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Live Conflict Myanmar Civil War
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In world's largest refugee camps, Rohingya mobilise to fight in Myanmar
By Devjyot Ghoshal and Poppy McphersonSummary
- Thousands of Rohingya refugees recruited from Bangladesh to fight in Myanmar
- Offered incentives by Myanmar junta to battle ethnic Arakan Army
- Some Bangladeshi officials back Rohingya armed struggle
- Many Rohingya disillusioned by poverty, violence in camps
Thousands of Rohingya insurgents, like 32-year-old Rafiq, have emerged from camps housing over a million refugees in Cox's Bazar, where militant recruitment and violence have surged this year, according to four people familiar with the conflict and two internal aid agency reports seen by Reuters.
"We need to fight to take back our lands," said Rafiq, a lean and bearded man in a Muslim prayer cap who spent weeks fighting in Myanmar before returning after he was shot in the leg.
"There is no other way."
The Rohingya, a mainly Muslim group that is the world's largest stateless population, started fleeing in droves to Bangladesh in 2016 to escape what the United Nations has called a genocide at the hands of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's military.
A long-running rebellion in Myanmar has gained ground since the military staged a coup in 2021. It involves a complex array of armed groups - with Rohingya fighters now entering the fray. Many have joined groups loosely allied with their former military persecutors to fight the Arakan Army ethnic militia that has seized much of the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, from which many Rohingya fled. Reuters interviewed 18 people who described the rise of insurgent groups inside Bangladesh's refugee camps and reviewed two internal briefings on the security situation written by aid agencies in recent months.
The news agency is reporting for the first time the scale of recruitment by Rohingya armed groups in the camps, which totals between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters.
Reuters is also revealing specifics about failed negotiations between the Rohingya and the Arakan Army, inducements offered by the junta to Rohingya fighters such as money and citizenship documents, as well as about the cooperation of some Bangladesh officials with the insurgency.
Several of the people - who include Rohingya fighters, humanitarian workers and Bangladesh officials - spoke on condition of anonymity or that only their first name be used.
Bangladesh's government did not respond to Reuters' questions, while the junta denied in a statement to Reuters that it had conscripted any "Muslims."
"Muslim residents requested protection. So, basic military training was provided in order to help them defend their own villages and regions," it said.
The two largest Rohingya militant groups - the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) - do not appear to have mass support in the camps in Cox's Bazar, said Shahab Enam Khan, an international relations professor at Bangladesh's Jahangirnagar University.
But the emergence of trained Rohingya fighters and weapons in and around the camps is regarded as a ticking time bomb by Bangladesh, one security source said. Some 30,000 children are born each year into deep poverty in the camps, where violence is rife.
Disillusioned refugees could be drawn by non-state actors into militant activities and pushed further into criminal enterprises, said Khan. "This will then suck in regional countries, too."
FIGHT FOR MAUNGDAW
After a boat-ride from near the camps to the western Myanmar town of Maungdaw around the midyear monsoon, Rohingya insurgent Abu Afna said he was housed and armed by junta troops. In the seaside town where the military is fighting the Arakan Army for control, Rohingya were sometimes even billeted in the same room with junta soldiers."When I'd be with the junta, I would feel that I am standing next to the same people who raped and killed our mothers and sisters," he said.
But the Arakan Army is backed by the majority Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community that includes people who joined the military in purging the Rohingya.
Reuters this year reported that the Arakan Army was responsible for burning down one of the largest remaining settlements of Rohingya in Myanmar and that the RSO had reached a "battlefield understanding" with the Myanmar military to fight alongside each other.
"Our main enemy isn't the Myanmar government, but the Rakhine community," Abu Afna said.
The military provided Rohingya with weapons, training and cash, according to Abu Afna, as well as a Bangladesh source and second Rohingya man who said he was forcibly recruited by the junta. The junta also offered the Rohingya a card certifying Myanmar citizenship. For some, it was a powerful lure. Rohingya have long been denied citizenship despite generations in Myanmar and are now confined to refugee camps where Bangladesh bans them from seeking formal employment.
"We didn't go for the money," Abu Afna said. "We wanted the card, nationality."
About 2,000 people were recruited from the refugee camps between March and May through drives employing "ideological, nationalist, and financial inducements, coupled with false promises, threats, and coercion," according to a June aid agency briefing seen by Reuters, which was shared on condition the authors not be named because it was not public. Many of those brought to fight were taken by force, including children as young as 13, according to a U.N. official and two Rohingya fighters.
