A bloody siege ended Myanmar’s military control of the western border.

The end, when BGP 5 came for the barracks, was loud and brutal. First, a blaring speaker is calling for their surrender. Then came a thunderous barrage of artillery, rockets and rifle fire that tore to pieces the buildings in which hundreds of soldiers were hiding.

BGP5 – the letters meant Border Guard Police – was. Myanmar The military junta’s last stand in the northern state of Rakhine, which lies along the border with Bangladesh.

Video of the rebel Arakan Army (AA), which has besieged the base, shows its ragtag fighters, many barefoot, firing a variety of weapons into the base, while air force jets strafe them. Roaring over heads.

It was a terrible battle – perhaps the bloodiest of the civil wars that have consumed Myanmar since then. The military seized power in a coup in 2021..

“They dug deep trenches around the base,” an AA source told the BBC.

“There were bunkers and fortified buildings. They laid over a thousand mines. Many of our fighters lost limbs, or lost their lives trying to get through.”

For the leader of the rebellion, General Min Aung Hlaing, it is another humiliating defeat after a year of military failures.

For the first time, his government has lost control of the entire border: the 270 km (170 mi) that divides Myanmar from Bangladesh is now entirely under AA control.

And with only Rakhine State’s capital, Sittwe, still firmly in military hands, although cut off from the rest of the country, AA would likely be the first insurgent group to take full control of a state.

The army has been retreating from the Arakan Army since the beginning of the year, losing town after town.

The last military units withdrew in September. to BGP 5, a compound covering about 20 hectares, just outside the border town of Maung Dao, where the AA lay siege.

BGP5 was built on the site of the Muslim Rohingya village of Myo Thu Gyi, which was burnt down by armed forces in 2017 during a violent exodus of most of the Rohingya population.

It was the first of many villages I saw on a visit to Maung Dao shortly after the military operation in September of this year, piles of charred rubble amid lush tropical vegetation, its inhabitants killed or forced to flee to Bangladesh. happened

When I returned two years later, the new police complex had already been built, all the trees had been removed, giving guards a clear view of any attacking force.

The AA source told us that their advance towards it was painfully slow, requiring the rebels to dig their trenches for cover.

It does not publish its casualties. But given the intensity of the fighting in Mong Dao, which began in June, he is likely to lose hundreds of his own troops.

Throughout the siege, the Myanmar Air Force continued to bomb Maungdao continuously, driving the last civilians out of the city.

His planes delivered supplies to the besieged troops at night, but it was not enough. A local source told us that they had plenty of rice stored in bunkers, but they could not treat their injuries, and the soldiers’ morale was low.

They started surrendering last weekend.

The AA video shows them walking out in a pitiful state, waving white cloths. Some hobble around on makeshift crutches, or their injured legs are wrapped in rags. Very few shoes are worn.

Inside the destroyed buildings, victorious rebels filmed piles of corpses.

AA says more than 450 soldiers were killed in the siege. It has published pictures of the captured commander, Brigadier General Thorin Toon, and his officers kneeling under the flag, now flying the rebel flag.

Pro-military commentators in Myanmar are venting their frustration on social media.

“Min Aung Hlaing, you have not asked any of your children to serve in the military,” wrote one. “Is this how you use us? Are you happy to see all these deaths in Rakhine?”

“At this rate, all that will be left is from Tamadao. [military] There will be Min Aung Hlaing and a flag,” wrote another.

The capture of BGP5 also shows that the Arakan Army is one of the most effective fighting forces in Myanmar.

Formed only in 2009 – much later than other Myanmar insurgent groups – by young ethnic Rakhine men who migrated across the country to the Chinese border in search of work, AA is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance. is the one that has suffered most of the defeats that the junta has suffered since last year.

The other two members of the alliance remain on the border in Shan State.

But AA returned to Rakhine eight years ago to begin his own armed campaign for self-rule, facing historic resentment among the Rakhine population of poverty, isolation and the central government’s neglect of their state. .

AA leaders have proven to be smart, disciplined and able to motivate their fighters.

They are already managing large areas of Rakhine State as if they were running their own state.

And they are also well-armed, thanks to links with old rebel groups on the Chinese border, and appear to be well-financed.

Although the extent to which the various ethnic rebel groups are willing to prioritize the goal of overthrowing the military junta remains a big question.

Publicly they say they are with the shadow government that was overthrown by a coup, and the hundreds of volunteer people’s defense forces that have risen up to support it.

In return for support from ethnic rebels, the shadow government is promising a new federal political system that would give autonomy to Myanmar’s regions.

But already the other two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance have accepted China’s request for a ceasefire.

China is seeking a negotiated end to the civil war that will surely leave the military with much of its strength.

The opposition insists that the army should be reformed and removed from politics. But having already made many territorial gains at the junta’s expense, ethnic rebels may be willing to make deals with China’s blessing rather than continue fighting to oust the generals.

AA’s win raises more troubling questions.

The group’s leadership is tight-lipped about its plans. But it occupies a state that has always been poor and has suffered greatly from last year’s fierce fighting.

“Eighty percent of the houses in Maung Dao and surrounding villages have been destroyed,” a Rohingya man who recently left Maung Dao for Bangladesh told the BBC.

“The town is deserted. Almost all the shops and houses have been looted.”

Last month the United Nations, whose agencies are being given little access to Rakhine, warned of the risk of famine due to the large number of displaced people and a military blockade that has made it difficult to get supplies there. A problem was encountered.

AA is trying to set up its own administration, but some of those displaced by the fighting have told the BBC the group cannot provide them with food or shelter.

It is also unclear how the AA will treat the Rohingya population, estimated to still number around 600,000 in Rakhine. After 700,000 were expelled in 2017.

The largest number live in northern Rakhine State, and Maung Dao has long been a Rohingya-majority city. Relations with the ethnic Rakhine majority, a base of support for AA, have long been strained.

Rohingya militant groups, which have their power base in the sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh, are now much worse after siding with the military against the AA, despite the military’s track record of persecuting the Rohingya. .

Many Rohingya do not like these groups, and some say they are happy to live in AA-run Rakhine State.

But tens of thousands have been expelled by the AA from cities it has conquered, and not allowed to return.

The AA has promised to include all communities in its vision for a future independent from the central government, but it has also condemned the Rohingya it finds itself fighting alongside the army.

A Rohingya man we spoke to in Bangladesh said, “We cannot deny the fact that the Rohingya people have been persecuted by the Myanmar government for many years, and the people of Rakhine have supported it. ”

“The government wants to prevent the Rohingya from becoming citizens, but the people of Rakhine believe that there should be no Rohingya in Rakhine state at all. Our situation today is even more difficult than it was under the rule of the military junta.”