Battlelines drawn on Rohingya issue
Subir Bhaumik, September 9, 2017
The Rohingya issue is seen as a serious humanitarian question by the UN and international human rights and civil liberties groups, but national interest seems to be dictating the response of Asian nations to the crisis caused by the recent rebel attacks and the usual heavy-handed military response in the Rakhine state.
The Western countries may be trying to restrain Myanmar for unleashing a military counter-offensive that is sending tens of thousands of Rohingyas across the border into Bangladesh.
But Israel, India and Bangladesh have all come out strongly in support of Myanmar’s fight against “terrorist violence”, lending much succour to Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, in which the military controls three crucial security related ministries of Defence, Home and Border Affairs.
Israel has refused to stop supplying arms to the Myanmar army, which human rights groups say is involved in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, but the country’s defence ministry clarifying, “the matter is clearly diplomatic”.
Israeli arms companies like TAR Ideal Concepts have even trained Myanmar’s special forces in Rakhine state where most of the violence against the Rohingya has taken place.
Israel has sold to Myanmar more than 100 tanks, military hardware and boats used to police its border, human rights groups allege.
The EU’s embargo on Myanmar refers to the ban on sales of “equipment which might be used for internal repression”. Notably, the US and the European Union (EU) have an arms restriction on Myanmar. The US cites the International Religious Freedom Act and uses the embargo on countries that have “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.
But neither the EU nor the US has failed restrain Israel for backing the Myanmar military.
Israel sees in the Rohingya militants a threat to itself because some of these jihadis have been fighting with the Islamist radical groups in the Middle East.
Hardline Jewish groups in Israel, as hardline Hindutva groups in India, have tried to connect to hardline Buddhist groups in Myanmar .
Understandably, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a great friend of Israel , has lend unequivocal support and promised all forms of military assistance like hardware and training to the Myanmar Tatmadaw during his recent visit to Myanmar.
India has already signed up to provide military training to Tatmadaw — two mobile Indian military trainings will be stationed in Myanmar soon.
And those Burmese military officers and soldiers trained in Myanmar will also be send to Indian commando training school in Belgaum.
India may be using the opportunity provided by the Rakhine crisis to cosy up to the Myanmar military to achieve its strategic objectives of neutralising the trans-border bases of northeastern militants in Sagaing, the last that these motley group of rebels enjoy after their eviction from Bhutan in 2003 and Bangladesh in 2009-10.
But Modi and his BJP party have made clear their unwillingness to raise the pitch on the Rohingya exodus.
Far from it, Modi’s junior home minister Khiren Rijjuju, a Buddhist who shepherded Dalai Lama during his recent controversial visit to Arunachal Pradesh, set the stage for the PM’s Myanmar visit by announcing that Delhi is determined to deport the 50-60,000 odd Rohingyas in India including the 15000 odd registered with UNHCR.
BJP and its fraternal groups need to periodically energise their core political base of Hindutva by Muslim bashing — be it the anti-beef campaign or the anti-triple talaq campaign (which also gets it some support from Muslim women in India). But now that the BJP has to desist from publicly expressing its ire against ‘illegal migrants from Bangladesh’ because Delhi sees Dhaka as a strong ally, it serves the saffrons right to whip up anti-Rohingya tirade not just to re-energise its Hindutva political base but also to cosy up to Burmese nationalist and Buddhist fundamentalist forces in Myanmar and also to the all-powerful Tatmadaw.
Like India, Bangladesh would not want to see any major escalation in the Rakhine crisis because that would keep sending tens of thousands of Rohingyas fleeing into the over-populated country with limited resources to tide over such an inflow.
But Sheikh Hasina’s government shares with India and Israel a huge fear of the Islamist jihad being unleashed in Rakhine, not only because the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has close links with its own bete noire , the neo-JMB, but also because the Rohingya issue may help the opposition garner support from Rohingyas who vote in Bangladesh in the rundown to the national elections due next year. No wonder the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami are vocal supporters of a policy to support and shelter the Rohingyas and perhaps also ensure backing of the ARSA.
The first time Rohingya militants got any foreign support for their armed insurgency to create an ‘Islamic Republic of North Arakans’ was during 1977-78 when BNP’s founder, the late Gen Ziaur Rahman was in power.
China has so far maintained silence on the Rakhine issue, but it shares concerns of Islamist militancy with its festering Uighur problem in Sinkiang.
With vital projects like the Kyaukphyu port and special economic zone and the oil-gas pipeline from there to Yunnan in the Rakhine state, China cannot side with its ally Pakistan or other Islamic countries, where pro-Rohingya feelings have peaked with their recent bout of extra-judicial killings and torture that the Myanmar military has been accused off.
In the Islamic world, there seems to be what can be described as competitive radicalism with Turkey trying to outdo Saudi Arabia by raising the pitch on the Rohingya issue.
But with Israel, India and Bangladesh determined to support Myanmar with military hardware, training and intelligence (Dhaka even offered joint military operations) and the Islamic countries hitting out at Myanmar, the battle lines are clearly drawn.
The West is at its hypocritical best — its human rights groups are attacking the Myanmar military for atrocities quite vocally but its governments are unable to exercise any influence on strategic allies like Israel and India to get Myanmar restrain military operations.
No wonder the Saudi ambassador in Yangon told me recently that leaving aside the Rohingya issue, the condition of Muslims in Myanmar was better than in Europe. 4500 Muslims have been granted visa for performing the Hajj this year against 3800 last year. That includes ten selected as special guests of King Salman.
Bertil Lintner with his huge insight and expertise on Myanmar drives home the point that the West and the Islamic world often cause huge problems for Burmese Muslims who have nothing to do with the Rohingyas and whose numbers are not inconsiderable.
“The narrative the Western media seeks to create is a huge distortion. Rohingyas and Burmese Muslims are one and the same for them, but tell me what has people like the murdered constitutional lawyer Ko Ni got to do with Rohingyas. He is a Burmese Muslim and he was killed for his politics, not religion,” said Lintner during a recent conversation with me in Yangon.
For Burmese Muslims, like the two beautiful sisters Hasina and Halima who I spotted clapping heartily for Indian PM Modi during his rally at Yangon’s Indoor Stadium, the Rohingya is a different nationality — like they are for the Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh.
So, Myanmar’s official description of them as illegal Bengalis or of the ARSA as Bengali terrorists have provoked huge reaction in Bangladesh.
That Myanmar’s official press releases started referring to ARSA as ‘Islamic terrorists’ and not as ‘Bengali terrorists’ any more owes to a very strong protest from Bangladesh foreign ministry, though that was not made public for obvious reasons.
For the majority of Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh, themselves victims of Islamist terror in form of JMB, ABT and HUJI the clubbing of Rohingyas as ‘illegal Bengalis’ and of groups like ARSA as ‘Bengali terrorists’ is simply a travesty of truth.
Myanmar’s officialdom needs to be more sensitive to such regional sensitivities if it wants to tide over the Rakhine crisis with support from neighbours at a time when the world is crying wolf.
And one question remains to be answered — whose cause the ARSA was furthering when it decided to go on the huge pre-dawn offensive on Aug 25 within hours of Aung San Suu Kyi promising to create an inter-ministerial committee to implement the Kofi Annan-led Rakhine Commission published earlier in the day! This report if implemented is the best the Rohingyas could expect at the moment and ARSA seems to have torpedoed that effectively because the discourse in Rakhine has shifted back to the security prism for Myanmar.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/09/battlelines-drawn-rohingya-issue/