Pakistan – Iran Army Chiefs consider military aid for Rohingya Muslims

[Banglar Bir]

Pakistan – Iran Army Chiefs consider military aid for Rohingya Muslims
on: September 18, 2017

TEHRAN (FNA)- Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri and Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in a phone conversation on Sunday underscored the necessity for ending the crisis created for the Muslims in Myanmar.
The two top Generals described measures adopted to send aid to the displaced Myanmar Muslims as insufficient, and underlined the need for the Muslim world's increased actions to end their undesirable and inhumane situation.

They also discussed the possibility for using the relief and humanitarian aid by all military and civilian organizations in the Islamic countries to accelerate aids the Myanmar Muslims.

In relevant remarks last Tuesday, Iranian Government Spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht vowed his country's utmost efforts to stop massacre and suppression of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has always shown that it defends the world's innocent and suppressed people, and the president (Hassan Rouhani) tried during his visit to Kazakhstan (for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit) to make other countries sensitive in this regard," Nobakht told reporters in Tehran.
"We will use all our diplomatic capacities in this regard," he added.

Nobakht also lambasted the international bodies for not showing a proper reaction to the human catastrophe in Myanmar.

His remarks came after Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei strongly blasted the international bodies and those who claim to be advocates of human rights for silence on the plights and pains of Muslims in Myanmar, and called on the Islamic countries to adopt practical measures against the Myanmar government.

"Of course, religious prejudice may play a role in this incident but it is a political issue because it is executed by the Myanmar government which is headed by a cruel woman who has won the Nobel prize, and actually the Nobel Peace Prize died with such incidents," Ayatollah Khamenei said last Tuesday.
He lashed out at the UN secretary-general who has only sufficed to the condemnation of the crimes in Myanmar, and said, "Those who claim to be advocates of human rights and start hues and cries sometimes for punishment of a guilty person in Iran, don’t show any reaction to the massacre and displacement of tens of thousands of people in Myanmar."

Ayatollah Khamenei underlined the need for the Islamic governments' action and practical measures, and said, "Of course, practical action doesn’t mean deployment of military forces but they should increase political, economic and trade pressures on Myanmar government and shout against such crimes in the international circles."
READ MORE: Pakistan takes a leading role on Rohingya Muslims issue in OIC contact group
The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have long been subjected to discrimination in Buddhist-majority country, which denies them citizenship.

Myanmar's government regards them as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even if they have lived in the country for generations.

Refugee camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar already had about 300,000 Rohingya before the upsurge in violence last month and are now overwhelmed.

Tens of thousands of new arrivals have nowhere to shelter from monsoon rains.

Those flocking into Bangladesh have given harrowing accounts of killings, rape and arson by Myanmar's army. Myanmar authorities deny any wrongdoing.

Most have walked for days and the UN says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter.
https://timesofislamabad.com/pakist...military-aid-for-rohingya-muslims/2017/09/18/

 

[Big Tank]

Myanmar won't even last a day if both Iran and Pakistan decide to whoop them out for once. But since they receive Israeli Military Support along with Chinese and Indian Diplomatic Support. Both Iran and Pakistan are regional Powers and I believe we together can sort out the issue putting enough pressure on the Oppressors. I am looking forward for Joint Military Drills between the states.

 

[Goenitz]

Myanmar won't even last a day if both Iran and Pakistan decide to whoop them out for once. But since they receive Israeli Military Support along with Chinese and Indian Diplomatic Support. Both Iran and Pakistan are regional Powers and I believe we together can sort out the issue putting enough pressure on the Oppressors. I am looking forward for Joint Military Drills between the states.

I don't think so unless we train or soldiers for forest warfare.
anyway, Isreal help is useless, as they can help upto limit bcz of economy and distance. its china backing, which constraints a direct involvement. if we go for a proxy war, BD has to the launching pad which will be dangerous or both BD and India too as per history, proxy turned out to be. e.g. US supported different factions like Mujhidenn and now they are out of control. Similarly, FSA and libiyan rebels.

