“While Myanmar’s emergent Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) claims it’s like other ethnic armed groups fighting for self-determination across the country and should not be branded as a terrorist organization, the realities on the ground tell a different tale.”
“On September 14, ARSA said it wanted to “make it clear” that it had no “links to Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Lashkar-e-Taiba or any transnational terrorist group.” ARSA also wanted “it to be known by all states that it is prepared to work with security agencies to intercept and prevent terrorists from entering [Rakhine] and making a bad situation worse.””
“Security analysts and terrorism experts are not convinced considering the group’s clear links to foreign extremist groups, including in Pakistan. ARSA’s leader, Ataullah abu Ammar Junjuni, also known as Hafiz Tohar, was born in Karachi and received madrassa education in Saudi Arabia.”
“According to intelligence analysts, its mentor is Abdus Qadoos Burmi, another Pakistani of Rohingya descent [who] has well-documented links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, or the Army of the Righteous, one of South Asia’s largest Islamic terrorist organizations that operates mainly from Pakistan.”
“ARSA’s second-ranking leader is a shadowy man known only as “Sharif” who comes from Chittagong in southwestern Bangladesh and does not appear in any of the group’s propaganda videos.”
“ARSA itself may have been able to recruit angry and desperate young men among the Rohingya in Rakhine state and refugee camps in Bangladesh, but, according to security analysts, there also 150 odd foreigners among their rank.”
“Most of them are from Bangladesh, eight to ten come from Pakistan with smaller groups from Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Thailand. Two are reportedly from Uzbekistan. Trainings held in the Myanmar-Bangladesh border areas have been carried out in part by older veterans of the Afghan wars, the security analysts say.”
Read more: The truth behind Myanmar’s Rohingya insurgency
2021-week24
