Some see the Arakan Army as the most serious insurgency since Myanmar's independence
Chin states, in the far west of Myanmar, bullets fly and villages burn. Dead bodies lie slumped in ditches. These “clearance operations”, as the Burmese government calls them, evoke those of 2017, when the army drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic group, from their villages, killing and raping many as they did so, in what thedescribed as genocide. Three years later the army’s sights are trained on a different ethnic group: the Rakhine.
Conflict erupted last year on January 4th, Myanmar’s independence day. Several hundred fighters from the Arakan Army , a Rakhine armed group, attacked four police posts in northern Rakhine state, killing 13 officers . Theand the Tatmadaw, as the Burmese army is called, had skirmished occasionally since 2014, but the insurgents had never before attempted anything so bold. The government, helmed by Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, instructed the army to “crush” the rebels.
Rakhine civilians are also coming under fire. Amnesty International claims that the army has been shooting indiscriminately at Rakhine settlements and torturing and murdering civilians. At any rate, more than 100,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. Analysis of media reports by Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, a Burmese think-tank, shows that 42 civilians have died since March 23rd.
The Tatmadaw risks turning “a war in Rakhine into a war on the Rakhine”, says Mr Davis. He believes that doing so will only encourage Rakhine civilians to rally around thewith greater fervour. The rebels do not have the firepower to defeat the Tatmadaw militarily, but he is not sure that they need to. If they inflict sufficient humiliation on the Tatmadaw, he reasons, the government may decide to retreat from the fight and seek a political settlement.
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