''Ethnic Rakhine insurgents have attacked four police stations in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, provoking a military counteroffensive. Escalation could imperil both prospects for Rohingya repatriation and the country’s transition toward civilian rule. All sides should step back from confrontation and pursue talks about Rakhine State’s future. On 4 January – Myanmar’s Independence Day – the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine group, launched coordinated attacks on four police outposts in northern Rakhine State, killing thirteen officers and injuring nine others. The attacks followed months of low-grade violence in the state, including a roadside bomb attributed to the AA that struck the chief minister’s convoy but did little damage. The government has directed the military to launch “clearance operations” against the group, which will likely precipitate further violence and civilian casualties. Thousands of civilians have already fled villages near the raided outposts. The attacks signify a dangerous shift from politics to insurgency as the means of addressing ethnic Rakhine grievances. The state is already afflicted by the Rohingya mass flight; an escalated fight between ethnic Rakhine and the government would represent a blow to Myanmar’s political transition to civilian rule and be difficult to stop. All sides should step back from confrontation and instead discuss how best to address Rakhine grievances through political channels...'' ''မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏လွတ်လပ်ရေးနေ့ ဇန်နဝါရီ(၄)ရက်နေ့တွင် ရခိုင်တိုင်းရင်းသားလက်နက်ကိုင်အုပ်စုဖြစ်သော ရခိုင့်တပ်မတော် (AA) သည် ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်ရှိ ရဲကင်း (၄)ခုကို တပြိုင်နက်တည်းတိုက်ခိုက်ရာ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲဝင် ၁၃ ဦးကျဆုံးခဲ့ပြီး ၉ ဦးဒဏ်ရာရရှိခဲ့သည်။ ပြည်နယ်အတွင်းဝန်ကြီးချုပ်ယဉ်တန်းကို အနည်းငယ်ထိခိုက်မှုဖြစ်စေခဲ့သော မိုင်းဗုံးခွဲမှုအပါအဝင် AA ကလုပ်ဆောင်ခဲ့သော အသေးစား...''