The village of Maw Ni Bill (Oe Thei) being burnt by arson attack on May 18th.

 

In the late evening of Friday 17 May 2024, Rohingya neighbourhoods in the town of Buthidaung in Myanmar’s Rakhine State were disturbed by an ominously familiar sight. Armed gunmen had come to their doors and ordered them to leave before the gunmen set their houses alight. If they refused, they were told, they would be burnt with their house.

As the Rohingya community fled to fields to the west, the gunmen torched their houses. By morning, most of what remained of Buthidaung had burnt to the ground. Buthidaung was the largest town to be burnt in a cycle of arson attacks throughout April and May, in which the junta and affiliated militants burnt approximately 2,400 structures, and the resistance-aligned Arakan Army retaliated by burning a further 8,500 structures across around 50 villages.

With communications in this area of Myanmar effectively cut off, with no independent media presence and with a desperate lack of supplies and food reaching the area, it is challenging to pin down specifics of what happened on 17 May. Using detailed analysis of satellite imagery, news reports, statements and open-source analysis of incidents on the ground, it is possible to provide crucial context to the violence that has occurred over the past weeks—enough to begin to verify the perpetrators.

This Strategist special report explains what happened that night and presents new satellite imagery analysis that reveals a systematic campaign of retaliatory arson that has occurred in the township since 24 April and continued until at least 21 May.

A map of the areas burnt in Buthidaung township between 24 April –  21 May.

 

The majority of these arson attacks occurred in uncontested Arakan Army territory with attacks on rural villages reportedly forcing many Rohingyas to flee from their burnt village to Buthidaung town itself prior to the arson attack there.

Following the genocidal anti-Rohingya violence of 2017, when the majority of Maungdaw Township’s Rohingya community was expelled or killed in a series of violent campaigns by the military, the township of Buthidaung in the Mayu River valley became home to the largest Rohingya community remaining in Myanmar, with over 150,000 Rohingya living in the township. Although the Rohingya community in Buthidaung is not as controlled or restricted as those living in internally displaced person camps across the rest of the state, the area is still subject to significant human rights abuses, including unreasonable restrictions on movement and access to services, along with a complete impunity for government forces in the area. 

Following the outbreak of clashes between the Arakan Army and Burmese state forces in 2019, the township became more isolated and cut off from services and supplies. The township has been effectively under siege since the latest outbreak of violence during which the Arakan Army has captured much of Rakhine state from the junta. 

With an increasingly dispossessed community, the junta has leveraged people’s desperation into actions deliberately calibrated to stoke communal tensions. In February and March 2024, junta authorities in Buthidaung town coerced and co-opted Rohingya residents to hold anti-Arakan Army demonstrations that were widely publicised in pro-junta media. These efforts were generally disregarded as a ploy to inflame communal tensions. However, the situation became more critical in March and April, as the junta started to enforce widespread conscription in an attempt to address its staggering losses on the battlefield over the preceding five months. Despite the Rohingya community long being denied citizenship or residency permits by government authorities, the junta sought conscripts from the Rohingya community using a mixture of false promises of citizenship along with threats and intimidation. 

Despite having previously fought against the Burmese army, some Rohingya armed groups carried out forced recruitment into junta-aligned militias, including by abducting boys (reportedly some as young as 14) from Bangladesh refugee camps to return to Myanmar and fight.

Starting on 11 April, the military junta and Rohingya militants began burning down predominantly Buddhist and Hindu neighbourhoods of Buthidaung town to stoke further sectarian tensions. Over the following week, these attacks destroyed roughly 2,400 structures across 150 acres of Buthidaung town, with several of Buthidaung’s most densely populated neighbourhoods being entirely destroyed, including an office and pharmacy of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

Satellite Imagery of the town of Buthidaung, clearly showing the burn scars from Junta-led and Rohingya-assisted arson attacks that took place  11-17 April.

 

While these attacks were taking place in Buthidaung town through April, the Arakan Army was gaining full control on the other side of the Mayu River. It besieged and captured remaining junta military bases one-by-one.

And from 24 April, the Arakan Army began an arson campaign against Rohingya villages, retaliating against the whole Rohingya community for arson attacks in Buthidaung town. Over the following 10 days, it burnt 27 villages and hamlets on the eastern bank of the Mayu River, according to our analysis of satellite imagery.

