The Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) was a

Rohingya The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

insurgent group active in northern

Rakhine State Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region to the east, the Bay of Ben ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

(Burma). The group was made up of Rohingya fighters led by Nurul Islam, a

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

-educated lawyer. The group was created after uniting the remnants of the Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF) and a defecting faction of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) that was under the command of Nurul Islam. On 28 October 1998, the ARIF merged with the RSO and formed the

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) is a Rohingya political organisation based in London, United Kingdom. Ideology The proclaimed beliefs and objectives of ARNO are as follows: * The right of self-determination of the Rohingya p ...

(ARNO), operating in-exile in Cox's Bazar. The Rohingya National Army (RNA) was established as its armed wing. It was responsible for a bomb attack on a military target in

Maungdaw Maungdaw (, ) is a town in Rakhine State, in the western part of Myanmar (Burma). It is the administrative seat of Maungdaw Township and Maungdaw District. Maungdaw is a town of Myanmar and borders Bangladesh. Maungdaw is 16 miles north of But ...

, Rakhine State, on 10 November 1991. It killed eight people.

References

Rebel groups in Myanmar Islam in Myanmar Islamist groups Rakhine State

Insurgency An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...

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