Rohingya

Steve Cima is resident program director for Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Geoffrey Macdonald is principal researcher for democracy and governance at the International Republican Institute. Bangladesh has drawn global attention as it struggles to manage the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by nearly one million forcibly displaced Rohingya who have fled to escape violence in neighboring Myanmar. While international organizations and other countries have focused on how they can further support the Bangladeshi government’s response to the crisis, they have paid less attention to the country’s growing political dysfunction. Bangladesh’s widely noted weakening democracy imperils its historically pluralistic political culture and recent economic progress. As Bangladesh enters an election cycle that could be the tipping point between renewed multiparty competition and cemented one-party rule, international attention should focus on a crisis equally pressing to the Rohingya issue: Bangladesh’s declining democratic character. The U.S. Department of State’s most recent human rights report documents the increasingly harsh political tactics of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her ruling Awami League since coming to power in 2008. The Awami League is accused of silencing critics using repressive measures such as attacking media outlets, co-opting the judiciary, and jailing political opponents. The primary opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is also accused of coordinating large-scale violence during its general election boycott in 2013–2014 that killed scores. These political rivalries have undermined fair electoral competition. In February, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was sentenced to five years in prison on corruption charges in a case the opposition considered partisan. The verdict could bar Zia from competing in the upcoming elections as the country’s constitution disqualifies a person sentenced to more than two years’ imprisonment from standing. The conviction could also lead the BNP to boycott the elections expected before January 2019, as it had five years ago. Bangladesh’s democratic system is subject to additional pressures including corruption, weak governance, poverty, demographic and environmental stress, and Islamist militancy. According to public opinion research conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), despite a growing economy, Bangladeshis continue to face severe hardships. Bangladeshi citizens complain of high unemployment, rising prices, and various other economic challenges. They also say bribes and other forms of corruption limit access to jobs, rule of law, healthcare, education, and other public goods. Furthermore, personal security is poor. Bangladeshi women, in particular, report living in fear of sexual assault with little recourse for justice. Citizens identify corruption, political violence, and nontransparent elections as key grievances. Yet despite a negative view of the quality of democracy and political parties in their country, Bangladeshis retain a positive view of democracy as a system. The Awami League and the BNP have an opportunity this election cycle to renew Bangladesh’s democracy, serving as effective, responsible, and responsive governing and opposition parties. However, this will require the parties to realign their priorities and build institutional capacity. International democracy assistance can help. Democracy assistance—a sector of international development—aids political parties, civil society, and other pro-democracy actors in new and struggling democracies. In Bangladesh, IRI is one of several organizations that has implemented democracy assistance programs over the years. Now is the time to expand these efforts. Here are a few ideas: Create space for productive political dialogue. Responding to a 2017 IRI poll that showed 66 percent of Bangladeshis wanted the Awami League to seek input from other parties, IRI has conducted a series of dialogues with the major political parties designed to build trust and facilitate conversations on key political and security issues as well as find areas of commonality. IRI’s interparty dialogue program has received significant support from senior-level politicians despite the hostile rivalries that exist among the political parties. Engage youth in nonpartisan political activity. Over the coming year, IRI will expand the scope of its political dialogue program to youth, holding a series of seminars on university campuses to encourage young people to discuss political issues in a nonpartisan and constructive manner. Support the integrity of the electoral process. During past elections, IRI has led international election observation missions, trained and supported domestic election observers, and conducted civic and voter education. Having informed and watchful international and domestic actors can deter election fraud and violence. Develop the capacity of civil society and media. In the past, IRI has worked with civil society and the media to strengthen their ability to monitor and build public awareness of political and electoral corruption before, during, and after elections. Help build the capacity of state institutions. An ineffective or partisan security sector and election commission can undermine trust in election outcomes and spur election violence. International actors can work to enhance capacity in these institutions with training and advice on best practices. Ultimately, only Bangladeshis themselves can repair the country’s flailing democracy. And with only six months before elections, international aid alone will not transform Bangladesh’s political and electoral system. But if properly targeted and funded, it can help keep open enough political space to allow for a substantive debate between and among citizens and parties on the serious issues that affect the country. This would be progress.

Despite evidence of systematic violence against the Rohingya, countries remain reluctant to classify the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as genocide.

Drawing on decades of research into transnational civil society networks and international institutions, political scientist Kathryn Sikkink counters skeptics from the left and the right who have argued that the persistence of grave human rights violations throughout the world is evidence that the international movement has failed and should be abandoned altogether.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh face serious risk during upcoming monsoon season, warns the UN Refugee Agency. 

