Looking at the human toll and causality figures of a hundred or more and is said to be increasing with every passing hours, the immediate need of the seemingly out of control conflict situation in Arakan as a whole is on how to first limit the damage.

All parties concerned in this conflict would be well advised to make use of the political dialogue and reconciliation attitude to defuse the situation, rather than just banking on total elimination of “win-lose” or zero-sum game.

At this confusing hours and attitude full of hatred from both sides of the conflict spectrum, just declaring Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) as a terrorist organization and total annihilation won’t end the conflict, as human rights violations and defending the country’s sovereignty through area cleansing and combing of the Rohingya settlement, couldn’t be delineated clearly. In other words, the line is blurred between the two issues.

Thus, “limiting the damage and political solution” are the only way to get out of this mess, even though it would be hard to swallow this reality at this emotionally charged moment that both conflict parties have the tendency to think that one side is wrong and the other side right, so to speak.

As in all conflict situation, the middle ground is always the place where solution could be found, as all Rohingya could not claim blanket citizenship for all, including illegal immigrants that have entered the country after the country’s independence from the British – as a timeline for example to draw a line between legal and illegal, the powers that be cannot also throw the whole Rohingya population into the sea.

As Kofi Annan’s Commission suggested reviewing the controversial 1982 citizenship law and verification of the legal resident from illegal ones would have to be carried out in an internationally accepted democratic norms, if this simmering conflict is to come to an end.

Link to the story: Security forces ‘fire on fleeing Rohingya’ as violence scorches Rakhine