhine State.
The Young Lai Association has been preventing supply routes for many months and is angry about the AA’s annexation of Chin place.
The new trend of “anticipatory actions,” which looks at present dynamics to forecast for unforeseen catastrophe or emergencies, is a big hit with the charitable aid sector. By then, planning to stop the state of Rakhine express from famine must be more important. But among Myanmar’s estimated 18 million individuals who need humanitarian aid, most are not being reached.
The international community’s responses to this humanitarian emergency call for a reversal of their foreign policies toward racial Rakhine communities, who have long been subject to persecution. To bridge gaps between Rakhine areas, it also requires a basic rethink of the” interpersonal unity” programming favored by Western support and development sponsors.
Since 2012, Western donor financing has been wasted on a tens of millions of dollars with much evidence of the expenditure. It is obvious that international organizations must develop new strategies that transcend the traditional and unsuccessful intervention efforts.
It is obvious that the UN Country Team in Yangon is unable to increase humanitarian aid or foster harmony.
A secret meeting with SAC leaders was made by Julie Bishop, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Myanmar, and former Australian foreign secretary. It was evident that there was no miracle in aid distribution.
In her first speech at the UN in late October, Bishop bemoaned the “zero-sum” mentality of all sides in the conflict. Many in Myanmar were enraged by this because the SAC is the primary perpetrator of using aid as a means of conflict.
The current international mediation methods will likely only add to tensions and continue to fail. Engaging with the AA leadership and the organization’s humanitarian administration is the key to resolving the crisis.
To facilitate aid directly through the Arakan Authority, Bangladesh and India must engage in more proactive international advocacy. All communities in Rakhine state will be destroyed if the humanitarian catastrophe is not addressed. There will be no end to the state’s reputation.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues on Myanmar.