On 27 November 2024, the ICC prosecutor announced his intention to seek an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s Prime Minister and Chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC), Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. The charges relate to the Myanmar Armed Forces’ (Tatmadaw) military operations against the Islamist insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in 2016-2017, during which an act of genocide against the Rohingya (Bengali Muslims) was allegedly committed. The prosecutor’s statement had a wide resonance among the Myanmar opposition and was supported by the National Unity Government (NUG), which has been waging a “revolutionary war” against the SAC since 2021.
Analysts have already focused on the legal implications of the arrest warrant. The international configuration created by the new phase of events in Rakhine has not been sufficiently covered. However, the ICC’s attack on Myanmar followed shortly after a similar attack on Israel. How connected are these two episodes? In addition, a thorough analysis should include an examination of the intellectual roots of the genocide in Myanmar and a comparison of the narratives of all parties to the conflict. Unfortunately, experts focus exclusively on denouncing the junta, refusing to criticize the NUG and the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAO’s).
This article aims to place the Rohingya case in a broader international context and highlight controversial and rarely discussed issues surrounding the world’s longest civil war.
Israel and Myanmar: Some Parallels
Comparing the campaigns against Israel and Myanmar will help us better understand the nature of the two conflicts. It seems that it isn’t by chance that Karim Khan’s statement about Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was made after the scandalous arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Despite the differences in culture, geography and politics between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, Israel and Myanmar face similar challenges and have common enemies.
Burma was one of the first Asian countries to officially recognize the state of Israel. The independence of the two young states was forged in a difficult war, with Israel fighting against a coalition of Arab states, and Burma against Communist, Mujahideen, and Karen insurgencies, as well as against the nationalist Chinese Kuomintang forces. During the period of parliamentary democracy, the Tatmadaw consciously copied the theoretical foundations of the IDF.
Beginning in the 1950s, Tatmadaw officers regularly visited Israel to learn about the IDF experience. In 1958, General Moshe Dayan visited Rangoon and met with General Ne Win, then head of the interim government. The friendship between the countries was so strong that, having begun under a parliamentary democracy, it continued under the BSPP regime, then under the SLORC and SPDC.
Following sanctions imposed on the regime for suppressing the 1988 riots (the so-called “8888 Revolution”), Israel was seen by the military as an “open door to the West,” as a mediator in breaking international isolation. At the same time, Israel continued to export weapons to Myanmar, which was under an arms embargo.
The Tatmadaw’s concept of a “people’s army” based on turning the country into a military camp was a literal copy of the Israeli experience. The Burmese military was also inspired by the Israeli system of military settlements established in restive areas. Following the kibbutz model, the Tatmadaw established fortified Pyu Saw Htee villages in central Burma and in Kachin and Shan states to effectively counter Communist Party forces and ethnic separatists. The backbone of these villages was made up of ideologically motivated veterans of the liberation struggle. After the 1962 coup, the civilian-based Pyu Saw Htee were replaced by all-military settlements called Pa-La-Na. In the 1990s, SLORC/SPDC hatched plans to establish similar settlements in Rakhine, where an Islamist insurgency was gaining strength with outside support (presumably involving Libyan intelligence services). Along with the counter-terrorism strategy, the mass migration of peasants was intended to solve the problem of overpopulation in central Burma. Such practices, dictated by the need to fight a cruel and dangerous enemy, are today the basis for accusing both Israel and Myanmar of “apartheid”.
Israeli-Myanmar relations remained stable even after the political changes in Myanmar, associated with the transfer of power first to the semi-military government of Thein Sein and then to the NLD government. In 2015, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing visited Israel and met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot. Mutual sympathies between the military elites of the two countries during the Rohingya crisis in 2017 served as the reason for a series of biased publications in pro-Palestinian and left-wing media. Nevertheless, in 2018, Israel and Myanmar signed an education pact to include the Holocaust remembrance materials in the Myanmar school curriculum. Not long ago, the leftist Haaretz published a series of articles on Israel’s alleged arms sales to the Tatmadaw after the constitutional transition in 2021.
Thus, the ICC campaign against Myanmar, launched immediately after the arrest warrant for the Israeli leaders, is not an accident, but a pattern. This is understandable: the elites of the two countries seriously believe that they are fighting for the interests of their nations.
Myanmar And The Islamic World: Isolation That Never Happened
In 1992, while visiting Bangladesh, the former commander of Saudi Arabian forces during Operation Desert Storm, Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, expressed his desire to help his fellow believers in Rakhine and do for the Rohingya what “was done to liberate Kuwait”. This statement deepened the military regime’s fear of external invasion. But how consistent are the most influential Islamic countries in their calls to help the Rohingya and is Naypyitaw a pariah in the Islamic world?