 

[Big Tank]

I don't think so unless we train or soldiers for forest warfare.
anyway, Isreal help is useless, as they can help upto limit bcz of economy and distance. its china backing, which constraints a direct involvement. if we go for a proxy war, BD has to the launching pad which will be dangerous or both BD and India too as per history, proxy turned out to be. e.g. US supported different factions like Mujhidenn and now they are out of control. Similarly, FSA and libiyan rebels.

I agree. There are many considerations for such a step that's why Diplomatic Pressure would be the best. RAW has its ultimate presence in BD and none of our covert activities would remain safe without being compromised.

Both Iranian and Pakistan Army can learn load of stuff from each other including Cyber Warfare into which no doubt Iran holds the precision. They're also fighting a long proxy war with many countries at once since the Islamic Revolutionary State was formed. All of that is gold knowledge for our Stability if we're brave enough to invite their Military or Special Forces to interact with SSG. Iranians and Chinese are the only Professional Militaries we've got in neighborhood. Chinese heavily lack modern experience except the drills.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya situation calls for urgent international military intervention
Abdul Hannan

Myanmar Army has unleashed a reign of terror, aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Rohingya Muslims with impunity. Village after village of Rohingyas has been pillaged, torched to ashes and wiped out prompting displacement and exodus of about half a million Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh. Barring India, China, Russia and conspicuously, Saudi Arabia, the International community including EU and America has condemned the atrocities and repression on Rohingya Muslims and called for immediate cessation of such atrocities.

Rattled by international outrage, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guteress has warned Aung San Suu Kyi that it is her ‘last chance’ to stop atrocities of Rohinga Muslims. In course of an interview by BBC hard talk programme he said ‘if she does not reverse the situation now, the tragedy will be absolutely horrible’ adding ‘unfortunately then I don’t see how this can be reversed”. This is a dire warning with serious implications indeed.
Kosovo-like action needed
Suu Kyi however has dismissed the reports of atrocities as ‘an iceberg of misinformation’ and ‘fake news’. That a Nobel peace laureate can indulge in such iceberg of lie and falsehood in the face of ground realities of massive human rights violation defies belief. She is an ignoble disgrace and desecration of Nobel laureate values and inspiration.

The Myanmar army chief has called upon his people to unite on the issue of Rohingyas who he said were Bengalis with no roots in Myanmar. It is clear the Myanmar army is bent upon finishing their unfinished campaign of racial hatred and extermination of Rohinga Muslims from the soil of Myanmar. Only a stray incident of killing a few security force in a of police out post by some disgruntled Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar persecution, an apology of a rag tag Arakan Rohingya Resistance Army (ARSA) certainly cannot justify such disproportionate response. It is an undisputed truth that the Rohingyas are sons of the soil living in Rakhaine province for more than 200 years. The persecution of Rohinga Muslims will only intensify increasing radicalisation by them posing a potential security threat to Myanmar.

The UN secretary general has not spelt out what he meant by looming ‘horrible tragedy’ for Myanmar. The critical situation of Rohingya Muslims lends support to the only suggestion of response by international military intervention similar to those by NATO to save Kosovo Muslims and Bosnian Muslims from the aggression and slaughter and ethnic cleansing by a systematic racial hatred and extermination campaign by Serbs. There is a striking resemblance among the Bosnian Muslim, Cosovo Muslim and Rohingya Muslim massacre.

The NATO intervention came in the wake of paralysis of will, inaction and disfunction of UN faced with Russian intransigence and outright hostility. Weeks of air strikes by NATO forces brought the Serbs to their knee to surrender and come to a peace agreement. It is quite clear that any attempt to agree on a consensus Security Council resolution will be stymied and stonewalled by veto of China and Russia who support Myanmar on the issue which they consider as an internal affair of Myanmar.
UN SC unlikely to act
But when the suffering mass of humanity cries out for help and succor from oppression and tyranny of its own rulers, the question of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations becomes irrelevant and international intervention becomes imperative. The only alternative envisaged under the existing circumstances is to involve some sort of international military intervention to be crafted and contrived by sympathetic western countries led by Britain, EU and American support.
Bangladesh with its resources stretched thin and bursting at the seams is overwhelmed by an unforeseen avalanche of continuing fresh influx of Rohihngya refugees posing a potential danger of a humanitarian disaster, security risks and instability. Bangladesh delegation must mobilize international public opinion during the current session of UN General Assembly forthwith in favour of some sort of international military intervention, failing efforts in UN Security Council. The ambivalence and prevarication, if any, by the West on the issue of such intervention will only confirm the suspicion that the international community is selective and guided by opportunism and Real Politic and not by ethics and morality on question of human rights violation.