The ongoing crisis in Rakhine State, where the Myanmar armed forces have credibly been accused of ethnic cleansing and where the Myanmar military recently admitted that the security forces were involved in a massacre that left a group of Rohingya dumped in a mass grave, shows no signs of resolution. It is extremely unlikely that many Rohingya will voluntarily return to Myanmar, where they are disenfranchised, have few civil rights, and face a situation in Rakhine State in which many of their towns have been torched. Taking advantage of potential Rohingya anger, a Rohingya militant group continues to launch attacks into Myanmar, making the situation along the border and in Rakhine State even more tenuous. The latest attacks, which came in early January, suggest the Rohingya militants are active and may been gaining skills. The situation in Rakhine State—and in the camps in Bangladesh—is the worst humanitarian crisis in East Asia. But at the same time, Myanmar actually confronts multiple other ticking time bombs. These demonstrate that Naypyidaw’s military/civilian government is failing not only in western Myanmar but also in other parts of the country. In Kachin State in the north, for instance, an excellent new article from IRIN News details how that area’s long-running conflict has gotten worse this dry season, while Aung San Suu Kyi’s peace negotiations with ethnic minority groups have produced no concrete results in the Kachin State battle. In fact, the military appears to be waging a tougher fight in Kachin State now than it had several years ago. As IRIN News reports, more than one hundred thousand people have been displaced in Kachin State and northern Shan State, and aid organizations have little access to many of these suffering people. As IRIN News notes: Rights groups say government restrictions have squeezed humanitarian access to a trickle, leaving tens of thousands of displaced people [in Kachin and Shan States] without aid, caught in the crosshairs between the military and rebel groups. In Shan State, violence is picking up again too, further suggesting a failure in Suu Kyi’s peace plans. In fact, as Anthony Davis notes in Asia Times, the dry season violence in Shan State, in which insurgent groups are getting bolder and the most powerful insurgency remains unchecked, could kill Suu Kyi’s peace plan completely. He writes that “this year could finally derail a government sponsored peace process that has already been stalled for months.” As Davis notes, small insurgent groups like the Paluang have in recent years gained recruits and become more aggressive, and the number of groups fighting in parts of Shan State has expanded. The spread of more armed groups into Shan State makes it highly likely that some of these armies could battle each other this dry season—and that the Myanmar military will initiate a large-scale offensive in Shan State as well. Meanwhile, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a heavily armed insurgent group with over twenty thousand fighters (and historically linked to narcotrafficking), roams free in portions of Shan State it controls. The UWSA has mostly disdained the government’s peace efforts, and has increasingly supported and armed other insurgent groups operating in Myanmar’s northeast. Its support has helped make the other ethnic armies even more powerful. Suu Kyi’s government seems to have no plan for how to deal with the UWSA in the long-term; the insurgent group has for decades essentially run its own independent statelet in Myanmar’s northeast. The government has little to offer the UWSA to disarm and accept central power, and Myanmar’s military is loath to take on the UWSA directly. Rakhine State is certainly a catastrophe. But in other parts of Myanmar, the government and military face severe challenges as well—and ones that they do not seem to have answers for.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the current humanitarian crisis in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the worst in East Asia. Both the United Nations’ human rights chief and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have now affirmed that Myanmar’s security forces are engaged in ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State, attempting to wipe out the Muslim, ethnic Rohingya group. Myanmar’s top generals, still in control of the security forces, bear the ultimate responsibility for the bloodshed, but de facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi, who has done nothing to stop it, bears responsibility as well. Outside powers, too, are accountable. Yet one group’s responsibility for the Rakhine crisis has not been as fully explored: nationalist Buddhist leaders in Myanmar. In my new review for the Washington Monthly, I examine the new book by Francis Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim “Other”.