The most intolerant towards the Myanmar military within ASEAN is Malaysia, in whose domestic politics the discourse of radical Islam and anti-Zionism plays a major role. Indonesia, which experienced a similar process to Myanmar in the transition of power from a military dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy, is more moderate in its statements. Brunei Darussalam is one of the most friendly ASEAN countries to Naypyidaw, along with non-Muslim Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait have maintained stable relations with Naypyidaw after 2021 and are clearly interested in implementing their projects against the backdrop of the exodus of Western companies. These include, first of all, using Myanmar’s agriculture to ensure food security for the Gulf countries, exporting agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, and transporting Saudi oil and Qatari liquefied gas to China via a pipeline through Myanmar. Min Aung Hlaing maintained contacts with former Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nawaf al-Sabah. In January 2024, at a ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kampala, Foreign Minister U Than Swe met with his Qatari counterpart Soltan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi. There are reports of the authorities’ intention to build a grand mosque in Naypyidaw, the master plan for which has supposedly been approved, and the Saudi ambassador has already made donations for it.
The military’s long-standing partner is Pakistan, which is one of the exporters of weapons to Myanmar. The Rohingya crisis has caused discontent in Pakistani society over the oppression of fellow believers, but Pakistani experts have objected to the anti-Myanmar campaign. One of them, commenting on the introduction of a state of emergency in Rakhine in 2012, emphasized that “the Tatmadaw has been quite successful in quashing communal violence as compared to the police”. Myanmar’s pro-military think-tank MISIS collaborates with its Pakistani colleagues from IPRI, with the ideological basis for the collaboration being the memory of the Buddhist Ghandhara Civilization in Pakistan.
Thus, there is no reason to assume that any ICC decision will have a fatal impact on the relations between Myanmar and the official authorities of Muslim countries that are interested in economic cooperation. However, the resumption of the anti-Myanmar campaign may very seriously affect the behavior of the non-state segment of the Islamic world in the direction of its radicalization.
Arakan Army: a New Player in Rakhine Conflict
The current state of the Rohingya crisis cannot be understood without taking into account the third force that was absent from the 2017 situation, when there were only two sides – the Tatmadaw and the ARSA. That third force is warlord Tun Myat Naing’s Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed organisation that claims to represent the Rakhine people. The AA, designated as a terrorist group by the NLD government, was removed from the list following the 2021 coup. However, the AA’s renewed intensification of attacks on the Myanmar military, leading to its occupation of almost all of Rakhine State, has prompted the SAC to reverse its decision and re-designate the AA as terrorists, along with its allies from the China-backed Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA).
Since Burma gained independence in 1948, the Arakan Mountains have always been a restive area. It was in this area that the first insurgency in the country arose – Rakhine became a stronghold for the Red Flag Communist Party of Comrade Than Tun. Rakhine ethno-nationalism initially didn’t have much weight and the Rakhine people were considered more of a Burmese subethnicity, since the differences in language were minimal. Rakhine State was established in 1974 under the BSPP regime, which considered it necessary to maintain the Rakhine identity against the Bengali Muslims. The Arakan Army was founded in 2009 and no one could have imagined that by the end of 2024, almost the entire state would be under its control.
Formally hiding behind the slogan of “federal democracy” and “confederacy,” the AA is seeking independence for Rakhine, not limited to the state’s borders, laying claim to the entire territory of the Arakan Kingdom (Mrauk-U) before its conquest by Burma in 1785. Tun Myat Naing’s appetites also include part of the territory of Chin State and the Irrawaddy province. The disproportionate ambitions of the Rakhine separatists are inevitably leading to a clash with the Muslim Rohingya and the Christian Chin people.
The best illustration of the AA’s racist policies towards Muslims is the Rohingya militia, forced to fight on the side of the unsympathetic Tatmadaw to prevent the dominance of Rakhine militants. Tun Myat Naing’s militants are accused of brutal massacres of Muslims. It is not only the Rohingya who suffer under the AA’s yoke: the global organization of the Chin people’s Khumi clan complains about the AA’s chauvinistic policies in the captured Paletwa. In February 2024, the AA sank two naval boats with family members of Tatmadaw soldiers, killing an estimated 900 civilians. This atrocity can well be classified as a crime against humanity.