Any agreement after the intervention must provide for return home of Rohingya refugees in safe and secure environment under auspices of UN international peace keeping force and an interim international civil and military administration. The birth right of Rohingya Muslims to live in freedom and dignity as rightful citizens of Myanmar must be ensured. Myanmar authorities must be forced to pay war reparation for wanton killing and destruction of homes and properties and rehabilitation of Rohingya Muslims. The Rohingyas on return will witness a wasteland burnt down and devastation of homes, mass graves of killed and executed near and dear ones. What needed as a remedy for permanent solution of the Rohinga, it is not only their rights of citizenship but full autonomy. Heterogeneous societies can work given political commitment to religious or linguistic pluralism.
Perpetrators be tried by ICC
The Myanmar military has let loose a mindless orgy of racial violence and orgasm of lust for rape and mayhem and murder of innocent civilians and ruthless destruction of properties of Rohinga Muslims. Any peace agreement after the intervention must provide for trial of Myanmar rulers as war criminals in the UN International Criminal Court (ICC) just as Serb leader Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic and Serb General Ratco Mladic faced trial as war criminals by UN International Criminal Tribunal and International Court of Justice. While Milosevic died in prison, Karadzic and Mladic are languishing in jail under 40 years of jail sentence for committing war crimes against humanity.

The international community must act now to see decency, righteousness, justice and good prevail over evil once again. The Myanmar intransigence must force them to be consigned once again as an international pariah before the restoration of so called democracy By Suu Kyi.

Abdul Hannan is a columnist and former diplomat. hannanabd@gmail.com
http://www.weeklyholiday.net/Homepage/Pages/UserHome.aspx

 

[Imran Khan]

pakistan is safe and secure ? first put your house in control mr bajwa

 

[TopCat]

I agree. There are many considerations for such a step that's why Diplomatic Pressure would be the best. RAW has its ultimate presence in BD and none of our covert activities would remain safe without being compromised.

Both Iranian and Pakistan Army can learn load of stuff from each other including Cyber Warfare into which no doubt Iran holds the precision. They're also fighting a long proxy war with many countries at once since the Islamic Revolutionary State was formed. All of that is gold knowledge for our Stability if we're brave enough to invite their Military or Special Forces to interact with SSG. Iranians and Chinese are the only Professional Militaries we've got in neighborhood. Chinese heavily lack modern experience except the drills.

I like the Turkey's and Iranian proxy. They are very loyal unlike Paksitani proxy. Pakistani proxy's are gaddhar to the core.

 

[Hellfire]

Pakistan – Iran Army Chiefs consider military aid for Rohingya Muslims

Ok. As far as I can make out, the title indicates "MILITARY AID", a valid term for provisioning with military weapons and logistics supplies for conduct of military operations. Now let us proceed ahead.

They also discussed the possibility for using the relief and humanitarian aid by all military and civilian organizations in the Islamic countries to accelerate aids the Myanmar Muslims.


In relevant remarks last Tuesday, Iranian Government Spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht vowed his country's utmost efforts to stop massacre and suppression of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has always shown that it defends the world's innocent and suppressed people, and the president (Hassan Rouhani) tried during his visit to Kazakhstan (for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit) to make other countries sensitive in this regard," Nobakht told reporters in Tehran.

"We will use all our diplomatic capacities in this regard," he added.

Nobakht also lambasted the international bodies for not showing a proper reaction to the human catastrophe in Myanmar.

His remarks came after Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei strongly blasted the international bodies and those who claim to be advocates of human rights for silence on the plights and pains of Muslims in Myanmar, and called on the Islamic countries to adopt practical measures against the Myanmar government.

