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United States Institute of Peace •

In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, a Fraying Truce May Hold Key to Anti-Regime Fight

A potent ethnic armed group, tied to the resistance, appears to be inching away from a cease-fire and back to the battlefield.

Myanmar has been crippled by growing political turmoil and militant resistance since the army overthrew the elected civilian government on February 1, 2021. Today, most of the country is engulfed in a virtual civil war. In Rakhine State, however, home to one of Myanmar's most powerful ethnic armed organizations, a tenuous peace still prevails under a cease-fire reached
United States Institute of Peace •

Myanmar’s Rakhine State: Parties Split, Rebels Rise, and the Junta Schemes

As the coup regime plots a sham election for next year, the volatile political and military conditions in Rakhine could decide its fate.

Myanmar’s military regime has a plan for trying to establish its governing legitimacy next year: In August of 2023, the dictatorship, which overthrew a democratically elected government in early 2021, intends to hold sham elections. A critical piece of this strategy involves maneuvering Myanmar’s welter of small ethnic parties into taking part in the electoral
United States Institute of Peace •

Insurgents in Myanmar’s Rakhine State Return to War on the Military

Serious combat has resumed in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, despite a continuing de facto cease-fire declared by the military just before its coup last year. Unlike previous rounds of fighting in Rakhine that could be viewed as a localized internal conflict, the renewed violence is taking place in the context of a nationwide civil war triggered by the coup, and its consequences are spreading far beyond the state’s borders. The resumption of war in Rakhine State, in short, could be a hinge on which th