Cash-strapped Bangladesh is increasingly reluctant to take in Rohingya refugees and a person familiar with the matter said some Bangladesh officials believed armed struggle was the only way the Rohingya would return to Myanmar. They also believed that backing a rebel group would give Dhaka more sway, the person said.
Bangladesh retired Brig. Gen. Md. Manzur Qader, who has visited the camps, told Reuters his country's government should back the Rohingya in their armed struggle, which he said would push the junta and Arakan Army to negotiate and facilitate the Rohingya's return.
Under the previous Bangladesh government, some intelligence officials supported armed groups but with little coordination because there was no overall directive, Qader said.
Near the camps in Cox's Bazar, where many roads are monitored by security checkpoints, dozens of Rohingya were taken earlier this year by Bangladesh officials to a jetty overlooking Maungdaw and sent across the border by boat, said Abu Afna, who was part of the group. “It’s your country, you go and take it back,” he recalled one official telling them.
Reuters was unable to independently verify his account.
‘WE LIVE IN FEAR’
In Rakhine state, insurgents struggled to push back the heavily-armed and better drilled Arakan Army. But the battle for Maungdaw has stretched on for six months and Rohingya fighters said tactics including ambushes have slowed the rebel offensive."The Arakan Army thought they would have a sweeping victory very soon," said a Bangladesh official with knowledge of the situation. "Maungdaw has proven them wrong because of the participation of the Rohingya."
Bangladesh attempted to broker talks between Rohingya and the Arakan Army early this year, but the discussions quickly collapsed, according to Qader and another person familiar with the matter. Dhaka is increasingly frustrated by the Arakan Army's strategy of attacking Rohingya settlements, the two people said, with the violence complicating efforts to repatriate refugees to Rakhine. The Arakan Army has denied targeting Rohingya settlements and said it helps civilians without discriminating on the basis of religion.
Back in Cox's Bazar, there is turmoil in the camps, where RSO and ARSA are jostling for influence. Fighting and shootings are common, terrifying residents and disrupting humanitarian efforts. John Quinley, director at human rights group Fortify Rights, said violence was at the highest levels since the camps were established in 2017. Armed groups have killed at least 60 people this year, while abducting and torturing opponents and using "threats and harassment to try to silence their critics," according to a forthcoming Fortify report.
Wendy McCance, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh, warned that international funding for the camp would run out within 10 years and called for refugees to be given "livelihood opportunities" to avert a "massive vacuum where people, especially young men, are being drawn into organised groups to have an income."
Sharit Ullah, a Rohingya man who escaped from Maungdaw with his wife and four children in May, described struggling to secure regular food rations.
The one-time rice and shrimp farmer said his biggest worry is the safety of his family amid spiraling violence.
"We have nothing here," he said, over the shrieks of children playing in the squalid alleyways running like filigree through the camps. "We live in fear."
This is kind of big, I realized nobody noticed it yet. Personally I heard some stuff. But I was waiting for a credible source to pick up the story. This started with some DGFI initiatives without any unified directive from top state apparatus during Hassina regime. However, appearantly now under IG Army+DGFI (BD military intelligence) is stepping up the efforts, from what I heard.
It's a risky endeavor. But risk acceptance and risk management is part of the job. Ultimately BD couldn't stay away from this forever and had to get involved in the end. One thing to keep in mind, we really tried hard through peaceful means. But they (all of them) just couldn't help themselves. And now it's on them. However, I find it kind of ironic= (loosely speaking) BD+Rohingya militias+Myanmar Junta vs Arakan Army.
@Nilgiri @Isa Khan what do you think? Also tagging, @TR_123456 @Sanchez @Ryder
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In world's largest refugee camps, Rohingya mobilise to fight in Myanmar
By Devjyot Ghoshal and Poppy Mcpherson
Summary
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Nov 25 (Reuters) - One day in July, Rafiq slipped out of the world's largest refugee settlement in southern Bangladesh and crossed the border into Myanmar on a small boat. His destination: a ruinous civil war in a nation that he had fled in 2017.
- Thousands of Rohingya refugees recruited from Bangladesh to fight in Myanmar
- Offered incentives by Myanmar junta to battle ethnic Arakan Army
- Some Bangladeshi officials back Rohingya armed struggle
- Many Rohingya disillusioned by poverty, violence in camps
Thousands of Rohingya insurgents, like 32-year-old Rafiq, have emerged from camps housing over a million refugees in Cox's Bazar, where militant recruitment and violence have surged this year, according to four people familiar with the conflict and two internal aid agency reports seen by Reuters.
