Myanmar’s post-coup bloodshed eclipsed other conflicts in Southeast Asia

 RFA: A commentary by Zachary Abuza

Anti-coup protesters run around a makeshift barricade they burn to form a defense line during a demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar, March 28, 2021.

Southeast Asia’s longtime conflicts cooled in 2021, a development overshadowed by the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar and ensuing civil war.

 

Since the coup, the Burmese military has killed at least 1,375 people, according to reports. While fighting the National Unity Government (NUG) and a myriad of armed ethnic groups this year, the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s military is known, has attacked civilian populations, especially in Chin State, Kayah State, and the Sagaing region.

It has razed villages and carried out wholesale massacres of civilians.

With the civil war spreading, especially after the NUG declared war on the Tatmadaw in September, it was easy to lose sight of developments in some of the other conflicts in the region.  

Rohingya and Arakan rebels

Despite a broader civil war in Myanmar, the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA), a rebel group which has endorsed the National Unity Government, was not a factor.

A rival group, the Buddhist Arakan Army, has not joined the National Unity Government and other armed ethnic groups taking part in the post-coup civil war, but it has engaged the military in a few small-scale skirmishes despite agreeing to a ceasefire with the Tatmadaw in late 2020.

The Arakan Army has also taken advantage of the military being preoccupied with other conflicts to consolidate its political power and enhance its autonomy. It has threatened to fully resume hostilities should the Tatmadaw try to quash its autonomy, something the army can ill afford to do.

ARSA, meanwhile, has been moving aggressively to consolidate its control over the sprawling refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, where uprooted Rohingya seem destined to stay until a political resolution is reached in Myanmar.

According to U.N. investigators, ARSA killed a leading Rohingya activist, and then six others at the camps in Cox’s Bazar, where Bangladeshi forces are trying to control security for the massive refugee population.