Islamic militants take aim
at MyanmarBy Jacob Zenn
After decades of isolation under
military rule, Myanmar is opening to foreign investment and forms of democracy
for the first time in a generation. The reform process, however, is now being
attended by unanticipated consequences and influences, both internally and from
abroad, that could undermine the country's new trend towards
openness.
Recent sectarian fighting between Muslims and Buddhists in
Myanmar's western Rakhine State has caught the attention of militant Islamists
in South and Southeast Asia. Since May, the amount of jihadi propaganda directed
towards Myanmar, a country previously unknown in the world of jihadi
antagonists, has surged as perhaps thousands of Muslim Rohingyas have been
forced to flee the country.
Tensions between the ethnic Rohingya and
Rakhine populations
in Rakhine State were mostly kept under
wraps under Myanmar's previous ruling military junta. Violence erupted on May 28
after an ethnic Rakhine woman was raped and murdered allegedly by three
Rohingyas in Rakhine State, and the government was unprepared for the
inter-ethnic violence that soon transpired.
A cycle of violence between
the two groups has since resulted in widespread arson attacks and hundreds of
murders. Perhaps thousands of the 800,000 Rohingyas living in Rakhine State have
recently fled to Bangladesh, which many Myanmar citizens claim is the Rohingyas'
true homeland.
The violence occurs at a time of growing regional
instability in the pivot area where South and Southeast Asia meet, namely the
areas along the Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India's Assamese borders. At the same
that Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines clashed in Myanmar, fighting erupted
between Muslims and Hindus in India's Assam State.
Since mid-July, more
than 30 people have been killed and 150,000 displaced in Assam as riots devolved
into open conflict between indigenous tribes such as the Bodos and Muslim
settlers in the state's Kokrajhar and Chirang districts. As in Myanmar where the
Rohingyas are considered illegal Bangladeshi settlers, the Muslims targeted in
Assam are accused of being ethnic Bengalis from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh
has the highest population density of any country and is woefully ill-equipped
to deal with an influx of refugees from Myanmar and India. Bangladesh is home to
a population of 160 million people in a country the size of the US State of
Iowa, which in contrast has a population of only three million
people.
Bangladesh also has its own homegrown problems with Muslim
extremist groups, including the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which authorities banned in
2009. The head of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), Yasin Bhatkal, is believed to be
hiding in Dhaka and Chittagong, Bangladesh's two largest cities, allegedly with
the help of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
The
Bangladesh government now runs the risk of being perceived by militant Islamists
as selling out fellow Muslims, a sentiment expressed in a recent surge of jihadi
propaganda condemning it for not doing enough to help the inrush of refugee
Rohingyas.
As is often the case with jihadi statements, the videos and
essays propagated by militant Islamists about recent events in Myanmar are more
rhetoric than substance. Playing up the victimhood narrative, they apparently
hope to incite the global Muslim community, or ummah, and win new recruits to
their wider cause against enemy "infidel" governments and
countries.
While secular Bangladesh has been a target of Islamists for
years, Myanmar is apparently a new member of the "infidel" club of countries
that propagandists threaten in response to its treatment of the Rohingyas. Given
the Myanmar military's ongoing challenges of trying to pacify internal
insurgencies, including a major unresolved conflict in northern Kachin State, it
is likely unprepared to raise its counter-terrorism capabilities to prevent a
possible retributive plot against the country.
The most recent militant
statement to target Myanmar came from Lebanon's Hezbollah, which on July 23 said
in an official statement:
"The regime-owned killing machine
relentlessly works on striking Muslims in different regions, with Rohingya at
the forefront...This is a new racial purification trend against Muslims."
On July 20, the Taliban released a more vitriolic statement
saying:
The Muslims of [Myanmar] have been facing such oppression and
savagery for the past two months never previously witnessed in the history of
mankind.
Mercilessly burning children, women and men like toasting
sheep on fire is not only against every known law but something no man with any
conscious can ever accept but unfortunately the Muslims of [Myanmar] are targets
of such a gross crime. Not only that, but they are also being expelled from
their lands, forcefully ejected from their homes, their wealth is being usurped
and their honor looted while the whole world turns a blind eye to their
plight.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, besides considering this
crime a black scar on the history of mankind, calls on the government of
[Myanmar] to immediately put a stop to this savagery and barbarism and halt such
heart rending historical violations against humans and humanity. They should
realize that this is not only a crime against the Muslims of [Myanmar] but
against all humankind and especially an unforgivable crime against the entire
Muslim world…[1]
On July 16, The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), the
European propaganda arm in support of al Qadea and other radical Islamic
organizations, issued a recent question and answer essay called "The Genocide
against the Muslims in [Myanmar]" on the jihadist website al Fidaa:
Why did this genocide begin? The Buddhist Rakhine killers placed the dead body
[of the raped and killed Rakhine woman] near a Muslim village without any
knowledge of the murder. The Buddhist Rakhine and Burmese (Myanmar) authority
accused Muslims of killing the woman. As a result, three innocent Muslim youths
were arrested. One was beaten to death, and the other two were sentenced to
death by the court. The government has shown the world that they created a fake
issue to instigate a real event against Muslims.
