'Arakan' issue: Imperialist rivalry, jihadist terror and nationalist delirium

The Arakan-Rohingya question, which has also come to the fore in Turkey because of the AKP government’s interest, is more complicated than it looks. Along with a historical question, imperialist rivalry and jihadist terror lie behind the narrative of the "oppressed Muslims"
soL
Wednesday, 13 September 2017 18:31

Following the last wave of violence in 2012, recent news of violence against the Rohingya people settled in the Rakhine state on the eastern coast of Myanmar (Burma) has again come to the fore under the headline of "Buddhist cruelty against Muslims."

The latest wave of violence started on August 25th after a jihadist organisation established by Rohingyas had attacked local police posts in Rakhine. According to the statement of the UN, following the military response, approximately 120 thousand people had to flee from West Myanmar to Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands of undocumented Rohingya got stuck in the infamous camps with poor conditions. Although the incidence has exposed to the media as Buddhists setting fire to Muslim villages again, attacks against Buddhist civilians have also occurred throughout acts of violence. The killing of four Rakhine Buddhists in Maungdaw is a proof for it. As Rohingyas fled towards Bangladesh, Rakhines too started to move within the state.

However, what is the background of these waves of violence which periodically repeat?

Myanmar’s neighbours include Bangladesh, China, Thailand and Laos.

A STATELESS PEOPLE AND THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF THE PROBLEM

It is known that the Rohingya people are of Indo-Aryan origin and occasionally called "Rakhine Indians." Although the media has created a perception that the whole Rohingya people are Muslims, there are also Hindu Rohingyas even though small in number.

The Muslim presence in Rakhine goes back to the ninth century. It is speculated that, as the Muslim "missionaries" who travelled to the region spread Islam, Rohingyas were also influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism, along with Islam, due to their Indian origins.

However, the chronicisation of the Arakan problem emerges with the entrance of British imperialism to the region.

As Britain was promoting the influx of agricultural workers from the lands then considered as part of Bengal to the fertile soil of Rakhine, Muslims emigrated from India composed a significant amount of this cheap labour force. Racist reactions against the immigrants in Burma started to come to the fore following the British colonialism’s enforcement of the workforce migration.

What complicated the problem, however, were the World War 2 and the Japanese occupation. When the Japanese imperialism occupied Burma under the British dominion during the war, it searched for local allies and the ally it found was Rakhine Buddhists.

The British army which retreated from Rakhine left behind the Japanese occupation and a Buddhist-Muslim conflict. Because Britain had started to arm Muslims whilst retreating. In that period, numerous conflicts took place between the two groups; however, the idea of kicking of Japanese and British invaders didn’t occur to them. In 1942, tens of thousands of Burmese lost their lives due to the reciprocal massacre. Also during the Japanese occupation, Japanese soldiers murdered many Rohingyas and raped the women.

An image from the British-Japanese battles in the WW2.

It was recorded by the British that, throughout the proxy war between Britain and Japan, Rohingyas who were armed by their British allies had destroyed Buddhist temples and attacked Buddhist villages instead of withstanding the Japanese occupation.

The situation of Rakhine Muslims become even more "delicate" with the fact that the local Muslims took action to unite Pakistan after the war and contacted Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, combined with the independence of Burma.

However, Rohingyas’ situation after the Burmese independence wasn't bad. This state was to change as a result of the military coup in 1962.

The civil code adopted in 1982 has deepened the problem even further. With this new law, Rohingya individuals who emigrated from British India to Burma later than 1823 weren’t given citizenship. Thus, over one million Rohingya became devoid of their civil rights.

Besides, Rakhines were also considering themselves as victims of the British colonialism and Burmese nationalism.

PAKISTAN, SAUDI ARABIA AND THE PRESENCE OF JIHADISTS

As for the current state, the jihadist presence in the region, along with an externally-controlled army, has added a new dimension to the issue.

Pakistan is one of the main locations where Rohingyas live. And a man who was born there in the city of Karachi, Ataullah abu Ammar Junjuni, has initiated an open armed war against the Burmese administration as the head of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) founded in 2013.

Although an ARSA representative, spoken to Asia Times, said that they didn’t have links with the international jihadist network and that the ARSA had derived from the voice of the local people, these claims don’t quite reflect the truth.