"We need to fight to take back our lands," said Rafiq, a lean and bearded man in a Muslim prayer cap who spent weeks fighting in Myanmar before returning after he was shot in the leg.
"There is no other way."
The Rohingya, a mainly Muslim group that is the world's largest stateless population, started fleeing in droves to Bangladesh in 2016 to escape what the United Nations has called a genocide at the hands of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's military.
A long-running rebellion in Myanmar has gained ground since the military staged a coup in 2021. It involves a complex array of armed groups - with Rohingya fighters now entering the fray. Many have joined groups loosely allied with their former military persecutors to fight the Arakan Army ethnic militia that has seized much of the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, from which many Rohingya fled. Reuters interviewed 18 people who described the rise of insurgent groups inside Bangladesh's refugee camps and reviewed two internal briefings on the security situation written by aid agencies in recent months.
The news agency is reporting for the first time the scale of recruitment by Rohingya armed groups in the camps, which totals between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters.
Reuters is also revealing specifics about failed negotiations between the Rohingya and the Arakan Army, inducements offered by the junta to Rohingya fighters such as money and citizenship documents, as well as about the cooperation of some Bangladesh officials with the insurgency.
Several of the people - who include Rohingya fighters, humanitarian workers and Bangladesh officials - spoke on condition of anonymity or that only their first name be used.
Bangladesh's government did not respond to Reuters' questions, while the junta denied in a statement to Reuters that it had conscripted any "Muslims."
"Muslim residents requested protection. So, basic military training was provided in order to help them defend their own villages and regions," it said.
The two largest Rohingya militant groups - the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) - do not appear to have mass support in the camps in Cox's Bazar, said Shahab Enam Khan, an international relations professor at Bangladesh's Jahangirnagar University.
But the emergence of trained Rohingya fighters and weapons in and around the camps is regarded as a ticking time bomb by Bangladesh, one security source said. Some 30,000 children are born each year into deep poverty in the camps, where violence is rife.
Disillusioned refugees could be drawn by non-state actors into militant activities and pushed further into criminal enterprises, said Khan. "This will then suck in regional countries, too."
FIGHT FOR MAUNGDAW
After a boat-ride from near the camps to the western Myanmar town of Maungdaw around the midyear monsoon, Rohingya insurgent Abu Afna said he was housed and armed by junta troops. In the seaside town where the military is fighting the Arakan Army for control, Rohingya were sometimes even billeted in the same room with junta soldiers.
"When I'd be with the junta, I would feel that I am standing next to the same people who raped and killed our mothers and sisters," he said.
But the Arakan Army is backed by the majority Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community that includes people who joined the military in purging the Rohingya.
Reuters this year reported that the Arakan Army was responsible for burning down one of the largest remaining settlements of Rohingya in Myanmar and that the RSO had reached a "battlefield understanding" with the Myanmar military to fight alongside each other.
"Our main enemy isn't the Myanmar government, but the Rakhine community," Abu Afna said.
The military provided Rohingya with weapons, training and cash, according to Abu Afna, as well as a Bangladesh source and second Rohingya man who said he was forcibly recruited by the junta. The junta also offered the Rohingya a card certifying Myanmar citizenship. For some, it was a powerful lure. Rohingya have long been denied citizenship despite generations in Myanmar and are now confined to refugee camps where Bangladesh bans them from seeking formal employment.
"We didn't go for the money," Abu Afna said. "We wanted the card, nationality."
About 2,000 people were recruited from the refugee camps between March and May through drives employing "ideological, nationalist, and financial inducements, coupled with false promises, threats, and coercion," according to a June aid agency briefing seen by Reuters, which was shared on condition the authors not be named because it was not public. Many of those brought to fight were taken by force, including children as young as 13, according to a U.N. official and two Rohingya fighters.
Cash-strapped Bangladesh is increasingly reluctant to take in Rohingya refugees and a person familiar with the matter said some Bangladesh officials believed armed struggle was the only way the Rohingya would return to Myanmar. They also believed that backing a rebel group would give Dhaka more sway, the person said.
