"The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has been labeled a terrorist organisation. It has caused a number of deaths—local civilian as well as security personnel. It is to be condemned and rooted out—no doubt about that at all. Indeed, since over two years ago, think tanks and diplomats in neighbouring countries have warned me personally about Islamist terrorist groups making their advent in Myanmar and I had passed this information on. The violence erupted as these friends had foretold, and we are now seeing the nature and the extent of the Myanmar state?s response. At this point we need to deeply consider one fundamental question: is ARSA and its attacks the cause or the consequence? The Rohingya issue has a long provenance, but beginning from the first military junta period (also known as the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime) that community began to be regarded as a problem from at least the 1970s. Immigration operations were carried out in the northern Rakhine border townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw. At least on two occasions, hundreds of thousands of Muslims (mostly Rohingya) fled into neighbouring Bangladesh. Official negotiations had to be held and most of those who had fled were taken back. The Myanmar government?s next response was to bottle up the Rohingya in those and adjacent townships, in the process stripping them of many basic rights. That region became a ghetto or quarantined area, and the situation festered for decades. The communal violence that erupted in 2012 started in another area of Rakhine state, and quickly spread to central Myanmar and also to north Rakhine. There were burnings and counter-burnings of homes and entire villages, in addition to other atrocities. As a result many Muslim communities were moved into IDP camps ?for their own safety?, these became in actuality 21st century concentration camps. Rakhine Buddhists have been displaced too, and there are a number of Buddhists from Bangladesh who have sought refuge in Rakhine..."