How did this
genocide start and what happened afterwards? On June 3, 2012, eight Muslim
pilgrims along with one escort, one bus helper, and one woman were killed by a
Rakhine mob in Taungup township in southern Arakan [Rakhine] State. Five others
escaped the massacre…The gang of Rakhine terrorists stopped the bus, which had
the license plate 7 (Ga) 7868, at an immigration gate, and called, "Come down
all, if there are any foreigners," while holding lethal weapons…Then, they
started to beat the Muslim pilgrims and dragged them from the bus to the road,
where an organized gang of more than 300 Rakhine terrorists beat the Muslims
until they died. The gang had been standing at the immigration gate, but no
authorities came out to stop the massacre. [2]
These messages and
interpretations of events are starting to cause regional ripple effects. On July
13, 300 members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid
(JAT) in Indonesia threatened to storm the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. One
protest leader said over a loudspeaker: "If embassy officials refuse to talk
with us, I demand all of you break into the building and turn it upside down …
Allahu Akbar … Every drop of blood that is shed from a Muslim must be paid back.
Nothing is free in this world … FPI is ready to wage jihad … Go to Myanmar and
carry out jihad for your Muslim brothers."
On July 6, the al-Faruq
Foundation for Media Production released an Arabic-language video called
"Solidarity With Our Muslim Brothers in Arakan (The Tragedy of [Myanmar])" on
the Ansar al-Mujahideen Forum. The propaganda film includes a historical
narrative focusing on Muslim victimhood played over images of brutalized
Rohingyas, although some of the images appear not to have come from the recent
violence. The video's narrative includes a passage that says:
They
steal the money of the Muslims and they steal their crops and they prohibit the
Muslims from communicating with people from other countries. They also prevent
the marriages of Muslims and they put a lot of obstacles in the way of Muslim
marriages. This is not all as there is a lot of injustice that you can't even
imagine and all forms of torture. So where are the defenders of the human rights
in the 20th century and where the people who fight for freedom and democracy.
This awful silence indicates the acceptance and supporting of this because it is
Muslim blood that is being shed and since it is a Muslim blood, then the blood
is cheap like the blood of Muslims of 'Arakan', Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya
and everywhere else.
These and other statements have put the Rohingyas'
plight on the radar of many Islamist militant groups. While their propaganda is
directed at militants from all regions, some of the groups who have issued
statements on Myanmar are clearly trying to recruit disenfranchised Rohingyas to
their radical causes.
They have a potential galvanizing figure. One
ethnic Rohingya, Abu Zar al-Burmi, is believed to be the mufti, or religious
scholar, for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan based in the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Without roots in any nation, as Rohingyas
are not allowed citizenship in Myanmar or Bangladesh, al-Burmi has promoted the
creation of a global Muslim community which exists without respect to
international borders.
The growing inter-religious fighting and spillover
humanitarian crises in Rakhine and Assam States is exerting new pressures on
Bangladesh, Myanmar, and India. As the violence spirals and governments fail to
restore order and dispense of justice for crimes committed, the situation could
quickly become a new regional, if not international, security
dilemma.
For their part, Islamist militants have shown they are prepared
to exploit the plight of the Rohingyas for their own radical purposes, while
neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh have demonstrated they are able to manage the
crisis at a local or national level. Should the crisis escalate and become an
effective recruiting tool for transnational Islamist militant groups, the
international community will one way or another eventually be dragged into the
mire.
Notes:
1. Statement of Islamic Emirate regarding the bloody
tragedy of the Muslims of Burma, July 20, 2012.
2. The Genocide Against the
Muslims in Burma, Jihadology, July 16, 2012.
3. Solidarity With Our Muslim
Brothers in Arakan (The Tragedy of Burma), Jihadology, July 6,
2012.
Jacob Zenn is a political risk analyst and legal adviser based
in Washington, D.C., who focuses on militant groups in Southeast Asia, Central
Asia, and Nigeria. He can be reached at
zopensource123@gmail.com.
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2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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