Bangladesh retired Brig. Gen. Md. Manzur Qader, who has visited the camps, told Reuters his country's government should back the Rohingya in their armed struggle, which he said would push the junta and Arakan Army to negotiate and facilitate the Rohingya's return.
Under the previous Bangladesh government, some intelligence officials supported armed groups but with little coordination because there was no overall directive, Qader said.
Near the camps in Cox's Bazar, where many roads are monitored by security checkpoints, dozens of Rohingya were taken earlier this year by Bangladesh officials to a jetty overlooking Maungdaw and sent across the border by boat, said Abu Afna, who was part of the group. “It’s your country, you go and take it back,” he recalled one official telling them.
Reuters was unable to independently verify his account.
‘WE LIVE IN FEAR’
In Rakhine state, insurgents struggled to push back the heavily-armed and better drilled Arakan Army. But the battle for Maungdaw has stretched on for six months and Rohingya fighters said tactics including ambushes have slowed the rebel offensive.
"The Arakan Army thought they would have a sweeping victory very soon," said a Bangladesh official with knowledge of the situation. "Maungdaw has proven them wrong because of the participation of the Rohingya."
Bangladesh attempted to broker talks between Rohingya and the Arakan Army early this year, but the discussions quickly collapsed, according to Qader and another person familiar with the matter. Dhaka is increasingly frustrated by the Arakan Army's strategy of attacking Rohingya settlements, the two people said, with the violence complicating efforts to repatriate refugees to Rakhine. The Arakan Army has denied targeting Rohingya settlements and said it helps civilians without discriminating on the basis of religion.
Back in Cox's Bazar, there is turmoil in the camps, where RSO and ARSA are jostling for influence. Fighting and shootings are common, terrifying residents and disrupting humanitarian efforts. John Quinley, director at human rights group Fortify Rights, said violence was at the highest levels since the camps were established in 2017. Armed groups have killed at least 60 people this year, while abducting and torturing opponents and using "threats and harassment to try to silence their critics," according to a forthcoming Fortify report.
Wendy McCance, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh, warned that international funding for the camp would run out within 10 years and called for refugees to be given "livelihood opportunities" to avert a "massive vacuum where people, especially young men, are being drawn into organised groups to have an income."
Sharit Ullah, a Rohingya man who escaped from Maungdaw with his wife and four children in May, described struggling to secure regular food rations.
The one-time rice and shrimp farmer said his biggest worry is the safety of his family amid spiraling violence.
"We have nothing here," he said, over the shrieks of children playing in the squalid alleyways running like filigree through the camps. "We live in fear."
This is kind of big, I realized nobody noticed it yet. Personally I heard some stuff. But I was waiting for a credible source to pick up the story. This started with some DGFI initiatives without any unified directive from top state apparatus during Hassina regime. However, appearantly now under IG Army+DGFI (BD military intelligence) is stepping up the efforts, from what I heard.
It's a risky endeavor. But risk acceptance and risk management is part of the job. Ultimately BD couldn't stay away from this forever and had to get involved in the end. One thing to keep in mind, we really tried hard through peaceful means. But they (all of them) just couldn't help themselves. And now it's on them. However, I find it kind of ironic= (loosely speaking) BD+Rohingya militias+Myanmar Junta vs Arakan Army.
@Nilgiri @Isa Khan what do you think? Also tagging, @TR_123456 @Sanchez @Ryder
I don't see anything good coming out of this long term if Rohingya is joining alongside the Junta. Junta is the one that drove them out with the mass scale pogroms and massacres involved....though the Arakan army might do the same given the chance.
The problem is twofold:
1) Level of junta treachery (and the kachin know this probably more than anyone else), thebackstabbing once they gain sufficient higher ground again..... after you cooperated in some way (higher ground for you and more autonomy for me here). Generals just dont operate on anything consistent, they can and will turn on dime especially with people they dont see as burmese.
2) Rakhine heavyset anti-rohingya sentiment (way different to way bamar past the junta see say the kachin ppl as burmese).
As the junta forces are on brink of losing rakhine to AA, this just seems to them transactional desperation play, they have little to contribute now in that spot and any situation that develops favourably to them is on the backs of rohingya/ARSA that they will throw under bus later if any advantage gained by AA weakening for the longer run.
Thing is you need heavy force and clear objectives to essentially carve out a state for rohingya sanctuary.....but who's going to commit to that. That takes major planning and long term commitment and costs.
