“The Burmese military are cowards.”An intermediary introduced him as Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine. The meeting with the ARSA commander was set up after a week of enquiries, dead-ends, and several false starts. Yangon has denied that the security forces have targeted civilians, claiming that the army is trying to hunt down terrorists. That statement seems to tally with an official statement from the Myanmar army released on August 26. The ARSA group is led by a man believed to have been born into a Rohingya family in Pakistan who goes by the name Ata Ullah.

Source: Dhaka Tribune September 23, 2017 17:35 UTC