China, India watch as Myanmar rebels advance on strategic western frontier

Rakhine State stands at a pivotal second because the Arakan Military (AA) edges nearer to seizing management of Myanmar’s strategic western frontier area, a shift in energy that would redefine each the nation’s civil struggle and regional geopolitics.

Whereas Myanmar’s army authorities has clawed again territory elsewhere within the nation, the AA now controls 14 of 17 townships in Rakhine, which is located on the Bay of Bengal within the nation’s west and shares a border with Bangladesh.

Flush from victories towards Myanmar’s army rulers, the insurgent group has pledged to seize the rest of Rakhine State, together with the capital Sittwe, in addition to a key Indian port undertaking, and Kyaukphyu, house to grease and fuel pipelines and a deep-sea port central to China’s Belt and Street Initiative.

Analysts say the window is open for a decisive offensive by the insurgent group.

However the AA’s struggle towards Myanmar’s army authorities for self-determination unfolds amid a deepening humanitarian disaster and rising reviews of significant abuses by the armed group towards Muslim-majority Rohingya in Rakhine.

The Myanmar army’s blockade of provides to Rakhine – traditionally often known as Arakan – has worsened a disaster wherein the United Nations estimates greater than two million folks face the danger of hunger. Earlier this month, the World Meals Programme warned that 57 % of households in central Rakhine can not meet fundamental meals wants – up from 33 % in December.

1000’s of civilians are hemmed within the encircled Sittwe, which is now accessible solely by sea and air.

Residents describe skyrocketing costs – pork that after value $2 now exceeds $13. Native media have reported on determined folks taking their very own lives, households turning to begging, intercourse work rising, and daytime thefts as legislation and order collapses.

One resident who not too long ago left by aircraft instructed of the rising hazard from crime in Sittwe.

“They’re like gangsters breaking into houses in broad daylight. They even take the furnishings,” he mentioned.

Inside Sittwe, a supply who requested for anonymity instructed Al Jazeera that the Arakan Liberation Military, an armed group linked to the army, displays conversations amongst native folks whereas troops raid houses and test residents for tattoos as indicators of AA help.

“The state of affairs is unpredictable,” the supply mentioned.

“We will’t guess what is going to occur subsequent.”

A consultant of the United League of Arakan (ULA), the AA’s political wing, described Sittwe as “a stark instance” of army rule, saying the regime’s leaders have “handled Arakan as occupied territory” for many years.

Rising civilian toll

Because the AA advances throughout Rakhine State, the army authorities has turned to air strikes – a tactic used nationwide because the generals seized energy in 2021.

In Rakhine, the ULA says air raids killed 402 civilians between late 2023 and mid-2025, together with 96 youngsters. One other 26 civilians died this yr from artillery, landmines or extrajudicial killings, it mentioned.

Air strikes on civilians “can not produce tangible army outcomes”, a ULA consultant mentioned, describing such ways as “terrorism” in a rustic the place greater than 80,000 persons are estimated to have been killed in preventing because the 2021 coup.

Amid the grinding battle, each the AA and Myanmar’s army have additionally applied conscription to bolster their forces.

The AA has drafted males aged 18 to 45 and girls aged 18 to 25 since Might, calling its marketing campaign a “struggle of nationwide liberation”, whereas the army has added an estimated 70,000 males to its ranks over its 16-month army draft drive.

Rakhine has additionally been scarred by ethnic violence, most brutally through the army’s 2017 crackdown that drove greater than 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh – atrocities from that point which are actually earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice in a case of suspected genocide.

Greater than one million Rohingya stay in refugee camps alongside the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, with the UN reporting 150,000 new arrivals over the previous 18 months.

Stories accuse the AA of abuses towards Rohingya civilians that stay in Rakhine, together with an alleged bloodbath of 600 folks final yr – allegations the AA denies, claiming photographs of human stays had been truly authorities troopers killed in battle.

In response to the rebels’ political wing, the ULA, “Muslim residents” in its areas of management in Rakhine “are experiencing higher lives in comparison with another interval in latest historical past”.

The ULA, just like the army authorities, avoids the time period “Rohingya” in an try and suggest the group shouldn’t be indigenous to Rakhine.