"Of course, religious prejudice may play a role in this incident but it is a political issue because it is executed by the Myanmar government which is headed by a cruel woman who has won the Nobel prize, and actually the Nobel Peace Prize died with such incidents," Ayatollah Khamenei said last Tuesday.

He lashed out at the UN secretary-general who has only sufficed to the condemnation of the crimes in Myanmar, and said, "Those who claim to be advocates of human rights and start hues and cries sometimes for punishment of a guilty person in Iran, don’t show any reaction to the massacre and displacement of tens of thousands of people in Myanmar."

Ayatollah Khamenei underlined the need for the Islamic governments' action and practical measures, and said, "Of course, practical action doesn’t mean deployment of military forces but they should increase political, economic and trade pressures on Myanmar government and shout against such crimes in the international circles."

So, no military aid yet. Still waiting for how this is concerning military aid.

The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have long been subjected to discrimination in Buddhist-majority country, which denies them citizenship.

Myanmar's government regards them as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even if they have lived in the country for generations.

Refugee camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar already had about 300,000 Rohingya before the upsurge in violence last month and are now overwhelmed.

Tens of thousands of new arrivals have nowhere to shelter from monsoon rains.

Those flocking into Bangladesh have given harrowing accounts of killings, rape and arson by Myanmar's army. Myanmar authorities deny any wrongdoing.

Most have walked for days and the UN says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter.
https://timesofislamabad.com/pakist...military-aid-for-rohingya-muslims/2017/09/18/

Nowhere is there a talk of "MILITARY AID"!

Sigh!! Another example of poor journalism.

Myanmar won't even last a day if both Iran and Pakistan decide to whoop them out for once. But since they receive Israeli Military Support along with Chinese and Indian Diplomatic Support

I like your post here ... typical firepower of a mini tank!!!! And it is "military support" applicable for Chinese and India too.

I now understand that Pakistan (along with some role from Iran) remains the only country which can take on Israel-India-China militarily and diplomatically supporting a nation! You have made your point. Kudos! Amazing interpretation and appreciation of the geopolitics as also the military aspects here.

. Both Iran and Pakistan are regional Powers and I believe we together can sort out the issue putting enough pressure on the Oppressors. I am looking forward for Joint Military Drills between the states.

And how exactly? Please care to elaborate!

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya crisis and the norm of R2P
12:00 AM, September 23, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 07:04 AM, September 23, 2017

With the Rohingya crisis spiralling into a disaster of magnanimous proportions, this maybe an appropriate time to invoke R2P against Myanmar. PHOTO: STAR
Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed

Overeignty is sometimes an overused yet largely exploited concept in the world of international relations. In its truest sense, sovereignty is a fundamental term designating supreme authority over a certain polity.

Sovereignty has been used by some as a tool to continue the activities of authoritarian regimes, whilst others have sought to celebrate it through the practice of democracy. Realising the practical implications of misusing sovereignty as an international norm, the global powers initiated a 21st-century political commitment called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). With the Rohingya crisis spiralling into a disaster of magnanimous proportions, this maybe an appropriate time to invoke R2P against Myanmar.

In 2005, member-states of the United Nations endorsed R2P to prevent four types of humanitarian crisis: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The Rohingya crisis has been recognised by the Bangladesh government and many global institutions as being under the category of ethnic cleansing. So, what does R2P entail? As a norm, it demands that national governments essentially do not take sovereignty for granted. R2P is based on the principle that sovereignty requires a responsibility to protect all populations from mass atrocity crimes and human rights violations.

Myanmar government's failure to protect a large proportion of the Rakhine-based Rohingyas makes a strong case for an intervention by the international community, either through taking measures stated in the R2P framework or by involving regional powers such as China or India to achieve a solution to an ever-growing problem.

Consider the case of Libya in which R2P was invoked to make a military intervention. However, one may be prompted to think that R2P automatically means direct military intervention on the part of the global powers.

That is not the case. The basic tenets of R2P also involve measures such as mediation, diplomatic cooperation and economic sanctions as part of a mechanism to ensure that sovereignty is respected within a certain nation.

