One year after renewed fighting in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, the rebel Arakan Army controls some 80 percent of the state while the military junta’s airstrikes and its blockade of trade routes have left residents worried about their safety and food shortages.
The ethnic Arakan Army, or AA, began its offensive on Nov. 13, 2023, and has since captured 10 out of the state’s 17 townships, as well as one township in neighboring Chin state.
The group is battling for self-determination for the mostly Buddhist Rakhine people. It would be the first Myanmar rebel group to take over a state if it seizes – as it has vowed to do – all territory under military control in Rakhine state.
Myanmar’s military, which took control of the country in a 2021 coup, has been battling various rebel armies and militias across the country, and has faced some of its biggest setbacks in Rakhine.
The AA’s battlefield successes over the last year has been unprecedented since the fall of the Arakan Kingdom to the Burmese in 1784, according to Pe Than, a former member of parliament from Rakhine state.
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