Tun Myat Naing’s army’s international contacts are a mystery and are probably closely tied to drug trafficking (like most EAO’s). One can state a distinctly anti-Indian character of the AA: Rakhine separatists still harbor a grudge against India for Operation Leach in 1998, when Indian intelligence services decapitated the top Rakhine movement by luring it to the Andaman Islands. In January 2024, the AA captured the town of Paletwa in Chin State and suspended the work of the Indo-Myanmar Kaladan Road Project station located there (attempts by Mizoram MPs to establish contact with the AA to resume the project were unsuccessful). There is evidence of Beijing’s support for the AA since 2020 – then a significant batch of China-made weapons intended for the AA was confiscated on the Thai border. AA spokesperson U Khaing Thukka said in 2020, “China recognises us, but India doesn’t.” The extent of AA’s involvement in Chinese politics remains to be seen, but it is already clear that this EAO will definitely not be able to partner with the US or India in containing China.
“Buddhist” Narratives on Rakhine: Rakhine Ethnocentrism vs. Pan-Myanmar Nationalism
Any study of the Rohingya crisis will suffer from incompleteness if it ignores the position of the country’s Buddhist majority and the country’s government, which claims to represent the interests of the majority.
There are two visions of the conflict from the Buddhist side: on the one hand, the pan-Buddhist vision, represented by the military and the 969 movement, and, on the other hand, the ethno-nationalist vision, shared by the Rakhine separatists. Both views exclude Bengali Muslims from the national body – be it a united Myanmar or self-proclaimed “independent” Arakan. However, the presence of the Rohingya in a single Union of Myanmar a priori gives them more hope for a successful outcome, both due to the presence of Muslim communities (Kamein people) already recognized by the authorities, and due to the greater negotiability of the regime in Naypyitaw. Independent Rakhine, under the rule of the Arakan Army, doesn’t feel constrained in the “final solution to the Rohingya issue” – the exhortations of the NUG and democratic activists don’t work on those who have entered the role of victors and builders of a new nation. It would not be wrong to say that the AA approach has little in common with Buddhism at all and is in the spirit of a narrow secular nationalism of the 20th century, more aggressive and homogeneous than the model of quasi-monarchical loyalty that the SAC is building.
The NUG tries to forget that it was under the NLD regime that the Arakan Army was declared a terrorist organization. The current relations between the Burmese exiles and the EAO, including the AA, leave the NUG with only one option: maximum compliance with the appetites of the separatists, who nominally declare their unwillingness to leave the Union, but in practice create a completely separate political body. The NUG’s blindness extends not only to anti-Muslim pogroms in the AA control zone, but even to the ethnic cleansing of Bamars in areas occupied by the China-backed MNDAA. This commitment by the “democratic opposition” suggests that the most realistic, albeit disruptive, way to improve the situation for the Rohingya is to help the Tatmadaw and its affiliated Muslim militias regain control of Rakhine State and eradicate the AA. Otherwise, the Rohingya will end up under the ethnocentric rule of the tyrant Tun Myat Naing, which is a far worse outcome than the victory of the religiocentric SAC.
Myanmar Nationalism in a Broad Context: A Terrible Anomaly or a Global Trend?
The Buddhist narrative is broadly grounded in a specific understanding of the religious and biopolitical realities of Rakhine. It is important to reject labels such as “Buddhist fascism” when analysing it. Going back centuries, the Buddhist prejudice against Muslim expansionism refers to the destruction of Dharmic religions in India by Muslim conquerors in the 13th century, which resulted in the Islamization of Bengal. Many Bengalis had ancestral Buddhists during the religion’s heyday under the Pala dynasty in the 9th century, a period that remains visible in the ruins of majestic Buddhist monasteries across Bangladesh.
During the parliamentary democracy (1948-1961), during the military rule and during the NLD rule (2015-2021), the state recognized the danger of alienating Muslim-populated areas of Rakhine. In the Myanmar optics, Bangladesh has always been seen as a “population bomb” and this has revived old fears of Buddhists about a “Muslim invasion”.
The Myanmar government’s position is easier to understand if we place it in the European and American context of the rise of right-wing parties with their anti-migrant demands. Over time, right-wing forces in the West have managed to break out of their marginal niche and become part of everyday politics. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is the Myanmar equivalent of parties such as the German AfD, the French Rassemblement National, and the Spanish Vox. If we abandon the Eurocentric view, we can see that Buddhist Myanmar nationalism is not something unique, but is in line with the “right turn” in Western countries. In 2016, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk known for his anti-Muslim statements, spoke about Donald Trump’s closeness to his views. USDP’s MP and organizer of the counter-terrorist militia, retired military officer U Hla Swe called Trump “American Ma Ba Tha” (Ma Ba Tha, or Patriotic Association of Myanmar). In some cases, constructive interaction between majority nationalists and ethnic/religious minorities is possible: in the 2024 French parliamentary elections, the Rassemblement National won a record 95% in the Muslim-populated department of Mayotte, recalling the success of USDP Muslim candidates in the 2015 parliamentary elections in northern Rakhine.
