How Growing Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh Could Delay Peaceful Refugee Repatriation to Arakan

Aung Naing Lin, Opinion

Global Arakan Network November 19, 2025

ARSA Terrorists and Laughing Refugee Children

The sun sets red over the Naf River. Another day ends without boats carrying families home. Dhaka talks of elections and fresh starts. Across the water, guns speak louder than promises. Textbooks call Bangladesh a rational state. Reality shows a house divided—calm voices drowned by the roar of uniforms. Suits plead for talks and open gates. Boots demand walls and weapons. Boots always win.

Inside the camps, soft words from Yunus aides like Dr. Khalilur Rahman arrive as faint radio static. Dialogue with leaders in Arakan. A roadmap for safe return. Papers stamped with dignity. Nice dreams. Every night, border guards tighten barbed wire. Intelligence officers slip cash and rifles to old ghosts—ARSA, RSO—men who once fled the same fire that burned villages. Those ghosts now cross back under moonless skies. They torch Buddhist homes in Buthidaung. They slaughter farmers in Maungdaw. Each corpse builds a new wall against any hope of return.

The script never changes. Hardliners always prevail. They call it security. Smuggling routes pay better when borders stay hot. Refugee misery funds fat budgets. Militants become handy excuses: “See? Terrorists. No safe return.” The circle tightens. Dhaka arms the chaos it claims to fear. People rot in plastic shelters. Children learn hate instead of letters.

Picture a mother clutching a repatriation form dated 2018, edges curled like dead leaves. She waits for a bus that never comes. Down the lane, a teenage recruit practices grenade throws, paid by the same agencies that block the bus. One policy for cameras, another for shadows. Civilians lose. Refugees lose. Peace loses.

Cross-border raids happen weekly. Last month, masked men dragged a village headman from sleep and slit his throat beside the mosque he helped build. Message clear: trust no one, return to nothing. Each atrocity hardens hearts on both sides. Local councils beg for joint patrols that protect, not punish. Dhaka sends drones instead. Trust erodes faster than riverbanks in monsoon.

Generals boast of control. They control guns, gates, fear. They do not control the future. Every bullet fired into a neighbor’s field plants revenge. Every camp left to fester breeds another fighter. Repatriation needs calm water, not blood in the current. Hardline wins mean more blood, more delay, more mothers growing old under blue tarps.

No grand theories needed to see the trap. Open trade posts at Taungbro and Ghumdhum. Let fishermen share the estuary without passports but legal fishing. Swap rice for shrimp, stories for silence. Small steps build bigger trust. Small steps scare men who profit from big chaos. So camps stay full, the river stays red, and “repatriation” gathers dust on shelves in Geneva.

One day the uniforms may tire of their own game. One day a leader may choose buses over barricades. Until then, smoke rises from border hamlets and the cost of someone else’s hardline victory keeps rising. The road home runs through Dhaka’s barracks, not its ballot boxes. Change the guard inside those barracks, and gates might swing open. Keep the same sentries, and the only thing repatriated will be despair.