As 2017 comes to an end, it’s time to assess which stories from South Asia had the most impact. By this I mean which events or ongoing developments shaped a country or the South Asian region, or had an outsized effect on the world. This year, a number of stories from the region drew global headlines, including from countries that do not always make front page news. Here are my top ten South Asia stories of the year: 1. The Rohingya Flee to Bangladesh The Rohingya Muslim minority has faced ethno-religious discrimination in Myanmar for decades. In August, this persecution descended into widely-acknowledged ethnic cleansing, with horrific violence perpetrated by the Myanmar military on Rohingya men, women, and children that has shocked the world. More than 655,000 Rohingya have fled the country since August, adding to the more than 210,000 Rohingya already living in Bangladesh as refugees. The International Rescue Committee has called this the “fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in the world.” The problems inside the refugee camps in Bangladesh have attracted less media attention than the stories of brutal violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and the tragic indifference of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to the suffering. But with nearly 870,000 Rohingya refugees in legal limbo, and surviving under rudimentary conditions in Bangladesh’s Teknaf Peninsula, attention should shift urgently to funding the relief operations there, supporting Bangladesh financially so this lower-income country does not have to shoulder the responsibility for the refugees on its own, and identifying a path forward for the Rohingya to find permanent residency in hospitable third countries. (Myanmar will not be able to guarantee their safety, and Bangladesh is not equipped to handle such a large refugee burden.) I place this story at the top of my list due to the depth of the atrocities committed and the scale of the tragedy. This crisis will last well into 2018. 2. India and China Go Eyeball to Eyeball in Doklam, Bhutan In most years, an event in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan wouldn’t rise to near the top of a list of the year’s most important regional developments. But this year, the border between Bhutan and China found itself the site of a military standoff between the armies of the world’s two giants (in terms of population), China and India. In mid-June, following the move of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to extend a road in the Doklam Plateau area of territory disputed between Bhutan and China, the Indian Army stepped in to defend Bhutan’s territory and prevent forward territorial seizure by the PLA. The two armies remained in a tense stalemate for almost three months. The situation was resolved only at the end of August on the eve of the BRICS Summit—hosted by China in Xiamen. (The last-minute agreement ensured that the standoff would not mar the summit.) The standoff showed that India will not hesitate to stand up to China when New Delhi perceives that its vital interests are at stake. We have not heard the last of the Doklam dispute: as of mid-December, press reports continue to emerge regarding a Chinese troop buildup in the same general location. 3. India Implements an Ambitious Goods and Services Tax (GST) It took five years to pass a law introducing a national goods and services tax in India. The national tax replaces a plethora of levies and effectively stitches all of India’s states and federally administered union territories into a single market for the first time in the country’s history. As you would imagine with an exercise of this magnitude, progress was tortuous. The 2011 introduction of a GST bill in parliament during the Indian National Congress–led United Progressive Alliance government did not gain sufficient support, and lapsed with the end of the government’s term in 2014. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government introduced a different GST bill, which eventually secured sufficient parliamentary support to pass into law in 2016, and subsequently received ratification by more than half of India’s states, required in order to bring this constitutional amendment into force. On July 1 this year, marked by a special midnight session of parliament, this hard-fought GST finally rolled out nationwide. It was a complicated debut, with multiple tax bands and a bewildering, non-intuitive assignment of goods and services across them. The complexity dented economic activity as businesses struggled to adjust—but as India irons out the wrinkles, it ought to realize the benefits of a unified domestic market with reduced red tape. In its November note upgrading India’s sovereign rating to Baa2 from Baa3, the first upgrade in fourteen years, Moody’s noted the implementation of GST as the first “key element” of India’s “wide-ranging program of economic and institutional reforms.” Consolidating the world’s seventh-largest economy into a single market bodes well for India’s economic growth. 4. Trump Unveils a New South Asia Strategy for Afghanistan In August, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced the results of a long-awaited South Asia strategy review. Most notably, the administration shifted to a “conditions-based” rather than a “time-based” approach to the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, and approved a slight increase in troop numbers—but without disclosing the actual number. The administration also bluntly called for an end to the ongoing presence of terrorist groups and sanctuary for them in Pakistan. Finally, the president publicly praised India’s economic and infrastructure support to Afghanistan, and asked for more. Each of these elements represented an incremental rather than quantum change in Washington’s approach to the United States’ longest-running war. But they could nonetheless have important consequences. 5. Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port Reveals the True Costs of the Belt and Road In July, the Sri Lankan government reached an agreement with the Chinese government to essentially hand over operations of the new Hambantota port to a Chinese state-owned enterprise on a ninety-nine year lease deal that gives the Chinese 70 percent of the equity in the operating company, worth more than $1 billion. The port—built in a strategic but commercially unviable location under the terms of a loan agreement from China inked in 2007—has not been profitable, and the handover at Hambantota marked a debt-for-equity swap designed to reduce Sri Lanka’s debt to China. External observers saw the swap as a sign of what Belt and Road infrastructure development deals extract from countries in the long term. These are not freebies. They come at a significant cost to smaller economies. 6. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Is Disqualified From Office  In July, a chain of events that began with the Panama Papers (private documents of a secretive legal firm that helped hide offshore wealth, provided to a consortium of newspapers by an anonymous source) reached a political conclusion in Pakistan: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was deemed ineligible to serve in parliament as he could not be certified “honest” and “truthful” given revelations about an income source he had failed to disclose earlier. Pakistan’s Supreme Court rendered this verdict after receiving the findings of a special “Joint Investigation Team” appointed by the court and which included two members of military intelligence agencies. Sharif resigned. His departure from the top office appeared to observers as one more step toward the consolidation of power for Pakistan’s military. Just four years back, with Nawaz Sharif’s election Pakistan could rightly boast of its first successful transition of power from one elected civilian government to another—an important milestone for the country given its history of military rule. Sharif’s efforts to make peace with India, and assert civilian authority, did not succeed. Pakistanis will again head to the polls to elect another national government in 2018, so expect this storyline to remain relevant. But for now Pakistan’s democracy looks shaky as the country’s generals reassert their power over elected politicians. 7. Islamist Protestors Cow the Government of Pakistan Part two in the existential question of where Pakistan is headed involves the continued rise of Islamic extremists. In late November, after weeks of street protests in Islamabad, the government of Pakistan caved to the demands of a few thousand Islamist protestors, and the country’s law minister resigned. The Islamists had accused him of blasphemy following proposed changes (quickly reversed) to the oath of office taken in Pakistan; the Islamists also accused the minister of being a member of the persecuted Ahmadi minority faith as they viewed the proposed change to the oath as beneficial to Ahmadis. Blasphemy is an explosive charge in Pakistan—those accused of it often face vigilante violence, and the offense itself carries a potential death penalty if convicted. In the end, the army negotiated a “truce” with the protestors. The government climbdown illustrated the level of ineffectiveness of the civilian government, the more visible street power of Islamist extremists, and the army’s willingness to side with the extremists even at the cost of discrediting the Pakistani state. 8. Yogi Adityanath Becomes Chief Minister of India’s Most Populous State  In March, after India’s BJP swept state-level assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the party’s selection for chief minister gave an indication of where they plan to pivot: to religious nationalism. Adityanath is a five-time member of parliament from Gorakhpur, where he is a monk and head of the influential Gorakhnath temple. Adityanath is also the founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, or “Hindu Youth Brigade,” best known for its vigilante street power, and his public oratory has featured tough talk against Muslims, India’s largest religious minority. The BJP’s election campaign in Uttar Pradesh did not project Adityanath as a potential chief minister, so his appointment came as a surprise to many. Observers see his selection as a sign that, in the absence of faster economic growth and much more robust job creation, the BJP has shifted its emphasis from the development-and-governance mantra of 2014 toward hardline Hindu nationalism.   9. Maldives Signs a Free Trade Agreement With China  In early December, the tiny island nation of the Maldives (population: 417,000) signed a free trade agreement with China, becoming the second country in South Asia after Pakistan to do so. (The Maldives’ major export is fish, which the country hopes to send more of to China, and Chinese tourists are the single largest source of visitors to Maldivian resorts.) The agreement surprised New Delhi, and has sparked yet another round of soul searching in India about its regional influence—and China’s growing visibility across the entire Indian Ocean region. (See Hambantota above, and Nepal below). 10. Communists Return to Power in Nepal Nepal held elections in late November and early December, its first under a new constitution ratified in 2015. When all the votes were counted in mid-December, it became clear that a coalition of two Communist parties (one Maoist, and the other Marxist-Leninist) would oust the centrist Nepali Congress from power. Since emerging from a violent insurgency in 2006, Nepal has had a tumultuous time politically—it has had ten prime ministers since 2008—affecting its governance and its ability to deliver services to citizens, including the still-incomplete rebuilding work from the catastrophic earthquake of 2015. The return of a Communist government in Kathmandu will likely mean a further strengthening of ties with Beijing—yet another arena for concern in New Delhi. A pro-China Communist government in Nepal will likely also be less receptive to the Tibetan refugee community living in Nepal. Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her book about India’s rise, Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its Place in the World, will be published in January by Oxford University Press.

