YANGON // A group of Rohingya Muslims that attacked Myanmar border guards in October is headed by people with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday, citing members of the group.
The coordinated attacks on October 9 killed nine policemen, and sparked a crackdown by security forces in the Muslim-majority north of Rakhine state in the country’s north-west.
At least 86 people have been killed, according to state media, and the United Nations has estimated that 27,000 members of the largely stateless Rohingya minority have fled across the border to Bangladesh.
Myanmar’s government, which is led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, blamed Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the October 9 attacks, but has issued scant further information about the assailants it called “terrorists”.
A group calling itself Harakah Al Yakin claimed responsibility for the attacks in video statements and the Brussels-based ICG said it had interviewed four members of the group in Rakhine and two outside Myanmar, as well as individuals in contact with members via messaging apps.
The Harakah Al Yakin, or Faith Movement, was formed after communal violence in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed and about 140,000 displaced in Rakhine, most of them Rohingya, the group said.
Rohingya who had fought in other conflicts, as well as Pakistanis or Afghans, gave clandestine training to villagers in northern Rakhine over two years ahead of the attacks, it said.
The ICG identified Harakah Al Yakin’s leader as Ata Ullah, born in Karachi to a Rohingya migrant father before moving as a child to Mecca.
“Though not confirmed, there are indications he went to Pakistan and possibly elsewhere, and that he received practical training in modern guerrilla warfare,” the group said, noting that Ata Ullah was one of 20 Rohingya from Saudi Arabia leading the group’s operations in Rakhine.
A committee of 20 senior Rohingya émigrés oversees the group, which has its headquarters in Mecca, the ICG said.
Groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent have referred to the plight of the Rohingya in their material, and the battlefield experience of at least some of the Rohingya fighters implied links to international militants, the ICG said.
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* Reuters