The bloody siege ends the Myanmar army’s control of the western border

The end, when it came to the BGP5 barracks, was loud and brutal. First, the irrational speaker calls for their devotion; then there was the roar of artillery, rockets and gunfire that tore through parts of the buildings where hundreds of soldiers were hiding.

BGP5 – the letters stand for Border Patrol Police – was in Myanmar the last military base in northern Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh.

A video of the rebel Arakan Army (AA) besieging the base shows rag-tag fighters, many of them unarmed, firing a variety of weapons at the base, while air force jets roar overhead.

It was a very difficult war – perhaps the bloodiest civil war that has engulfed Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in 2021.

“They were digging deep trenches full of spikes around the base,” an AA source told the BBC.

“There were buildings and fortified buildings. They laid over a thousand mines. Many of our fighters lost limbs, or their lives, trying to get through.”

For the coup leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, this was yet another humiliating defeat after a year of military crises.

For the first time his regime failed to control the entire border: the 270km (170 miles) that separates Myanmar from Bangladesh is now under AA control.

And with only the capital of Rakhine State, Sittwe, still firmly in military hands, although cut off from the rest of the country, the AA may become the first insurgent group to completely rule the state.

The army has been retreating headlong from the Arakan Army since the beginning of the year, losing town after town.

The last troops withdrew in September to BGP5, an area covering 20 hectares just outside the border town of Maungdaw, where the AA laid siege.

BGP5 was built on the site of a Rohingya Muslim village, Myo Thu Gyi, which was burnt down during the 2017 mass exodus of Rohingya by armed forces.

It was the first of many burnt villages I saw when I visited Maungdaw shortly after the military campaign in September of that year, piles of burnt rubble amidst the green vegetation, its inhabitants killed or forced to flee to Bangladesh.

When I returned two years later, a new police building had been built, all the trees had been cleared, making the defenders clearly visible to any attacking group.

An AA source told us that their advance is slow, requiring the insurgents to dig trenches for cover.

It’s not self-publishing idiots. But judging by the intensity of the battle in Maungdaw, which started in June, it may have lost hundreds of its soldiers.

Throughout the siege, the Myanmar Air Force bombarded Maungdaw, driving out the last residents of the town.

Its planes dropped supplies to the besieged soldiers at night, but it was not enough. They had a lot of rice stored in the houses, a local source told us, but they did not receive medical treatment for their injuries, and the soldiers lost their strength.

They started volunteering last weekend.

The AA video shows them coming out in a sad state, waving white cloths. Others play with makeshift sticks, or jump, their injured legs wrapped in rags. Few are wearing shoes.

Inside the collapsed buildings the victorious insurgents captured a large number of dead bodies.

The AA says more than 450 soldiers died in the siege. It published pictures of the captured commander, Brigadier-General Thurein Tun, and his officers kneeling under a flagpole, now flying the insurgents’ banner.

Pro-military commentators in Myanmar have been venting their frustrations on social media.

“Min Aung Hlaing, you have never asked one of your children to serve in the army,” wrote another. “How do you use this? Are you happy to see all those people dying in Rakhine?”

“At this rate, all that will be left to the Tatmadaw [military] it will be Min Aung Hlaing and the flag,” wrote another.

The capture of BGP5 also shows the Arakan Army as one of the most effective fighting forces in Myanmar.

Founded only in 2009 – much later than most of Myanmar’s other rebel groups – by young Rakhine men who had migrated across the Chinese border to the other side of the country in search of work, AA is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance that was heavily defeated by the junta last year.

The other two members of the alliance remain on the border, in Shan State.

But the AA returned to Rakhine eight years ago to begin its armed campaign for self-rule, tapping into historic resentment among the poor, isolated Rakhine people and the neglect of the central government.

AA leaders have shown that they are smart, disciplined and able to motivate their fighters.

They already control large areas of Rakhine State which they control as if they were running their own country.

They are also well-armed, thanks to their connections with old guerrilla groups on the Chinese border, and appear to be well-financed.

There is a big question, however, about the extent to which the various ethnic groups are willing to prioritize the goal of a military coup.

Publicly they say they do, along with the shadow government that was ousted by the coup, and the hundreds of volunteer security forces that have moved to support it.

In return for support from ethnic rebels, the shadow government is promising a new political system that will give Myanmar’s regions self-government.

But of course the other two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance have already accepted China’s request for a ceasefire.

China wants to end the talks about a civil war that could leave the military with a strong hold.

The opposition parties insist that the military must be reformed and removed from politics. But having already gained so much territory at the junta’s expense, ethnic insurgents may be tempted to make a deal with China’s blessing rather than continue fighting to oust the generals.

AA’s victory raises more troubling questions.

The leadership of this group is not transparent about its plans. But it is taking over a kingdom that has always been poor and has suffered greatly from the fierce fighting of the past year.

“80 percent of the houses in and around Maungdaw have been destroyed,” a Rohingya man who recently left Maungdaw for Bangladesh told the BBC.

“The town is empty. Almost all the shops and houses have been looted.”

Last month the United Nations, whose organizations are given little access to Rakhine, warned of impending famine, due to the large number of displaced people and the difficulty of finding any supplies, which have passed the military blockade.

AA is trying to establish its own administration, but the BBC has been told by some of those displaced by the fighting that the group cannot feed or shelter them.

It is also unclear how the AA will treat the Rohingya, who are still thought to number around 600,000 in Rakhine, even after 700,000 were fired in 2017.

The largest number live in northern Rakhine State and Maungdaw has long been a Rohingya-populated town. Relations with the Rakhine majority, the AA’s base of support, have long been strained.

Now they are worse after Rohingya rebel groups, which have a strong presence in refugee camps in Bangladesh, have chosen to side with the military, against the AA, despite the military’s history of abusing the Rohingyas.

Many Rohingya do not like these groups, and some say they are happy to live in AA-run Rakhine State.

But tens of thousands were expelled by the AA from the cities it conquered, and they were not allowed to return.

The AA has promised to include all communities in its vision of a future independent of the central government, but has also criticized the Rohingya who find themselves fighting alongside the military.

“We cannot deny that the Rohingyas have been abused by the Myanmar government for many years, and the people of Rakhine support that,” said a Rohingya man we spoke to in Bangladesh.

“The government wants the Rohingya to be non-citizens, but the people of Rakhine believe that there should be no Rohingya in Rakhine State. Our situation today is much worse than it was under the rule of the military.”