Myanmar’s war-ravaged Rakhine state faces a humanitarian catastrophe just as the insurgent Arakan Army (AA) looks set to take almost complete control of the area from the border with Bangladesh down to the Irrawaddy Delta after a year of brutal armed conflict.
The anti-military AA is currently besieging the central town of Ann, home to the Myanmar military’s Western Command, and is still engaged in furious fighting in Maungdaw to overrun Border Guard Police Camp 5, the final installation after months of grinding street battles and destructive drone warfare.
The coup-installed State Administration Council (SAC) military junta has been dropping reinforcements and supplies into both areas by parachute and helicopter, prolonging the fighting.
The AA has seized more than ten townships in several months of brutal fighting. The state capital, Sittwe, is effectively surrounded, forcing thousands of inhabitants to flee south to Yangon by ship.
The seaport and airport are still functioning, but land routes are reportedly closed. SAC security forces are fortifying the city in anticipation of an imminent AA assault. Recent photos emerging from Sittwe show deserted streets; a longstanding internet blackout frustrates a full picture of the situation inside the city.
This may well be an unprecedented insurgent victory in the history of armed conflict in Myanmar, but it has come at a terrible human cost, the impacts of which will be felt for years to come.
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 highly restricted environment has hobbled the international humanitarian assistance operation, which is failing to meet the urgent need for food, shelter and medication.
The conflict-induced displacement comes after the devastation of Cyclone Mocha in May 2023, which pummeled infrastructure and housing, particularly in Sittwe, and destroyed 85% of existing IDP camps.
A late October United Nations assessment demonstrates the limitations of the aid efforts over the past year. In Sittwe, only 10,634 of 76,090 IDPs received some aid, or were “reached”, as the aid industry jargon goes.
Furious fighting and mass arson during the battle for Buthidaung from April to May left 85,223 people displaced, with only 27,839 reached, according to the UN assessment. An estimated 150,000 civilians displaced in Rathedaung, Ponnagyun and Pauktaw have received no assistance.
In the south of Rakhine State, townships like Ann, Taungup, Thandwe and Gwa have not been traditionally defined conflict zones and, therefore, have had little access to emergency assistance.
The AA has since taken control of almost all these areas, which has prompted the SAC to expand punitive air strikes, artillery bombardment and naval gunfire against civilian settlements, driving displacement and disrupting economic activity.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has warned that Rakhine state is at risk of a widespread famine, with two million people facing possible starvation. A recent report claims that by March 2025 only 20% of the domestic food production needs will be met.
“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.
This dramatic decline in food security has been exacerbated by a blockade of most road and maritime routes, with shipping only reaching Sittwe, the state capital, and the port of Kyaukphyu. The SAC has been strangulating Rakhine state as it loses control.
The conflict has dramatically increased the burden of protection and aid distribution to the AA, its United League of Arakan (ULA) political wing, and its Arakan Authority public administration.
Rakhine scholar Kyaw Hsan Hlaing has recently outlined the broad attempts “to establish legitimacy among diverse communities in Rakhine state, including the Rohingya.”
Having gradually expanded its public services as it gained more territory and “control” over a greater percentage of the population, the AA now faces the arduous task of “governing” while also fighting a war for control of the state.
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.
Rakhine’s conflict has been compounded by the incomprehensible arrangement reached by the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) armed groups to cooperate with the Myanmar military and jointly wage war on the AA.
It was ARSA’s attacks against Myanmar security force outposts in 2016 and 2017 that sparked the military’s mass ethnic cleansing campaign that forced some 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh.
The AA have clashed numerous times with Rohingya militants and have raided their alleged military camps in northern Maungdaw. Many militants are recruiting fighters in the teeming Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and among local populations in Maungdaw and Buthidaung.
The Myanmar military has also forced, or accepted voluntarily, thousands of Rohingya men to take up arms. The AA also stands accused of forced labor and other abuses against the Rohingya.
The past year has seen a seismic shift in conflict dynamics in Rakhine state and risks a protracted conflict involving multiple protagonists. This makes the repatriation of the Rohingya back to Rakhine state from Bangladesh even more perilous than it was a year ago and likely impossible in the near term.
Calls for a humanitarian corridor from Bangladesh to AA and regime areas have gone unheeded. Even though the new Muhammad Yunus administration in Dhaka has vowed to help the Rohingya, Bangladesh security forces have taken a markedly different approach by restricting supplies from entering Rakhine state and blocking Rohingya refugees from entering.
That disconnect was especially apparent after fierce fighting in Maungdaw in mid-2024. There is also widespread speculation that the Bangladesh military is assisting the RSO with arms and training.
Meanwhile, supplies from India are also restricted. The AA seized Paletwa in neighboring Chin state in January, finally capturing a string of Myanmar Army firebases that controlled the area.
Strategically important for the AA, this opened up the possibilities for more food and fuel supplies from India, down the Kaladan River and by road.
However, blockades are being imposed due to inter-ethnic enmity. The Central Young Lai Association, an ethnic Chin organization based in Mizoram in northeast India, has been stopping food and fuel shipments from India to Paletwa, and then further down into Rakhine State.
The Young Lai Association is angered at the AA’s seizure of Chin territory and has been interdicting supply routes to exert pressure for several months.
The humanitarian aid industry is enamored with the new craze of “anticipatory action”, which looks at current dynamics to forecast for future disasters or emergencies. Planning to avert a famine in Rakhine state must be more of a priority by now. Yet among Myanmar’s estimated 18 million people who need humanitarian assistance, most are not being reached.
Responding to this humanitarian emergency requires a readjustment of international approaches to ethnic Rakhine communities, who have long been vilified due to the persecution of the Rohingya. It also requires a fundamental rethink of the “social cohesion” programming favored by Western aid and development donors to bridge divides between Rakhine communities.
Tens of millions of dollars of Western donor funding have been squandered since 2012 with little to nothing to show for the spending. New approaches that go beyond the standard – and failed – mediation efforts of international organizations are clearly required.
The UN Country Team in Yangon is clearly not up to the task of scaling up humanitarian assistance or building peace.
Julie Bishop, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Myanmar and a former Australian foreign minister, made a secret visit to Naypyidaw to meet SAC leaders but obviously failed to make any breakthrough on aid delivery.
In her first speech at the UN in late October, Bishop bemoaned the “zero-sum” mentality of all sides in the conflict. This infuriated many in Myanmar, where the SAC is the principal perpetrator of using aid as a weapon of war.
Current international mediation approaches will not only continue to fail but will likely exacerbate tensions. The main path to addressing the crisis must be engaging with the AA leadership and the group’s humanitarian administration.
There must also be more proactive international advocacy with Bangladesh and India to facilitate aid directly through the Arakan Authority. Failure to address the humanitarian catastrophe will decimate all communities in Rakhine state, with blame to go all around.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues on Myanmar.
Another failed state. This time thanks to China