Rohingya Solidarity Organisation

The  Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (রোহিঙ্গা সলিডারিটি অর্গানাইজেশন; RSO) is a militant Rohingya organization founded in the early 1980s after Burma's military launched violent operations in Arakan State (King Dragon operation in Arakan) that pushed about 250,000 Rohingyas over the border into Bangladesh.

During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Rohingyas who resided in the borderline got opportunity to collect weapons from the war. On 15 July 1972, the remained Mujahid rebel leader Zaffar founded the Rohingya Liberation Party (RLP) after mobilizing the scattered Mujahid factions. Chairman of RLP was Zaffar, Vice-Chairman & in-charge for military affairs was Abdul Latif and Secretary was Muhammad Jafar Habib, a graduate from Rangoon University. Their strength increased from 200 in the beginning to 500 in 1974. RLP based in the jungles of Buthidaung. After Military Operation conducted by the Burmese Army in July 1974, Zaffar and most of his followers fled to neighboring Bangladesh and the role of Zaffar disappeared.

After the failure of RLP movements, Muhammad Jafar Habib (the former Secretary of RLP) founded the Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1974 with a strength of 70 guerrillas. RPF's Chairman was Muhammad Jafar Habib, Vice-Chairman was Nurul Islam, a Rangoon-educated lawyer, and CEO was Muhammad Yunus, a medical doctor.

In March 1978, Ne Win's Burmese government launched a campaign called Operation King Dragon in Arakan with an intention to check illegal immigrants residing in Burma. As the operation was extended to other parts of Arakan, tens of thousands of Rohingyas crossed the border to Bangladesh. As a result, Rohingyas from Burma sprung up along the Burma-Bangladesh border. Radical Rohingya militant group RPF took this opportunity in recruiting many Rohingya Muslims who were sprung up along the Bangladesh-Burma border.

In the early 1980s, more radical elements broke away from the Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF) and formed the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO). It was led by Muhammad Yunus, the former CEO of RPF. It soon became the main and most militant faction among the Rohingyas on the Burma-Bangladesh border. RSO based itself on religious ground; and as a result, it obtained various support from the groups of the Muslim world. These included JeI in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami (HeI) in Afghanistan, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and the Angkatan Belia Islam sa-Malaysia (ABIM), and the Islamic Youth Organisation of Malaysia.

Another Rohingya militant group, Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) was founded in 1986 by Nurul Islam, the former Vice-Chairman of Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF), after uniting the remnants of the old RPF and a handful of defectors from the RSO.

Military Expansions and connections with Taliban and Al-Qaeda (1988-2011)
The military camps of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) were located in the Cox's Bazaar district in southern Bangladesh. RSO possessed a large number of light machine-guns, AK-47 assault rifles, RPG-2 rocket launchers, claymore mines and explosives according to a field report conducted by a famous correspondent Bertil Lintner in 1991. Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) was mostly equipped with UK-made 9mm Sterling L2A3 sub-machine guns, M-16 assault rifles and point-303 rifles. Afghan's Taliban instructors were seen in some of the RSO camps along the Bangladesh-Burma border, while nearly 100 RSO rebels were reported to be undergoing training in the Afghan province of Khost with Hizb-e-Islami Mujahideen.

Among the more than 60 videotapes obtained by CNN from Al-Qaeda's archives in Afghanistan in August 2002, one video showed that Muslim allies from "Burma" got training in Afghanistan. Some video tapes were shot in RSO camps in Bangladesh. These videos which show the linkage between Al-Qaeda and Rohingya insurgents were shot in the 1990s. Besides, RSO recruited many Rohingya guerrillas. According to Asian intelligence sources, Rohingya recruits were paid 30,000 Bangladeshi taka ($525) on joining and then 10,000 taka ($175) per month. The families of recruits killed in action were offered 100,000 taka ($1,750). Rohingya recruits, believed to be quite substantial in numbers, were taken to Pakistan, where they were trained and sent on further to military camps in Afghanistan. They were given the most dangerous tasks in the battlefield.

The expansion of the RSO in the late 1980s and early 1990s made the Burmese government to launch a massive counter-offensive to clear up the Burma-Bangladesh border. In December 1991, Burmese troops crossed the border and attacked a Bangladeshi military outpost. The incident developed into a major crisis in Bangladesh-Burma relations, and by April 1992, more than 250,000 Rohingya civilians had been forced out of Arakan, western Burma. During these happenings in April 1992, Prince Khaled Sultan Abdul Aziz, commander of the Saudi Arabian Military, visited Dhaka and recommended to wage a military action against Burma like Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.



In April 1994, about 120 members of RSO militant group entered Maungdaw Township by crossing the Naf River which marks the border between Bangladesh and Burma. On 28 April 1994, nine out of 12 time bombs planted in 12 different places in Maungdaw by RSO militants exploded. One fire engine and some buildings were damaged, while four civilians were seriously wounded in the explosions.

On 28 October 1998, Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) combined together and the Rohingya National Council (RNC) was founded. The Rohingya National Army (RNA) was also established as its armed wing; and, the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) appeared to organize all the different Rohingya insurgents into one group.

According to US Embassy Cables revealed by Wikileaks, the alleged meeting of ARNO members and Al-Qaeda representatives is reported as follows:

Five members (names still under inquiry by the GOB) of ARNO attended a high-ranking officers' course with Al Qaeda representatives on 15 May 2000 and arrived back in Bangladesh on 22 June. During the course, they discussed matters relating to political and military affairs, arms and ammunition, and financing with Osama Bin Laden. Mohamed Arju Taida and Mohamed Rau-Sheik Ar-Mar Darsi from the Taliban were present with them at the meeting. Ninety members of ARNO were selected to attend a guerrilla warfare course, a variety of explosives courses and heavy-weapons courses held in Libya and Afghanistan in August, 2001. Thirteen out of these selected members participated in the explosives and heavy-weapons training.

As Wikileaks noted, there was also connection between Talibans and ARNO Rohingya militants:

Arrival of Two Talibans at ARNO Headquarters: Al Ha-Saud and Al Ja-hid, two members of Taliban group, arrived at ARNO's headquarters in Zai-La-Saw-Ri Camp on 2 November 2001 from the Rohingya Solidarity Organization's (RSO) Kann-Grat-Chaung camp. They met with Nur Islam (Chairman), ZaFaur-Ahmed (Secretary) and Fayos Ahmed (acting Chief-of-Staff Army), ARNO, and discussed the reorganization of RSO and ARNO. It was learned that ARNO/RSO and Taliban groups planned to hold a meeting on 15 November 2001. Nurul Islam, Chairman of ARNO, also declared that the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) had agreed to reorganize as integrated members of ARNO. However, Mullah Dil-Mar from RSO did not agree with this re-organization and resigned with his entourage of insurgents.

In March 2011, between 80 to 100 Rohingya Muslim men in Maungdaw Township of Burma-Bangladesh border were arrested by Burma Frontier Forces accusing them of belonging to a terrorist ring linked to the Taliban. According to the source, a Taliban militant known as Moulivi Harun had given the group training in combat and bomb making deep in the jungles of northern Maungdaw on the Bangladesh border in February, 2011. Among the suspected people allegedly linked to Talibans, 19 people were brought before the court in March and April, 2011. Twelve of the 19 suspects in associating with the Taliban and other Islamic militant groups were sentenced to various jail terms on 6 September 2011.