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Rakhine State
Myanmar's Bay of Bengal coast, now mostly held by the Arakan Army and ancestral home of the Rohingya
Rakhine State, the long coastal strip of western Myanmar on the Bay of Bengal, has slipped almost entirely out of the military government's hands. Since launching an offensive in November 2023, the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, has taken 14 of the state's 17 townships, including the military's regional command at Ann and the entire border with Bangladesh. Only the capital, Sittwe, the port town of Kyaukphyu and Manaung island remain under the junta, all under pressure as of October 2026. Rakhine is also the homeland of the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority whom successive Myanmar governments have denied citizenship, more than a million of whom live as refugees in Bangladesh.
The state covers about 36,800 square kilometers between the Bay of Bengal and the Arakan Mountains, a steep, forested range that long isolated it from central Myanmar. Rice paddies and mangroves fill the Kaladan and Lemro deltas around Sittwe and the old royal city of Mrauk U, and islands such as Ramree and Manaung line the southern coast. The AA and its political wing, the United League of Arakan, now administer the north, including Maungdaw and Buthidaung on the Naf River border, and most of the south. Kyaukphyu, terminus of Chinese oil and gas pipelines and site of a planned Chinese-backed deep-sea port, is the focus of junta counterattacks. Blockades and fighting have choked trade, and the UN Development Programme warned in 2024 of famine conditions.
Rakhine was the independent kingdom of Arakan, centered on Mrauk U, until Burmese forces conquered it in 1784. Britain took it in 1826, and the official English name changed from Arakan to Rakhine in 1989. Many Rakhine Buddhists accuse the central state of neglect, and many regard the Rohingya, whom they and the government often call Bengalis, as migrants, a claim Rohingya reject. In 2017, after attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a military campaign that UN investigators said had genocidal intent drove about 740,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, where UNHCR counts about 1.1 to 1.2 million refugees around Cox's Bazar. Since 2024 Rohingya have accused both the AA and the junta of abuses, Rohingya armed groups have fought the AA, and more than 150,000 more people have fled to Bangladesh.