Buthidaung town was, by all accounts, a chaotic place on 17 May, as conflict in the township was reaching its nadir. The Arakan Army had told residents that they would assault the town at 10am the next day, and ordered a general evacuation. However, by around 6pm on Friday afternoon, the group was overrunning four junta battalions on the western edge of town. According to statements by the Arakan Army, the remnants of these units then fled into the town, with local media reporting clashes at the entrance to Buthidaung town throughout Friday. This hastened the Arakan Army’s advance, and by 9:30pm much of the town was under their control, according to eyewitnesses. On the night of the arson attack, there was significant movement of Arakan Army and Burmese junta troops through the town, along with continued and hasty displacement of civilians.

Movements in and around the town of Buthidaung on 17 May , showing the Arakan Army in blue, Junta troops in red and civilians in purple.

 

Given the chaotic scene on the ground, and the immense communication restrictions in the area, independently and firmly establishing the perpetrator of this attack is challenging. However, satellite imagery analysis of arson attacks enables us to establish a clear pattern of retaliatory violence by the Arakan Army against Rohingya villages and neighbourhoods. The  images show that as Arakan Army forces advanced across rural Buthidaung township in late April and May, they left a trail of rubble and ash as they burnt down Rohingya villages, seemingly indiscriminately.

That trail started on 24 April, around a week after the initial bout of junta-directed and Rohingya-committed arson in Buthidaung town ended. On that day, the village of Raza Berha (Nan Yar Kone), with around 100 homes, became the first Rohingya village torched on the Mayu River’s eastern bank. Satellite imagery from the next morning shows much of the northern part of the village destroyed. Over the next week, around a dozen villages would be burnt, including the large settlements of Kun Taing Ywar Gyi and Taung (Pale Taung). 

Burnt villages of Kun Taing Ywar Gyi, Ah Nauk, Ah Shey, Fawrni Bashar, Da Bru Yaung, Tha Rat Kuni and Reza Berha on the eastern bank of the Mayu River in satellite imagery from May 13th.

 

The comprehensive destruction, completely burning all villages in this area of the township, strongly suggests that this has been a deliberate campaign of arson and that these towns were not merely damaged by airstrikes, artillery fire or columns of fleeing troops.

In a 4 May statement announcing their control over the entire eastern bank of the Mayu River, the Arakan Army provided some clarification regarding their territorial control over the area in the preceding months. They state that for much of 2024, Arakan Army troops had surrounded and blocked the 15th Military Operations Command HQ in the area, and that since around 20 April, there had been heavy clashes within the base itself before the Arakan Army seized it on 2 May. As early as the start of April, local media was reporting that every battalion in Buthidaung was besieged by the Arakan Army.

Accordingly, 4km away from the nearest battalion base, when Raza Berha village burnt in the last week of April, the only armed group with presence in this part of the countryside was the Arakan Army. Similarly, other villages burnt in the early days of this arson campaign were some distance from besieged junta bases.

Over the following weeks, as the Arakan Army captured the remaining besieged junta battalions one-by-one, a disturbing pattern emerged of nearby villages being burnt immediately following their capture.

• On 25 April, the 565th Light Infantry Battalion was captured and, within a week, the neighbouring Rohingya villages of Shawdawr Para and Hadimma Para were burnt.
• On 2 May, the 15th Military Operations Command HQ was captured, and that night the neighbouring Rohingya village of Da Bru Yaung was burnt.
• On 3 May, the 551st Light Infantry Battalion was captured and within three days the neighbouring Rohingya village of Setawr Para was burnt.
• On 13 May, the 353rd Light Infantry Battalion was captured and, the following night, the neighbouring Rohingya village of Na Khine Daung was burnt.
• On 18 May, the final Junta battalions with the Buthidaung Tactical Operations Command were captured, with the neighbouring villages of Thar Mai Khali, Myaung, Daing Net Ywar, Kyauk Hpyu Taung and Let Wea Det Pyin Shey all burnt over the next two days, along with nearby town of Buthidaung itself.

This pattern was not repeated, however, in villages near military bases that were captured prior to the junta-directed arson attacks in Buthidaung town in mid-April. The 564th Light Infantry Battalion HQ was the first in the township to fall to the Arakan Army, being captured on 5 April. None of the villages surrounding this military base were burnt following its capture. This provides further evidence that the recent spate of arson attacks was in direct retaliation to junta-orchestrated provocations of communal tension.

Preliminary mapping of burnt areas in Buthidaung, showing the neighbourhoods burnt in the mid-April junta-led arson attacks and the areas burnt on 18 May.

