Rohingya militants joining the fight for Myanmar’s Rakhine, putting refugees at risk

By International Crisis Group: As rebel groups have advanced across Myanmar in the past 18 months, nowhere has the Southeast Asian country’s military government lost more ground than in Rakhine state, a strip of land along its western coast, bordering Bangladesh.

There, the 45,000-strong Arakan Army has seized control of much of northern Rakhine and now appears poised to take over the entire state, even as the junta has pummelled resistance-held towns and cities with airstrikes and tried to mobilize a former bitter enemy against the AA.

Since at least last year, Rohingya militant groups have been fighting the AA, often alongside junta troops or allied militias, and have recently paused a years-long turf war to control refugee camps in Bangladesh in order to concentrate on the battle for Rakhine, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

A predominantly Muslim ethnic group with a long history of oppression in Myanmar, the Rohingya were targeted by the military in what is now widely recognized as a genocidal campaign in 2016, which left tens of thousands dead and drove the majority of the remaining population into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they have lived in sprawling and increasingly chaotic camps ever since.

While Myanmar’s parallel National Unity Government – an umbrella group of various ethnic armed organizations and resistance forces – has condemned previous administrations’ treatment of the Rohingya and called for their inclusion in a future federal democracy, the Arakan Army, which purports to represents the majority Rakhine ethnic group, has been accused of massacring Rohingya civilians and seeking to drive them out of the region.

“Over the past six months, Rohingya armed groups have paused their turf war in the camps in southern Bangladesh and stepped up recruitment of refugees, telling them the only way to return home is by fighting the Arakan Army,” said Thomas Kean, ICG senior consultant for Myanmar and Bangladesh based in Melbourne.

“Such an insurgency is very unlikely to succeed but could do immense damage on both sides of the border, and undermine any prospect for repatriation of the more than one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.”

At the core of this is the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an Islamist armed group whose attacks on Myanmar military posts in 2016 were used as justification for the subsequent genocide. Largely operating in exile ever since, ARSA has become the dominant force in Cox’s Bazar, a sprawling camp on the Bangladesh border where the majority of Rohingya refugees live. Over the years, ARSA has fought Bangladeshi security forces and other armed groups for control of the camps and has been accused of murdering civilian leaders who challenge it.

Representatives of both AA and ARSA did not respond to requests for comment. In the past, both groups have expressed support for a multi-ethnic Rakhine.

The situation for Rohingya in Bangladesh has grown increasingly dire in recent years, with international funding already insufficient before U.S. President Donald Trump moved to slash most of his country’s foreign aid spending. The increased desperation in Cox’s Bazar has made recruitment easier for armed groups like ARSA, according to multiple reports by aid groups.

Since last year, despite longstanding opposition to the Myanmar military, ARSA forces have fought alongside the junta against the AA in multiple operations, according to local media and online statements by ARSA representatives.

Fighting between Rohingya armed groups and the AA, “as well as the presence of Rohingya in regime-controlled militias,” has had a “ruinous effect on communal relations,” the ICG report warns, and hate speech on social media is growing, echoing a situation around the 2016-2018 crackdown, when genocidal messages spread widely on Facebook and other platforms.

Some 200,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine as a result of the fighting over the past year, according to ICG. Around 400,000 still live in territory controlled by the AA, and as the group becomes the dominant power in the region, it will be pivotal to any negotiations to allow refugees to return, something Bangladesh has long sought despite warnings from the United Nations and others that the situation in Myanmar is too unstable.

Mr. Kean said that in order to reduce support for armed struggle among Rohingya refugees, AA “needs to demonstrate to both Bangladesh and the Rohingya that it can govern Rakhine State in the interests of all communities.”

“Further conflict between Rohingya armed groups and the Arakan Army is in the interest of neither the Rohingya people, Bangladesh nor the Arakan Army,” the ICG report warns. “Given the Arakan Army’s military strength, armed struggle will not succeed in helping the Rohingya return to Rakhine State, and it could have devastating consequences, now that the Arakan Army in effect controls most of the areas where Rohingya remain and all the areas to which refugees would return.”