Pak, Bangladeshi Militants Join ARSA Post Myanmar Army Attacks

Police guard UN convoy which carries INGO and UN staff, as they flee from Maungdaw after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attack, in Buthidaung, Myanmar.

(Photo: Reuters)

Scores of foreign militants – mostly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis – have joined the ranks of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in the weeks after the deadly 24-25 attacks in northern Rakhine, intelligence sources say.

Indian intelligence has intercepted communication between some of the Pakistani militants fighting for the ARSA when they called their principals and relatives in Pakistan.

On the basis of the intercepts, the number of Pakistani militants fighting in Rakhine is estimated to be around 30 to 40, but if such recruitment is a continuous process, these numbers may go up.

Also Read: US Worried About Rohingya Muslim Crisis: Tillerson to Myanmar Army

At Least 80-100 Bangladeshis Seem to Be Working With the ARSA

Bangladesh intelligence has come upon evidence of some volunteers from Chittagong and other areas of the country joining the battle against the Burmese Army.

These volunteers are from qaumi groups that support the struggle for an Islamic Republic in North Arakans. Some of them belong to Bangladesh terror groups like Jammat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), who are evading counter-terrorism action against them in Bangladesh and find it convenient to join the ARSA.

A top Bangladesh counter-terrorism official, over phone from Dhaka. 

Eighty to 100 Bangladeshis, at the very least, seems to be working with the ARSA

Journalists, who have gone to ARSA hideouts inside Bangladesh, say the rebels move around freely in the Teknaf-Cox's Bazar area and even take mediapersons inside Myanmar territory.

One such journalist told Myanmar's Mizzima Media they found no resistance from Burmese security forces during such forays.

Besides Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, a small contingent of Uzbeks, Arabs, and Afghans have also arrived in south-eastern Bangladesh. Intelligence officials say they are being 'prepared' for future terror strikes in Myanmar, including Rakhine.

Their numbers are estimated at between 30 to 35.

Also watch: Rohingya Crisis: Refugee Rights Org Wants Myanmar Sanctioned Again

“The Authorities Are Playing With Fire”

This is dangerous. The ISI is creating another jihad theatre because for them; jihad is commerce. India, Myanmar and Bangladesh should firmly ensure Rakhine is not the next Afghanistan.

Major General Gaganjit Singh, former Deputy Chief of India’s Defence Intelligence Agency

The Mizzima has earlier furnished incontrovertible evidence of close links between the ARSA, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI.

The ISI is said to be controlling through its 'external publicity' division the Rohingya networks which are on a propoganda overdrive to garner global Muslim support for the 'jihad in Arakans,’ like similar efforts in the 1980s for the Afghan jihad.

Without ignoring the suffering of the local people, evidence is emerging of a more organised, Islamist-inspired militancy in the area – and the army’s ferocious response to it – which could have far-reaching consequences.

“The authorities are playing with fire,” a diplomat familiar with the issue told top Myanmar watcher Bertil Lintner.

“There’s widespread sympathy for the militants in the Muslim world. Or, as the ICG says, unless properly handled, this could well be the beginning of a new religiously-motivated insurgency with outside support."

Movements to Highlight the Rohingya Cause

Key to the revival of the Rohingya insurgency is Abdus Qadoos Burmi, a Pakistani of Rohingya descent, who first launched his Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami-Arakan (HUJI-A) and then used it as, which may be part of a broader network usually transcribed from the name in Arabic as Harakah al-Yaqin, the ‘Faith Movement.’

Then he finally merged all these groups into the newly-created ARSA, which is also headed by a Pakistan-born Rohingya, Abdullah Junooni. The ARSA military wing chief, Hafiz Tohar, is, however, from a Rakhine village, from where he was recruited by Qadoos Burmi, who developed close links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and its political wing, Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD).

Both organisations are banned in Pakistan but continue to operate more or less openly. According to a US diplomatic cable dated as early as 10 August 2009, and made public by Wikileaks, LeT and its “alias” JuD are affiliated with the international terrorist network al-Qaida and have raised funds for its activities from so-called charities in Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after the first bout of violence in June 2012, LeT and JuD initiated a movement called the Difa-e-Musalman e-Arakan Conference to highlight the Rohingya issue.

In August the same year, two senior JuD operatives, identified by intelligence agencies as Shahid Mahmood and Nadeem Awan, visited Bangladesh to make contact with Rohingyas in camps near the Burmese border. Religious and some military-style training is said to have been provided. At the same time, LeT-linked operatives visited the Mae Sot area in Thailand, where training was also provided to potential militants.

Now the LeT and ARSA have managed to create, with ISI guidance and funding, a huge social media network to build support for the Arakan jihad.

Prominent Dissemination of Fake Images

Lintner, who has investigated this process, says that "while not denying that atrocities have been carried out, veteran human rights observers are appalled by the dissemination of a flood of fake images coming from the area."

He gives a few examples :

• Most recently, pictures of a Cambodian child being tortured by a Dutch man and two Cambodian men appeared in British newspaper Daily Mail, claiming that it was a Rohingya toddler being tortured by Burmese soldiers.
• Pictures of victims of the May 2008 Cyclone Nargis and an earthquake in the Chinese province Sichuan, also in May 2008, have been peddled as evidence of violence against the Rohingyas as well.
• Pictures of Christians laid in an open field and killed by Islamic militants in Nigeria were said to be dead Rohingyas. Even a picture of a Muslim man killed in a traffic accident in Thailand was portrayed as a victim of violence in Arakan State.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has released genuine pictures of villages that have been burned down in Arakan State and other confirmed reports of abuses, has had to be careful to sort fact from fiction.

According to David Mathieson, who has covered human rights abuses for HRW for 15 years, said many photos and videos they had been sent were “crude fakes.”

"By doing so, some Rohingya-support groups are actually undermining the work of internationally-recognised human rights organisations such as the HRW, says Lintner.

“One bad set of reporting gives the government ammunition to smear serious rights reporting and discredit professional reports,” said Mathieson.

It also shows that social media can be misused as a platform for transmitting information of complex human rights issues and users should automatically question every report and image instead of immediately posting anguish and invective. Too often people feed off their emotions during crises, and don’t rely on balanced reporting.

David Mathieson of HRW

(Subir Bhaumik, a veteran BBC Correspondent, is now Consulting Editor with Myanmar's Mizzima Media Inc. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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