A/HRC/39/CRP.2 54. The Mission is also satisfied that the violence between the SSA-S/RCSS and the TNLA amounts to a separate non-international armed conflict, since at least November 2015. (b) Rakhine State 55. A more difficult question was whether the violence in Rakhine State, involving the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)55 and the Myanmar government forces, amounted to a non-international armed conflict at any point in time. ARSA is commonly regarded as a poorly armed and poorly trained group, with a small number of partly trained members but principally relying on untrained villagers to conduct attacks with sticks and knives. In comparison with the long-standing and well-armed non-State armed groups active in northern Myanmar, ARSA’s level of organization and military capacity appears more limited. 56. However, the situation must be assessed on the facts, based on the information that emerged during the Mission’s fact-finding work.56 The Mission considered the following elements as pointing at a certain level of organization within ARSA: a command structure allowing instructions to pass from decision makers to members and supporters at ground level, who complied with them; an ability to coordinate between an operational group in Rakhine State and groups based abroad; an ability to stage coordinated or simultaneous attacks across different locations in a tightly-controlled environment; an ability to mobilise widely among the Rohingya community at the time of attacks; the organization of village cells according to different roles and responsibilities; an ability to provide at least a core group of members with some military training and others with basic defence training, albeit limited; an ability to obtain some firearms and produce some improvised explosive devices and other hand-made weapons; an ability to articulate and communicate its positions and demands in a seemingly unified manner; and at least a stated willingness to abide by international law. On the other hand, the Mission also found elements that point towards the opposite view, chiefly ARSA’s apparent inability to raise significant funds and to procure and distribute firearms or other weaponry, and an overwhelming majority of those who participated in the attacks not having had any meaningful military training. 57. On balance, considering that international jurisprudence and legal scholarship emphasize that “some degree of organization will suffice” and that the requisite level of organization “should not be exaggerated”,57 the Mission considered that ARSA meets the requisite threshold of organization. The main factor that swayed the Mission was ARSA’s ability to stage up to 30 coordinated attacks on Government security posts in August 2017 (although some of these attacks were very limited in scale) in a tightly controlled environment and despite the earlier “clearance operations” of the Myanmar security operations following the October 2016 ARSA attacks. 58. The second criterion, the intensity of the violence, cannot be in doubt, especially since August 2017. The number of incidents, the geographic spread of the violence, the military equipment and weaponry brought in and used during the operations, the duration of the security operations, the number of casualties and injuries, and the extent of the destruction caused, are of a nature and scale that cannot be regarded as a mere internal disturbance. The question of whether the use of such tactics by the Myanmar security forces was warranted, appropriate and commensurate with the threat faced is valid, and will be discussed in this report, but has no bearing on the factual determination of the intensity of the violence itself. In this regard, the Mission also notes that ARSA was involved in multiple attacks on Myanmar security posts, as well as in the killing of informants and the burning of at least one village.58 55 56 57 58 18 The name “ARSA” came into existence only later, but is used for ease of reference. See chapter V, section D.1.c. Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, for a full overview of ARSA based on the information obtained by the Mission. See S. Sivukumaran, “The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict” (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 170 and the references listed there. E.g. ICTY, Prosecutor v Limaj et al., IT-03-66-T, Judgment, 30 November 2005, para. 89. See chapter V, section D.1.c. Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.