According to the R2P doctrine, “The primary purpose of the intervention, whatever other motives intervening states may have, must be to halt or avert human suffering. Right intention is better assured with multilateral operations, clearly supported by regional opinion and the victims concerned.”

But “there must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention,” it states, “with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has already made it clear that her government has taken in Rohingya people purely on humanitarian grounds, nothing else.

The Rohingya crisis ensued after the Myanmar government failed to exercise its responsibility to protect its own people from the horrors of ethnic cleansing. Considering that, many nations have initiated diplomatic efforts to pressure Aung San Suu Kyi into recognising the severe failures of her government with regard to Rakhine and the outflow of migrants towards Bangladesh.

R2P also covers an interesting point that makes it even more applicable for the Rohingya crisis. Its coverage is extensive in the sense that R2P recognises the fundamental rights of all people, whether one is a citizen or not—aliens or stateless.

The fact that the Rohingyas are now stateless and being subjected to mass atrocity crimes means the R2P-bound international community has no option but to intervene to address Myanmar government's lack of accountability and action. It also means that the international community has a moral and legal obligation, as per international law, to pressure Myanmar into taking action to prevent ethnic cleansing and simultaneously support Bangladesh in its effort to ensure the survival of the refugees.

Interestingly, it was a Bangladeshi—Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury—who helped shape many tenets of the R2P. Chowdhury, who served as the Foreign Affairs Adviser to the Caretaker Government of 2007-08, had worked as a diplomat to negotiate several paragraphs of the R2P norm. It is now up to Bangladesh to persuade the global community to act immediately based on those tenets.

Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali has suggested that Bangladesh is pushing for placing the Rohingya agenda at the UN Security Council, although it is unlikely that it will result in quick action thanks to the council's history of bureaucratic red tape and veto politics.

However, the European powers have supported Bangladesh's stance on the crisis, with UN-based organisations asking nations to provide concrete support to the Hasina government. While it is disappointing to observe India's lack of condemnation towards Aung San Suu Kyi, one hopes that both India and China will eventually overcome the practical impediments holding back a formal condemnation, and intervene to pressure the Myanmar government into ending what surely qualifies as ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar is a proud, sovereign nation with a rich history. The same nation is now ignoring the plight of its people, and pushing the country to the brink of unrest by facilitating the massacre of one of its own ethnic groups. Identity politics and the politics of power cannot, and should not, be used as a basis for perpetrating ethnic cleansing. Myanmar cannot hide behind its sovereignty status to cover up state-supported crimes. The international community should seriously consider going for soft R2P interventions such as mediations and sanctions, and this seems to be the only way to convince a Nobel Peace icon that the path she and her government have taken is morally, legally, and constitutionally wrong.

Aung San Suu Kyi's chapter in history began with her bold, courageous and symbolic effort to institute democracy in her country. That she was able to do to some extent. But the world is getting increasingly disillusioned to see one of its greatest champions of democracy tread a dangerous and morally unacceptable path. She cannot hide behind the curtains of sovereignty and democracy any more, as the R2P demands that she take action to resolve the crisis that her government and the military have undoubtedly aggravated.

Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed is a student of economics and international relations at the University of Toronto.
http://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/mayanmar-refugee-rohingya-crisis-and-the-norm-r2p-1466200

 

[Banglar Bir]

 

[Sugarcane]

Title and contents of report doesn't match, But anyway Pakistan has nothing to do with that part of word. Rohingya people are related to Bangladeshis and Indians, So they should sort out the issue. However we should send as much humanitarian aid as we can.

 

[Banglar Bir]

‘We are not terrorists’ – an exclusive interview with an ARSA commander
Syed Zain Al-Mahmood Manik Miazee
Published at 11:34 PM September 23, 2017
Last updated at 02:03 PM September 24, 2017

Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine Syed Zain Al-Mahmood/Dhaka Tribune
An Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army commander in an exclusive interview with the Dhaka Tribune recounts the story of the August 25 attack on a Myanmar border guard post and claims that his outfit isn’t a terrorist organisation
The man sat slumped in a chair inside the thatched hut, the shadows lengthening over his face in the gathering dusk. Tall and gaunt, he was in his mid-twenties but sounded younger. Wearing a traditional blue-and-white check lungi and a cotton shirt, he did not really look like a rebel.