Junjuni, who stated that they would fight until the Muslims are entitled to civil rights, at a certain period of his life, had moved to – what a coincidence – Saudi Arabia and worked as the imam of a mosque attended by the Rohingya community in this country. Turned back to Rakhine in 2013, Junjuni established an organisation called Harakah al-Yaqin, or the “Faith Movement,” and started to form a secret military force by contacting the local youth.

According to Junjuni’s claim, the organisation began getting trained at camps in Rakhine by Rohingya instructors who formerly served in Myanmar’s military and police departments. However, experts spoken to Asia Times discredit this story given the position of Rohingyas in Myanmar. According to them, the military instruction must have been given by “sympathetic ex-servicemen from other countries in the region.”

However, there are two more information about Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Rohingyas. According to a 2015 article in the Pakistan-based newspaper Dawn, Rohingya migration from Bangladesh to Pakistan increased during the Zia-ul-Haq regime in the 1970s and 1980s. The reasons are, first, educating Rohingyas in the well-known madrasas in Pakistan, and second, using Rohingyas in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets!

Tens of thousands of Rohingya immigrated to Pakistan during this period and obtained a residence permit, but the then-President Zia-ul-Haq have never bestowed them with the right to citizenship.

The other information is from Reuters. A 2016 report prepared by the International Crisis Group specifies that Ataullah received “modern guerrilla training” in Pakistan and that a committee of some 20 senior leaders of the ARSA headquartered in Mecca.

An image from the ARSA statement.

Another claim is that, along with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the ARSA is also associated with Bangladesh. It is alleged that Jamaat-e-Islami, which is outlawed in Bangladesh, gives support to the ARSA jihad in Rakhine.

This claim is based on the British "aid" organisation Muslim Aid and the affiliated Bangladeshi individuals. Its founders being trialled in absentia and sentenced to death, this group is thought to be in touch with Jamaat-e-Islami and other jihadist groups in the region.

The head of the USA branch of Muslim Aid is – what a surprise – a Rohingya known for his links to the ARSA, Dr Wakar Uddin. Uddin is from very inside of the "network," so much so that he attended a hearing of US House Committee on Foreign Affairs as an Arakan witness.

Therefore, the claim that the ARSA is "a local organisation of Arakan" doesn’t reflect the truth. For instance, the jihadist Islamic Defenders Front in Indonesia has announced that they began recruiting "volunteers" for the ARSA. This is a manifestation that Arakan will become a base of the jihadist aggression in Southeast Asia.

USA-CHINA TENSIONS

The blog Moon of Alabama highlights the role Rakhine plays for strategic interests of the People’s Republic of China.

Rakhine occupies a critical place in China’s “One Belt, One Road" initiative because the region is located on a geographical position which can enable China to stand out to the Indian Ocean.

Moreover, with the projected pipelines running from the west coast to its own east, China will get the chance to bypass the disputed the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait. These pipelines are of vital importance for the transport of the Gulf petrol to China.

In an assessment in the blog, it is reminded that fuelling a possible jihad in Rakhine and inciting the Buddhist-Muslim war suit the West’s in terms of strategic and will impair the economic and political interests of China.

As a result of China’s "One Belt, One Road" project, the pipeline crossing over Myanmar will ease the access to Africa and the Gulf.

MYANMAR-TURKEY DIPLOMATIC TENSION

Recently, a statement was made by the office of Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and it was announced that Kyi made a telephone conversation with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Responding to Erdoğan’s "genocide" statement, Myanmar Leader stated that they were doing their best to protect the Rakhine people; however, disinformations that could create problems between the two countries should have been avoided.

The person who spread the disinformation that Kyi mentioned was the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, Mehmet Şimşek. Kyi said that the post on Şimşek’s Twitter account was "the tip of the iceberg" and she argued that such disinformations pursued the goals to create problems between different communities and to support the interests of terrorists.

1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a British-educated, Aung San Suu Kyi seems to disappoint the Western world nowadays. In an article in The Guardian by George Monbiot, a call was made for the revocation of Kyi’s Nobel: "She no longer deserves it."

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar.

However, despite being praised then by the West, the "Saffron" movement initiated by Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2015 emerged with explicitly racist and misogynist elements, and its main goal was to protest the government which intended to give citizenship to the Rohingya people.

Apparently, the USA-China competition in Myanmar, along with a jihad provoked by the Saudis and an ultranationalist government, will continue hurting peoples.