Arakan Army claims Rohingya militias fighting alongside military near Bangladesh-Myanmar border

The Arakan Army (AA) on Tuesday repeated allegations that Rohingya armed groups are among the pro-junta forces fighting against the AA in Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State on the Bangladeshi border. The AA issued a statement naming three Rohingya militias or armed groups as collaborators with the junta forces: the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), and Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA). The organisations are believed to have formed initially as criminal networks in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. The Tuesday statement claimed the Rohingya Muslim militias have established permanent bases in remote, hilly areas not yet reached by the AA, accusing them of launching attacks on AA forces from these bases in Maungdaw, collaborating with the Myanmar military, and harming regional stability and public safety on both sides of the international border. The AA statement also accused members of the ARSA, RSO, and ARA of frequent crimes against civilians in Maungdaw Township, including extortion, abductions, and murder. The AA’s statement also said claimed they had fought with members of the ARSA in the mountains northwest of Kha Yu Chaung village, Buthidaung Township, around noon the previous Saturday. After engaging the ARSA fighters five times, the AA reportedly took over territory where the ARSA had established four base camps and were storing weapons and ammunition supplied by the Myanmar junta, according to the AA statement. The AA added that there had also been a brief clash with the ARSA east of the Gyin Taw base near Maungdaw Township’s Bay of Bengal coast on Tuesday. Myanmar Now spoke with two residents of Kyee Kan Pyin village, located less than 10 miles north of Maungdaw, who said that the AA had conducted raids in the village searching for ARSA and RSO members in response to the recent disappearance of civilians. The AA detained and questioned hundreds of Rohingya residents of Kyee Kan Pyin in August of this year regarding the disappearance of a man and a woman in the township. Some 17 residents of the village are reportedly still in AA custody. The AA released its statement concerning Rohingya armed groups amid battles for control of Maungdaw Township that have been ongoing since February of this year. The AA claims to have occupied the township’s urban centre, but has so far failed to seize and hold the junta’s Border Guard Police 5 station after months of fighting. With clashes ongoing, the junta air force has repeatedly conducted bombing raids to prevent the AA’s complete takeover of Maungdaw Township, killing and injuring the township’s civilian inhabitants, the AA said. Rakhine State’s Rohingya-majority townships: Maungdaw and Buthidaung Maungdaw Township remains one of the few contested areas in northern Rakhine State, with the AA having established control in the rest of the region since last year. Following the AA’s capture of neighbouring Buthidaung Township, hundreds of Rohingya people protested against the rule of the powerful Rakhine ethnic armed organisation in March of this year. The extent to which the Myanmar military coerced or induced Rohingya people’s participation in these demonstrations remains unclear. The Myanmar army has also put young Rohingya men in northern Rakhine State through basic military training, in some cases after forcibly pressing them into service from internally displaced people’s camps. Other Rohingya men fighting against the AA appear to have been recruited—sometimes by abduction or other use of force—from Bangladeshi refugee camps. While the role of the military and armed Rohingya militias in the forced recruitment of young Rohingya men remains murky, it may serve to advance an intentional agenda on the part of the military regime to sow interethnic and interreligious animosity in Rakhine State. The junta as well as previous governments in Myanmar have consistently refused to grant citizenship to Rohingya people from Rakhine State. The military still rejects the self-applied ethnonym ‘Rohingya’, continuing to use the term ‘Bengali’, which is considered a slur. Rohingya people and Muslims in northern Rakhine State have been subjected to waves of targeted ethnic and religious violence, which peaked in 2012 and 2017 with massive, widespread riots and massacres. The violence in 2017, which resulted in the burning of thousands of Rohingya homes, the deaths of tens of thousands, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees to Bangladesh, is the subject of an ongoing United Nations genocide investigation. Following reports earlier this year that Rohingya men were undergoing training and being deployed to the battlefield on the side of the military, the AA was accused of massacring Rohingya civilians fleeing the violence by human rights groups in August. In the same month, more than 100 Rohingya advocacy organisations released a statement—endorsed by Rohingya activists Ro Nay San Lwin and Htun Khin—denouncing the ARSA and other Rohingya militias supporting the junta as “criminal organisations” and strongly condemning their actions. “We declare that they neither represent nor act on behalf of the Rohingya community,” the organisations’ statement said, also accusing the Rohingya militias of kidnapping Rohingya refugees from Bangladeshi camps and transporting them back to Maungdaw to fight alongside junta troops. A Rohingya civilian from Buthidaung Township also told Myanmar Now that his community did not recognise or support the Rohingya armed groups collaborating with the military. "Living under the AA is better than before,” he said. “We are allowed to build houses. We are allowed to build mosques.” Fighting is ongoing in various parts of Rakhine State, with the AA not only continuing its efforts to capture the remaining border police outpost in Maungdaw Township, but also fighting around the towns of Kyeintali, Ann, and Taungup in southern Rakhine State. A Rohingya armed militia’s base camp captured by the AA (Photo: AA Info Desk)

Arakan Army claims Rohingya militias fighting alongside military near Bangladesh-Myanmar border

Rakhine State’s largest and most powerful ethnic armed organisation said members of three Rohingya militias were collaborating with the Myanmar military in the ongoing fight for control of the state’s Maungdaw Township

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