His youthful voice hardened, however, as he reeled off the names of the villages which had been burnt down by the Myanmar army in his home state of Rakhine since August 25, when his organisation attacked border posts and an army base, an operation in which he took part with “200 men from our area.”

“We hit their soldiers, they hit our women and children,” he said. “The Burmese military are cowards.”

An intermediary introduced him as Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine. We met him near a barbed wire fence separating Bangladesh and Myanmar after a long trek through swaying rice fields and rolling hills, a deceptively pristine setting for a desperate tale of loss, recklessness and forlorn hope.

After a succession of guides took turns to lead us through a maze of dirt tracks, we came upon a cluster of huts. Children played in a clearing nearby. Chickens scrabbled in the dirt. There were no guns in sight. It was oddly appropriate for the insurgency that Shakoor was describing – almost entirely rural, a peasant war fought in the Rakhine countryside.

The meeting with the ARSA commander was set up after a week of enquiries, dead-ends, and several false starts. ARSA fighters are under severe pressure from the Myanmar army, which has reacted to the August 25 attacks with a scorched-earth campaign that the UN and international human rights groups have denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Yangon has denied that the security forces have targeted civilians, claiming that the army is trying to hunt down terrorists.

It is an accusation to which Shakoor is extremely sensitive. “We are not terrorists,” he said, using the English word, which he pronounced as ‘tetarist.’ “We stood up for our haqq, our rights. There’s nothing else that we want, nothing!”

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, or “Faith Movement,” attacked border guard posts, police stations, and army bases on August 25, killing at least 10 policemen and an army soldier.

Shakoor described why and how his group planned and carried out the attack.

“Our zimmadars or elders said we must fight back because the Myanmar government was starving us, killing us slowly. They slaughter our people for no reason, they dishonour our women. They want to uproot us from the land that was handed down from our forefathers.

“To save our people, to save our mothers and sisters, to take back our rights, we took up sticks, and axes and knives and rose up against the oppressors.”

For several nights before the attack, his men took stock of the situation around the army post, he said, noting troop strength, weapons and duty shifts. Similar preparations were taken in other districts in Rakhine.

Then around 1am, the coordinated attacks began.

Although some units in other parts of Rakhine had a small number of firearms, his fighters didn’t have guns, Shakoor said. “We just had knives and axes and some homemade bombs that didn’t explode,” he said almost ruefully.

That statement seems to tally with an official statement from the Myanmar army released on August 26. “In the early morning at 1am, the extremist Bengali insurgents started their attack on the police post … with the man-made bombs and small weapons,” said the army, referring to the Rohingya with the derogatory term implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh.

“If we had weapons, we would have defeated them,” Shakoor said. “We knew we were going up against guns and mortars. We resolved to die so our people could live free.”

He said he carried an axe that he used to chop wood and a couple of Molotov cocktails. His men had hoped that the Myanmar soldiers would be asleep. “We had the numbers. But maybe they had advance warning, because they started firing as soon as we approached.”

The army response – a “clearance operation” – has pushed 400,000 Rohingyas out of Rakhine. Did he think the attack on the army base and the outposts were a mistake?

He paused for a moment before responding, “Our zimmadars made decisions that we thought were necessary under those circumstances.”

Shakoor claimed that the Al-Yaqeen outfit has given rise to a potent insurgency, which has grown in size and morphed from an armed group of a few hundred men into something more akin to a widespread movement.

“Our qaum – or people – support us,” he said. “They know what we want. If the Shaan or Karen people in Myanmar can fight for their rights, so can we.”

He is quick to point out that his outfit hasn’t attacked civilians. “We have nothing against Rakhine people or any other people,” he claimed. “The huqumat or regime is guilty of oppression.”

Shakoor joined ARSA just under a year ago, after the group came out of nowhere to stage attacks on Myanmar police posts, killing nine policemen in October 2016. He was a student at a clandestine madrasa in Maungdaw near the river Naf. The Myanmar authorities had banned schools and madrasas and placed restrictions on the Rohingya which denied them education, he said. “We even have to study in secret,” he said.

