Earlier this week, an ethnic armed group announced the capture of a major Myanmar Navy training base in the west of the country, the first Navy headquarters to fall to resistance forces.
The Arakan Army (AA) said in a statement on Friday that its forces had captured the Maung Shwe Lay Navy Base, in coastal Thandwe township, the day before, Myanmar Now reported. The AA also published several trophy shots of its soldiers standing in front of a diving tower and with a captured helicopter inside the base, which is officially known as the Central Naval Diving and Salvage Depot. (Some reports also refer to the facility as the Kwin Wine Naval Base.)
It said that the base, the last to be held by junta forces in Thandwe, was defended by air force and navy forces as well as more than 1,200 soldiers, including forces evacuated from elsewhere in Myanmar and new graduates from the base. “More than 400 junta soldiers were killed during our attack, and junta weapons, ammunition and equipment were seized,” the AA said in its statement. The AA added that the junta responded by attacking surrounding areas with “heavy weapons.”
The seizure of the base appears to mark the final collapse of the junta presence in Thandwe. This is just the latest victory for the AA, which has made sweeping gains across Rakhine State since launching an offensive against regime forces in November, part of the Operation 1027 offensive that also saw attacks on junta positions in Shan State.
The AA now claims stable control over nine of the 17 townships in Rakhine State, plus the township of Paletwa in neighboring Chin State, and is fighting to take full control of three additional townships. Fighting has been ongoing for nearly a month across Thandwe. In July, the AA seized Thandwe town and the adjacent Ngapali Beach, a popular tourist destination, as well as the town’s airport, and then turned its focus to the Maung Shwe Lay Naval Base, which lies on the other side of a small bay from Thandwe town.
In northern Rakhine, the AA continues to close in on Maungdaw town on the Bangladesh border, amid controversies about alleged AA attacks on Rohingya Muslim civilians. Fighting also continues in Gwa township to the south of Thandwe. All of this puts the AA’s dream of establishing an independent ethnic Rakhine State, a reanimated version of the Arakan kingdom that was conquered by the Burmese kings in 1784.
The loss of the Maung Shwe Lay base leaves Danyawaddy Naval Base in Kyaukphyu township, the home of one of the Navy’s five regional commands, as the junta’s last remaining naval base in Rakhine State. In January, the AA launched rocket attacks on Danyawaddy, part of the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port complex and special economic zone that is currently being developed by China’s government.
It will no doubt come as a deflating loss to a military junta that is on the defensive across all four quadrants of the map, and struggling to stem the bleeding in Rakhine. As one state politician told Radio Free Asia, “Losing such a base will affect training as well as fighting… The military is like a bird with one wing now.”