Sand and Strategy: The Arakan Army’s Long War

With white sand, azure waters, and palm groves lining the shore—a far cry from the waste-filled streets of Yangon or Mandalay—Ngapali beach is a favourite vacation spot of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, president of Myanmar’s military junta. The tourist destination fell to the Rakhine-based Arakan Army in June 2024 and remains securely under the ethnic armed organization as it continues its campaign against the regime.

Civil conflict has been a part of the politics of Myanmar (formerly Burma) from before the British Raj, but in the four years since the current military coup, the Burmese army has held on to just 21 per cent of national territory. Rebel forces and ethnic armies hold 42 per cent, and over 40 organizations compete for the remaining 37 per cent.

The case of Rakhine (formerly Arakan), a western state only connected to the rest of Myanmar by crumbling mountain roads, demonstrates how the war is moving beyond ethnocentric framing. Myanmar will be defined just as much by control over land and people in the months to come.

Home to 135 ethnicities grouped into eight national races, notions of ethnic superiority have long shaped politics and policies in Myanmar. The Burmese military sees itself as the defender of a Buddhist Bamar nation-state. Democracy advocate and humanitarian Aung San Suu Kyi infamously defended the Rohingya genocide. The Arakan Army struggles against the junta to secure self-determination for the Arakanese, the Indigenous people of Rakhine. Broadly, the war has seen ethnic organizations seize and control large swathes of land while claiming to fight for their own ethnic groups. While not every Burmese person thinks they are superior to someone else because of ethnicity, institutional norms have promoted an “us versus them” mentality for decades. As a result, the breakdown of junta control increases the resolve of ethnic groups to have territories of their own.

The Arakan Army, now controlling 80 per cent of Rakhine, has allegedly been moving Rakhine people to conquered territories, specifically the Paletwa township in the neighbouring Chin State. Native Chin continue to flee from the human rights violations committed against them by the junta and the Arakan Army, as the proportion of Rakhine people increases. Ethnic grievances define the Arakan Army’s cause, but this strategic resettlement reflects a deeper ambition—turning captured land into Rakhine land. Moving people secures demographic legitimacy, building stronger land claims, not just in Rakhine but across Myanmar, where other ethnic organizations pursue similar strategies in anticipation of a future political settlement. The war started as a rebellion for democracy, but now, the only question that matters is who controls what.

Today, the pro-democracy National Unity Government slows in the South, and its People’s Defence Forces become extensions of ethnic organizations. As the junta instigates anti-Rakhine sentiment, full Rakhine sovereignty becomes more desirable. With an expanding sphere of influence, bolstered by increased ethnic Rakhine presence in neighbouring territory, the Arakan Army is well-positioned to establish its own state in the absence of the junta.

The Arakan Army sends a clear message in resettling areas beyond Rakhine’s borders. The war is about more than dislodging an oppressive regime. It is about securing a Rakhine nation-state. The Arakan Army needs more than anti-regime and pro-Rakhine talking points to accomplish that; it needs concrete territorial dominance.

The regime, confronted with the threat to its existence, has also realized this. To stop the Arakan Army’s onslaught, the junta has forced military conscription on the Rohingya, whom they once tried to genocide. Even as the Arakan Army increases in power, the junta has blockaded Rakhine State, with two million people at risk of famine and a near-total blackout of electricity and internet access. The junta also maintains air superiority, bombing sites in Rakhine with impunity—even the families of its own servicemembers. Ultimately, the regime realizes that to protect its own vision of a Buddhist Bamar nation-state, it also needs territorial dominance, which will come at any cost necessary. Where the Arakan Army uses ethnicity as a tool to control territory, the junta abandons its ethnic pretensions to hold on.

The Arakan Army’s resettlement is a microcosm of the larger conflict. The ground in Myanmar is filled with actors attempting to govern territory that confirms their own ethnic visions. At the end of the day, the future of Myanmar will be defined by whoever is left behind. If the junta wins, it can exacerbate the ethnic divisions deepened by the current insurgency, consolidating its own control.

If the junta falls, the entire country may disintegrate into different ethnic states, through which different ethnic parties will inevitably bump heads. For a country already exhausted by war and violence, the involved parties will attempt to resolve land disputes peacefully. When that happens, the strongest argument for a land claim may lie in the population makeup of that land. It is a weak case for the Arakan Army to claim a township with only 30 per cent of the population being Rakhine. It is quite another argument for the Arakan Army if the population makeup is 70 per cent Rakhine. The Arakan Army’s game becomes clearer. For a sovereign Rakhine state to have the best chance of success in Myanmar’s resource-rich land, it must have a strong claim to territorial control. Population resettlement manufactures congruency between ethnic settlements and state boundaries.

The sunsets at Ngapali beach are breathtaking. But as the sun sets on conflict-ridden Myanmar, the struggle over who controls what grows murkier—and ethnic passions grow fiercer.

Edited by Allison Dera

Featured image: Yangon is Myanmar’s largest city. Photo by Zuyet Awarmatik is licensed under the Unsplash License.