 

The village of Na Khing Daung serves as a useful case study providing insight into the timeline on the Arakan Army’s control of the area. Following the arson attack on Buthidaung town and its widespread condemnation, official propaganda channels from the Arakan Army released photos showing their troops caring for injured Rohingya civilians in Na Khing Daung on 14 May. As Arakan Army troops were capturing the neighbouring 353rd Light Infantry Battalion the previous day, fleeing junta troops opened fire at the village as they passed through, causing injuries among civilians, according to local media reporting. A video from the same date and previously released through official Arakan Army channels shows scores of Rohingya from Na Khing Daung who were detained by junta forces being released by Arakan Army troops.

These two videos show the Arakan Army in firm control of the village on 14 May, with junta forces that were previously nearby rapidly disintegrating and fleeing across the countryside. Satellite imagery from the early afternoon of that day shows fire beginning to consume the village, with houses along the main road through the village having already been burnt. These fires would continue overnight and into the next day until, by the next satellite pass, the entire Rohingya hamlet within the village was burnt to the ground. 

Tellingly, the ethnically Daingnet (a predominantly buddhist ethnicity from northern Rakhine state numbering around 80,000 people) hamlet of the same village remained completely undamaged. A mosque in the Rohingya hamlet was burnt, while the monastery 200m away was spared. 

The burning also continued in many villages following the complete capture of Buthidaung township by the Arakan Army, with around a dozen villages, mostly to the west and southwest of Buthidaung town being burnt down following the expulsion of all junta positions in the area.

Together, the satellite evidence clearly demonstrates a systematic pattern of arson attacks across much of Buthidaung township, both in areas under complete Arakan Army control, and in a manner suggestive of on-the-ground arson attacks as compared to damage from airstrikes or artillery. 

Thankfully, it appears that there have been no reports of continued arson attacks in the area beyond 21 May. It is possible or even likely that the Arakan Army command has reacted to the attention the atrocities generated, and prevented their troops on the ground from committing further arson. However, this is not enough. The already vulnerable and dispossessed Rohingya community of Buthidaung is now languishing in even worse conditions than before, with some reports suggesting that up to 60 displaced people have died, largely as a result of a lack of clean drinking water. 

The Arakan Army urgently needs to restore community relations in the Rohingya heartland of which it is rapidly seizing control. It faces an uphill climb given the extent of the recent violence in which it has played a significant part, but there is room for reconciliation, especially as Rakhine and Rohingya communities can point to a common enemy as the actor responsible for provoking sectarian tension and as a springboard for common reconciliation.

The Arakan Army must act with initiative and urgency by providing immediate aid and assistance to displaced and desperate communities. It should reach out to key Rohingya leaders in areas under its control and commit to treating the Rohingya community as brothers just like all other members of the Arakanese nation, and demonstrate this commitment. It should recognise that at the individual level, Rohingya militants coerced into fighting alongside the junta are victims of the junta and not targets for reprisals. It should call them ‘Rohingya’ instead of the variety of slurs it has used and that immediately demonstrates the Arakan Army’s hostility. It should also recognise the opportunity in both human capital and economic development that could be realised if the Arakan Army is able to reverse its course and foster community relations in northern Rakhine state that facilitates widespread repatriation of Rohingya citizens. 

The national resistance organisations must make it clear, both privately and publicly, that such atrocities are unacceptable, and that if the Arakan Army wants a seat at the table in a future federalised and democratic Myanmar, it must treat all civilians under its control with dignity and respect. It should publicly name the Arakan Army as the perpetrator of these atrocities that it condemned. It should facilitate dialogue and reconciliation efforts between the Arakan Army and Rohingya community leaders both inside and outside of Burma.

International actors should continue to recognise that the military junta remains the biggest impediment to peace and stability in both Rakhine and Myanmar more broadly, and that this communal violence has been directly and deliberately provoked by them. Even over the last week, junta forces and affiliated militias cordoned off a village in Rakhine state before executing over 70 civilians and burning scores of houses. Any policy that seeks to restore a pre-coup status quo is misguided and counterproductive. Despite this outbreak of violence, the Arakan Army—should it reflect and evolve from these atrocities—is far more likely to transform into a responsible and reliable partner in the region than the military junta.

The alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi Arabia is one of four big events in our world this year showing that human rights and hard-edged national security have converged.

It’s not optional to protect human rights, because, if we don’t, our security suffers. National security ‘hawks’ need to be as interested in this as anyone else. Here’s why.

The events I’m talking about are really two packages of two—one about individuals and one about groups of people. First there’s the Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national with US residency and three children who are US citizens. And there’s the case of Dawn Sturgess, a UK citizen killed as a result of the failed Russian attempt to murder former spy Sergei Skripal.

