By 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 organization
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.
 |
| Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine |
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.
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!”
“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.”
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