‘They don’t represent us’: Rohingya armed groups wreak havoc in Rakhine

The return of Rohingya militants to the state in recent years to fight the Arakan Army has led to a string of alleged abuses against civilians, and has imperilled relations with the Rakhine community.

On February 8 last year, a group of armed men arrived at a Rohingya village in northern Rakhine State. They were members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, and were looking for middle school teacher Ko Maung Ba, who they accused of sharing information about them with the media and human rights organisations.

On finding Maung Ba, the militants took him outside the village and shot him dead that same morning, his brother Ko Tun Win told Frontier.

Tun Win, who requested that his and his brother’s name be changed for security reasons, said the enmity between Maung Ba and ARSA started in 2017. That year the group tried to assert control over the village, which is close to the Bangladesh border in Buthidaung Township, but Tun Win said many residents including Maung Ba rejected it.

2017 marked the height of ARSA’s power in northern Rakhine, before a brutal operation by the Myanmar military later that year drove the group’s fighters and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya civilians into Bangladesh to live as refugees. However, in the following years the fighters continued to sneak back across the border and make demands on the remaining Rohingya residents.

“In 2019, an ARSA member tried to forcibly marry a girl from the village, but my brother and others protected her. ARSA also tried to collect taxes, and my brother opposed them again,” Tun Win said. “He was also in touch with Fortify Rights and other international NGOs, passing them information, and ARSA didn’t like that.”

After threatening to kill Maung Ba and his father in 2021, ARSA finally murdered him last year, prompting Tun Win and his family to flee to Bangladesh, where they now live in the sprawling refugee camps of Cox’s Bazaar district.

“We were very scared and it was very painful. They’re bullying Rohingya people. They claim they’re protecting our community, but that’s just nonsense,” Tun Win said.

By the time of the killing, ARSA was back in force. From at least early 2023 it started setting up bases in northern Rakhine along the Bangladesh border and in the Mayu mountain range that separates Buthidaung from neighbouring Maungdaw Township. A rival, long-dormant militant group, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, also began infiltrating the state from Bangladesh. More recently another, little-known force called the Arakan Rohingya Army started to establish itself too.

These various groups have tried to re-impose control over Rohingya villages, prompting allegations of brutality.

“They are mainly based in Maungdaw Township, and from there they are roaming around in villages across Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships,” U Tun, a Rakhine political analyst told Frontier, also using a pseudonym to protect his identity. “These Rohingya armed groups are kidnapping, killing, beating and forcibly recruiting in these townships.”

The Rohingya militants are also regularly clashing with the Arakan Army, the Rakhine armed group that has largely seized the northern townships of the state from the Myanmar military over the last year. Yet, despite its claims to protect Rohingya civilians, the AA has been accused of massacring them on several occasions, making many Rohingya feel trapped in the middle.

Adding to their plight, some Rohingya in northern Rakhine and in Bangladesh have been forced or induced into fighting against the AA, either as conscripts of the Rohingya armed groups or of the Myanmar military. This has heightened distrust and resentment towards the community from the Rakhine Buddhist majority, prompting fears of a renewed communal, or interreligious, violence and fresh attempts to expel the mostly Muslim Rohingya from the state.

From rebels to military allies

ARSA was founded by members of the Rohingya diaspora after communal violence in Rakhine displaced about 100,000 Rohingya residents in 2012. The group subsequently infiltrated the state to recruit and train members but did not launch its first attack until October 2016, when it overran several Border Guard Police posts in northern Rakhine, provoking a brutal response by the military.

Worse was to come in August the following year, when the group launched much larger coordinated attacks on security posts in the north. This was met by a military “clearance operation” that killed thousands of Rohingya and drove over 730,000 of them out to the camps in Bangladesh, where they largely remain.

Despite its stealthy trips back into Rakhine, ARSA focused on trying to control and profit from the camps in the years after 2017. It drew fresh recruits from among the refugees and engaged in drug smuggling and other illegal rackets, while imposing a reign of terror where camp residents were killed for speaking out against the group.

However, ARSA soon had to vie for power with other Rohingya armed groups, particularly RSO. The latter was founded in 1982 but seemed to disappear after 1998, before reemerging in recent years. The competition only deepened the lawlessness and danger for ordinary refugees.

“Violence has escalated especially rapidly over the past year, with up to a dozen different groups now engaged in turf wars and criminal activity, leading to a steep rise in killings and abductions,” said a report by the thinktank International Crisis Group in December 2023.

The rivals to ARSA often behaved little better, and even recruited many of the same abusive fighters.

“There are many armed groups in the camps, but most of them are formed by former ARSA members,” Ko Min Soe, a refugee in Cox’s Bazar, told Frontier while using a pseudonym for security reasons. “Both ARSA and their former members are committing abuses against us.”

