As part of a secret plot of the Myanmar authorities, guerilla-trained members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) are entering Bharat and joining local jihadist outfits in Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and northeastern provinces with the notorious agenda of spreading jihadist terror. According to a credible source, members of ARSA, who are infiltrating inside India are also being guided by Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), who are trying to use them in executing terrorist plots jointly with militancy groups in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
Until recently it was perceived by most counterterrorism experts and critics of Myanmar authorities that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) was a pro-Rohingya terrorist entity. But recently it has been exposed that leaders of ARSA, including its founder Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, are under the monthly payroll of the Myanmar government.
According to media reports, several front-ranking leaders of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), including its kingpin Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi are in fact paid agents of the Myanmar military junta and have been on a monthly payroll, with the main assignment of sabotaging return of Rohingyas to Myanmar. With this mission, Jununi and other key members of ARSA are targeting and killing pro-repatriation Rohingya leaders inside Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. These lapdogs of the Myanmar military junta also are running campaigns with the goal of convincing Rohingyas to give up their decades-old demand of getting legal status in Myanmar. In addition to paying monthly stipends, Myanmar’s military junta is helping members of ARSA to run illegal Yaba trade, while Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi alone gets 20 per cent of the total income generated from the drug trade. With this income, Jununi has purchased properties in Pakistan and also has established two medium-range industrial projects in Pakistan’s Karachi province.
It may be mentioned here that Ataullah Jununi was born in Karachi, Pakistan to a migrant family, who had fled the religious persecution in his native Rakhine State in Myanmar (also known as Arakan, Burma) sometime in the 1960s, At an early age, Ataullah’s family moved to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he was enrolled in a madrassa. In his later years in Mecca, Ataullah served as an imam to the Rohingya diaspora community of around 150,000. According to the think tanks, Ataullah Jununi and several members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) maintain deeper connections with Afghan drug lords, while they also enjoy discreet relations with Buddhist leaders in Myanmar as well as officials of Myanmar’s intelligence agency.
Although Myanmar authorities are aware of the fact that Ataullah spent six months training in modern guerilla warfare under the Taliban in Pakistan; they succeeded in hiring him and a few other key figures in ARSA by giving them an offer of huge financial benefits. It is even learnt that the Myanmar military junta has allocated a large land to Ataullah Jununi, where he currently is running a Yaba manufacturing factory.
With the uncertainty of returning Rohingyas to Myanmar, there already are signs of the spread of militancy activities amongst the Rohingyas. According to media reports, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA, which was formerly known as Harakahal-Yaqin has succeeded in recruiting more than two thousand Rohingyas as members of this jihadist outfit, while there are approximately 150 females in it. ARSA has been increasing the number of recruits, while a section of the Rohingya jihadists is trained by the Pakistani spy agency Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) within the mountainous areas in Nepal. For years, ARSA has been receiving funding from several countries including Turkey, Iran and Qatar, while it already has been aligned with several militancy outfits including Al Qaeda, Islamic State, and Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Sources said, under the direct patronization of the Myanmar military junta, members of ARSA are already taking secret preparation of establishing their total control over Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh and finally proclaim it as an ARSA Caliphate.
Back in 2021, a vernacular news portal in its report claimed, it has received video statements of several ARSA members who have claimed Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh as “part of Arakan”. They said Rohingyas will permanently stay in Cox’s Bazar and ultimately take control of the area.
According to media reports, under the direct patronization of Myanmar’s military junta, ARSA has taken over control of Yaba pills (a type of drug also known as methamphetamine and captagon pills), are has been trafficking consignments of this drug to a number of Middle Eastern nations, Thailand, India, Philippines, Japan and South Korea with the direct help from mafia don Dawood Ibrahim’s infamous D Company as well as Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas. Generally, the consignments of Yaba pills are sent from Myanmar via various shipping lines in concealed consignments to the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon, wherefrom these are later re-routed to Middle Eastern nations, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Yaba has one too many nicknames to keep up with, but this little red tablet, regardless of its name, was outlawed in Thailand in the early 1970s.
Otherwise known as the madness drug or Nazi speed, is a combination of a number of stimulants. The two main substances that make up the drug are caffeine and methamphetamine, otherwise known as crystal meth.
In recent years, the use of yaba has become rampant in a number of countries including Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, while it has massive demand in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has been mainly pushing yaba pills inside Saudi Arabia mostly by hiding inside various edible and non-edible consignments, including fruits and vegetables. Hezbollah also started sending yaba to South American nations, mainly, Mexico and Colombia. According to media reports, during recent months mega-terror outfit Hamas has also aligned with the Iranian proxy network, joining hands with Hezbollah and Houthis. It is anticipated, Hamas too has joined the multi-billion-dollar narco-trade.
A source claimed, the number of ARSA girls and women in various brothels in Bharat is on the rise, while a significant number of the ARSA female terrorists are also entering Indian brothels under the disguise of sex workers.
Another credible source said Rohingyas are also trying to increase their presence within various parts of Bharat, especially Jammu, Kashmir and West Bengal. They are seeing the current West Bengal government, which is led by Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress as a “friendly force”, which has mostly been ignoring the case increase in the number of Rohingyas in West Bengal.
The disturbing news about recruiting of Rohingyas by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) within Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, particularly Cox’s Bazar district and Myanmar’s state-owned mobile phone company MPT’s installation of towers within Bangladesh-Myanmar borders are certainly matters of gravest concern. Bangladesh’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies should now take immediate steps in dismantling the existence of ARSA within the Rohingya camps and launch massive drives against the use of MPT mobile phone SIMs inside the country.
(The article was first published in HinduPost. Republished with permission. Opinions expressed are that of the original author)
Aayush Pal 
Saisha Kamla Dudha