Why homeless Rohingya are still backing Myanmar insurgency

Myanmar says ARSA is a ruthless Islamist extremist movement that wants to create an Islamic republic in northern Rakhine

For 28-year-old Rohingya Muslim shopkeeper Mohammed Rashid, the evening phone call from organisers of the fledgling insurgent movement came as a surprise.

“Be ready,” was the message.

A few hours later, after meeting in the darkness in an open field, he was one of 150 men who attacked a Myanmar Border Guard Police post armed with swords, homemade explosives and a few handguns. At the end of a short battle, half a dozen men he had grown up with in his village were dead.

“We had no training, no weapons,” said Rashid, from the Buthidaung area of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, who had joined