Part Two Read Part One here. In addition to several crucial elections, other events in 2018 will shape Southeast Asia’s economies, security, and regional politics. Some more events to watch in 2018: 1. The ongoing crisis in Rakhine State Bangladesh and Myanmar supposedly have discussed plans for repatriation of Rohingya back to Myanmar, and Bangladesh news outlets have reported that Dhaka has drawn up a list of one hundred thousand Rohingya to be repatriated first. Still, any repatriation seems unlikely anytime soon. Bangladesh’s government has made clear that it does not want Rohingya to leave the camps, and hopes to draw down the population of the refugee camps as soon as possible. The camps are in dire shape, with massive overcrowding and a high risk of disease. But given that the Myanmar government seems unwilling to make any real reforms in Rakhine State, provide some guarantee of security for Rohingya, or even admit any culpability at all for the massacres in Rakhine State, the only way Dhaka will be able to repatriate Rohingya, probably, is to force them back across the border. Many Rohingya rightly fear that, if they do return to Rakhine State, they could easily be interned in the state by the army and local police, detained in one of the internment camps dotting Rakhine. And without any real repatriation from Bangladesh, the large number of people in the camps inside Bangladesh well could grow in 2018, with no real long-term solution in sight—and with militant groups seeking recruits in the camps. Meanwhile, in Myanmar there is a strong possibility that journalists and rights organizations could reveal other atrocities that have been committed in Rakhine State, like the recent revelation of a mass grave, which seems to have prompted the authorities to jail two Reuters journalists. Such revelations would put further pressure on outside actors to take stronger measures against Naypyidaw, and would further isolate major democratic leaders from Aung San Suu Kyi, who has refused to engage with international interlocutors regarding any evidence of major crimes in Rakhine State. 2. Singapore as chair of ASEAN With the most skilled diplomatic service in the region, Singapore is often the most effective chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). (The chair rotates from country to country each year.) After a year in which ASEAN, with the Philippines as chair, again failed to address the biggest issue collectively confronting Southeast Asian states—how to deal with China’s South China Sea strategy—Singapore is the organization’s best hope for developing some common South China Sea approach that all members can sign onto at regional meetings. Unlike the Philippines, which is increasingly aligned with Beijing’s South China Sea policy, Singapore is at least likely to make ASEAN states discuss the South China Sea at ASEAN meetings—to put the South China Sea high up on meetings’ agendas. In addition, if any concrete progress is to be made on the ASEAN-China talks on a South China Sea Code of Conduct, Singaporean officials stand the best chance of actually achieving such progress toward a legally binding code. (I am doubtful that such progress will be made, however.) In addition, Singapore could work to ensure that tools being put into place to prevent tensions between South China Sea claimants from escalating into dangerous encounters—such as the planned Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea—are actually finished and utilized. 3. Southeast Asia forging its own path on trade With the United States having pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the White House reportedly gearing up to impose new trade actions against China, Southeast Asian states are trying to take their own trade paths. Several states, including Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia, have pushed forward with the TPP. Other states in the region, including the Philippines have become increasingly open to, and are touting, China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Southeast Asian states will more closely embrace RCEP in 2018 if the TPP is not finalized—Canada seemingly is not ready to finalize the TPP. And despite the Trump administration’s touting of the potential for bilateral trade deals between the United States and Asian states, no Southeast Asian nations seem eager to explore a bilateral deal with Washington. 4. The Islamic State in Southeast Asia Although the Philippine government has ended the siege of Marawi, in Mindanao, the threat from self-proclaimed Islamic State-linked actors in Southeast Asia has not receded. Islamic State-linked groups will continue to recruit in the southern Philippines, in Indonesia, and in other parts of Southeast Asia. In addition, the rise of larger, conservative Islamist groups as major players in politics in Indonesia will potentially bolster militant organizations’ recruiting efforts.

The past year saw the ongoing historic displacement of millions from conflict and persecution, and a weak response from the world’s richest nations to address the problems.

Welcome to "Women Around the World: This Week," a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week's post, covering December 11 to December 16, was compiled with support from Becky Allen and Anne Connell.

There was no way that Pope Francis’s trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh last week was going to be uneventful. The trip came in the midst of a massive spasm of violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State—one that the UN’s human rights chief, many rights organizations, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have all called ethnic cleansing. The pope has built a reputation as a defender of the poor, of the powerless, and of refugees and migrants, and so it seemed natural that, in Myanmar and Bangladesh, he would speak out on behalf of the Rohingya. Not only have over 600,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh since August, but conditions in the refugee camps inside Bangladesh are increasingly dire. In a recent report by the Inter-Sector Coordination Group on conditions inside Bangladesh for the Rohingya refugees, it noted that: One of the camps [where Rohingya are living] has become the largest and fastest growing refugee camp in the world, where approximately half a million people are living extremely close to each other without access to basic services such as toilets