The second set of two are about acts being carried out against populations as the world’s leadership and institutions watch and fail to prevent atrocities.

I’m referring to Myanmar’s killing and brutalisation of around 700,000 Rohingya Muslims through a formal army campaign under state direction, and to the Chinese state’s forcible detention of a million of its Uyghur citizens for ‘re-education’ in hastily built camps in Xinjiang.

What these acts tell us is that the states involved—Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Myanmar—feel empowered to act against core principles of humanity through arbitrary killings and by brutalisating and detaining people who have committed no crime or offence.

In part, this is because they fear no consequences. And they seem to be onto something.

The consequences for the rest of us? Others feel empowered to act as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mohammad Bin Salman have—and that makes it a more dangerous, less human world.

In the case of Russia, there have been widespread expulsions of Russian diplomats internationally, and further sanctions may be meted out against individual Russians associated with the murder—but Russia isn’t being isolated by the international community. In fact, Putin seems more welcomed and better travelled since the murder than during much of his reign if his travel program is a metric.

On Saudi Arabia, as former Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai said when asked about the French Revolution, it may be ‘too early to tell’. But it seems that if there’s any way for the US administration to express ‘discomfort’ over the murder of a US resident but keep the US$450 million in recent ‘deals’ between the Saudis and US companies, President Donald Trump will take it.

What does this tell us? Maybe not much that is new, but it seems to be a part of human history that we need to relearn lessons our ancestors knew well. Here, the lesson is that our actions matter far more than our words.

We license atrocities when we condemn them, while engaging with their perpetrators in ways that show we ‘understand’. Not cancelling the US$110 billion US arms sale to the Saudis would be an eloquent example.

On the actions of the Myanmar and Chinese governments, the failure of other states to act to prevent the brutalisation of 700,000 Rohingas and a million Uyghurs—or pressure these governments effectively—has many contributing factors.

Let me name a couple: narrow self-interest and fear.

Governments and institutions from the US, UK, Australia and EU have all issued statements of concern about the Myanmar government’s failure to prevent its army from killing and displacing Rohingya people.

But even now, more than a year since the crisis began, international action has been about providing humanitarian relief funding to help displaced Rohingyas. There have been no referrals of Myanmar leaders—like Aung San Suu Kyi or army commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing to the International Criminal Court.

At least one of the UN Security Council members—China—would probably veto such a reference or any move to set up a UN or regional intervention mission. But making Chinese leaders carry out such public vetoes helps build an international constituency and also demonstrates Chinese leadership perspectives.

Why haven’t we seen world leaders seeking such ICC action, or calling for a UN or regional mission to protect returned Rohingyas? One reason is that states fear driving Myanmar further into China’s authoritarian orbit and losing access and influence. Another is that economic engagement with Myanmar, given its natural resources, is very attractive. A third is ASEAN states’ adherence to the principle of non-intervention (against this, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has been a striking voice for action from within ASEAN). Narrowly conceived self-interest is trumping longer term interests.

On the Uyghurs, we see a similar pattern of international concern and failure to act. Xi is forcibly detaining around a million Uyghurs in a massive re-education camp system, and using his Ministry of Public Security to surveil and control the rest of China’s 13 million Turkic Muslims. And it’s all happening in plain sight, thanks to global satellite coverage and the efforts of investigative teams of journalists, human rights organisations and individual Uyghurs.

Whatever we each may think of the simple inhumanity of Myanmar and Chinese authorities’ treatment of their own citizens, we should all be as concerned that these two governments are creating large future security problems for themselves and for all of us in coming years.

Whether wittingly or not, Xi and Suu Kyi are creating the perfect conditions for the radicalisation of millions of Rohingyas and Chinese citizens who are very likely to cause both states and the broader region decades of security trouble.

Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State are adept at taking advantage of such opportunities.

Being mesmerised by China’s power—and paralysed by a fear of losing trade benefits from China or Myanmar—is not reason enough to let these two states damage all of our security interests and affect the safety of all of our citizens in coming years.

So, whether it’s state-sanctioned murder or states creating generations of radicalised people, what we walk past is what we allow. Let’s look beyond our wallets and our noses and resurrect a sense of an international community, with the ability to intervene and punish, to hold to account and to act. Values matter, but only when they are made real through actions.

