Young men trapped between war and conscription in Myanmar’s Rakhine

The renewed fighting is the latest crisis to hit Rakhine which endured waves of communal violence in the years before the coup [AFP]

Since war resumed in his native Rakhine State last November, Thura Maung has seen his options narrow.

The 18-year-old, from the state’s ethnic Rakhine majority, first fled his home in the coastal town of Myebon in December, when clashes between the military and autonomy-seeking Arakha Army – formerly known as the Arakan Army – seemed imminent.