or clinics. The pope also reportedly was pressured, before the trip, by Catholic leaders in Myanmar not to openly criticize the Myanmar government’s handling of Rakhine State or even use the word Rohingya. They may have done so for fear that, if the pope did criticize the country’s military and civilian leaders for their roles in the ethnic cleansing, Catholics in Myanmar would be targeted for violence because of the pope’s words. In addition, some Catholic leaders may have feared that anything the pope did to upset Myanmar leaders could threaten relations between the Vatican and Naypyidaw; the two sides only established diplomatic relations last May. Pope Francis is politically savvy, but this was always going to be a very delicate trip. Pope Francis ultimately did not issue any open criticism of the Myanmar government, or even use the word Rohingya, until he had left Myanmar for Bangladesh to meet Rohingya refugees and discuss the crisis with Bangladesh leaders. (Myanmar military and civilian leaders refuse to even use the word “Rohingya,” as a means of denying the existence of targeting the Rohingya as supposed outsiders in Myanmar.) Amidst international criticism, the pope then defended his approach to the trip on his way back to Rome and suggested to reporters that he was frank in private with Myanmar leaders about the nature of the Rakhine crisis and their responsibility for it. He further suggested to some reporters that he did indeed use the word Rohingya in private discussions with Myanmar leaders. He may well have been frank in private. Surely, in dealing with civilian, military, and even some religious leaders in Myanmar, the pope must have faced the biggest obstacle all foreign leaders, rights activists, and diplomats address in addressing the Rakhine crisis: the vast majority of Myanmar people either seem to support the government’s approach to Rakhine or are untroubled by it. This is not a reason for outsiders, including the pope, to avoid criticism of Myanmar for the crisis in Rakhine or sanctions for leaders abetting ethnic cleansing. But, the fact that a majority of Myanmar citizens seem to support the brutal campaign that has driven as much as two-thirds of the Rohingya from Myanmar into Bangladesh means that outsiders’ words and actions seem to be pushing most Myanmar leaders and citizens into a bunker mentality. Increasingly, Myanmar citizens seem to be supporting the Myanmar military, no matter how abusively it acts in Rakhine State. Many Rohingya already seem to accept that they have been ethnically cleansed, and have no future in Myanmar, even if Naypyidaw and Dhaka eventually forge some real agreement on repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar. (Dhaka and Naypyidaw reportedly have agreed on a memorandum of understanding about some kind of repatriation, but it is hard to imagine repatriation going forward while conditions for Rohingya inside Rakhine State are still so dire.) “The Rohingya are finished in our country,” Kyaw Min, a Rohingya man living in Yangon, told the New York Times in a story published over the weekend. “Soon we will all be dead or gone.” In addition, although Pope Francis has said that he is a strong supporter of Myanmar’s democratic transition—and there is no reason to doubt that he indeed supports the transition—his decision to go along with commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing’s demand that the pontiff meet the top general before meeting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi is not helpful to the democratic process. (In the meeting, the general reportedly told the pope that there is “no religious discrimination” in Myanmar.) Min Aung Hlaing already has been bolstering his power, and the military’s popularity, through a series of high-profile visits to foreign countries and through the brutal campaign in Rakhine State. Getting the pope to meet him first sends another signal to the Myanmar populace that Min Aung Hlaing wields the power in Myanmar, and that foreign leaders should treat him as the country’s real ruler. To be sure, on his return to Rome, the pope indicated to reporters that he did not see his meeting with the top Myanmar general as akin to his meeting with de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he had sought out and who he actually wanted to meet. In response to a question on his plane about his meeting with the top general, the pope noted: I would distinguish between the two meetings, two types of meetings. Those meetings during which I went to meet people [i.e, with Suu Kyi] and those in which I received people. This general asked me to speak. And I received him. I never close the door. Yet, few people in Myanmar will have read this press conference transcript, while many will have read or heard about Pope Francis meeting with Min Aung Hlaing and then, only later, with Aung San Suu Kyi. The pope was his usual forthright self again with Rohingya refugees he met in Bangladesh. Again, he showed his humble, human touch by apologizing to the refugees for the “indifference of the world” to their plight and appearing to hold back tears hearing their stories.

By now the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has resulted in more than 625,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing into Bangladesh just since August 25. Last week, I wrote about Pope Francis’s visit to Bangladesh, and his public interaction with eighteen Rohingya refugees, which helped focus attention on their plight, if briefly. This week I want to provide a sense of how challenging the state of affairs is for the Rohingya refugees. Bangladesh has opened its border to them, and they at least have a literal place of refuge. But the scale of the influx in such a compressed period of time has overwhelmed relief agencies. As of December 3, the Inter Sector Coordination Group reports that with the new influx of refugees since August, the total number of Rohingya refugees now in Bangladesh is more than 838,000. Crowding and poor sanitation create the perfect storm for waterborne disease outbreaks. Reuters reported contamination of 60 percent of the camps’ water supply. The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told Agence France-Presse in November that the risk of cholera was a “ticking bomb.” To prevent the worst, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) began a mass cholera immunization drive in October, targeting some 900,000 people. The UNICEF representative in Bangladesh called it the “second largest largest oral vaccination campaign in the world after Haiti in 2016.” The WHO indicates that the available oral cholera vaccines can provide around 65 percent protection—clearly helpful, but not an impenetrable shield. Just three weeks back, the World Food Program warned of “high malnutrition rates among Rohingya refugees.” Its news release stated that “one in four Rohingya children” are malnourished. