Kuala Lampur, Feb. 16 -- South-east Asia has grown accustomed to viewing Myanmar's civil war as a continental conflict - a tragedy of jungles, mountain strongholds, and ruined towns battered by artillery and airstrikes.

Yet far from Yangon, Naypyidaw, Mandalay or even the heavily reported Rakhine frontlines, another theatre has quietly emerged along Myanmar's Andaman coast and its scattered islands.

This maritime dimension of the war remains almost invisible in regional diplomacy.

But it may become one of the most consequential developments in the entire crisis.

The Andaman islands are no longer peripheral communities living beyond the reach of politics.

They have become a zone where the civil war intersects with longstanding struggl...