The continuing military operations in western Myanmar have triggered a major humanitarian crisis. More than 65,000 refugees have fled an army and paramilitary police crackdown aimed specifically at Rohingya people and villages. Myanmar's de facto leader and foreign minister, Aung San Suu Kyi, sent a special envoy to Bangladesh last week to discuss the border crisis. But a parallel danger has emerged in the form of a Bengali terrorist group seeking to cause more problems.
It is clear now that the Myanmar military's "clearing operations" in Rakhine State neighbouring Bangladesh are sheer retaliation against the innocent. The cause of the violence against the Rohingya was a coordinated attack last Oct 9 on several Myanmar police posts. An estimated 200 armed men attacked the posts in Maungdaw district of Rakhine. This western Myanmar region area has a number of Rohingya villages nad the Myanmar armed forces and paramilitary police immediately set about those villages on Oct 10 and have not ceased since.
The armed October attack on the police posts were led by a Bangladesh-based terrorist group. It is called Aqa Mul Mujahidin or Faith Movement of Arakan -- "Arakan" being the term used recently to describe what is now called Rakhine state. Looking at the larger militant picture in Bangladesh, Aqa Mul Mujahidin is considered a small jihadist group, posing no threat to the central powers either in in Bangladesh or Myanmar.
But Ms Suu Kyi's government and the Myanmar military believe it is made up mostly of Rohingya men. Immediately after last October's deadly attack on the police posts, the group released a statement in Dhaka and a Turkish-language video on YouTube. They named their leader as Abu Ammar Junooni, also known as Ata Ullah and known to authorities as having been born in Karachi to a Pakistani mother and Rohingya father.
Since October, attacks on Rohingya people have been relentless. Refugees have streamed out of Rakhine State, which has been sealed off by Ms Suu Kyi's government. Nay Pyi Taw has recently allowed limited and supervised access by government media workers. Limited access is also applied to Asean member countries which pledged humanitarian assistance at a conference in Nay Pyi Taw last month. It was alleged that the military has razed entire villages, arrested thousands of people with no apparent attempt to actually identify militants and isolated the region to cut off all food supplies.
On the video, the man identified as Ata Ullah says the Rohingya "have been waiting for decades for the civil world ... to come to save us". This false belief, he claims, has turned the Rohingya into refugees. The Oct 9 attack was the result, a "revolt to protect our ethnic society".
The truth of that is debatable but the message is clear, and will resonate within Rohingya communities of western Myanmar, and the small but significant Rohingya diaspora.
On its own, the attack on the border posts last October was a minor event in a troubled region. But the army and Ms Suu Kyi's government have given it far more importance than warranted.
With its vicious retaliatory attacks on Rohingya villages, the Myanmar military risks the almost certain spread of extremism, armed terrorism and violence by Rohingya.
There is no shortage of jihadist groups in Bangladesh seeking to build up their influence and brand of hatred. The call for Rohingya independence by Ata Ullah cannot be tolerated by Ms Suu Kyi's government. But Myanmar cannot profit by employing such barbarous attacks against women and children, even burning whole villages to the ground.