Restoring Security and Peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts: Addressing the Root Causes Imperative

Thander Nwe, Opinion

Global Arakan Network September 29, 2025

Indigenous Protestors Against the Injustice (photocrd)

In the mist-shrouded ridges of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), where the earth's ancient contours cradle echoes of unyielding heritage, a precarious calm fractures once more into shards of chaos. The mandate to restore security and peace compels not fleeting bandages but a ruthless dissection of the chronic ailments gnawing at the region's core.

This verdant frontier, repository of indigenous legacies intertwined with our own, has long endured as a crucible of unresolved grievances, where pledges of equity evaporate amid relentless incursions. The latest upheavals, fueled by barbaric violations against the defenseless, lay bare an unassailable reality: cosmetic fixes merely fuel the inferno. Authentic renewal demands grappling with the primordial schisms—imperial inheritances, institutionalized marginalization, and the brazen onslaughts of demographic overreach—that imperil not only local serenity but the intricate web of cross-border kinship.

The catalyst for the current maelstrom in Khagrachari district crystallizes the venomous cycle ingrained in the CHT's narrative. A young Marma girl, symbol of the enduring vitality that has withstood epochs of erasure, became prey to a gang rape allegedly orchestrated by Bengali settlers—a transgression not anomalous but incubated in a ecosystem of unchecked license.

This outrage, unfolding on September 23, 2025, in Singhinala village, ignited communal strife that crescendoed into lethal skirmishes, with Bangladesh Army troops unleashing indiscriminate fire on demonstrators, exacting at least four fatalities and wounding over 40 on September 28. Protests, initially a cry for justice, morphed into conflagrations, with shops torched and curfews imposed under Section 144, as paramilitary forces scrambled to contain the blaze.

These flare-ups are no aberrations; they reprise a liturgy of predation, where settlers, frequently abetted by the very sentinels of order, exploit indigenous vulnerabilities. Chronicles from advocacy fronts depict a harrowing continuum: territorial seizures, sexual predations, and orchestrated assaults weave a tapestry of dread, transforming state protectors into accomplices of subjugation.

In Khagrachari's shadowed alleys, the specters of prior indignities—desecrated sanctuaries, uprooted lineages, and muffled outcries—resonate with ominous prescience. This transcends petty delinquency; it embodies the honed blade of ethnic reconfiguration, where settler surges erode the cultural substratum, rendering aboriginal custodians’ exiles in their primordial realms.

Locals and Civilians Experiencing Intense Violence from Both Bengali Settlers and Army Personnel (photocrd)

To confine the CHT's turbulence to Bangladesh's internal ledger is to sever the unseen sinews linking it to adjacent horizons. As an intimate sentinel, indifference to the ordeals of brethren whose essence echoes is untenable—the Marma, Chakma, Tripuri, and kindred ethnic minorities, are all identical lineages. These guardians of the terrain for eons now contend with a tripartite onslaught that ravages psyche, framework, and flesh.

Psychologically, they endure a corrosive doctrine of diminishment, wherein Bengali ethnocentrism and religious fervor brand them as subordinates, fodder for domination. This cerebral assault, disseminated via curricula, broadcasts, and decrees, breeds endemic estrangement, tilling soil for escalated barbarities.

Structurally, Bangladesh's polity erects a citadel of perfidy: the 1997 Peace Accord, erstwhile harbinger of autonomy and self-governance, crumbles under assault from a charter that consolidates authority and apparatuses that privilege settler hegemony. Indigenous polities, primordial overlords of these expanses, witness their entitlements to territory, administration, and heritage methodically dismantled, relegated to marginalia in a saga of uniform assimilation.

And corporeally, as the fresh carnage affirms, the aggression materializes in primal savagery—floggings, dispossessions, and fatal volleys dispensed by overlords and interlopers alike. This confluence forges a maelstrom of hopelessness, were mere existence morphs into rebellion.

The brittleness of this tableau necessitates a paradigm shift, one that vaults frontiers and mobilizes unified tenacity. From perch, the directive crystallizes: we proffer engagement through affirmative conduits, channeling discourse to carve avenues for amelioration. Our bonds with the Marma and allied kin transcend abstraction; they are consanguineous, tempered in mutual chronicles of fortitude against usurpation.

Such paradigms might illuminate CHT stratagems, where peace reclamation eschews martial quelling for authentic political infusion. We should champion architectures that venerate the 1997 Accord's ethos: decentralized prerogatives, territorial reclamation, and bulwarks against settler incursions. Furthermore, the ascent of Muhammad Yunus's provisional regime, though heralding overhauls elsewhere, has faltered in cauterizing the hills' lesions.

Narratives of arbitrary detentions—such as the September 22 apprehension of six innocent Rakhine herders in Sitakunda, framed on fabricated Arakan Army affiliations—underscore a lingering vein of ethnic animus, intensified following Sheikh Hasina's August deposition. In this nascent order, the global consortium—vicinal sovereignties, the United Nations, and vigilance sentinels—must intensify scrutiny. Collaborative missives and campaigns, exemplified by indigenous pleas for EU mediation amid military clampdowns, furnish schemas for incursion, mandating probes and liberation of ensnared advocates.

Homes and Markets of Indigenous Groups Burnt Down Due to Violence (photocrd)

In the impending lunar cycles, as vulnerability hovers on the precipice, vows must transmute into deeds. We vow political immersion in this quagmire, not as intruders but as vested allies, tethered by lineage and cartography. The Bangagya (Rohingya) quandary, enmeshed with CHT vortices, heightens the wager: transboundary torrents of anguish necessitate panoramic remedies, were repatriation and entitlements dovetail with aboriginal fortifications.

Fiscal injections from planetary financiers, geared toward steadying Bangladesh through turmoil, could pivot to impartial advancement in the uplands, bolstering rather than supplanting. Yet, absent confrontation of the origins—ideological debasement, architectural injustices, and somatic ferocities—peace will linger ephemeral. Our kith in the CHT merit not benevolence but equity: fortified abodes, sovereign stewardship, and the sanctity of auto determination.

In essence, current instability in CHT is a domestic issue of Bangladesh and the trajectory to concord serpents through confession and rectification. May this juncture, seared by calamity, ignite metamorphosis. The tracts, as indomitable as their denizens, can flourish afresh if injustice's tendrils are extirpated. In this communal odyssey, we tender our mettle: for the guardianship of our amplified people, for zonal tranquility, and for an epoch where divides coalesce into bridges. The hour of oratory wanes; the dawn of unyielding endeavor summons.