The ARSA group is led by a man believed to have been born into a Rohingya family in Pakistan who goes by the name Ata Ullah.

Shakoor said he had never seen Ata Ullah. “He is the ameer (commander or leader in Arabic) and our zimmadaar (senior officials) relay his instructions verbally or through audio-video recordings.”

Because Shakoor had some education, he was quickly appointed a supervisor and then a commander. Now, he says the future is uncertain.

“We want the international community to help us,” he said. “We want nothing more than to live in peace as human beings.”

As the darkness deepens and the hut is illuminated by a single bulb powered by a solar panel placed in the yard, Shakoor says his people are grateful to Bangladesh for allowing 400,000 Rohingya to take refuge in the country.

“Bangladeshis have done a great thing by helping our women and children,” he said. “They have acted like human beings.”
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2017/09/23/we-resolved-die-our-people-live-free/

 

[Solomon2]

...The ARSA group is led by a man believed to have been born into a Rohingya family in Pakistan who goes by the name Ata Ullah.

Shakoor said he had never seen Ata Ullah. “He is the ameer (commander or leader in Arabic) and our zimmadaar (senior officials) relay his instructions verbally or through audio-video recordings.”

Islamists Responsible for Rohingya Refugee Crisis
by Mohshin Habib
September 25, 2017 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11045/myanmar-rohingya-crisis

• The current crisis is being depicted -- wrongly -- as the "ethnic cleansing" of an innocent Muslim minority by Burma's security forces, and the "apathy" to the plight of the Rohingyas by Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's foreign minister and its de facto head of state.
  
• "Their [the Rohingyas'] tactics are terrorism. There's no question about it. [Kyi is] not calling the entire Rohingya population terrorists, she is referring to a group of people who are going around with guns, machetes, and IEDs and killing their own people in addition to Buddhists, Hindus, and others that get in their way. They have killed a lot of security forces, and they are wreaking havoc in the region. The people who are running and fleeing out to Bangladesh... are fleeing their own radical groups.... [T]he international community has to sort out the facts before making accusations." — Patricia Clapp, Chief of the U.S. Mission to Myanmar from 1999 to 2002.
  
• The origins of the Bengali Muslim jihad in Western Myanmar in the late 19th century through the World War II era, illustrates that it is "rooted in Islam's same timeless institution of expansionist jihad which eliminated Buddhist civilization in northern India." — Dr. Andrew Bostom, author and scholar of Islam.
  

A surge in clashes between Islamist terrorists and the government of Burma (Myanmar) is at the root of a refugee crisis in Southeast Asia that has caused the United Nations and international media to focus attention on the Rohingyas in the northern Rakhine, an isolated province in the west of the Buddhist-majority country.

In late August 2017, a terrorist group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched a series of coordinated attacks on Burmese security forces in northern Rakhine. When the Burmese Army announced that it had responded by killing 370 assailants, Rohingya activists claimed that many of the dead were innocent people who had not been involved in the attacks. They also accused the authorities of demolishing Rohingya villages -- devastation that was shown in satellite images released by Human Rights Watch -- but the Burmese government said that it was carried out by ARSA, which had committed similar attacks on Burmese police in October 2016.

Since those events, hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas -- Muslims who settled in Burma prior to its independence in 1948 -- have been fleeing for the last two years, primarily to neighboring India and Bangladesh, in an attempt to escape violence and poverty. Fearing for its national security, on the grounds that among the refugees are ARSA terrorists and sympathizers with ties to ISIS and other Islamist organizations, India issued a deportation order for the Rohingyas who had crossed the border illegally. This move, however, was met with resistance by the Indian Supreme Court. Bangladesh has addressed the problem by severely restricting the movement of the Rohingya refugees.

The outcry on behalf of the innocent men, women and children who are caught in the crossfire of the radicals -- who claim to represent their interests -- is completely justified. No humanitarian solution to their plight can be found or implemented, nevertheless, without understanding the conflict -- and the true culprits behind it.

