Arakan Army pushes Myanmar's military to brink in monsoon war

 BANGKOK -- The Arakan Army (AA), an armed ethnic group in Myanmar, is taking advantage of the monsoon rains sweeping across the country to intensify its offensive against the military regime's troops in Rakhine state, located along the country's western coast and bordering Bangladesh.

The AA attributes its tightening its grip on the muddy, rugged terrain, following battle plans using both guerilla tactics typically favored by rebel armies and conventional military operations -- as it targets long-held military outposts, border camps and heavily fortified operational commands that have been pivotal for the military regime to assert its authority.

"We are mainly deploying insurgent tactics, in combination with some characteristics of conventional warfare," the media team of the AA and its political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), told Nikkei Asia in an exclusive interview from its headquarters on condition that it be identified only with its initials, AA and ULA.

"[When] we approach the enemy's military stations near the towns, we have to set up some kind of fixed positions to besiege and surround their military positions."

The effectiveness of that tactic is reflected in the AA's recent successes following a monthslong offensive to gain control of Nagpali, a popular beach strip in the Rakhine state where Myanmar's generals and their business cronies own villas and resorts, and the surrounding area. It also captured the headquarters of an infantry battalion, according to reports from Myanmar's media.

The shifting weather conditions, according to the AA, were included in the battle plans for its forces to gain complete control of Rakhine state, which is also called Arakan state, explaining the ferocity of the current campaign taking place under gray monsoon skies. It is a different environment from the two previous monsoon battles since the military takeover in February 2021 that brought the State Administrative Council -- the official name of the military regime -- to power.

"We prepared to better use the changing weather [during] the monsoon," the AA/ULA said. "[Because we could] also face ... deployment issues during the rainy season and [a] challenge to target drone strikes over [the] enemy's position."

Seasoned Myanmar political observers like David Scott Mathieson, an independent analyst, say the battles during this year's monsoon war are an escalation from the two previous rainy seasons, which begin around June and taper off by September. "This round of fighting since November last year is really a 'cold' season, then summer, and now [a] monsoon multiseasonal offensive," added Mathieson, who has authored multiple reports on the country's ethnic armed forces. "It is the most intensive since the AA was formed."

The AA, which emerged in 2009, officially claims to have around "40,000 standing troops, excluding several thousand auxiliary members." Such numbers have made the AA "the largest de-facto state-armed organization in Myanmar based on manpower," according to the AA/ULA.

While some Southeast Asian military intelligence operatives following the civil war in Myanmar raise questions about the accuracy of AA's troop numbers, they concede that the ethno-nationalist group's multipronged attacks have pushed Myanmar regime troops to the wall. Among the AA's military prizes is the vanquishing of two of the three Military Operations Commands (MOCs), which are well-armed, division-size strategic bases of Myanmar's military, in Rakhine state.

A woman walks past her temporary house on May 21, following fighting between Myanmar's military and the Arakan Army ethnic minority armed group in a village in western Rakhine state.   © AFP/Jiji

"Our troops have already captured two MOCs in Rakhine state ... and are in military confrontation with forces from MOC-5 (the third such command)," said the AA/ULA. "We have [also] defeated [troops from three light infantry divisions] in several armed zones."

According to Mathieson, the AA has "played it pretty smart in terms of military operations," with the targeting of the MOCs as part of its broader campaign to achieve strategic and symbolic gains. "Its strategy is to take over all the towns in the Rakhine state," he said.

A clutch of reports monitoring the Myanmar regime's weakening grip in a state that has been economically marginalized and a rural backwater affirm that over half of Rakhine state's townships have fallen under the AA's control.

The current conflict in this state marks a new chapter in a corner of Myanmar that still bears scars of the "textbook example of ethnic cleansing," as described by a U.N. official in 2017, when Myanmar troops unleashed waves of attacks against the unarmed Muslim minority Rohingya.

A May report by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, an independent group of international human rights experts, revealed that the Myanmar regime had lost complete control over townships covering 86% of the country's territory and 67% of its people. "The overall trajectory of the conflict in Myanmar since 2022 has been one of expanding resistance control, versus corresponding military junta losses," said the council. "That trajectory has been consistent and escalated rapidly from October 2023."

But the civil war pitting regime troops against an array of ethnic armed organizations on the border, and clashes with the newly-formed armed wing of the National Unity Government, the anti-regime political opposition, in central Myanmar, has exacted a heavy toll. A total of 5,161 civilians have been killed since the generals seized power in 2021, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, a Myanmar human rights group. The U.N. has also raised the alarm, saying more than 3 million people have been displaced because of the conflict.

And a reprieve appears unlikely as the generals are deploying a fresh crop of conscripts, who were rushed through their military training, to reinforce troops in the besieged camps in Rakhine state. But that has not prompted the AA to change its tune.

"It is true that the SAC has been reinforcing more troops and military ammunition these days, especially into its military bases in ... Sittwe," the AA/ULA said, referring to the capital of Rakhine. But the group added that its progress is "in line with our military objectives ... to eradicate all SAC forces across Arakan."