Jonathan Head
speaker
175 appearances
13 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 2 Sep
Jonathan Head’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 3.
Appearances
They usually live in quite tight-knit communities in the villages they come from. But, you know, the not knowing when or whether their sons, husbands, brothers would come out has been very, very painful. And you... had this absolute gush of relief that's come from, for example, Willett Tyner. He's a 65-year-old man and his son Pongsak has been held for all that time.
And I think my colleagues have spoken to before, you know, he was beginning to lose hope. Remember, Thailand has been running its own diplomatic track to try and get the hostages out. It's not a party to the conflicts in the Middle East. And Thailand tries to maintain good relations with everyone, but actually has quite a good relationship with Iran.
So they've been talking directly to the Iranians, to the Qataris, to the Egyptians in the hope that they would be able to get their own people out. But, you know, they did get 23 out the month following the initial attacks. But there's been no progress, partly because of the devastating Israeli operation. Everything's been frozen for this last year while that's gone on.
So it's been a very long wait and a very difficult one. But as far as the ties are concerned, apart from this one man who's missing, their saga is now over.
We know about it because the Arakan Army has put out a quite dramatic video showing the last stages of the siege of a base in which the remaining military units had retreated. The Arakan Army has had the military on the run for a year. This is the most sustained fighting in the entire civil war. This battle for Rakhine State, the westernmost state in Myanmar, up against the Bangladesh border.
And the Arakan army is probably the best armed, and it's certainly a very dynamic ethnic, a relatively new one, well-funded, well-armed. It seemed to have the military certain to drive them out. But this last base proved very tough indeed. I know the base well. It was built on top of a burnt Rohingya village that I covered when I was there seven years ago, and I saw them build it.
It's about 20 hectares. They built ditches with spikes. There were minefields around it. And it seemed like those soldiers were told they couldn't surrender. And they just pounded it and pounded it with rockets, with all the artillery they could get. All the time, the Myanmar Air Force was bombing the insurgents, bombing the town. All the remaining civilians were driven out.
Finally, last weekend, they surrendered. And if you look at the video, it's extraordinary. These soldiers coming out look absolutely bedraggled. They're carrying terrible wounds. And then when the Arakan army goes inside, there are dozens and dozens of bodies. It was a really nasty battle. But as a result, this insurgent group now controls the entire Bangladesh border.
The military regime in Myanmar has lost control of its border with Bangladesh.
Look, from a prestige point of view, it's devastating for Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader. He's taken many embarrassing losses. His own side, the sort of hardline supporters of the military, are out on social media saying, Yeah, absolutely condemning him, saying, what are you doing? How can you let this happen? We've often wondered whether he would survive.
He's very unpopular, even in his own military council now. But we do see China as a crucial player now, looking for a solution. And it doesn't want the military to collapse completely. So there's a lot we can't tell about what happens in the future, even though the military is much weakened. And this will weaken it a lot more.
There are far more serious considerations, though, for Rakhine State itself. Just one of multiple conflicts in Myanmar is completely cut off. We can't get access. Humanitarian agencies can't get access.
But we know that the devastating fighting of the last year has caused immense dislocation of people, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes, no aid going in, the UN warning of looming famine. This is a lot for the Arakan army to be taking on. And there will be real problems for the Rohingya minority, those left behind, those who didn't flee in the ethnic cleansing seven years ago.
The Arakan army is backed by the local Rakhine Buddhist population who don't like the Rohingyas. And tension has really risen during this conflict because some Rohingya groups bizarrely have backed the military against the Arakan army, even though it's the military that attacked the Rohingyas seven years ago.
So it's a very messy situation and deeply alarming to the humanitarian agencies who are monitoring it. Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan,
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