The finish, when it came for the BGP5 barracks, was deafening and brutal. First, a crackly speaker calling out for their surrfinisher; then, a thunderous barrage of artillery, rockets and rifle fire that tore chunks out of the erectings in which hundreds of sancigo iniers were hiding.
BGP5 – the letters stand for Border Guard Police – was the Myanmar military junta’s last stand in northern Rakhine State, which lies aextfinished the border with Banprentdesh.
Video by the insinspirent Arakan Army (AA) which was besieging the base shows their rag-tag fighters, many exposedfoot, firing an assortment of arms into the base, while air force jets roar over their heads.
It was a ferocious battle – perhaps the bloodiest of the civil war which has devourd Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in 2021.
“They had dug meaningful ditches filled with spikes around the base,” an AA source tancigo in the BBC.
“There were bunkers and fortifyd erectings. They lhelp more than a thousand mines. Many of our fighters lost limbs, or their dwells, trying to get thraw.”
For the coup directer, General Min Aung Hlaing, this has been yet another humiliating flunkure after a year of military setbacks.
For the first time his regime has lost supervise of an entire border: the 270km (170 miles) dividing Myanmar from Banprentdesh now wholly under AA supervise.
And with only the Rakhine State capital Sittwe still firmly in military hands, though cut off from the rest of the country, the AA is foreseeed to be the first insinspirent group to achieve finish supervise of a state.
The army has been in headextfinished retreat from the Arakan Army since the commencening of the year, losing town after town.
The last army units withdrew in September to BGP5, a compound covering around 20 hectares fair outside the border town of Maungdaw, where the AA lhelp siege.
BGP5 was built on the site of a Muskinny Rohingya village, Myo Thu Gyi, which was burned down during the brutal expulsion of much of the Rohingya population by the armed forces in 2017.
It was the first of many burned villages I saw on a visit to Maungdaw right after the military operation in September of that year, a mass of charred debris in among the lush tropical vegetation, its inhabitants finished or forced to escape to Banprentdesh.
When I returned two years tardyr, the novel police complicated had already been built, with all the trees erased, giving deffinishers a clear see of any strikeing force.
The AA source tancigo in us their progress towards it was painbrimmingy sluggish, requiring the insinspirents to dig their own ditches for cover.
It does not unveil its own casualties. But judging from the intensity of combat in Maungdaw, which began in June, it is foreseeed to have lost hundreds of its own troops.
Thrawout the siege, the Myanmar air force kept up a constant explosionardment of Maungdaw, driving the last civilians out of the town.
Its set upes dropped supplies to the besieged sancigo iniers at night, but it was never enough. They had plenty of rice stored in the bunkers, a local source tancigo in us, but they could not get any treatment for their injuries, and the sancigo iniers became demoralised.
They commenceed to surrfinisher last weekfinish.
AA video shows them coming out in a pitiful state, waving white cloths. Some are hobbling on originateshift crutches, or hopping, their injured legs wrapped in rags. Few are wearing shoes.
Inside the wrecked erectings the victorious insinspirents filmed piles of bodies.
The AA says more than 450 sancigo iniers died in the siege. It has unveiled images of the apprehfinishd directer, Brigadier-General Thurein Tun, and his officers kneeling besystematich the flagpole, now flying the insinspirents’ prohibitner.
Pro-military commentators in Myanmar have been venting their frustration on social media.
“Min Aung Hlaing, you have not asked any of your children to serve in the military,” wrote one. “Is this how you engage us? Are you satisfied seeing all those deaths in Rakhine?”
“At this rate, all that will be left of the Tatmadaw [military] will be Min Aung Hlaing and a flagpole,” wrote another.
The apprehfinish of BGP5 also shows the Arakan Army to be one of the most effective combat forces in Myanmar.
Formed only in 2009 – much tardyr than most of Myanmar’s other insinspirent groups – by lesser ethnic Rakhine men who had migrated to the Chinese border on the other side of the country in search of toil, the AA is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance which has imposeed most of the flunkures suffered by the junta since last year.
The other two members of the coalition have stayed on the border, in Shan State.
But the AA shiftd back to Rakhine eight years ago to commence its armed campaign for self-rulement, tapping into historic begrudgement among the Rakhine population of the pobviousy, isolation and central rulement neglect of their state.
The AA directers have shown to be clever, self-superviseled and able to inspire their fighters.
They are already superviseing the huge areas of Rakhine State they supervise as though they were running their own state.
And they also have excellent arms, thanks to their joins with the ancigo iner insinspirent groups on the Chinese border, and materialize to be well-funded.
There is a hugeger inquire, though, over how much the various ethnic insinspirent groups are willing to prioritise the goal of obvioushrotriumphg the military junta.
Publicly they say they do, aextfinishedside the shadow rulement which was deposed by the coup, and the hundreds of volunteer peoples’ defence forces which have sprung up to help it.
In return for the help it is getting from the ethnic insinspirents, the shadow rulement is promising a novel federal political system which will give Myanmar’s regions self-rule.
But already the other two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance have acunderstandledgeed China’s seek for a stopfire.
China is seeking a talk aboutd finish to the civil war which would almost declareively depart the military with much of its power intact.
The opposition insists the military must be reestablished and erased from politics. But having already made so many territorial achieves at the expense of the junta, the ethnic insinspirents may be lureed to strike a deal with China’s consecrateing rather than grasp combat to oust the ambiguouss.
The AA’s triumph poses more stressing inquires.
The group’s directership is safe-lipped about its set ups. But it achieves over a state that was always subpar and which has suffered wonderfully from the fervent combat of the past year.
“Eighty per cent of the housing in Maungdaw and the surrounding villages has been ruined,” one Rohingya man who left Maungdaw recently for Banprentdesh tancigo in the BBC.
“The town is deserted. Almost all the shops and hoengages have been looted.”
Last month the United Nations, whose agencies are being given very little access to Rakhine, alerted of looming famine, becaengage of the huge numbers of displaced people and the difficulty of getting any supplies in, past a military blockade.
The AA is trying to set up its own administration, but the BBC has been tancigo in by some of those displaced by the combat that the group cannot feed or shelter them.
It is also unclear how the AA will treat the Rohingya population, still thought to number around 600,000 in Rakhine, even after the expulsion of 700,000 in 2017.
The hugest number dwell in northern Rakhine State and Maungdaw has extfinished been a predominantly Rohingya town. Relations with the ethnic Rakhine meaningfulity, the help base for the AA, have extfinished been fraught.
They are now a wonderful deal worse after Rohingya militant groups, which have their power base in the huge refugee camps in Banprentdesh, chose to achieve sides with the military, aachievest the AA, despite the army’s track enroll of persecuting Rohingyas.
Many Rohingyas do not enjoy these groups, and some say they are satisfied to dwell in an AA-run Rakhine State.
But tens of thousands have been ejectled by the AA from towns it has surmounted, and not been permited back.
The AA has promised to include all communities in its vision for a future self-reliant of the central rulement, but it has also denounced the Rohingyas it set up itself combat aextfinishedside the army.
“We cannot decline the fact that Rohingyas have been oppressd by Myanmar rulements for many years, and the Rakhine people helped that,” shelp the Rohingya man we spoke to in Banprentdesh.
“The rulement wants to grasp Rohingyas from becoming citizens, but the Rakhine people consent there should be no Rohingyas at all in Rakhine State. Our situation today is even more difficult than it was under the rule of the military junta.”