The current crisis is being depicted -- wrongly -- as the "ethnic cleansing" of an innocent Muslim minority by Burma's security forces, and the "apathy" to the plight of the Rohingyas by Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's foreign minister and its de facto head of state. As PJ Media reported, many critics in the media and among human rights groups are calling for Kyi to be stripped of the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991 for her campaign on behalf of democratization and against the country's military junta rulers.

Rohingya refugees from Burma arrive in Bangladesh, on September 17, 2017. The current crisis is being depicted -- wrongly -- as the "ethnic cleansing" of an innocent Muslim minority, but the true culprits are radical Islamists among the Rohingyas themselves, who with guns, machetes and bombs are killing their own people, in addition to Buddhists, Hindus, and others that get in their way. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)



Yet, as the report pointed out, Priscilla Clapp, who served as U.S. chief of mission in Burma from 1999 to 2002, strongly disputes the current "narrative" about Kyi and the response of her government to the terrorist attacks in Rakhine last October and August. In a September 7 interview with France 24 (a partial transcript of which was provided by PJ Media), Clapp argued that the attacks were "perpetrated by people in the Rohingya diaspora living in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia coming in through Bangladesh," with the more recent one

"timed to follow the...presentation of the recommendations of the Kofi Annan international commission on Rakhine, which Aung Sun Suu Kyi has accepted and agreed to implement [and which] call for a long-term solution there....Their tactics are terrorism. There's no question about it. [Kyi is] not calling the entire Rohingya population terrorists, she is referring to a group of people who are going around with guns, machetes, and IEDs and killing their own people in addition to Buddhists, Hindus, and others that get in their way. They have killed a lot of security forces, and they are wreaking havoc in the region. The people who are running and fleeing out to Bangladesh are not only fleeing the response of the security forces, they are fleeing their own radical groups because they've been attacking Rohingya, and in particular the leadership who were trying to work with the government on the citizenship process and other humanitarian efforts that were underway there... [T]he international community has to sort out the facts before making accusations."​

Clapp's assertions are backed up by an extensive analysis in 2005, written by Dr. Aye Chan, Professor of Southeast Asian History at Kanda International University in Japan, and discussed recently in a piece by author Andrew Bostom. According to Bostom, Chan's article, "The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar)," on the origins of the Bengali Muslim jihad in Western Myanmar in the late 19th century through the World War II era, illustrates that it is "rooted in Islam's same timeless institution of expansionist jihad which eliminated Buddhist civilization in northern India."

Bostom also referred to an open letter, penned by Chan in 2014 to then-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, demonstrating the transparent if "strenuous efforts" of Bengali Muslim migrants to Northwestern Myanmar "to take away Rakhine's [Arakan's] own [Buddhist] ethnic identity from the Rakhine people."

To grasp the intent of the jihadists in Rakhine, it is important to look into the workings of ARSA -- formerly Harakah Al-Yaqin ("Faith Movement" in Arabic) -- which was created after the June 2012 Rohingya riots against a Buddhist community.

The group's main leader, Attaullah Abu Ammar Junnani (known familiarly as Ata Ullah), was born in Karachi, Pakistan to a migrant Rohingya father and grew up in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he attended a religious Islamic school and developed ties with Saudi clerics. According to the Burmese government, Ata Ullah, at some point, also received training in guerilla warfare under the Taliban in Pakistan. Although he claims to be fighting "on behalf of Myanmar's long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority," his methods are those of all Islamist terrorists. The danger to Burma -- and the reason that India and Bangladesh fear that the refugees pose a security problem -- is that Ata Ullah will manage to radicalize a growing number of Rohingyas, both inside and out of the country.

Rather than placing all blame on the Burmese government for this critical situation, the concerned international community and human rights groups must recognize the real threat. Only then can Kyi begin to implement the recommendations spelled out in the plan for a "peaceful, fair and prosperous future for the people of Rakhine" -- which she herself commissioned.

Mohshin Habib, a Bangladeshi author, columnist and journalist, is Executive Editor of The Daily Asian Age.​

 

[El Sidd]

When did that happen?

I am confused now.

 

[MultaniGuy]

Good to see muslim countries helping the rohingya