From jail near Patiala, a trail to Thai border, Rohingya arms route
The Indian Express
Written by Praveen Swami, Chiang Mai
December
23, 2017
Thailand’s
intelligence services had begun noticing the use of Rohingya refugees by
jihadists as early as 2007, claiming they were being used as mercenaries by
Islamist insurgents operating in the country’s conflict-torn southern
provinces.
Three bedrooms, two
bathrooms, a dining room and a central hall. But the sparse two-floor
house-for-rent wasn’t open for entrepreneurs flocking to the exuberant town of
Mae Sot on Thailand’s border with Myanmar: dealers in electronics and used
cars, smuggled gems and teak, narcotics, laundered cash and trafficked women.
Its clientele was
special: Khalistan terrorists from India and the UK, Lashkar-linked operatives
from Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, Bangladesh jihadists, all arriving for
discreet, week-long courses in the art of fabricating improvised explosive
devices.
This month,
photographs surfaced of Rohingya jihadists from the Harakah al-Yakin posing
with newly opened crates of Kalashnikov assault rifles. The discovery has
sparked growing concern among intelligence services from Myanmar, Bangladesh,
India and Thailand that a new arms smuggling route could have opened up,
linking the terror group with South-East Asia’s Golden Triangle, heartland of
the region’s narcotics trade.
In their search for
answers, investigators are turning once again to the story of the house in Mae
Sot, and a tall, powerfully built man called Harvinder Singh. Now held in
prison near Patiala, Singh had a ringside view of the centre’s operations — and
its complex web of international linkages.
Late this summer,
Thai authorities arrested three military officers on charges of ferrying 30
Kalashnikov assault rifles, along with grenade launchers and over 100 M79
grenades and 4,000 rounds of ammunition to Karen National Union (KNU)
insurgents, the Myanmar rebel group that once ran the Mae Sot explosives
training facility as a revenue-generating operation.
Intelligence sources
told The Indian Express that photographs of the Rohingya jihadists’ new weapons
have raised fears that Harakah al-Yakin could have been the final recipient.
The discovery of the Mae Sot weapons caché came about by chance: Thai air force
officer Flight-Sergeant Pakhin Detphong was held after his pick-up truck
crashed into a ditch. The truck bore a fake licence plate identifying it as
belonging to the Thai military’s Internal Security Operations Command.
Flight-Sergeant
Detphong, Thai officials say, admitted to having made at least three similar
runs since the beginning of 2017, purchasing weapons from a Cambodian army
officer and handing them over to a Karen contact in Mae Sot. In 2016, another
consignment of ten M-16 rifles and seven Kalashnikovs were seized in the area
from a former police officer in Mae Sot. The KNU was named as their intended
recipient, but denied the allegation.
Last year, Thai
intelligence services warned that Noor Kabir and Fareed Faizullah, Pakistani
nationals of Rohingya origin, had been operating across the Thai border with
Myanmar, fuelling recruits into the country’s north. Fearing that Rohingya
jihadists could provide support for jihadists fighting in three of its own
southern provinces, Thailand had sought to clamp down on terror training camps
in the Mae Sot area. But the patronage of the cartels of insurgents and traffickers
serving the drug routes from Thailand into Bangladesh has made bases like the
bomb-training school used by Harvinder resilient against efforts to shut them
down.
Harvinder — “Mintoo”
to his friends — arrived in Mae Sot late in the summer of 2014, along with a
group of UK-based jihadists led by Coventry-based Khalistan Liberation Front
organiser Gurcharanbir Singh. The group had been put together by Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence, Harvinder told Indian intelligence — the testimony
cannot be used against him as evidence, according to law.
In Mae Sot, the men
were received by two men Harvinder described during interrogation as “Burmese
looking”, but “speaking Pashto and Urdu”. The instructor, he claimed, said “he
had earlier trained Afghan jihadis on behalf of Pakistan’s ISI”. Bangladesh and
Burmese nationals were also training in the camp, Harvinder said, but the two
groups were not allowed to meet.
From August 4-10,
2014, the Khalistani group learned to fabricate small improvised explosive devices
that could be used against civilian targets, notably timed petrol bombs that
could set buildings on fire. The trainer told them that he once used to run a
larger camp, but it was closed down because of pressure from Thai authorities.
Thailand’s intelligence
services had begun noticing the use of Rohingya refugees by jihadists as early
as 2007, claiming they were being used as mercenaries by Islamist insurgents
operating in the country’s conflict-torn southern provinces.
Royal Thai Navy
Vice-Admiral Supot Prueska told reporters that year that Rohingya were “not
coming here to take up decent jobs, but only to help insurgents in the three
[southern] provinces”.
Then, as ethnic
violence sparked off a massive exodus of Rohingya refugees in 2012, the Lashkar
initiated a programme in support of the Rohingya jihad, inviting its leader
Abdul Quddus Burmi to share a platform with its chief, Hafiz Saeed.
Later that year,
senior Lashkar operatives Shahid Mahmood and Nadeem Awan were despatched to set
up an arms supply route for Burmi’s organisation. Bangladesh authorities also
arrested Karachi-based cleric Noorul Amin and Afghan jihad veteran Ali Ahmed,
who the Lashkar had tasked with recruiting cadre.
The Mae Sot training
facility was set up to support these operations — a safe distance from the
locations in Bangladesh where intelligence services were hunting them down.
Funding for weapons and training, Myanmar officials say, has been intense among
the large Rohingya diaspora in Malaysia — a country that over 100,000 have made
their home over the past decade, making a living as low-wage labourers.
In 2015, over 139
burial sites were discovered on the Thai-Malaysian border, where criminal gangs
had put Rohingya slave-labour to work. Malaysia’s liberal visa policies have,
Indian intelligence officials believe, also allowed organisations like the
Lashkar-e-Taiba to reach out to Rohingya inside Malayasia, operating under the
cover of the group’s charitable wing, the Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation.
Last month, Malaysian
counter-terrorism police chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay warned that Islamic
State recruits from the country “are planning to go to Rakhine state”. “The
southern Philippines, where there is an ongoing conflict, and now Rakhine have
become their latest destination for jihad,” he said.
Earlier this year,
The Indian Express first reported, an FIF mission made contact with Rohingya
inside Rakhine, in what many intelligence officials believe could lead to
direct military support for terrorism. FIF operations, Myanmar believes, have
been routed through Kuala Lumpur, using contacts in the diaspora there.
Thailand, for its
part, has worked with Myanmar to stop Rohingya refugees from arriving at the
nine camps along its western border — home to displaced populations from the
many ethnic groups at war with Naypyidaw’s rule. Royal Thai Navy personnel also
have instructions to push back Rohingya refugees seeking to arrive by boat.
Peerawat Saengthong, from the Internal Security Operations Command, said that
if refugees arrive in the country’s waters, “we will act according to the law
by pushing the boats away”.
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