Arakan Army

For other armies of the same name, see Arakan Army (disambiguation).

Arakan Army
အာရက္ခတပ်တော်
LeadersTwan Mrat Naing[1]
Nyo Twan Awng[2]
SpokespersonKhine Thu Kha[3]
Dates of operation10 April 2009 (2009-04-10) – present
HeadquartersLaiza, Kachin State (currently)
Mrauk-U, Rakhine State (planned)
Active regionsChin State[4],
Kachin State,
Magway Region[5],
Rakhine State,
Sagaing Region[6],
Shan State,
Bangladesh–Myanmar border
China–Myanmar border
IdeologyArakanese nationalism
Arakanese self-determination
Confederalism
Anti-Rohingya sentiment
StatusActive
Size40,000+ (self-claimed in May 2024) [7]
15,000+ in Chin and Rakhine State, around 1500 in Kachin and Shan State (estimated in February 2024)[8]
Part of
AlliesNorthern Alliance[9]

Other allies:

Opponents
Battles and warsInternal conflict in Myanmar
Designated as a terrorist group byMyanmar[20]
Flag
Websitewww.arakanarmy.net

The Arakan Army (Rakhine: အာရက္ခတပ်တော်, romanized: Araka Tatdaw;[21] abbreviated AA), sometimes referred to as the Arakha Army, is an ethno-nationalist armed organisation based in Rakhine State (Arakan). Founded in April 2009, the AA is the military wing of the United League of Arakan (ULA). It is currently led by Commander-in-Chief Major General Twan Mrat Naing and vice deputy commander-in-chief Brigadier General Nyo Twan Awng.[1] The Arakan Army states that the objective of its armed revolution is to restore the sovereignty of the Arakan people.[22] It was declared a terrorist organization in 2020 by Myanmar,[23] and again by the State Administration Council junta in 2024.[20]

In February 2024, Twan Mrat Naing claimed that the AA had grown to at least 38,000 troops.[24] Anthony Davis, an expert of military and security,[25] rejected this claim and estimated that it has at least 15,000 troops in Chin State and Rakhine State, and around 1,500 in Kachin State and Shan State.[8] In the early 2010s, the Arakan Army fought alongside the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) against the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) in the Kachin conflict. Following the 2016 outbreak of conflict in Rakhine state, the AA became more heavily involved in the Arakan region.[26] In 2019, the AA launched attacks on state security forces and the Myanmar Army responded, heightening clashes.[27][28] The AA reached a ceasefire in late 2020 after eroding the central government's control in northern Rakhine. The power vacuum was filled by the AA over the next 18 months with state-building efforts, like their COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.[29]

During the Myanmar civil war, the ceasefire broke down and armed clashes resumed in July 2022 after a Tatmadaw airstrike against an AA base.[30] The two sides agreed to a temporary ceasefire in November 2022, reportedly for humanitarian reasons.[31]

On April 10, 2024, AA announced it was changing its name from Rakhain Tatdaw (Rakhine: ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော်) to Arakha Tatdaw (Rakhine: အရက္ခတပ်တော်). Spokesperson U Khaing Thu Kha, claimed "Arakha" represents everyone living in Rakhine State, regardless of background.[32][33] Even though they claim to be diverse, activists have brought forth evidence of war crimes against Rohingyas following this announcement.[34] However, AA continues to use the name "Arakan Army" on its English website.[35]