ICC and Public Opinion in Myanmar
How might the ICC arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing affect the domestic situation in Myanmar? The answer lies in the realm of national honor and dishonor.
Today, the country is divided between supporters and opponents of the current regime. Opinion polls don’t confirm that the Tatmadaw sympathizers are a vanishingly insignificant number. It is worth agreeing that Min Aung Hlaing’s personal rating is low, and both supporters of the “Spring Revolution” and nationalists who accuse him of inability to wage war feel antipathy towards him. But one must also distinguish between trust in the head of the military government and trust in the Tatmadaw as an institution. Many Myanmar people, hating Min Aung Hlaing for his abuse of power, support the Tatmadaw in its fight against insurgents who threaten to divide the country and desecrate Buddhist shrines (as demonstrated by the blasphemous behavior of the Han Chinese MNDAA insurgents in Laukkai and Lashio). The ICC arrest warrant will thus be interpreted by them as a slap in the face to all of Myanmar, as an expression of anti-Buddhist bias and patronage given to Islamist terrorism.
The current situation has a colorful parallel in Burmese history: Mad King Thibaw is not respected within the Burmese historical tradition, but the fact that he was overthrown by foreigners in 1885 and held in foreign captivity far from Myanmar is still an open wound in the national consciousness.
It is clear that the NUG will enthusiastically accept any decision that is detrimental to the regime, but the people of Myanmar will most likely feel insulted. Discontent with the coup is unlikely to destroy the national consensus on the events in Rakhine in 2012-2017. Not so far away is the case of Slobodan Milošević, whose extreme unpopularity among Serbs, however, did not prevent them from experiencing the trial of the former president as a national humiliation. This anti-Serbian bias of international justice still poisons relations between democratic Serbia and the West.
Anti-Buddhist version of woke ideology
As stated earlier, the Rohingya case must be placed in the context of global ideological battles. The notorious Wokeism that was at the forefront of the culture wars in the US and Europe has spread to the rest of the world. The far-left attacks Eurocentric concepts while interpreting Third World conflicts within the Eurocentric discourse. In Myanmar, the analogue of the cursed “white privilege” has become “Burmese fascism”, personified not only by the military but also by the Buddhist majority.
Accordingly, the oppressed minority, for whom justice can only be restored through the punishment of the oppressors, are the Rohingya Muslims. In the Myanmar media space, Wokeism has led to a paradox: on the one hand, ethnic Burmese are forced to feel guilty for oppressing ethnic minorities, while on the other hand, in order to undermine confidence in the government in Naypyitaw, “revolutionaries” of Bamar origin are portrayed as victims of oppression. The Bamars are required to admit guilt before the Muslims, which is a prerequisite for determining the “righteousness” of their own struggle against the “fascist junta”.
It is interesting that even such a radical opponent of the junta as the Burmese libertarian socialist Hein Htet Kyaw negatively assesses the transfer of Wokeism to Myanmar soil: “However, with the identity politics imported from western politics, the concept of Bamar privilege (which I can confirm exists) has been installed. However, instead of viewing it in terms of actual existing material conditions, identity politics agents such as western-trained academia, NGOs, and CSOs tried to implement race/ethnic reductionism. As a result, Burman ethnicity has become the dominant oppressor in Burma’s politics. In a nutshell, the whiteness from the west is replaced by being Burmese in Burma. The role Christianity plays in the west has given to Buddhism in Burma.”
Conclusion
The suffering of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine is undoubtedly a reason for a broad multilateral discussion. However, the international community must take into account the historical background and current realities, in particular the anti-Muslim policies of the AA, the enemy of the Tatmadaw. The narratives of the far-left extremists from the armed Myanmar opposition cannot be taken at face value, just as the positions of the official Myanmar government and the Tatmadaw cannot be completely ignored. Distorted and one-sided coverage of the brutal civil war in this country threatens to make erroneous decisions that will only worsen the situation of the Rohingya. Today, the Trump administration 2.0 claims to be a leader in peace processes, and hopes for a settlement of the conflict in Myanmar can be pinned on it. It is preferable that the skeptical assessment of the ICC arrest warrant for Israeli government officials be taken into account by the US administration when considering the Myanmar case.