Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan call for jihad in Myanmar

Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement, said they “shared the grief” of Myanmar’s beleaguered Rohingya Muslim minority.

Myanmar refuses to recognise most of its 1.3 million Rohingya as citizens and places a series of restrictions on them, such as family size, movements and access to jobs.

The country’s impoverished western state of Rakhine has become a tinderbox of tension between the Buddhist majority and the Rohingya, many of whom live in displacement camps after deadly unrest erupted in 2012.

“I address Burma’s youth: take up the sword and kill in the path of God. No doubt, God is with us,” Ehsan said in an audio message sent to media, using Myanmar’s former name.

“Our (training) centres, our resources, training, people, everything is available to provide comfort to you.”

Roughly four percent of Myanmar’s 51 million people are Muslim, with the Rohingya making up slightly more than half of the community.

The TTP has killed thousands of people in its bloody fight against the Pakistani state since 2007 but has rarely shown much interest in taking its struggle beyond the country’s borders.

But the Rohingya issue is beginning to stir public opinion in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has reportedly set up a special committee to suggest what Pakistan can do to help the Rohingya, and on Sunday protesters burned the Myanmar flag in the central city of Multan.

Ehsan said “protest demonstrations, processions, marches, condemnation resolutions” had little impact, saying only jihad, or holy war, would make the Myanmar rulers take notice.

The TTP has been on the back foot since the military began a major offensive against its hideouts in June last year.

In recent years various violent Islamist groups have issued messages of support for Rohingya and exhortations to jihad, including al-Qaeda.

But Rohingya have so far shown no appetite for adopting their violent rhetoric or actions. -AFP