On trying to reestablish itself in Rakhine about two years ago, ARSA’s main enemy was not the Myanmar military but the AA. It clashed with the Rakhine group in the Mayu mountains in July 2023, and the AA has since been determined to stop ARSA and other Rohingya armies from gaining a permanent foothold and challenging its control of the state. This control has grown further since the AA broke a ceasefire and resumed its war against the Myanmar military in November 2023. The latter now only controls the capital Sittwe and Kyaukphyu and Munaung towns in Rakhine.

The military has tried to hit back by recruiting Rohingya into its ranks, including through alleged coercion and false promises of citizenship to members of the largely stateless community. It has also been accused of covertly smoothing ARSA’s path back into the state to fight the AA, as part of its longrunning policy of divide-and-rule.

A former ARSA member said the group has been able to move back and forth between Bangladesh and Myanmar thanks to its contacts in the security forces of both countries

“ARSA has links with some low-level officers in the Bangladeshi border guard police and military. They also communicate with Myanmar military officers. These officers allow them to cross the border from time to time,” he told Frontier, asking to stay anonymous to avoid reprisals.

Forced recruitment

Ko Sein Aung, a 32-year-old Rohingya resident of a village in northern Buthidaung Township, said both ARSA and RSO troops became visible in his area in 2023.

ARSA members often visited his village before the AA took control of it in March last year, to try to recruit fighters and take food and money. However, ARSA kept the deployments small and discreet at that time to avoid alerting the AA, and residents were often unwilling to cooperate.

“Usually only about 10 members would come to our village. They came secretly and tried to recruit and organise new troops, but people didn’t want to join,” he told Frontier, using a pseudonym to protect his identity.

“They said they needed to fight the AA and for our rights. They said they would take action against us if we didn’t join them. People were afraid and many ran away. The people who could afford it went to Sittwe or took a boat to other countries, while others moved elsewhere in Buthidaung,” said Sein Aung.

ARSA has meanwhile continued recruiting in the Bangladesh camps, often forcibly, to allegedly fill both its own ranks and that of the Myanmar military.

Min Soe described one instance in May last year, when ARSA members went around abducting young refugee men at night.

“They said men aged under 30 needed to join, and abducted between 15 and 30 people. They caught four people in our area, including a minor. They threatened to beat the refugees who refused,” he said, adding that the RSO has also continued recruiting people in the camps.

But as well as threats, these groups have also used deception to gain willing recruits and support. Min Soe said rumours had been spread in the camps that Rohingya who join the fight against the AA will be granted Myanmar citizenship.

“These are baseless rumors, but some Rohingya youth believe them and have ended up caught in fighting,” he said. “Many young men in the camps support ARSA or RSO.”

Besides the false promises, some refugees are also swayed by anger and hatred towards the AA.

One 21-year-old refugee told Frontier on condition of anonymity, “The AA is oppressing and bullying the Rohingya, so we need to fight back. Now ARSA and RSO are attacking the AA and that’s why I support them.”

This hostility is not without basis. There are credible reports that when the AA took Buthidaung town in May last year, it torched hundreds of Rohingya homes and killed an unknown number of civilians.

ARSA has tried to retaliate for this and other incidents, such as the alleged killing of more than 100 Rohingya civilians fleeing Maungdaw in August last year by AA drone and shelling attacks.

On December 8, when the AA was overrunning the last regime bastion in Maungdaw, ARSA released a video showing its troops surrounding five Rakhine men and demanding that the AA withdraw from northern Rakhine.

The men had been detained when ARSA fighters raided Sin Swe Ya village, in northern Maungdaw near the Mayu mountains. “They also killed a young woman and burned down five houses,” a Rakhine resident of a nearby village told Frontier.

Seemingly out of the blue, ARSA’s top leader Ata Ullah was arrested by the Bangladeshi authorities on the outskirts of Dhaka along with 10 other people in March this year. However, this does not seem to have crippled the group’s operations.

“ARSA members continue operating in Rakhine, and the group is still very active in some of the refugee camps,” said a community leader in one of the camps.

“They get funding from the Rohingya diaspora in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The Bangladeshi authorities should investigate who is supporting ARSA and take action against them. If they don’t, ARSA will still continue their criminal activities,” he told Frontier.

Meanwhile, local outlet Narinjara reported fresh clashes between the AA and ARSA in Maungdaw on April 27.

However, none of the Rohingya armies seriously challenge the AA’s dominance of Rakhine. “They do not have the strength to fight the AA, so they target local residents instead,” U Tun said.

Although the groups aren’t a serious military threat, U Tun is concerned their activities could deepen distrust between the Rakhine and Rohingya communities, possibly reigniting the communal violence seen in 2012.

Rohingya civilians could also risk reprisals from the AA, whose leadership has struck a more belligerent tone against Rohingya politics and activism over the last two years.

A Rohingya resident of Buthidaung shared these worries.

“Rakhine people will misunderstand us,” he told Frontier, asking to remain anonymous. “ARSA and RSO are coming from Bangladesh and we’re the ones who are going to suffer the consequences.”

“They don’t represent us,” he said. “They only oppress us.”