In 2012 huge anti-Muslim riots sweeped across Myanmar cities and towns. The primary targets were the Rohingiyas, when four men of their community allegedly raped a Buddhist woman, in Rakhine. Crowd razed houses of Muslims who are not Rohingiyas and even Chinese Muslims called Panthays or Hui are not spared. The Panthays are descendents of Ghengis Khan, whose grandson Kublai Khan ruled China from 1260-1294 by forming the Yuan dynasty. Kublai descended on Yunnan in 1253 and subjugated the Dali Kingdom by his conquest. The Panthays or Hui Muslims of Yunnan history started with Kublai’s Yannam conquest.
The Panthays settled in Northern Myanmar in Shan Kachin and Sagaing province after the Panthay rebellion of (1856-1873) was crushed in China, making the community flee across Chinese borders. Many then got involved in the Opium trade of Golden Triangle but the rebellion removed the drug trade South to Burma from China.
China in their own country are battling Muslim separatist in Xinjiang province from late 1960s in the North West and the Myanmar anti-Muslim riots fended of any threat from its Southern axis, that Islamic fundamentalists may pose to China. The majority Bamars or ethnic Myanmarese are fed with the increasingly virulent rhetoric of Ashin Wirathu and Ma Ba Tha of the powerful Buddhist clergy of the Theravada sect
In China only 9% of its population are of ethnic origin. Muslims in Myanmar today constitute 2.3 percent (2014 census) of its population and half of it are in Rakhine province. Just like China are wary of Muslims revolt (the Panthay) and later the Xinjiang rebellion, hard line opinion in Myanmar and China are not dissimilar. The Muslims are considered a threat by junta chiefs of Myanmar. To appease the clergy they adopt similar positions as far as immigrants are concerned.
Uyghur’s of Xinjiang in China (Beginning of Jihad):
Xinjiang, which was annexed to China in the mid18th Century, was populated by Turkic speaking Uyghur or Uyghurs. From 1949 the re-emergence of a new and centralized power enabled China to assert sovereignty over the region. The communist regime then introduced a minorities policy modeled on the Soviet pattern. Fifty five national minorities together with the Han make up the Chinese nation. With Turkish speaking Uyghurs province of Xinxiang was made an autonomous region in 1955, and began to settle Han Chinese in Xinxiang, the colonisation sowed seeds of future revolt.
The Uyghur identity crisis of 1960s as Han settlement increased, began to express themselves with the formation of East Turkistan Peoples party (ETPP) in 1968, and it went underground. In 1980s student unrest began in Xinjiang as Afghan war unfolded across the Durand line and fighters from the Islamic world joined the war alongside Afghan Mujahideen to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. In 1989 Tiananmen square pro-democracy protest and its fall out led the Chinese security apertures to stifle dissent of any form across China. In the Baren insurrection of April, 1990 near Kashgar led by Zeydin Yusup of Turkistan Islamic Party, first acts of sabotage happened in Xinjiang. In February 1992 on Chinese New year three persons were killed in a bus attack at Urumqi by Shock Brigade of Islamic Reformist Parties. On 25th
February, 1997 in Urumqi four bomb blasts killed 9 and injured 74 suspected to be carried out by East Turkistan National Alliance. In another major attack on March 7th 1997 the bomb went off in a bus in Peking’s Xidan district leaving to 30 injured and two dead. Responsibility for this attack, the first to affect Peking since 1949, was claimed by Islamist of East Turkistan Freedom Party based in Turkey. There were reports in Chinese media that Uyghur’s in Kazakhstan joined Islamic Renaissance Party in Uzbekistan and Kirghizstan and Islamic movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) or Hizb-ut- Tahrir (HT). There are also reports that 10,000 Uzbeks went to Pakistan for religious training with Jamaat-e- Islami and Tablighi-Jamaat . A little over 26 years ago China implemented it Strike Hard (da fa) campaign including Xinjiang in 1996. In wake of 9/11 China accelerated the Strike Hard in Xinjiang by early 2001, November police closed 13 illegal religious schools and arrest more than fifty in an effort to control religious extremism in Xinjiang. In 2008 the anticommunist Uyghur separatism forces called Turkistan Islamic Party threatened Beijing Olympics Games. East Turkestan Information Centre (ETIC) based in Germany led by Abudujelili Kalakash. The World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC), ETHO (East Turkestan Liberation Organization) and ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) are listed as terror groups lay the Chinese Security forces. ETIM emerged as a front line Islamist group in Xinjiang and they established contact with Bin Laden of Al-Qaeda. Chinese press released figures of 200 Uyghurs in Bin Laden Camps who participated in the Afghan Jihad, fighting alongside Hizb-e-Islami, Taliban and IMU. Salafi-Jihadist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba enrolled Uzbeks for Jihad in Jammu & Kashmir as did Hizbul Mujahideen. Twenty nine people were killed in a knife attack and 130 injured in a Kunming railway station on 1st March, 2014 by Uyghur Jihadis that marked the coming of Jihad to Chinese heartland
Jihad and Myanmar:
Ne Win who seized power on 2 March 1962 followed a hard line against the Rohingiyas. In the eve of Burma’s independence on 4 Jan 1948, Ne Win as Deputy Chief of Army battled the Mujahideen forces of Rohingiyas who wanted to join Pakistan. But the rebellion was put down as most of the leaders were arrested. In 1978 Ne Win a veteran of Rohingya insurgency launched Ops Naga Min (Dragon King) in Arakan. This operation started a long saga of migration from Arakan to Chittagong’s Cox Bazar district. As a consequence of these operations at the local level clashes began with ethnic Buddhist or Rakhine people and Rohingiyas. The cold War of late 1970s are all set to change the Rohingiya issue as thousands of Bangladeshis joined the Afghan jihad launched across the Durand line in Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
By then Cox Bazar hosted a good 1-1.5 lakh Rohingiyas as the first Islamist group RSO (Rohingiya Solidarity Organization) ARNO (Arakan Rohingiya National Organization) made their appearance in Cox Bazar with a sprinkling of the fundamentalism spread among the Muslim community in Upper Burma in 1980s and 1990s.
