ISI behind Rohingya crisis

Several Muslim organisations in India and their patrons in the sickular Establishment are championing the cause of Rohingya Muslim refugees. Congress MLA Asif Shaikh Rashid of the communally-sensitive Malegaon in Maharashtra even went to the extent of welcoming and appealing to these refugees to make the town their new home.

The ISI trained a Karachi-born Rohingya Atah Ullah Khan in guerilla warfare and helped him set up Harakha al-Yaqeen or the Movement of the Faithful, a terrorist outfit with strong international jihadi links.

None of these people had a word of sympathy for the 3.5 lakh Hindus who were attacked, raped and forced to leave the Kashmir valley by Pak-backed Islamist terrorists.

Yet when 1.5 lakh Rohingyas illegally entered India (thanks to corrupt officials of the Border Security Force) after being rejected by the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh, then pseudos and several Muslim bodies started championing their cause with alacrity.

It is said that these refugees are victims of “genocide” practised by the Myanmarese army. But nobody asks why the army has ordered a crackdown in Rakhine region of Myanmar where a bulk of these Rohingya Muslims lives.

Even though discontent has been brewing in Rakhine region among the Rohingyas over their perceived discrimination by the Buddhist majority, it wasn’t until the protests took a violent form that the Myanmarese authorities sat up and took serious notice of the situation.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, in tandem with China, discovered a perfect opportunity to create trouble in India’s eastern flank. The ISI trained a Karachi-born Rohingya Atah Ullah Khan in guerilla warfare and helped him set up Harakha al-Yaqeen or the Movement of the Faithful, a terrorist outfit with strong international jihadi links. Khan’s parents had shifted to Mecca and this gave him access to fundamentalist elements there. A committee of Rohingya extremists was formed in Mecca to oversee the affairs of Harakah al-Yaqeen with Wahabi Islamic scholar Zabiur Rahman providing theological support.

It was Rahman who got Islamic clerics in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Pakistan to issue fatwas to the Rohingyas Rakhine to support Harakah al-Yaqeen.

According to the International Crisis Group, the formation of the Harakah in 2012 was a “game changer” at the ground level in Rakhine.

On October 9 last year the Harakah launched a major offensive against three army posts, including an armoury. Several security personnel were killed and weapons were stolen. The attackers, who were well trained, even targeted the local security headquarters by using sophisticated IEDs.

On November 12, a senior army officer was killed. This sounded alarm bells in the army H.Q. in Yangon. It was clear that a full-fledged insurgency was on in Rakhine region with civilian support. The army did what any other army facing a similar situation would have done — launched a massive operation to crush the insurgency.

Many of the Rohingyas who have entered India are not mere refugees. They are trained guerrillas who have escaped arrest by the Myanmarese army. They pose a huge security risk to our nation. The fact that they are guided by the ISI is clear from the fact that a sizable number of the refugees have parked themselves in Jammu as part of a demographic aggression.

The Central government is fully justified in forcing these refugees to return to their country. But it should also take to task BSF personnel whose laxity enabled the entry of such a large number of Rohingyas into India.

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S Balakrishnan

Advocate and Senior Journalist who was formerly City Editor & Chief of Bureau of The Times of India, Mumbai. He has also served in the MumbaiMunicipal Council.

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