A 12-hour gunbattle and the torching of a refugee settlement alongside the Bangladesh-Myanmar border thrust the Rohingya Solidarity Group, an outdated armed rebel group, again into the highlight.
The preventing final month between members of RSO and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Military (ARSA) insurgents left not less than one individual useless and compelled tons of of Rohingya refugees to flee the encampment.
The violence was the primary identified act of open preventing between the 2 militant teams, who each declare to help the Rohingya trigger in opposition to the Myanmar navy. It boiled over from tensions in a turf struggle within the sprawling refugee camps that dot the frontier between the neighboring international locations.
BenarNews obtained eye-witness testimonies and images of the slain individual, Hamid Ullah, that counsel he was sporting a camouflage uniform emblazoned with an RSO insignia.
Based in 1982, the RSO was the foremost Rohingya armed group preventing the Myanmar navy earlier than it went into a chronic hibernation within the 2010s. ARSA crammed that vacuum when it carried out a collection of assaults in opposition to Myanmar’s border outposts, beginning in 2016. These provoked a Burmese navy crackdown that unleashed an enormous exodus of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh in 2017.
However as ARSA’s picture throughout the Rohingya group faltered, RSO made a comeback after the Myanmar navy coup in February 2021. Since then, the teams have traded barbs, with every making an attempt to determine dominance within the Rohingya camps, culminating within the violence that flared up on the refugee settlement within the no-man’s land between the 2 borders on Jan. 18.
“We could not be a silent spectator but were compelled to suppress that terrorist gang who were extensively carrying out different criminal activities […] in the Rohingya refugee camps [from] that zero-line camp,” the RSO mentioned in a press release offered to BenarNews.
Efforts to succeed in ARSA have been unsuccessful.
ARSA burst onto the scene after it attacked Myanmar’s border outposts in 2016 and 2017. The Myanmar navy used these assaults to justify its brutal counter-insurgent offensive in August 2017 that pressured about 740,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.
The United Nations described the crackdown as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” and the USA finally declared the atrocities and different abuses carried out by the Burmese safety forces in the course of the offensive as genocide.
Following the February 2021 coup d’état in Myanmar, the RSO resurfaced in Bangladesh that March.
An official with Bangladesh’s Nationwide Safety Intelligence claimed that regardless of its sudden re-emergence, RSO has been lively within the Chittagong Hill Tracts space within the southeast, and in neighboring Cox’s Bazar the place many refugees have sheltered for the reason that 2017 navy clearance operation.
“RSO is not like ARSA,” he advised BenarNews. “[RSO members] are all highly trained.”
The official spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he was unauthorized to talk to reporters.
The border settlement within the no-man’s land – also called “Zero Point” – is exterior the purview of both Bangladesh or Myanmar, which permits Rohingya militants or criminals to make use of it as a sanctuary, in keeping with Christina Fink, a professor at Georgetown College who’s an skilled on Myanmar.
“The reason for the fighting is that these two Rohingya armed groups are competing to gain control over the camp, and that’s because of its location,” Fink advised Radio Free Asia’s Burmese service.
“And whoever has control of this piece of land can more easily make forays into Myanmar. More importantly, they can make money by taxing informal border trade.”
The temporary episode of latest preventing adopted a unprecedented escalation between Bangladeshi safety forces and suspected ARSA members within the encampment alongside the border in November final 12 months.
On the time, the Speedy Motion Battalion, an elite Bangladeshi police unit, performed a raid in opposition to “drug smugglers,” throughout which an intelligence officer with the Directorate Basic of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) was killed. Though Bangladeshi authorities initially blamed unspecified “drug smugglers” for the incident, DGFI later formally accused ARSA chief Ataullah Abu Amar Jununi and others of killing its official.
The federal government additionally withdrew the RAB commander who performed the raid, which appeared to have violated worldwide norms for respecting no-man’s land areas.
Shafiur Rahman, a Britain-based journalist and an influential Rohingya watcher, linked the “botched” November operation with the latest RSO-ARSA skirmish.
“Bangladesh could not risk becoming implicated in the situation again,” he wrote in a latest weblog put up. “Therefore, it is not surprising that many residents of ‘no-man’s land’ believe that while the January 18th attack was carried out by RSO, it must have had the approval of those in power.”
Ko Ko Linn, an RSO spokesperson, advised BenarNews through WhatsApp, “We are very much thankful to the government and the people of Bangladesh for giving long-time shelter to our helpless community.”
“The government, the politicians, and the people are seeking goodness for our community. The government strongly stands for us with full sympathies,” he mentioned.
Officers at Bangladesh’s overseas ministry didn’t instantly reply to a BenarNews request for remark concerning the nation’s alleged backing of RSO.
Lengthy hibernation
All through the Eighties and 90s, the RSO operated within the border areas of Bangladesh. And unbiased observers credited the help of successive Bangladeshi governments for the RSO’s progress.