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Yeah, I figured this is temporary. But it buy us few years to up our military and diplomatic game. Which i think can and will be done this time. Ultimately we need to stablish military superiority over Junta through qualitative edge and show them we are willing to use it if necessary. That might be enough to deter them from committing another genocide or exodus.
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Sounds like a very bad idea. From what you guys say I can surmise that non of the weaponized factions consider Rohingya as anything remotely citizen of the country. In short Myanmar is devoid of the concept human rights and naturalization concept. Finding flatlands and building a wall and minefield might be only way to create a border for a potential country for Rohingyans. Not gonna happen.
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Rohingya and BD will have to be careful about the timing of this stuff w.r.t PRC and Burmese junta moves developing.....given Shan rebels performed far better than PRC adjudged they would (in PRC approach to weaken both and grow leverage over both).
The Shan militias (incl. many pro-PRC ones) control the major vector and dagger force pointed at Mandalay (and then internal Bamar land like the new capital) and are deferring to PRC call to not push anymore while PRC negotiates some longer term political settlement with Junta given the investments PRC has made with the Junta (that the Junta could salt in collapse at great cost to PRC...or at least they would come under threat and uncertainty).
Remember it was PRC that vetoed all (US-UK-FRA backed) UNSC resolutions against burmese junta after rohingya massacres, when the first waves fled to BD CTG area.... I forget if anything came to UNGA floor vote (but those carry little weight compared to UNSC), but BD basically found itself in pretty awkward situation raising PRC ire if it challenged things then w.r.t. calling out the junta and looking pro-West etc.
So if there is something PRC is in touch with rohingya w.r.t something it can then enforce w.r.t junta in the next "federation" attempt downstream (basically a bunch of bribes where everyone has their own turf status quo) as part of cutting AA down to size for better junta bargaining strength later in this region.... then it depends how much rohingya trust PRC to do that. As without that, the burmese junta will flex on rohingya at earliest opportunity.
But problem is its evolving situation and we don't have much intel on whatever is going on prompting these signals right now.
Anyway this is some of what I mean:
China Is Off the Fence in Myanmar - War on the Rocks
On Nov. 6, the head of Myanmar’s military junta, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, finally traveled to China, meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Kunming
warontherocks.com
Myanmar: How far will China go to keep junta afloat? – DW – 11/26/2024
Beijing has pitched a joint security venture to the Myanmar junta with China's geo-strategic assets at stake. The apparent alliance has soured ties with rebel groups, who now control most of the country.
www.dw.com
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Its long story with why that is with Burma (I really dislike the name Myanmar lol, especially as Junta pushed this). "Myanmarese"..... just sounds weird too compared to Burmese.
A large part of it is mantle occupied by the military in void legacy of Burmese kings and the wars with Britain that removed them....and reasons why Britain elected to do this (regarding the north east frontier incursions by Burmese at time of Bengal presidency and then British Raj).
Then you have to understand Burmese history of conflict with Thailand (and China)....these were monarchy centric as to the national identity (so this all dictates pathways to how you form a modern nationstate basis later, what inertias you still have to harness).
Thailand in comparison kept its monarchy as British and French saw Thailand as natural buffer state and Thailand was insular/defensive towards both as Qing China by now was severely weakened (Thailand's traditional ally vis a vis Burma). This acted as veery big buffer for Thailand to transition into modern nation state (and helped immensely by US aid especially military aid against communism and indochina wars in region).
This and the way it came to a head in WW2 w.r.t Japan as well, unleashed some very poignant forks in road with Burma after situation stabilised post war and British were looking to decolonize quickly.
A national aegis basically was worn as face mask for a small while (not helped by assassination of Aung San)... but nothing of sustenance regd modern republic institution took root. Basically no king meant it had to be the army and junta acting as neo-monarch....and this is a total crappy situation for the diversity of Burma population and its context.
Rohingya in many ways were living on borrowed time after the large expulsions of Indian Burmans from interior Burma already....and also the Chinese in Burma to some degree (this was several chapters too regarding CCP victory in mainland China under Mao and then a whole host of Nationalist Chinese i.e KMT forces setting up in Yunnan unable to reach Taiwan etc and then a slow grinding war in these border regions given the geography, the competing vector of India + Tibet for Mao and Korean war and CKS in Taiwan looking to come back etc).....that dealt a bad hand to Chinese Burmese as well.
The whole thing became very baked in and reductive to who is Burmese and who is not....and just one heavy lever exercised by military dictator/junta discretion on it.
