"When the most recent and dramatic stage of the genocide against the Rohingya started with Myanmar’s “clearance operations” in August 2017, the immediate trigger was an attack against a military border post by a previously insignificant insurgent group that called itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). That attack was significant. Dozens of people died and it provided the Myanmar military with a casus belli of sorts to crack down on insurgent groups in the area — a crackdown it then extended to all civilians associated with the group by virtue of supposedly belonging to the same ethnicity, the Rohingya. In the space of just over six months, the “clearance operations” cleared at least 70 percent of the roughly 1 million Rohingya people from the lands of their ancestors. But the operations were somewhat less successful at “clearing” actual militant groups. The most significant of these groups is the Arakan Army (AA), a long-established ethnic militia of Rakhine Buddhists on the borders of Myanmar. It has been noticeably more effective at resisting the onslaught of the military than other comparable groups, despite bearing the brunt of attacks for decades now (if we also include precursor groups). In the past couple of years, since the genocidal cleansing started in earnest, it has also been the most effective internal group in fighting back against federal Myanmar forces..."