How geopolitics helped create the Rohingya crisis

Although clashes and crises erupted in 2012, 2015 and 2016, the Myanmar authorities felt constrained by the much-needed international assistance that was crucial to political change

This is not the first clash between members of the stateless and discriminated Muslim community and Myanmar’s armed forces, nor the first Rohingya refugee crisis. Yet the latest military offensive is unprecedented in brutality and scale.

An account of the timing of the current crisis should consider how Myanmar’s government found itself in such a favourable global environment, with its giant neighbours India and – crucially – China embracing the government’s official narrative. A politically distant and distracted US administration was also convenient.

Disenfranchisement and discrimination are nothing new for the Rohingya population, a community of 1.3m people settled