The 1990s saw a much more concerted effort by the jihadi elements to take up the Rohingiya issue as a fight against Myanmar’s discrimination towards Rohingiyas. Burma (Myanmar from 1989) meanwhile passed the Citizenship Bill in 1982 that does not recognize the Rohingiyas as one of the 135 ethnic groups of the country, denying them citizenship rights, and rendering them stateless.
Parallel to the growth of Rohingiya resistance in Arakan (now Rakhine) the Rakhine Buddhists showed secessionist tendency from late 1960s inspired by similar insurgencies by other ethnic communities like Karens, Kachins, Chins bordering Arakan and Shans. The ALA (Arakan Liberation Army) are fighting the
junta for an ethnic Rakhine autonomy. The Naga Min operations targeted the ALA and the pro-government militias that came up in Arakan scared the Rohingiyas, as Ne Win’s policies are turning sharply against them.
Al Qaeda the harbinger of Islamic jihad was born in 1988 under its leader the Saudi citizen Osama Bin Laden (OBL) who rallied jihadi forces to victory in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen rebels. The Bangladeshi component of the Afghan jihad returned home to form HUJI-B Harkat-ul-Mujahideen-Bangladesh) in 1989 and took up the Rohingiya issue. They only disclosed their formation in Dhaka in 1992, as the jihadist took out Afghan victory celebration in the streets.
By early 1990s the first of the cadres of Harkat ul jihad ul Arakan under Abdul Quddus could send a forty member team to train in Afghanistan and Libya. With this the global jihadi outfit al Qaeda tested the next jihadi venture after Afghanistan.
The policy of Ne Win vis a vis Rohingiyas are followed by his successors who ruled Myanmar from 1988 after he abdicated, post 8888 pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. The quasimilitary nature of Than Shwe and Thein Sein’s premiership in Myanmar implemente Tatmadaws (Myanmar military) kill all, burn all, destroy all, following the World War II Japanese Army doctrine, till 2012.The Cox Bazar Rohingiya refugee camps became breeding ground of extremism fed by pan Islamic jihad by preachers like Al Qaeda’s Anwar al Awlaki (killed in US drone attack 2011) and his follower Md Jasimuddim Rahmani of Bangladesh.
A shadow group of Harkah ul Yakin was formed by Karachi born Ataullah who immediately went underground in 2011. Just in the aftermath of anti-Muslim riots this group surfaced styled ARSA (Arakan Rohingiya Salvation Army). From 2012- 2017 Ataullah and his group could launch operations against Tatmadaw, culminating in Aug 25,2017 attack that left over fifty security forces of Myanmar dead. The emergence of ARSA gave renewed push
for a joint force called Tatmadaw operations that saw over 600,000 Rohingiyas fleeing to Cox Bazar after the Aug 2017 ARSA attack.
From 2009 in the Hpakant jade mines of Kachin a group of Budddhist Rakhine workers are recruited and trained by KIA (Kachin Independence Army) at Myanmar-Chinese border. The group called Arakan Army (AA) began as junior partner of Northern Alliance comprising of ethnic armies of Shans, Was, Palaungs and Kachins that took up arms against Tatmadaw. As a new force AA insurgents fought Tatmadaw in Shan state in joint operations, earning praise from Alliance members. By 2014 taking a North South Corridor from Sagaing to Yesago (near Irrawady) to Kalay and another 130 kms beyond the AA cadres marched to the rising massif of Chin hills. They established their base in Paletwa in Chin hills, across the Kaladan river in 2014. The Kaladan rises in the Chin Hills, passing through Mizoram and drains into Sitwee port of Rakhine. Sitwee is also the capital city of Rakhine. From 2015 AA could infiltrate south into Arakan and forge links with Rakhine heartland in Buddhist townships of Kyawktaw, MraukU, Min Bya and Ponnagyun close to Sittwe. A A also infiltrated into Rohingiya townships of Buthidaung and Rathedaung. In 2016 it overran bases of ALA (armed wing of Arakan Liberation Party) in Paletwa. AA’s standing with FPNCC (Federal Political Negotiating Committee) which declined NCA (National Ceasefire Agreement) in 2015 helped it to fill up the political vacuum that arose with Islamist upsurge within Rakhine.
Groups like UWSA (United Wa State Army) of 30,000 cadres, KIA (Kachin Independence Army) with 10,000 cadres and AA with 8000-9000 combatants is now considered as top three insurgent armies of FPNCC.
The Rohingya crisis which triggered an exodus of a million plus refugees got a renewed interest in pan Islamic Islamist groups as ISIS made its appearance in 2014. This Salafist group of ultra- orthodox Islam made rapid inroads in Bangladesh and with
he expatriate Bangladeshis eager to join it. Two such nodes of Canadian Bangladeshi Tamim Ahmed Choudhary and ‘Ex Cadet Islamic Learning Forum’ of Japanese Bangladeshi Saifullah Ozaki. On 1st July, 2016 Tamim Ahmed Choudhiry’s new JMB which pledged allegiance to ISIS carried out a gruesome attack on holy artisan bakery at Gulshan Dhaka killing 20 people, mostly foreigners including an Indian student.
The emergence of global Jihad Organizations in Xinjiang and Rakhiane province of China and Myanmar respectively from 1990s after the Afghan wars unsettled the geo-political balance in Asia as terrorist groups by deployment of violence try to change the national policy of target nations.