{"id":306051,"date":"2025-10-27T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=306051"},"modified":"2025-10-25T13:53:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T12:53:20","slug":"expelling-rohingyas-from-rakhine-the-greatest-strategic-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/10\/expelling-rohingyas-from-rakhine-the-greatest-strategic-error\/","title":{"rendered":"Expelling Rohingyas from Rakhine: The Greatest Strategic Error"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Hundreds of Rohingya people crossing Bangladesh’s border as they flee from Buchidong at Myanmar after crossing the Nuf River in Taknuf.
(Image by mamun11021981@yahoo.com \/ depositphotos)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the game of geopolitics, perhaps the most important rule is \u2018self-interest first\u2019. In Rakhine, Myanmar\u2019s every internal actor, including the military junta, the civilian govt. (NLD) and the United League of Arakan (ULA) or the Arakan Army (AA) sought their own interest, making a complex situation for the Rohingya. But \u2018expelling Rohingyas from Rakhine\u2019 was the biggest strategic miscalculations by the junta and the then Suu Kyi-led NLD civilian govt.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

24 Oct 2025<\/em> –\u00a0Before the 2017 Rohingya ethnic cleansing, Rakhine had a population where around 55% people were Buddhist, 43% were Muslim, 1.2% Christian, 0.3% Hindu, and 0.1% followed Animism. Clearly, there were only two vital groups, i.e., Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. With 1.2 million Rohingyas expelled from Rakhine to neighboring Bangladesh, Rakhine Buddhists now enjoy a majority of around 80%.<\/p>\n

The Rakhine people\u2019s desire for an independent Arakan\/Rakhine nation or perhaps an autonomous Rakhine state has grown as a result of this circumstance. As the United League of Arakan (ULA) or the Arakan Army (AA) gets full support from Rakhine Buddhists, the AA now dreams of an autonomous or even independent Arakan\/Rakhine country. The expulsion of the Rohingyas, thus, clearly benefited the ULA\/AA and the Rakhine Buddhists.<\/p>\n

The ULA\/AA now holds the position of de facto governmental authority in the state of Rakhine, which is dominated by Buddhists. The military junta only controls three of Rakhine\u2019s seventeen townships\u2014Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung<\/a>\u2014while AA currently controls fourteen of them. Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung Townships, once known as the home of Rohingyas, are all now under the control of the AA.<\/p>\n

If the Rohingya were in the Rakhine province, the ratio of Rakhine to Rohingya today would have been around 55:43. As a result, the Rakhine Buddhists, being around half the population, could not stake claims for an independent country based on their ethnic identity. This clearly justifies why Rakhine Buddhists were also involved in expelling the Rohingyas from the Rakhine state.<\/p>\n

The historic conflicts between these two arose during the Second World War. During World War II, Rohingya Muslims, who were allied with the British, fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who had allied with the Japanese. Following independence in 1948, the newly formed union government of the predominantly Buddhist country subjected the Rohingyas to extensive systematic discrimination in the country.<\/p>\n

The Myanmar military, regrettably, has consistently opposed the Rohingya in the confrontations between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. The Junta consistently ignored the reality that the Rohingya have never demanded separation or an independent Rakhine State; all they asked was citizenship and rights to live in their motherland like other ethnic groups. So, there was never any threat to Myanmar\u2019s sovereignty or territorial integrity from the Rohingya people.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, despite ample evidence of the Rohingya\u2019s ethnic presence in Myanmar for generations, the majority of internal actors still view them as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from nearby Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire\u201d by Francis Buchanan (1799), which was found and republished by Michael Charney in the \u201cSOAS Bulletin of Burma Research\u201d in 2003, states, among the native groups of Arakan, there are the \u201cMohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan.\u201d The Classical Journal of 1811 identified \u201cRooinga\u201d as one of the languages spoken in the \u201cBurmah Empire.\u201d In 1815, Johann Severin Vater listed \u201cRuinga\u201d as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in German.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blatantly ignoring this history, Myanmar still regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants and non-citizens. Thus, the persecution of the Rohingya went beyond all bounds. Violent, large-scale crackdowns targeted toward the Rohingya \u2014 like Operation King Dragon in 1978<\/a>, and Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation in 1991<\/a> \u2014 forced hundreds of thousands to flee Burma into Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

The Myanmar military\u2019s ruthless assault on the Rohingya villages in August 2017 marked the start of the most recent and arguably most severe phase of Rohingya persecution. Later, the chief of the United Nations agency for human rights described the military\u2019s actions as \u201ca textbook example of ethnic cleansing,\u201d<\/a> \u201cacts of horrific barbarity,\u201d and possibly \u201cacts of genocide.\u201d The persecution forced over a million Rohingya to flee to their neighboring country, Bangladesh, while thousands fled to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

However, in today\u2019s reality, to save Rakhine\u2019s and Myanmar\u2019s territorial integrity, there is only one path for the Myanmar government\/junta, and that is to repatriate Rohingyas to Rakhine, return their citizenship and create a balance there.<\/p>\n

Regional and global actors cannot afford to just sit and watch Rakhine\u2019s fall to any non-state actors. Because, this will encourage many insurgent\/separatist groups in South Asia and South-East Asian regions, threating security and stability.<\/p>\n

\n

Imran Hossain, Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Bangladesh Army International University of Science and Technology (BAIUST), (MBA), (BBA), University of Rajshahi.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – pressenza.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Oct 2025 – In the game of geopolitics, the most important rule is \u2018self-interest first\u2019. In Rakhine, every actor sought their own interest, making a complex situation for the Rohingya. But \u2018expelling Rohingyas from Rakhine\u2019 was the biggest strategic miscalculations by the junta and the civilian govt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":306053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677],"tags":[526,865,487,883,821,527],"class_list":["post-306051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-updates-on-myanmar-rohingya-genocide","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-genocide","tag-human-rights","tag-migrants","tag-refugees","tag-rohingya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306056,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306051\/revisions\/306056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}