Myanmar army faces a new challenge as an armed ethnic group opens a new front in a western state

By GRANT PECK
Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military government is facing a fresh challenge after one of the ethnic armed groups it is fighting in the country’s northeast launched attacks in the western state of Rakhine. The Arakan Army launched surprise assaults on two outposts of the paramilitary Border Guard Police on Monday. That’s according to independent online media and residents of the area. The attacks took place despite a yearlong cease-fire with Myanmar’s military government. The Arakan Army is the well-trained military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement seeking autonomy from the central government. Rakhine was he site of a brutal army counterinsurgency in 2017 that drove about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border to Bangladesh.