The Guardian’s 1 October investigation reports that the Arakan Army is converting Rohingya villages into camps and military infrastructure. For displaced families, these changes raise an urgent question: will there still be homes and land to return to?
The transformation of civilian settlements into military sites threatens both immediate safety and the community’s future. Where residents remain nearby, military activity can expose them to attacks. Where they have already been displaced, the redevelopment of their land can create lasting obstacles to return. These dangers must be examined together.
Military Use of Villages and the Airstrike Danger
Myanmar’s military continues to carry out deadly attacks on civilian areas in Arakan. On 2 October 2026, Fortify Rights reported that military airstrikes on 28 September struck several civilian locations in Kyauktaw Township, including a public market. The market bombing reportedly killed at least 50 civilians and wounded more than 50 others, including Rakhine and Rohingya residents. The organisation examined casualty lists, photographs and videos and described the attack as an apparent war crime.
This threat makes the location of military positions a matter of civilian survival. Establishing military activities within or near inhabited villages creates foreseeable danger for families who have little control over the armed forces around them. Their homes, livelihoods and physical safety can become exposed to attacks directed at those positions.
THe continuing aerial campaign makes it essential to investigate whether military deployments in Rohingya settlements are delibrate exposing residents to avoidable harm and whether civilians are permitted to leave safely. But there is no where to go for Rohingya.
Displacement Must Not Become Permanent Dispossession
The removal of a village’s inhabitants and the subsequent transformation of its land can have consequences long after fighting ends. Families may survive an attack or escape danger, only to discover that their homes have disappeared and their land has been assigned another purpose.
For Rohingya, return means recovering a place within their own homeland. It requires access to property, livelihoods, religious institutions and community life. A camp elsewhere cannot replace those rights. Nor can displacement justify taking land from people who are unable to defend their claims because they have fled or remain confined.
Independent monitoring must therefore follow what happens after residents leave. Investigators need to establish who orders demolition, who occupies the land, whether original owners consent and whether displaced families retain a practical route to return. Destruction followed by redevelopment can otherwise make exclusion increasingly difficult to reverse.
Opposing Armies, Converging Harm
The reported conversion of villages raises serious concerns that military occupation, bombardment and dispossession can reinforce one another. Armed positions create danger; attacks can drive residents away; changes to the land can then prevent their return. This is an editorial assessment of the risks, rather than proof that every stage follows a single coordinated plan.
Although the Arakan Army and Myanmar’s military fight each other, when it comes cleansing the Rohingya they coordinate with each other. The consequences of their actions must be judged from the position of civilians whose homes, safety and future are at stake.
Rohingyas from inside Arakan say that military positions are deliberately placed to draw attacks onto Rohingya co.mmunity. The reports military strikes provides grounds to demand scrutiny on civilian settlements and the lasting consequences of their destruction provides ground to scrutiny.
Neither Force Can Evade Responsibility
The laws of war require parties to take feasible precautions to protect civilians under their control from the effects of attacks, including separating military objectives from densely populated areas wherever feasible. Armed forces must account for the danger their deployments create for surrounding communities.
Myanmar’s military remains responsible for its own targeting decisions. An opposing force’s presence does not permit deliberate attacks on civilians, indiscriminate bombardment or attacks expected to cause excessive civilian harm. Rohingya residents retain civilian protection even when fighters occupy their village.
Responsibility must therefore be examined on both sides: the decisions that expose civilians to danger and the decisions that unleash attacks upon them. Neither can be excused by pointing to the other.
Preserve Rohingya Lives, Land and the Right to Return
Rohingya settlements must be protected from military practices that expose residents to avoidable attack. Civilians need safe movement, humanitarian assistance and protection against forced displacement. Families who have fled must retain their property claims and the possibility of voluntary, safe return.
Satellite imagery, land records and survivor testimony should be preserved before further demolition or redevelopment removes the evidence. International scrutiny must address immediate civilian danger and the quieter process through which a displaced community can lose its homeland.
Rohingya should not have to choose between bombardment, confinement and exile. Protecting them means preserving their right to live freely in Arakan, with homes and land to return to, and holding those responsible for taking that future away accountable.