In view of the escalating civil war in Myanmar, the military junta is pursuing a cruel strategy to break the resistance in Rakhine State: it is deliberately using hunger as a weapon.

As the conflict escalates, civilians caught in the crossfire are finding that food shortages are as deadly as the bullets fired by soldiers.

Rakhine State, long a powder keg of ethnic tensions, is experiencing new levels of human suffering as the junta tightens its grip on aid routes and access for humanitarian aid.

The military’s actions were strongly condemned by observers, who accused the regime of systematically using starvation as a means of repressing the local population and weakening support for the Arakan Army (AA), a powerful ethnic rebel group that controls significant territory in the region. CNN reported.

The junta’s blockade strategy

The junta’s blockade strategy, which includes checkpoints, road and water closures, and denial of entry permits to humanitarian aid organizations, has drastically reduced food supplies in AA-controlled areas. The result is a growing humanitarian disaster that has left nearly 900,000 people at risk of starvation.

“They are using food as a weapon,” said a senior aid official CNN“That much is clear.”

The situation is particularly dire in northern Rakhine, where aid agencies report that less than a quarter of the 873,000 people who need food aid have received it. Prices of basic commodities such as rice, fuel and cooking oil have soared, driven by shortages caused by the junta’s control of supply routes. With the junta refusing requests to deliver goods to the region, even those who still have money cannot afford the inflated prices.

“People are surviving on the bare minimum,” said Ejaz (pseudonym), a local aid official. “I have seen it with my own eyes – families living on nothing but rice and salt, and even that is running out.”

Fighting in refugee camps

Reports from the region paint a harrowing picture of the suffering of the civilian population. In a makeshift refugee camp in an overcrowded monastery near the regional capital of Sittwe, a lone monk struggles to feed about 300 people who have sought refuge there after being driven from their homes by the conflict.

“There are days when we have nothing to eat, even though we are hungry,” CNN quoted Khin Mar Cho, a mother who fled to the camp with her young son after soldiers stormed her village, arrested the men and shot her brother: “I cannot feed my child anything other than the meals that people donate to me because I have no job or income and all the male members of my family have been taken away.”

Crackdown on aid measures

The junta’s strategy goes beyond mere blockades. Aid workers have reported that local aid organizations have been arrested while trying to deliver food and supplies without authorization. In some cases, aid shipments have been confiscated or destroyed by the military, exacerbating the food crisis.

In June, a World Food Programme warehouse in Maungdaw was looted and burned, depriving the community of much-needed food aid.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has tried to negotiate with the junta to lift the blockade and get aid to those in need, but progress has been slow. Informal talks with senior junta officials in the country’s capital have produced little more than vague assurances, and humanitarian partners have not been granted travel permits to operate outside Sittwe township since November 2023.

Despite overwhelming evidence of the junta’s role in the crisis, Myanmar’s government continues to deny blame. In a statement to CNNMyint Kyaw, deputy permanent secretary at Myanmar’s information ministry, claimed that rebel groups, not the military, were responsible for restricting aid. “The Myanmar government is committed to the equality of all citizens,” the statement said. “Every citizen has the right to move freely without restrictions.”

The international community: a silent spectator

As the junta tightens its stranglehold on Rakhine, the response from the international community has been appallingly muted. The UN humanitarian aid program in Myanmar is one of the worst funded in the world. By 2024, only 20 percent of the $1 billion needed for relief efforts had been raised. “We have become invisible,” lamented a senior UN aid official in Myanmar. “It will be difficult for donors to fund invisible missions.”

For the people of Rakhine, the consequences of this invisibility are all too real. As hunger becomes a weapon in this brutal conflict, the lives of countless civilians hang by a thread, dependent on a world that is increasingly unwilling – or unable – to help.