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), in a November call to action, expressed concern that another influx of Rohingya “new arrivals” could be coming, which would push the total to more than 1 million refugees in Bangladesh. (This is already one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with more than 160 million people packed into an area roughly the size of Iowa.) The IRC termed the present situation an “unimaginable humanitarian crisis.” On top of all this, the refugees, who fled Rakhine State to escape brutal violence, remain vulnerable in the refugee camps. The International Organization for Migration has warned of “human trafficking, labor exploitation, and sexual abuse.” Children separated from their families are particularly at risk. Reports of child labor and forced child marriages are emerging. So are reports of sex trafficking and sexual slavery. Against this backdrop of human suffering, the funds needed to continue providing nutrition, better sanitation and housing, and continued health care and vigilance against infectious disease—not to mention ongoing protection and education for children—remain utterly inadequate. To date, the fundraising appeal remains just under 35 percent of its goal of $434 million.  No wonder the IRC called this the “world’s fastest growing humanitarian crisis.”  My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, will be out in January. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

Earlier this week, Pope Francis visited Myanmar. During his visit there, he did not mention the word “Rohingya” publicly, despite the fact that since August 25, world attention has been focused on the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State. That’s why, when the pope mentioned the Rohingya by name today in Bangladesh, it captured attention. Pope Francis—arriving at a cathedral in an open cycle rickshaw, totally unlike the bulletproof “popemobiles” of his predecessors—participated in an interfaith gathering in Dhaka, and then interacted with sixteen Rohingya refugees who had been brought to Dhaka from refugee camps near the border with Myanmar. As the BBC reported, Pope Francis said in a remark departing from his planned speech that “the presence of God today is also called Rohingya.” He asked for their forgiveness “in the name of all those who have persecuted you.” Recognition from the pope does help raise global awareness of the continued humanitarian catastrophe the Rohingya have experienced, but it unfortunately does very little to address the big questions about their future. With much fanfare, Bangladesh and Myanmar reached an agreement on the repatriation of the Rohingya on November 23. As my colleague Josh Kurlantzick wrote on Monday, there are some big questions to ask about how this agreement would work in practice. Specifically, Josh asks: how would repatriation occur with ongoing violence still in Rakhine State? Where would the Rohingya live in Rakhine State—would they be forced into camps? What rights would they have, if not citizenship rights? And how can their safety be guaranteed? The questions Josh poses are some big ones, and they illustrate how difficult it will be to effect an actual repatriation of any scale. Is this agreement actually implementable? Despite a relatively successful repatriation effort in the 1990s, I am personally doubtful, and would like to be proved wrong. It is entirely possible to imagine this agreement running aground if, for example, Rohingya refugees are refused entry to Rakhine based on a lack of identity documents, or they are told they will have to live in camps once again, or there is no way to guarantee their safety in the end. Meanwhile, what of the present situation and the immediate future for the Rohingya refugees? To date, the total number of Rohingya arrivals to Bangladesh since August 25 has increased to 625,000. The UN mounted a humanitarian funding appeal to support the extensive needs of such a large refugee population in Bangladesh, and the total appeal amount through February 2018 is $434 million. According to the most recently available figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, only 34.8 percent of that total has been funded so far. The financial shortfall will obviously affect the ability of aid organizations to deliver relief. And the Bangladesh government, which should be commended for its open door to the refugees in this terrible moment, has begun taking steps to move refugees from the Teknaf Peninsula to an island in the middle of the Bay of Bengal. Reuters reported that the Bangladesh government this week approved a plan to develop this island, known as Thengar Char or Bhasan Char, so refugees could be shifted there. The island, as Reuters notes, is “two hours by boat from the nearest settlement…has no roads or buildings and it regularly floods during the rough seas of the June-September rainy season.” So, despite the good news of an agreement to repatriate the Rohingya, it strikes me that bigger questions still remain about what will happen to them in the next several months. I am afraid all the mercy Pope Francis can muster will not help with the answers. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, will be out in January. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