The humanitarian crisis afflicting Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya has damaged the country’s political stability and shattered its image as a country moving towards democracy. Moreover, it has tarnished the reputation of the government’s de facto leader, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi; called into question the crisis-management credentials of ASEAN and the United Nations; and made a mockery of international institutions for conflict prevention.

And yet, for all the woe, a resolution remains possible; to achieve it, five steps must be taken without delay.

First and foremost, the killings and atrocities must stop, which will be as difficult as it is necessary. Myanmar’s military has engaged in a sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing, with the primary goal of expelling the Rohingya from the country. Although these actions cannot be undone, further bloodshed and targeted evictions can and should cease.

For that to happen, however, Rohingya extremists must be contained. Contrary to the prevailing narrative in the West, the Myanmar military was provoked, after insurgents staged a series of attacks on police and army posts in August. Exploiting a history of armed clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has assumed leadership of an increasingly violent campaign.

The problem, of course, has been the disproportionate use of force by the military, which retaliated against ARSA strikes by launching a scorched-earth campaign that has killed as many as 3,000. Soldiers have burned entire Rohingya villages, engaged in sexual violence, destroyed mosques, and provoked mass displacement. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, says it is ‘a textbook example of ethnic cleansing’, while UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the crisis ‘catastrophic’.

Suu Kyi, meanwhile, has failed to exercise any moral authority, sounding instead like an apologist when she insists that ‘a huge iceberg of misinformation’ is ‘promoting the interest of the terrorists’. She is, no doubt, sandwiched between an autonomous military that retains complete control over the country’s security services, and a Buddhist-majority population with deeply rooted anti-Muslim prejudices. But that predicament does not excuse her failure to condemn what is happening under her watch.

To be sure, Suu Kyi’s government resents the idealistic but partisan statements often issued by Western leaders and UN representatives. Rohingya extremists have long-established links with foreign jihadists, including those of the Islamic State. Complicating the military’s position, ARSA is, according to the International Crisis Group, commanded by Saudi-based insurgents with extensive experience in guerrilla warfare. Few Westerners grasp the challenges faced by decision-makers in developing countries confronting extremism from insurgents and terrorists.

It is precisely these concerns that have made it difficult for Myanmar to break the cycle of violence. Bangladesh and India have refused to resettle Rohingya refugees permanently, largely because they fear that jihadists could be among them. Indian intelligence agencies have linked ARSA to the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Similarly, China’s government has supported Myanmar’s efforts to protect its national security. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China is investing $7.3 billion in a port project in Rakhine, which may lead China to block any attempt in the UN Security Council to censure Myanmar for its actions.

This tangled web of interests, coupled with the government’s failure, means that responsibility for protecting all of Myanmar’s people now falls to ASEAN or the UN.

Once hostilities cease, the second step towards ensuring long-term peace will be the repatriation of refugees, which could prove to be a logistical nightmare. According to UN figures, at the end of September some 700,000 Rohingya refugees had crossed into Bangladesh, with more than half arriving since late August. And Myanmar’s military has mined the border with Bangladesh to stop them from returning.

Assuming that the issues of violence and refugees can be addressed, Myanmar must grant international humanitarian access to the affected regions. ASEAN, which demonstrated its capabilities in the wake of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, is well positioned to take the lead in shaping a regional response. ASEAN could also coordinate with the UN in managing emergency personnel.

The fourth step is to hold enablers of the atrocities accountable. Myanmar’s government must undertake—or permit ASEAN or the UN to do so on its behalf—an independent and impartial investigation into the killings, identify the perpetrators, and subject them to transparent and credible prosecution. If this cannot be done domestically, the matter must be referred to the International Criminal Court.

Finally, the government that Suu Kyi leads must repeal or amend all discriminatory laws and end official anti-Rohingya discrimination. With 1.1 million members, the Rohingya are one of the world’s largest stateless ethnic groups. Most came to Myanmar as part of the expansion of the British Empire, after the Burmese king was defeated in 1826, but are still considered to be illegal Bengali immigrants. The 1982 citizenship law did not recognise them as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups, and they have severely limited access to health care, education and employment, in addition to facing restrictions on their freedom of movement.

Myanmar’s democratic transition remains fragile, with civil–military relations, poverty, economic growth and governance competing for attention. But the cessation of hostilities and resolution of the Rohingya crisis must take precedence. The report issued in August by the Rakhine Advisory Commission, led by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, offers one possible path forward.

These five steps will not heal all wounds or end every grievance. But they can help ease the suffering by discouraging further atrocities, deterring violent extremism, and improving border security. At the moment, this may be the best possible outcome.