Bloody siege ends Myanmar military’s management over western border

The top, so far as the BGP5 barracks have been involved, was loud and brutal. First, a cracking orator calling for his or her give up; then, a thunderous barrage of artillery, rockets and rifles that tore into items the buildings during which a whole bunch of troopers have been hiding.

BGP5 – the letters stand for Border Guard Police – was the Burma the army junta’s newest stand in northern Rakhine State, situated alongside the border with Bangladesh.

Video from the rebel Arakan Military (AA) that was besieging the bottom reveals its motley, largely barefoot fighters firing an assortment of weapons on the base, whereas Arakan Air Power planes air roars above their heads.

It was a fierce battle – maybe the bloodiest within the civil conflict that has ravaged Myanmar for the reason that the army seized power in a coup in 2021.

“They’d dug deep ditches full of spikes across the base,” an AA supply advised the BBC.

“There have been bunkers and strengthened buildings. They laid greater than a thousand mines. Lots of our fighters misplaced limbs and even their lives making an attempt to get by way of.”

For the putschist, Common Min Aung Hlaing, it’s a new humiliating defeat after a yr of army setbacks.

For the primary time, his regime has misplaced management of a whole border: the 270 kilometers separating Myanmar and Bangladesh are actually fully below AA management.

And with solely Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, nonetheless firmly within the palms of the army, though reduce off from the remainder of the nation, the AA will possible be the primary rebel group to take full management of a state .

The military has been retreating towards the Arakan military for the reason that starting of the yr, shedding metropolis after metropolis.

The last army units withdrew in September at BGP5, a compound masking about 20 hectares simply outdoors the border city of Maungdaw, the place the AA has laid siege.

BGP5 was constructed on the location of a Rohingya Muslim village, Myo Thu Gyi, which was burned through the violent expulsion of a lot of the Rohingya inhabitants by armed forces in 2017.

It was the primary of many burned villages I noticed throughout a go to to Maungdaw simply after the army operation in September of that yr, a mass of charred particles amid lush tropical vegetation, its inhabitants killed or compelled to flee to Bangladesh.

Once I returned two years later, the brand new police compound was already constructed, all of the timber eliminated, giving the defenders a transparent view of any attacking power.

The AA supply advised us that their progress in the direction of this space was extraordinarily gradual, forcing the insurgents to dig their very own ditches for canopy.

He doesn’t publish his personal losses. However judging by the depth of the preventing in Maungdaw, which started in June, it’s possible that he misplaced a whole bunch of his personal troopers.

All through the siege, the Myanmar Air Power continued to always bomb Maungdaw, driving the remaining civilians from the city.

His planes dropped provides in a single day to besieged troopers, but it surely was by no means sufficient. They’d loads of rice saved within the bunkers, a neighborhood supply advised us, however they may not get any remedy for his or her wounds and the troopers have been demoralized.

They began visiting final weekend.

An AA video reveals them popping out in a pitiful state, waving white garments. Some limp on makeshift crutches or hop round, their injured legs wrapped in rags. Few folks put on sneakers.

Contained in the destroyed buildings, the victorious insurgents filmed piles of corpses.

The AA says greater than 450 troopers died through the siege. It launched photographs of the captured commander, Brigadier Common Thurein Tun, and his officers kneeling below the flagpole, now flying the rebel banner.

Professional-military commentators in Myanmar expressed their frustration on social media.

“Min Aung Hlaing, you haven’t requested any of your kids to serve within the military,” one wrote. “Is that this how you’re utilizing us? Are you content to see all these deaths in Rakhine?”

“At this charge, all that can stay of the Tatmadaw [military] might be Min Aung Hlaing and a flagpole,” wrote one other.

The seize of BGP5 additionally reveals that the Arakan Military is considered one of Myanmar’s only preventing forces.

Fashioned solely in 2009 – a lot later than most of Myanmar’s different rebel teams – by younger ethnic Rakhine males who had migrated to the Chinese language border on the opposite aspect of the nation in the hunt for work, the AA is a part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance that has inflicted a lot of the defeats suffered by the junta since final yr.

The opposite two members of the alliance remained on the border in Shan State.

However the AA returned to Rakhine eight years in the past to launch its armed marketing campaign for self-governance, exploiting the historic resentment of the Rakhine inhabitants over poverty, isolation and neglect by the central authorities in with regard to his state.

AA leaders proved to be clever, disciplined, and able to motivating their fighters.

They already administer and management massive areas of Rakhine State as in the event that they have been working their very own state.

And so they even have good weapons, due to their ties to older rebel teams on the Chinese language border, and seem properly financed.

There stays, nevertheless, a extra vital query: the extent to which totally different rebel ethnic teams are keen to prioritize the aim of overthrowing the army junta.

They publicly say they’re doing so, alongside the shadow authorities that was toppled by the coup and the a whole bunch of volunteer well-liked protection forces that rose to help it.

In return for the help it receives from ethnic insurgents, the shadow authorities guarantees a brand new federal political system that can give autonomy to Myanmar’s areas.

However already, the opposite two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance have accepted China’s request for a ceasefire.

China is searching for a negotiated finish to the civil conflict that may virtually actually depart the army with a lot of its energy intact.

The opposition insists the military have to be reformed and faraway from politics. However having already made quite a few territorial good points on the junta’s expense, ethnic insurgents could also be tempted to strike a cope with China’s blessing fairly than proceed preventing to oust the generals.

The AA’s victory raises extra worrying questions.

The group’s leaders stay discreet about their initiatives. However he takes over a state which has at all times been poor and which has suffered tremendously from the extraordinary preventing of the previous yr.

“Eighty p.c of properties in Maungdaw and surrounding villages have been destroyed,” a Rohingya who just lately left Maungdaw for Bangladesh advised the BBC.

“The city is abandoned. Virtually all of the retailers and homes have been looted.”

Final month, the United Nations, whose companies have little entry to Rakhine state, warned of a looming famine, because of the massive variety of displaced folks and the issue of getting provides in, regardless of the army blockade.

The AA is making an attempt to arrange its personal administration, however some folks displaced by the preventing have advised the BBC the group can not feed or shelter them.

It is usually unclear how the AA will cope with the Rohingya inhabitants, nonetheless estimated to quantity round 600,000 in Rakhine, though after the expulsion of 700,000 people in 2017.

Most stay in northern Rakhine state, and Maungdaw has lengthy been a predominantly Rohingya city. Relations with the ethnic Rakhine majority, the AA’s help base, have lengthy been strained.

The scenario is now a lot worse since Rohingya militant teams, who’ve their energy base in Bangladesh’s huge refugee camps, selected to aspect with the army, towards the AA, regardless of the nation’s monitor document. military concerning the persecution of the Rohingyas.

Many Rohingya dislike these teams, and a few say they’re pleased to stay in an AA-ruled Rakhine state.

However tens of hundreds of individuals have been expelled by the AA from the cities they conquered and weren’t allowed to return.

The AA has promised to incorporate all communities in its imaginative and prescient of a future unbiased of central authorities, but it surely has additionally denounced the Rohingya whom it finds itself preventing alongside the military.

“We can not deny the truth that the Rohingya have been persecuted by Myanmar governments for a few years, and the Rakhine folks have supported this,” stated the Rohingya man we spoke with in Bangladesh.

“The federal government desires to stop Rohingya from turning into residents, however the folks of Rakhine imagine that there needs to be no Rohingya in Rakhine State. Our scenario at this time is much more tough than it was below the army junta regime.