Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army
| Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army | |
|---|---|
| Participant in the Rohingya insurgency in Western Myanmar | |
Logo of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army
|
|
| Active | 2013 – present 9 October 2016 – present (militarily) |
| Ideology | Rohingya nationalism |
| Leaders | Ata Ullah |
| Area of operations | Northern Rakhine State, Bangladesh-Myanmar border |
| Size |
~200 (January 2018) |
| Opponents | |
| Battles and wars | |
| Website | twitter |
| Designated as a terrorist organisation by | |
 Myanmar
|
|
~200 (January 2018)
Rohingya insurgency in Western Myanmar
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Burmese: အာရ်ကန်ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ကယ်တင်ရေးတပ်မတော်; abbreviated ARSA), also known by its former name Harakah al-Yaqin (meaning Faith Movement in English), is a Rohingya insurgent group active in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. According to a December 2016 report by the International Crisis Group, it is led by Ata Ullah, a Rohingya man who was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and grew up in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Other members of its leadership include a committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia.
The Central Committee for Counter-Terrorism of Myanmar declared ARSA a terrorist group on 26 August 2017 in accordance with the country's counter-terrorism law. The Burmese government has alleged that the group is involved with and subsidized by foreign Islamists, despite there being no firm evidence proving such allegations. ARSA released a statement on 28 August 2017, calling government allegations against it as "baseless" and claiming that its main purpose is to defend the rights of Rohingyas.
According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a spokesperson for ARSA, the group was formed in 2013, following the 2012 Rakhine State riots, under the name Harakah al-Yaqin (translated as Faith Movement in English). A former member of ARSA described how he was recruited by the group's leader, Ata Ullah, three years prior to the attacks in October 2016. Ata Ullah had approached villagers, asking for five to ten recruits to join his group and telling them that the time had come to "stop the mistreatment of the Rohingya people". Prior to the October 2016 attacks, ARSA had merely patrolled villages armed with bamboo sticks, making sure that villagers prayed at the mosque. According to Rohingya locals and Burmese security officials, the group had again began approaching Rohingya men from various villages for recruitment six months prior to its first attack in October 2016, this time with the intention of training them across the border in Bangladesh for a future attack in Myanmar.
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