To additional confuse an already advanced state of affairs, the army has armed members of the Rohingya group to struggle the AA, a dramatic reversal after a long time of persecution of their communities by Myanmar’s armed forces.

The Worldwide Disaster Group (ICG) assume tank additionally warns that Rohingya armed teams are utilizing non secular language to mobilise refugees within the camps in Bangladesh towards the AA.

However “a Rohingya insurgency towards the Arakan Military is unlikely to succeed”, the ICG reviews, including that it might additionally heighten anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar and harm prospects for the repatriation of refugees from Bangladesh to houses they fled inside Rakhine.

Tensions are additionally simmering with Bangladesh, which needs the AA – in charge of all the border area between Myanmar and Bangladesh – to just accept refugees again into areas below its authority.

Dhaka can be reportedly backing armed Rohingya teams to strain Arakan forces, whereas the AA is cautious that Bangladesh might help a breakaway zone in Rakhine, threatening its territorial ambitions for the state.

Battle for Chinese language-built port

South of Sittwe, a decisive struggle looms for Kyaukphyu, the coastal hub linking Myanmar to China’s Yunnan province via twin oil and fuel pipelines and a deep-sea port that’s a part of China’s Belt and Street infrastructure undertaking.

Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst with defence publication Janes, predicts the AA might launch a monsoon offensive between September and October, utilizing cloudy skies as cowl towards aerial assaults by the army’s warplanes and which might increase its probabilities of capturing Kyaukphyu.

Davis mentioned munition shares seized by the AA in 2024 might dwindle by 2026, whereas Chinese language strain might restrict arms provides utilized by the rebels from getting into northern Myanmar – components that add urgency to the AA urgent its assaults now.

He estimated 3,000 authorities troops are defending Kyaukphyu, backed by jets, drones and naval firepower.

With at the very least 40,000 fighters after its conscription drive – and now changing into Myanmar’s largest ethnic military – the AA might doubtless commit 10,000 troops to the assault on Kyaukphyu, Davis mentioned.

Based mostly on its observe report, Davis believes the AA has a “important probability” of seizing the port, in what might change into “one of the consequential and costliest campaigns” of the civil struggle.

About 50 Chinese language safety personnel stay in Kyaukphyu, in accordance with a Chinese language business supply cited by Davis, who believes Beijing has accepted the AA would possibly seize the ability – so long as its property keep protected.

However Beijing has additionally intensified its backing of Myanmar’s army rulers in latest months.

The ULA consultant mentioned Kyaukphyu is a “delicate space” for the AA, the place it makes use of “the least quantity of drive vital” and maintains a “agency coverage of defending overseas investments and personnel from all international locations”.

The AA would “try to pursue all doable means to foster optimistic relations with China”, the consultant added.

Widening Struggle

India, too, has stakes in Rakhine via the Kaladan transport undertaking, which goals to attach India’s distant northeast areas to the Bay of Bengal through the India-built Sittwe port and river routes working via AA-controlled territory.

That hall would permit India to bypass Bangladesh and create an alternate commerce route for India with Myanmar.

Analysts say taking management of the port, highway and river community might permit the AA to tax Indian commerce, boosting its funds whereas additionally undermining the Myanmar army’s ties with New Delhi.

If the AA does achieve capturing Rakhine’s coastal ports, the armed group might feasibly management transport and commerce gateways very important to each China and India, which might create leverage that no different armed participant within the Myanmar civil struggle holds.

That would elevate the AA-backed Arakan Individuals’s Revolutionary Authorities as a regional powerbroker, Davis mentioned.

The Institute for Technique and Coverage-Myanmar says the AA can be deployed past Rakhine and now leads the nation’s most intensive alliance of armed teams.

“No different ethnic armed group has woven such a far-reaching net of affect among the many nation’s subsequent technology of fighters,” the institute wrote.

However with the army regaining misplaced floor in different areas of the nation whereas getting ready to carry elections in December – already broadly dismissed as a sham – there’s a prospect the AA might in the future conform to a ceasefire with the army authorities or proceed to struggle and probably be robust sufficient to face the army alone.

Commenting on such a situation, the ULA consultant known as for vigilance towards the army’s conventional “divide and rule” technique.

“Struggle typically entails advances and retreats,” mentioned the consultant. “This time, we’re assured that the resistance forces can obtain significant change within the nation.”