Is Bangladesh Indirectly Responsible for Crimes Committed by ARSA Terrorists?

Opinion

Global Arakan Network | October 24, 2025

In the sweltering borderlands where the Naf River coils like a serpent between Arakan’s fractured north and Bangladesh’s strained frontier, terror stalks the innocent with chilling precision. Since November 13, 2023, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has carved a trail of blood through Maungdaw and Buthidaung: 48 civilians slaughtered, 10 wounded, 20 abducted and presumed dead—pushing the toll past 60. These are not battlefield casualties but cold, deliberate executions in villages far from any clash of armies.

On January 8, 2024, in Tat Min Chaung’s quiet lanes, three villagers—likely traders returning from market—were gunned down; three more writhed in agony as bullets tore through flesh. Six months later, on July 18, Letpanchay became a graveyard when seven locals, including women gathering firewood, were hacked and shot in broad daylight. By July 31, between Shwe Daung and Kyee Kan Pyin, five more fell in an ambush that left two others bleeding on the roadside. March 29 claimed four lives in a single, savage sweep. And on October 22, two women—mothers, sisters, pillars of their homes—were cut down in southern Maungdaw while two men survived only to carry the scars of that day’s fury.

These are not random acts of war. No artillery thundered. No rival forces clashed. These were targeted killings—ARSA’s signature: silent infiltration, sudden violence, swift retreat across the border. The group strikes where resistance is weakest: rural paths, village outskirts, market routes. They do not fight for territory; they terrorize to dominate, to intimidate, to fracture the fragile peace that has begun to take root under Arakan’s emerging governance.

And they can—because they operate with impunity from bases inside Bangladesh. From the sprawling refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar to hidden outposts in Teknaf, ARSA recruits, re-arms, and heals. Wounded fighters vanish across the Naf and reappear days later, bandaged and battle-ready. Local intelligence speaks of safe houses, supply lines, and—most damning—complicit silence from those meant to guard the border. While Dhaka loudly proclaims itself a victim of Myanmar’s chaos, its border forces look away as ARSA crosses back into Arakan to kill again.

Mohammad Emdadul Islam, the retired Bangladeshi major who once served as consul in Sittwe, offered a chilling rationalization in a recent BBC interview on October 24: “When people are hopeless, they can do anything bad.” Translated into the reality of Maungdaw’s villages, this becomes a license: ARSA’s atrocities are not crimes to be condemned but outbursts of despair to be understood. Such words, spoken from a position of authority, do not merely excuse—they embolden. They signal to the marauders that their actions will face no rebuke, no consequence, no barrier at the border.

Mohammad Emdadul Islam, the retired Bangladeshi major who once served as consul in Sittwe

This is not mere negligence. It is a pattern. ARSA does not survive in the wilderness; it thrives in the shadow of complicity. When a group can strike deep into Arakanese territory, execute civilians, and retreat without pursuit, someone is letting them pass. When abducted villagers vanish and no joint operation is launched, someone is choosing silence over justice. When arms flow one way and wounded fighters return the other, someone is looking the other way.

The people of northern Arakan—Rakhine, Hindu, Mro, Khumi—live under siege not from a distant army but from a neighbor’s neglect. Their children cannot walk to school without fear. Their women cannot tend fields without scanning the treeline. Their elders speak in whispers, knowing that dissent invites a knock in the night. This is not the collateral damage of war. This is terror by design.

And yet, Dhaka positions itself as the aggrieved party—burdened by refugees, strained by aid costs, victimized by spillover violence. But victims do not back their attackers. Victims do not shelter those who slaughter across the border. Victims do not issue statements of concern while their border guards wave through the very men who return with blood on their hands.

The truth is sharper: Bangladesh is not just failing to stop ARSA—it is enabling its survival. Every unchallenged crossing, every uninvestigated camp killing, every muted response to a village massacre strengthens the group’s grip. ARSA does not need Dhaka’s direct orders. It needs only the absence of resistance. And that absence is provided, day after day, in the silence that follows every scream from Maungdaw.

Arakan has fought too hard, sacrificed too much, to see its hard-won peace eroded by a neighbor’s indifference. The world must see what happens when terror is tolerated under the guise of humanitarian strain. The women of Tat Min Chaung, the children of Letpanchay, the traders of Shwe Daung—they are not statistics. They are the cost of silence. And that silence has a price Arakan can no longer afford to pay.

Until Bangladesh chooses action over apathy, the Naf will remain not a border—but a gateway. And through it, ARSA will keep coming. The cycle of blood will not end with words of regret. It will end only when the hand that feeds the beast is forced to close.