As blaring air raid sirens shattered the silence of a moonless night, residents rushed out of their shelters and groped toward a makeshift bomb shelter made out of sandbags.
They waited anxiously until the roar of the aircraft faded away. Some sighed and went back to bed, while those who could not get back to sleep lit a cigarette to calm down. For residents, the long nights in liberated towns in northern Rakhine State are filled with fear.
The third phase of battle between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA) erupted in November last year, when the AA attacked two border police stations in Rathedaung Township.
Fight for the control of towns
The Brotherhood Alliance, a military alliance of three ethnic armed organizations including the AA, launched the anti-regime Operation 1027 in northern Shan State in late October. Separately, the AA launched an offensive in Rakhine State in November. Unlike the two previous rounds, this time it targeted towns.
Fighting in Rakhine spread to Pauktaw town, some 32 km east of the state capital Sittwe, in mid-November, making it the first town where residents were displaced by the latest clashes.
It had barely been affected by the previous fighting, so residents had almost no experience of it. Once the AA seized control of junta departments in the town, naval ships responded with artillery bombardments before military aircraft strafed the town. Residents were forced to flee with only the clothes on their backs, and shopkeepers did not even have time to pull down their shutters.
As instant reports of the fall of Pauktaw flooded the social media pages of news agencies, the regime responded by showering the town with shells and bombs. Residents, the AA and its political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), blamed news agencies for the response, and since then it has become difficult for reporters to cover the fighting in Rakhine.
One source close to the AA told The Irrawaddy that the ethnic army never planned to strike Pauktaw first but launched an impromptu raid after police there contacted it to say they would surrender and leave immediately.
As fighting raged for months in Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, Ponnagyun, Minbya, Rathedaung and Buthidaung towns in Rakhine and neighboring Paletwa Township in Chin State, residents from northern Rakhine fled to the countryside.
Soaring prices amid escalating fighting
Commodity prices have shot up in Rakhine, with fuel prices increasing 10-fold from 2,800 kyats to nearly 30,000 kyats per liter, forcing many residents to travel on foot. Food prices have also soared, and certain goods are out of stock.
Three months into the fighting in January, the AA had captured all the junta hilltop bases fortified with artillery along the Kaladan River on the border of Kyauktaw and Paletwa. The 9th Military Operations Command headquarters and battalions fell in early February.
Once junta troops were cleared out along the Kaladan River, residents and merchants sought to import goods from India across the border.
Junta employees change jobs
Five months into the fighting, Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, Minbya, Pauktaw, Myebon, Rathedaung, Ponnagyun and Ramree towns in Rakhine State and neighboring Paletwa Township in Chin State were all in the hands of the AA, with ULA officials occupying junta offices.
Once the junta troops were driven out, employees from the departments of administration, health, education, agriculture, and communications no longer received their monthly salaries, and after a few months many junior officials and low-ranking employees switched jobs to make a living.
Some families who had saved some money sailed upstream to the Indian border, where they bought goods to resell in Rakhine. Others became market vendors, selling vegetables and other basic foodstuffs in the markets.
But traders say only a certain amount of the goods from India are actually made there, while the majority are Burmese goods that reached India in various ways from Magwe and Sagaing in central Myanmar.
Rakhine politicians say Indian border trade alone cannot solve the food crisis in Rakhine, partly because the Lai people, a tribe of ethnic Chin living in India’s Mizoram over the border, blockaded the trade route, and also because of the Indian government’s stance on the AA.
Communication breakdown
The regime cut off most phone and internet access once the fighting broke out in Rakhine, casting residents into the dark. Even when locals could hear continuous bombardments, they did not know where exactly the clashes were taking place.
They could only exchange information by word of mouth.
The banking system too has collapsed in northern Rakhine as fighting forced the closure of junta-controlled and private banks. Cash shortages also affect mobile wallet services, forcing residents to pay high service charges of up to 20 percent per withdrawal to mobile money agents.
Without access to phone and internet services, many people have bought transistor radios to get updates about the military situation. Houses that have radios are always crowded with elderly villagers in the evenings. But since batteries too are in short supply, villagers switch off their radios the moment the news program is over.
Education and agriculture
Except for Sittwe, all the public schools in northern Rakhine have been closed since November due to the junta’s air and artillery strikes and road blockades.
Instead they serve as makeshift camps for civilians young and old displaced by the fighting.
In AA-controlled territories, students have to rely on private tuition as the “Arakkha people’s government” has yet to adopt an education policy, while teachers and staff from the public education system have fled the fighting, and textbooks are thin on the ground.
Farmers are reluctant to go to their fields this monsoon season, even though farming is the main livelihood along with fishing in the coastal state. But the prices of fuel and fertilizer have skyrocketed, and they have been unable to sell last year’s harvest due to the junta’s blockades. Many of them are only growing enough rice for their own consumption, cutting sown acreage by half.
To make matters worse, continuous rains in July flooded and destroyed many paddy fields in Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, Minbya and Myebon townships.
War victims
The AA has installed its own administration in all towns in northern Rakhine except Sittwe and Maungdaw, but it has not yet been able to restore the economy and public services like electricity and communications.
Nor has it allowed residents to return yet because of the junta’s aerial attacks.
While encouraged by the defeats of junta troops, residents are groaning under the shortages, price hikes, limited access to healthcare, and financial hardship.
AA chief Major-General Twan Mrat Naing in a recent interview with The Irrawaddy stressed the need to make political preparations, because the ethnic army is seeking “greater victories” than merely driving junta troops out.
