SUMMARY
The ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army; formerly known as Harakah al-Yaqin, HaY, Faith Movement of Arakan; Myanmar authorities referred to the group as Aqa Mul Mujahidin, “Communities of Fighters”) was a rebel group that began fighting an intrastate armed conflict over territory against the Government of Myanmar (Burma) in 2016. Active in Myanmar’s Rakhine (historically known as “Arakan”) state, the group claimed to represent the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group. The Rohingya in Rakhine state have suffered from discrimination and persecution for decades, and their situation has grown increasingly dire ever since the military coup in Myanmar in 1962. Myanmar’s government and extremists within the Buddhists majority population view them as illegal immigrants (“Bengalis”) rather than a national minority. Consequently, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship rights and their lives have been subject to severe restrictions. The Rohingya, alongside other Myanmar Muslims, were also targeted in communal rioting in 1991, 2012, and 2013. Against this backdrop, the ARSA claimed that it fought for the self-determination and self-defense of all the people in “Arakan” (that is, Rakhine state). This included, for example, the promotion and protection of rights of the Rohingya, and ensure their rights to full citizenship status.
The ARSA was created by a group of twenty people from the Rohingya diaspora in Saudi Arabia; it was believed that the formation of the group began at some point in 2013 or 2014. A primary motivation behind ARSA’s creation was said to have been the communal clashes between Muslims, including the Rohingya, and Buddhists in Myanmar in 2012 and 2013 (see Buddhists (Myanmar) - Muslims (Myanmar)). The group, which at the time still called itself HaY, publicly announced its existence on 11 October 2016 after another armed Rohingya group, the largely defunct RSO, claimed responsibility for an attack carried out by HaY on 9 October. While the group has sought recognition from the international Islamic community, and despite being created in Saudi Arabia, the ARSA did not promote an Islamist agenda, but focused solely on the rights of the Rohingya.
It was suggested that at the time of its first militant activities in 2016, 20 commanders drawn from the Rohingya diaspora in Saudi Arabia led the group. Among them was Ata Ullah, who also appeared as a spokesperson in several YouTube videos. This has led to the conclusion that Ata Ullah was the group’s primary leader “on the ground” in Myanmar; however, his exact standing within the group was not completely clear. It is worth noting that the 20 commanders of ARSA were not the same individuals that founded the group.
The rank-and-file members of the ARSA were largely recruited from Rohingya refugees that had fled from Rakhine in 2012, or from villages in the Maungdaw township in northern Rakhine. While the Rohingya population has never displayed any significant level of radicalization, it is believed that the relative success of the ARSA to mobilize popular support was caused by the targeting of Muslims during the 2012 communal rioting. Following these riots, the population became more susceptible to the idea of utilizing violent strategies to achieve change; particularly younger religious leaders propagated such strategies. This presented a major shift in Rohingya society, where social and religious leaders had historically renounced the use of violence. The ARSA organized its fighters into village-level cells, usually led by a young Islamic cleric. As of 2017, no estimates of the group’s total cadre strength existed.
ARSA’s fighters were most likely trained with the help of militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, given the relative sophistication of their tactics. The group’s leaders were believed to have contacts in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and perhaps also in India. It is worth noting that despite the allegations of connections to militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as of 2017, the ARSA did not display a modus operandi commonly associated with extremist Islamist groups; the group primarily focused its attacks on Myanmar security forces, such as the Border Police. In fact, ARSA’s tactics were similar to those of the defunct RSO, despite there being no known connection between the two.