In 1991, Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist who extensively lined the Myanmar militant teams, reported concerning the presence of heavy artillery in RSO camps inside Bangladesh.
In 1998, the group reportedly dissolved below an umbrella group, the Arakan Rohingya Nationwide Organisation.
Some observers claimed that RSO constructed a robust rapport with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), a Bangladeshi Muslim political get together, and likewise prompt that some Rohingya militants tied with RSO had hyperlinks with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
However in Bangladesh, its ties with JeI proved essential.
Linter reported that an entity in Cox’s Bazar tied to a JeI-linked charity was RSO’s navy headquarters and that JeI’s pupil cadres obtained coaching, too.
Bangladeshi press reviews additionally counsel that RSO operatives simply blended into Cox’s Bazar’s native communities as a result of cultural similarities and helped construct a strong political base in help of the JeI.
When Bangladesh’s Awami League get together returned to energy in 2009, RSO confronted a extreme crackdown, primarily due to its deep ties with JeI, and subsequently light into obscurity.
In the meantime, Myanmar by no means stopped blaming RSO for any Rohingya-related violence in its territories.
In October 2016, when Burmese border outposts first got here below assault from what would later be referred to as ARSA, the Myanmar authorities initially blamed RSO. It took Myanmar a while to comprehend that ARSA and RSO have been separate teams.
Filling the vacuum
Within the years that adopted the 2017 Burmese navy offensive that drove practically three-quarters of 1,000,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, ARSA built a strong base throughout Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, the place about 1,000,000 refugees dwell.
An array of observers, together with Tom Andrews, the U.N. particular rapporteur for Myanmar, accused ARSA of working a ruthless reign of terror within the Bangladeshi camps.
ARSA denied the allegations and insisted that criminals have been abusing its recognition, however the group’s denials now bear scant, if any, credibility.
For its half, the Bangladesh authorities for years steadfastly denied that ARSA rebels had a foothold within the crowded and sprawling camps close to the Myanmar frontier.
The federal government might have been frightened that an acknowledgment would undermine its stress marketing campaign in opposition to Myanmar to take again its nationals, in keeping with observers.
However issues began to vary when the Myanmar navy staged a coup in early 2021.
With the elected civilian authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi gone in a single day, Bangladesh noticed little hope for Rohingya repatriation below a junta.
In the meantime, opposition teams in Myanmar shaped another authorities in exile, referred to as the Nationwide Unity Authorities (NUG).
Its armed wing, the “People’s Army,” aimed to unite Myanmar’s many insurgent teams and factions divided throughout ethnic and political strains.
However even inside Myanmar’s opposition factions, ARSA was deemed categorically unfit to hitch the Individuals’s Military.
In that context, the RSO emerged from its extended hibernation in March 2021 when its social media pages popped up and revealed statements supporting the NUG.
Aung Kyaw Moe, the Rohingya Affairs advisor to the shadow Nationwide Unity Authorities (NUG), acknowledged the liaison with the RSO.
“After the revolution, we met the RSO online,” he advised RFA Burmese. “They said they were contributing to the revolution, but they didn’t.”
A number of claims by RSO of high-profile assaults in opposition to Myanmar navy or border guards have been discredited by observers.
“Like other Rohingya groups, RSO produces a lot of propaganda,” a long-time Western analyst, who was not licensed to talk to the press, advised BenarNews.
“For example, in October last year, they claimed they had captured a Myanmar border guard post after a fight but it later turned out it was an abandoned post.”
Right this moment, most Rohingyas see RSO because the lesser of the devils, whereas Rohingya diaspora figures publicly resign ARSA.
“The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is considered a ‘terrorist group’ by the majority of Rohingya,” Ro Nay San Lwin, a Europe-based Rohingya activist, advised RFA Burmese. “We clearly said that we cannot accept the ARSA. Can the RSO work in an orderly manner? We will see.”
But it surely took the homicide of Muhib Ullah, a famed Rohingya activist chief, in September 2021 for the Bangladesh authorities to crack down critically in opposition to ARSA.
Muhib Ullah, a outstanding civil society determine, had sought safety from the Bangladesh authorities after ARSA threatened him with demise. After his homicide at his workplace in one of many refugee camps, his members of the family publicly blamed the armed group.
A police investigation later discovered that ARSA killed him due to his recognition throughout the camp.
The homicide put the Bangladesh authorities below huge worldwide stress to enhance security and safety within the camps. And because the authorities reshifted its give attention to ARSA, different actors, together with RSO, benefitted.
However to the odd Rohingyas trapped in violence within the congested refugee camps, the armed resistance isn’t interesting.
“We face threats every day. You never know what will happen next,” Sayed Alam, a Rohingya refugee dwelling within the Kutupalong camp, advised RFA Burmese. “But we have minimal interests in armed organizations. We are more interested in returning home to our own country and having our work back.”
Radio Free Asia, a information service affiliated with BenarNews, contributed to this report. Abdur Rahman and Ahammad Foyez for BenarNews contributed to it from Cox’s Bazar and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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