The essence of the conflict:
While Muslims are a small minority in Myanmar as a whole, they constitute 42% of the population of the coastal state of Rakhine.
As tends to happen when the number of Muslims approach parity with non-Muslims, conflicts were happening in the area. The apparency was that the Muslims were starting their own ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims in Rakhine, so that they could then declare independence from Burma and align with Bangladesh.
Whoever controls the coastal state gets to control the rights to the offshore oil and gas discoveries in the Bay of Bengal. The Myanmar government decided that was NOT going to happen.