Arakan ArmyThe end, when it came to the BGP5 barracks, was loud and brutal. First, a staccato speaker calls on them to surrender; Then, a thunderous bombardment of artillery, rockets and rifle fire, tearing apart parts of the buildings in which hundreds of soldiers were hiding.
BGP5 – the letters that stand for Border Police – were her Myanmar The junta's last stronghold is in northern Rakhine state, which lies along the border with Bangladesh.
A video of the rebel Arakan Army besieging the base shows its fighters, many of them barefoot, firing a variety of weapons at the base, while air force jets fly overhead.
It was a fierce battle, perhaps the bloodiest in the civil war that has engulfed Myanmar since 1930 The military seized power in a 2021 coup.
A source in the Autonomous Administration told the BBC: “They dug deep trenches filled with nails around the base.”
“There were bunkers and fortified buildings. They planted more than a thousand mines. Many of our fighters lost their limbs or their lives trying to cross.”
For coup leader General Min Aung Hlaing, this was another humiliating defeat after a year of military setbacks.
For the first time, his regime has lost control of the entire border: the 270-kilometre (170-mile) area that separates Myanmar from Bangladesh and is now entirely under the control of a rebel coalition.
Since Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, is the only one still in military hands, despite being cut off from the rest of the country, the Arakan Army is likely to be the first rebel group to take full control of the state.
The army has been retreating significantly from the Arakan Army since the beginning of the year, losing one city after another.
The last army units withdrew in September To BGP5, a complex of about 20 hectares outside the border town of Maungdaw, where Afghan armed forces have been surrounded.
BGP5 is built on the site of a Rohingya Muslim village, Myo Thu Gi, which was burned during the violent expulsion of much of the Rohingya population by armed forces in 2017.
This was the first of many burned villages I saw while visiting Maungdaw immediately after the military operation in September of that year, a mass of charred rubble among the lush tropical vegetation, its inhabitants killed or forced to flee to Bangladesh.
When I returned two years later, the new police compound had already been built, with all the trees removed, giving the defenders a clear view of any attacking force.
The self-administration source told us that their advance towards the area was painfully slow, requiring the rebels to dig their own trenches to hide.
It does not publish its losses. But given the intensity of the fighting in Maungdaw, which began in June, it has likely lost hundreds of its troops.
Throughout the siege, the Myanmar Air Force continued its constant bombardment of Maungdaw, expelling the last civilians from the city.
Its planes dropped supplies to the trapped soldiers at night, but that was far from enough. A local source told us that they had a lot of rice stored in the bunkers, but they could not get any treatment for their injuries, and the soldiers were frustrated.
They started giving up last weekend.
The AA video shows them emerging in tatters and waving white clothes. Some of them limped on makeshift crutches, or jumped, their injured legs wrapped in rags. Few wear shoes.
Inside the destroyed buildings, the victorious rebels photographed piles of bodies.
The Self-Administration says more than 450 soldiers died in the siege. It published pictures of the captured commander, Brigadier General Thorin Tun, and his officers kneeling under the flagpole, now raising the rebel flag.
Arakan ArmyPro-military commentators in Myanmar are expressing their frustration on social media.
One wrote: “Min Aung Hlaing, you did not ask any of your children to serve in the army.” “Is this how you are using us? Are you happy to see all these deaths in Rakhine?”
“At this rate, all that will be left of the Tatmadaw will be Min Aung Hlaing and the flagpole,” another wrote.
The seizure of BGP5 also shows that the Arakan Army is one of Myanmar's most effective fighting forces.
Formed only in 2009 – much later than most other rebel groups in Myanmar – by young ethnic Rakhine who had migrated to the Chinese border on the other side of the country in search of work, the AA is part of the Three Brotherhood alliance that has inflicted most of the defeats in The military junta has suffered from it since last year.
The other two members of the coalition remained on the border in Shan State.
But the Arakan Army returned to Rakhine eight years ago to begin its armed campaign for autonomy, exploiting historical resentment among Rakhine people over poverty, isolation and neglect by the central government of their state.
AA leaders have proven themselves to be intelligent, disciplined, and able to motivate their fighters.
They already run large areas of Rakhine State that they control as if they were running their own state.
They also have good weapons, thanks to their connections to older rebel groups on the Chinese border, and appear to be well-funded.
However, there is a larger question about the extent to which various ethnic rebel groups are willing to prioritize the goal of overthrowing the junta.
They publicly say they are doing so, along with the shadow government ousted by the coup, and the hundreds of volunteer People's Defense Forces who have shown up to support it.
In exchange for support from ethnic rebels, the shadow government has promised a new federal political system that would give Myanmar's regions autonomy.
But the other two members of the Three Brotherhood alliance have already accepted China's ceasefire request.
China is seeking a negotiated end to the civil war, which would leave the military with much of its strength intact.
Getty ImagesThe opposition insists on the need to reform the army and keep it away from politics. But having already made several territorial gains at the expense of the junta, the ethnic rebels may succumb to the temptation of making a deal with China's blessing rather than continuing to fight to oust the generals.
The AA victory raises even more troubling questions.
The group's leadership remains silent about its plans. But it controls a country that has always been poor and has suffered greatly from heavy fighting in the past year.
A Rohingya man who recently left Maungdaw for Bangladesh told the BBC: “80% of the housing in Maungdaw and surrounding villages has been destroyed.”
“The town is deserted. Almost all the shops and houses have been looted.”
Last month, the United Nations, whose agencies have been given little access to Rakhine, warned of a looming famine due to the huge numbers of displaced people and the difficulty of obtaining any supplies after the military siege.
The Self-Administration is trying to establish its own administration, but some people displaced by the fighting told the BBC that the group cannot feed or shelter them.
It is also unclear how the Arakan Army will deal with the Rohingya population, believed to number about 600,000 in Rakhine, even if they are Rohingya. After 700,000 were expelled in 2017.
The largest number of them live in northern Rakhine State, and Maungdaw has long been a Rohingya majority city. Relations with the Rakhine ethnic majority, the Arakan Army's support base, have long been fraught.
The situation has now become much worse after Rohingya armed groups, whose power is based in Bangladesh's vast refugee camps, have chosen to side with the army against the Arakan Army, despite the army's record of persecuting the Rohingya.
Many Rohingya do not like these groups, and some say they are happy to live in Rakhine state, which is run by the Red Army.
But tens of thousands were expelled by the Autonomous Administration from the towns it occupied, and were not allowed to return.
The Arakan Army has promised to include all communities in its vision of a future independent of the central government, but has also denounced the Rohingya who have found themselves fighting alongside the army.
“We cannot deny the fact that the Rohingya have been persecuted by Myanmar governments for many years, and the people of Rakhine have supported this,” said the Rohingya man we spoke to in Bangladesh.
“The government wants to prevent Rohingya from becoming citizens, but the Rakhine people believe there should be no Rohingya at all in Rakhine State. Our situation today is more difficult than it was under the junta’s rule.”
