The Marginalization of Once-Dominant Rakhine Political Actors in the Shadow of the Arakan Army

Executive Summary

This report examines the marginalization of once-dominant Rakhine political actors—including the ALP, ANC, ALD, RNDP, ANP, AFP, and RNP—in the shadow of the United League of Arakan/Arakan Army (ULA/AA). Using a qualitative methodology based on secondary sources, the study analyzes how these actors lost political relevance while the ULA/AA rose from a marginal force to control over 90 percent of Arakan's territory with more than 50,000 troops by mid-2026. The central framework focuses on how military power and legitimacy reinforced each other: the ULA/AA succeeded by building both, while non-ULA actors experienced fragmentation, collaboration, and strategic failure.

Between 2010 and 2015, electoral politics dominated Arakan, with the RNDP winning 37 of 44 contested seats and the ALP representing armed struggle through its NCA signing. The ULA/AA remained marginal, building forces externally. However, the 2012 communal violence created profound insecurity, and the failure of electoral parties and ceasefire groups to provide protection opened a legitimacy gap. The ANP (formed in 2014) fractured internally by 2017, while the ALP's NCA status appeared as co-optation rather than resistance.

From 2018 to 2020, armed struggle became the key alternative. The ULA/AA escalated operations (681 clashes in 2019), captured major positions, and established the Arakan People's Authority (APA) in December 2019, providing taxation, dispute resolution, and public services. This governance capacity transformed military power into political legitimacy. Meanwhile, the ANP's direct alliance with Myanmar military leadership (August 2017) damaged its credibility, and the ALP was militarily outmatched with its dialogue requests denied.

The February 2021 coup was a critical juncture. As parliamentary politics collapsed, the ULA/AA consolidated governance. From late 2023, Operation 1027 saw AA forces capture most of Arakan's townships. By mid-2026, the ULA/AA controlled over 90 percent of the territory with parallel judicial and administrative systems. Non-ULA actors fragmented further: the ANP was denied registration, the AFP and RNP lost sham elections, and the ALP split into rival factions, one collaborating openly with the junta.

The future for non-ULA actors is irrelevant or extinction. Electoral parties have no parliamentary space; armed groups lack capacity and face ULA/AA's policy that "Arakan needs only one armed force." The ULA/AA must now transition from revolutionary movement to governing entity, addressing economic development and ethnic inclusion. The marginalization of once-dominant Rakhine actors resulted from internal divisions and strategic miscalculations, while the ULA/AA succeeded by building military power and legitimacy in a mutually reinforcing cycle decisive in post-coup Arakan.

Background Information

Arakan is a land of multi-ethnic and religious groups with Arakanese (Rakhine Buddhists) forming the largest majority with more than 70 percent of the total around 3 million people. Other ethnic groups are Rohingya, Mro, Thet, Khami, Daingnet (Chakama), Maramagyi, Chin, Kaman and Hindus. However, among all these groups, the political movements in the region are mainly led by Rakhine and Rohingya groups, only distantly to be followed by Chin and others.(see more)

Rakhine’s political movements normally began after the fall of their kingdom in 1784 CE, and the post-colonial era produced both electoral and armed struggle paths for them. Thus, the ultimate objective of the Rakhine political movement is to restore the lost sovereignty and ‘independence’ in historical terms despite not all groups explicitly demanding for a ‘sovereign and independent state’. For the Rohingya, as the majority of them are immigrants during the British colonial era and concentrated in northern Arakan, their demands for political rights and ethnic recognition mainly began in the post-colonial period in around 1950s.

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