NOVANEWS
The world, and especially the Ummah, is incensed at what is being portrayed as genocide against Muslims in Myanmar, but the reality of what’s happening there is a lot more complex than the simplistic rumors lead one to believe, and the geopolitical ramifications of this crisis could become very far-reaching.
Right off the bat, killing innocent people is wrong, and everyone is justified for feeling outraged when they believe this is happening, as it plainly is in some cases in Myanmar’s coastal Rakhine State. The question, though, comes down to identifying who’s doing the killing and why, and whether the victims were intentionally targeted or “collateral damage,” be it from a military “anti-terrorist” operation or a “rebel” one against the government. It’s also important to ponder what the geopolitical ramifications of all of this could be in terms of the larger dynamics at play in the New Cold War.
Rakhine Review
Pertaining to Rakhine State, this conflict has ebbed and flowed throughout the decades, most recently climaxing in 2012, 2015 and just recently this summer, with the latest three escalations seeing reprisal violence by some of the hyper-nationalist Buddhist majority against the minority Muslim population. In response, the more impoverished Rohingya, who don’t have citizenship rights because most of them don’t qualify for such under the country’s pertinent laws, had little to leave behind in Rakhine State and would flee en mass to Bangladesh for safety.
It’s worthwhile here to point out that the Myanmarese military, known as the Tatmadaw, claims that its operations in their locales are triggered by the deadly attacks that Rohingya rebels — seen as terrorists by Naypyidaw and accused of having links to al-Qaeda and other such notorious groups — carried out against them and Buddhist villagers. The fog of war is such that civilians are obviously getting killed as a result, but it’s unclear whether this constitutes genocide, or who’s actually behind it all.
A “South Asian Kosovo”
It’s impossible to tell at this moment exactly what’s going on in Rakhine State and part of the reason is because of the heavy information war against Myanmar right now and Naypyidaw’s refusal to let independent journalists into the region out of what it says are security concerns, but the general dynamics at play right now are oddly reminiscent of the run-up to NATO’s 1999 War on Yugoslavia in carving the West’s protectorate of Kosovo out of what is now Serbia.
Back then, the world suddenly became aware of a newly popularized sub-identity of Muslims called “Kosovars,” just as they’re now becoming quickly acquainted with the “Rohingyas,” and they too claimed that their rights were being violated and that this therefore justified them committing acts of violence against the state and sometimes even civilians.
Unfortunately, these sorts of situations have a track record of attracting international terrorists and leading to the explosion of domestic ones, like what happened with the “Kosovo Liberation Army” and its al-Qaeda backers in Yugoslavia; the “moderate rebels,” al-Qaeda and eventually Daesh in Syria; and now the “Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army” and what increasingly looks to be Daesh’s next Asian hot spot in Myanmar.
Correspondingly, each conflict was linked to either capturing the whole country or partitioning off a strategic corner of it, with post-conflict Kosovo hosting the US’s gigantic Camp Bondsteel; all of Syria at one time being planned to become the US’s pivot of control over the entire Levant; and a future “South Asian Kosovo” of “Rohingyaland” giving its patron powerful influence over the two oil and gas pipelines from coastal Kyaukphyu to China’s Kunming and accordingly dominating this envisioned New Silk Road hub.
Yugoslavia 2.0
The point here isn’t to whitewash what might eventually turn out to be proven is the Tatmadaw’s excessive and disproportionate counterinsurgency operations against civilians, but to draw attention to how the overall conflict momentum is being guided in the direction of an externally provoked identity-centric hybrid war through a coordinated and one-sided information campaign. This is aimed most immediately at demonizing the Myanmarese state while deflecting attention away from the attacks of Rohingya “rebels,” which contributed to the rapidly deteriorating military and humanitarian situation.
Moreover, another fault line would instantly emerge in the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” (itself nothing more than a blueprint for dividing and ruling the Eastern Hemisphere through identity-centric Hybrid War) between not only Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine State, but possibly even eventually the Buddhists and Christians in the central part of Myanmar and its Northern-Eastern peripheries respectively. In addition, one could expect Buddhist and Christian “volunteers” from abroad to flood into the battlefield too, potentially catalyzing what might go on to one day become their religions’ own form of Daesh.
Other than the geopolitical removal of Myanmar from the world map and the untold suffering of its over 50 million people, the other victim would of course be China, which would have to confront a Syrian-like Hybrid War along its porous southwestern border on top of the other many security challenges ringing its periphery (North Korea, East China Sea, South China Sea and India). Any plans for a CPEC-complementing Myanmar Corridor to the Indian Ocean would also be dashed, and Buddhist troublemakers in Tibet might become radicalized and inspired to commence another round of violence.
The likelihood of these forecasted scenarios could naturally compel China to take the lead in jump-starting emergency conflict resolution measures in Myanmar if the situation continues to spiral out of control there, which might help establish exactly which of the two sides started this whole mess and hopefully bring justice to all the perpetrators without the large-scale geopolitical consequences that threaten to unfold otherwise.