  1. ^ a b "About AA". Arakan Army. Archived from the original on 3 November 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2015.
  2. ^ "ARAKAN ARMY ( AA )". Arakan Army. Archived from the original on 10 October 2019. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
  3. ^ "ပြန်ကြားရေးတာဝန်ခံ ဦးခိုင်သုခ". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
  4. ^ "Internet Blackout Imposed on Myanmar's Restive Rakhine State". Agence France-Presse via Voice of America. 23 June 2019. Archived from the original on 20 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  5. ^ "Arakan Army Attacks Myanmar Junta's Rakhine Power Base". The Irrawaddy. 29 March 2024.
  6. ^ "၁၀၂၇စစ်ဆင်ရေး စစ်ကိုင်းအထက်ပိုင်းဝင်ရောက်လာ". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 30 October 2023. Archived from the original on 22 March 2024. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  7. ^ "The Arakan Army responds to Rohingya abuse accusations in Myanmar".
  8. ^ a b Davis, Anthony (1 February 2024). "Myanmar junta in a make-or-break Rakhine fight". Asia Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2024. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  9. ^ Lynn, Kyaw Ye. "Curfew imposed after clashes near Myanmar-China border". Anadolu Agency. Archived from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
  10. ^ Mathieson, David Scott (11 June 2017). "Shadowy rebels extend Myanmar's wars". Asia Times. Archived from the original on 11 September 2022. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
  11. ^ "Chin National Front Signs Deal with Myanmar's Shadow Govt". The Irrawaddy. 29 May 2021. Archived from the original on 21 November 2021. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  12. ^ "CDF-Mindat admits receiving military training and arms from Arakan Army". BNI. 28 April 2022. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference emergence was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ "Myanmar Resistance Seizes First District Level Town in Sagaing as Offensive Expands". The Irrawaddy. 6 November 2023. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023.
  15. ^ "မကွေး တော်လှန်ရေးအဖွဲ့ PRA ကို AA ချီးကျူး". Burma News International Online. 22 March 2022. Archived from the original on 29 March 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  16. ^ "ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော်၏ကူညီထောက်ပံ့မှုဖြင့် ကျောင်းသားလက်ရုံးတပ်တော်ကို ဖွဲ့စည်းတည်ထောင်ခဲ့". Narinjara (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 10 March 2023.
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference nie17Feb2024 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ "Almost 40 Myanmar Junta Positions Abandoned in Rakhine: Arakan Army". The Irrawaddy. 14 November 2023. Archived from the original on 14 November 2023. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  19. ^ "KIA: Nine Myanmar Junta Strongholds Seized in Two Days". The Irrawaddy. 23 March 2024.
  20. ^ a b "Myanmar regime labels key ethnic armed groups 'terrorist' organisations". Al Jazeera. 4 September 2024.
  21. ^ "ရက္ခိုင်ပြည်တိုက်ပွဲသတင်းများ" [News of the Battle of Rakhine]. 12 April 2024. Archived from the original on 14 April 2024. ရက္ခိုင်ပြည်၊ မောင်တောမြို့ ၌ အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ လက်ကျန်စခန်းများထဲမှ တစ်ခုဖြစ်သော မောင်တော၊ ကြိမ်ချောင်း ဗျူဟာစခန်းကြီးအား အာရက္ခတပ်တော်(ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော်)မှ ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ်၊ ဧပြီလ (၁၂) ရက်နေ့တွင် အပြီးသတ်သိမ်းပိုက်ရယူနိုင်ခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်သည်။
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference akk was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ "Myanmar officially brands Rakhine rebels a terrorist group". AP News. 24 March 2020. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
  24. ^ "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ထွန်းမြတ်နိုင်နဲ့ဘီဘီစီသီးသန့်မေးမြန်းခန်း". BBC Burmese (in Burmese). 2 February 2024. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
  25. ^ Ebbighausen, Rodion (7 January 2022). "Who is winning Myanmar's civil war?". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 22 March 2024. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference reuters1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference lintner1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference uncha was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference icg was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ Cite error: The named reference usip1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  31. ^ Cite error: The named reference ceasefirerfa was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  32. ^ အာရက္ခမိဘပြည်သူများသို့ မေတ္တာရပ်ခံပန်ကြားချက် (An appeal to the people of Arakha). April 11, 2024. Archived 2024-04-14 at the Wayback Machine
  33. ^ Cite error: The named reference arakha was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  34. ^ Fortifyrights (27 August 2024). "International Criminal Court: Investigate Arakan Army Massacre of Rohingya Civilians, Hold Perpetrators Accountable". Fortify Rights. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
  35. ^ "About Us". Arakan Army. Archived from the original on 10 August 2024. Retrieved 1 August 2024.