Daily Times

Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya will undoubtedly loom large at the UN General Assembly this week. And even with Aung San Suu Kyi skipping the session — the small Southeast Asian nation represents yet another front threatening to spotlight Pakistan and its links to known terror outfits.

Which is the last thing this country needs.

Nevertheless, there is nothing much we can do about it this close to show time in New York. Not when the Indian government has already claimed that some of the 40,000 Rohingya currently seeking refuge within its borders, and which New Delhi is seeking to expel en masse, have ties to Pakistan-based terror groups. Presumably, this is more than the simple warmongering rhetoric of a ‘bad’ neighbour. Given that the Modi regime has categorically said — to its own Supreme Court, no less — that these go beyond non-state actors to include our very own ISI. It has also pledged to privately share intelligence with the Apex Court.

This comes a week after damming reports emerged in the Indian press linking Myanmar militant group Aqa Mul Mujahideen (AMM) to Pakistani terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami Arakan (HUJI-A). The former is held responsible by the Myanmar regime for the attack on its security forces at the end of August that sparked the latest assault against the beleaguered Rohingya community. The latter claimed it was behind the 2008 bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel, while also being implicated in the 1995 plot to overthrow the Benazir Bhutto government of the day. Its top leadership is said to be close to Lashkar e-Taiba’s Hafiz Saeed, a man under house arrest in Pakistan but who has, nonetheless, just seen his group enter mainstream Pakistani politics over the weekend wearing yet another brilliant disguise.

None of which is good news for Pakistan.

Having said that, most of the damage has already been done in the run-up to the global moot. Meaning that what we are seeing is more of the usual tit-for-tat that sadly too often mars Indo-Pak bilateral ties. The latest Indian manoeuvre is likely retaliation for Pakistani threats to bring up Kashmir at the UN summit for the first time in decades. Which itself is in retaliation for the BRICS communiqué as well as the separate Indian statement lambasting Pakistan for harbouring terrorist groups that pose a threat to regional security. Thus neither side seems ready to hop off the merry-go-round any time soon.

Sadly, in her first speech on what is happening in her country, Suu Kyi failed to address Indian claims of Pakistani interference. Equally unforthcoming was any denunciation of violence against the Rohingya. Indeed, she mentioned the latter by name only once and that, too, in relation to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which the country has designated a terrorist outfit. Which may or may not lend credence to Indian claims of the Rohingya-Islamist extremism nexus.

We would like to say that we have weathered worse. Yet with Donald Trump feeling at liberty to say to an international audience of so-called peace-loving nations that he may just have to totally destroy North Korea’s Rocket Man and his regime — we can’t be so sure.  *

Published in Daily Times, September 20^th 2017.