In an earlier post today, I noted that there remain many questions about the memorandum of understanding that Dhaka and Naypyidaw have supposedly negotiated, allowing at least some Rohingya to return to Myanmar, after years of a scorched earth campaign in Rakhine State. As I noted in my earlier post, the memorandum of understanding remains vague. It does not answer important questions like how the Rohingya would be protected if they returned to Myanmar, what types of legal and civil rights they would enjoy back in Myanmar, and whether they would be moved into camps in Myanmar once they crossed back across the border. On Pope Francis’s visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh this week, perhaps the most politically charged trip on the pontiff’s career, the pope is walking a fine line in his meeting with senior Myanmar and Bangladesh officials. He has already apparently met with Myanmar commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, though he may meet with the general again. He also plans to meet with de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, top political leaders in Bangladesh, and prominent religious leaders as well. The Pope is reportedly trying to be careful to highlight the suffering of Rohingya refugees—the result of a massive, military-managed campaign in Rakhine State—while not taking any actions that might turn the rage of Myanmar’s Burman, or Bamar, majority, against Christians as well. Several questions should be raised about the trip. Here are some questions to ask to assess how Pope Francis has handled his trip: Is Pope Francis actually going to call the Rohingya “Rohingya,” or will he use some kind of compromise terms—like “they refer to themselves as Rohingya.” Calling the group “Rohingya,” without qualifications, would send a powerful message of how Pope Francis views the Rohingya, and how they should be treated in Myanmar. Will Pope Francis push both Dhaka and Naypyidaw to present a clearer, more obviously feasible plan for how Rohingya could actually ever return to Myanmar without facing the threat of renewed violence against them, or being confined to camps within Myanmar itself? Right now, the repatriation plan is only sketchily detailed, and likely would not protect returning Rohingya from a wide range of abuses if they returned to Myanmar. Will the Pope actively rebut obvious falsehoods by top Myanmar leaders? Commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing today apparently told the Pope that there was “no religious discrimination” in Myanmar, which is clearly false. How forcefully will the Pope highlight continuing discrimination against Christians in Myanmar, which has been overshadowed by the ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State? Christian minorities, especially outside of central Myanmar, often face discrimination and even violence, according to extensive reporting including a report released last year by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  

Last week, it was reported that the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding for a plan to eventually repatriate large numbers of Rohingya from Bangladesh back to Myanmar. Over 600,000 Rohingya reportedly have fled into Bangladesh since August 2017 alone. In August, Rakhine violence—which has been severe in Rakhine State for five years now—spiked once again. That number of refugees in camps inside Bangladesh does not include the many Rohingya who had fled into Bangladesh before August 2017. Reporting about the details of the memorandum on return remain sketchy. CNN reported that “So far, no official details have been released on the agreement, what it would entail and under what circumstances the Rohingya would return.” The New York Times reported that “Neither side [Dhaka or Naypyidaw] gave many details, apart from a vague commitment to beginning a repatriation process within two months’ time.” Still, before any Rohingya return to Myanmar, both countries would need to adequately answer several questions. First, is it really safe for Rohingya to return? There is little evidence that the campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State, reportedly overseen by the security forces and encouraged by many hard-line Buddhist nationalist religious and political leaders, has even stopped. Human rights organizations are still recording details of refugees fleeing into Bangladesh saying that ethnic cleansing remains underway in Rakhine State. Much of the northern part of the state is still often inaccessible to monitors and journalists. Who will determine that it is safe for Rohingya to leave Bangladesh and go into Myanmar? According to some reports, Dhaka and Naypyidaw have agreed to allow UNHCR to oversee repatriation of Rohingya back to Myanmar. But how can UNHCR do so while violence is still going on in Rakhine State? What’s more, the Myanmar government reportedly has not agreed to allow UNHCR full access to Rakhine State. Second, where would Rohingya who returned to Rakhine State be housed? Many have not only been driven out of their homes by a campaign of violence but also witnessed their dwellings burnt to the ground or seized by local police or Buddhist residents. It seems highly unlikely that the Myanmar army, Rakhine politicians, and the national government would allow Rohingya to return to their homes; Naypyidaw seems uninterested in some kind of program to resettle Rohingya elsewhere in Rakhine State. Instead, as Amnesty International has warned, Rohingya who did return into Myanmar could wind up in camps that are already established in Rakhine State. Those camps, which have held Rohingya since the violence first broke out five years ago, have been condemned by rights organizations as little more than open-air jails or concentration camps. Third, even if international monitors were allowed to travel in Rakhine State freely, and there was a real opportunity for Rohingya to return and rebuild communities in Rakhine, what rights would they have—and who would pay for their resettlement? As it currently stands, most Rohingya are disenfranchised, and are viewed by most national, ethnic Bamar politicians as aliens to the Myanmar state—as people who are not one of the state’s recognized groups and thus do not enjoy the rights of Myanmar citizens. Meanwhile, hard-line Buddhist nationalism is on the rise in Myanmar, and no prominent politician, including Aung San Suu Kyi, will risk alienating Buddhist nationalists. If the Rohingya return, to Rakhine State or other parts of the country, but they do not have citizenship rights, they will remain complete outsiders to the Myanmar state-building project, and will live outside the rule of law. They will have few legal protections, and no protectors in government If Rohingya return to Myanmar without getting such legal rights, what guarantees will they have that there won’t be pogroms against them in the future? This is a question that Pope Francis, who is visiting Myanmar and Bangladesh this week on one of the most difficult trips of his papacy, should raise with Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders.