Bangladesh's Myanmar problem

On Monday afternoon, two people lost their lives in Jolpaichari village, Bandarban, by mortar shells originating from Myanmar. 

Bangladesh's Myanmar border along the Bandarban district has turned into a valley of fear as the Tatmadaw – Myanmar's military – fights the insurgent group the Arakan Army, in order to maintain control over adjoining Rakhine and Chin states.

Relentlessly crossing into Bangladesh, Myanmar's mortar shells are instigating panic among the border residents. The villagers across this side of the border are living a nomadic life as the local administration has recommended evacuating their homes and seeking shelter. 

The conflict on the Myanmar side has escalated to the point where members of Myanmar's Border Guard Police (BGP) are abandoning their positions and seeking refuge in Bangladesh in large numbers, as rebel forces continue to gain control of additional areas.

Myanmar has been devastated in its most serious civil war so far, following the coup staged by the Tatmadaw against Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) government.

The nation has a historical record of combating different regional rebel forces. However, since the NLD also joined forces with these factions to free the country from military rule the military government has lost control over significant portions of the country, including Bangladesh's neighbouring Rakhine and Chin states.

Bangladesh, a longstanding victim of Myanmar's troubles, is now grappling with repercussions of the spill-over from the Rakhine conflict. The latest development is causing panic, however, troubles on this side of the border are not unprecedented. 

Back in 2022, a Rohingya teenager was killed at the borderline by a mortar shell from Myanmar. Bandarban witnessed panic that time as well, because mortal shells were indiscriminately falling on this side of the border.  

The latest turbulence, however, is more severe, with more than two hundred BGP members taking shelter in Bangladesh. Bangladesh's state minister announced on Saturday evening that these soldiers would be sent back to Myanmar. However, given the intensity of the war raging throughout Myanmar, Bangladeshis at the Bandarban border may have to endure a longer wait before they can return home.

Tapestry of time: Creation of the trouble

Bangladesh's trouble with Myanmar began within the first decade of its (the former's) independence, because Myanmar junta's oppression of the ethnic Rohingyas in the Arakan state escalated in the late seventies.

The historic reality is that the Rohingyas have endured persecution in Myanmar for centuries. The initial displacement of this ethnic community can be traced back to 1785 when Burmese King Bodapawpaya conquered Arakan, leading to the escapade of Mogh and Rohingya to Bangladesh's Chattogram due to oppression. These communities resettled in Arakan in the early nineteenth century. 

The early years of the Rohingya's presence in independent Myanmar was favourable as the first two prime ministers – U Nu or U Ba Swe – considered them as a race of the larger fabric of the nation. However, things turned worse for the Rohingya after military general Ne Win assumed power in 1962, categorising the Rohingyas as 'Bengali.'

It was during Ne Win's tenure that the Burmese crises, which would later haunt Bangladesh on this side of the border, started to emerge. Poverty-stricken Myanmar began wholescale opium production.  Consequently, the drugs proliferated in the entire country to transform it into a narco-state, setting the stage for drug cartels to disrupt lives in neighbouring Bangladesh in the future.  

While the drug trade flourished, internal conflicts between various rebel groups and the military also continued to intensify. Concurrently, China was arming the Communist Party of Burma to counter elements of the Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) in Myanmar's Shan province. These fights never stopped, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of civilian lives and displacement of tens of thousands more up to the present day.  

Decades of Myanmar troubles 

In the first decade of Bangladesh's independence, Myanmar launched Operation Dragon King (Naga Min) in Rakhine. Meanwhile, the Rohingyas were declared 'illegal' and they were stripped of their citizenship.
In the timeframe of 1977-78, Operation Dragon King conducted mass arrests and violence against the ethnic minority, leading to the displacement of approximately 2,00,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh. However, this group of refugees was repatriated to Myanmar by 1979. The Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 failed to recognise the Rohingyas as citizens, effectively rendering them stateless and subjecting them to further repression and continued incursions into Bangladesh. 

Later in 1991, the junta conducted the 'operation clean and beautiful nation', which forced around 2,50,000 Rohingyas to take refuge in Bangladesh. The repatriation process began in 1992 and in the following years, thousands were sent back while Bangladesh kept attempting to prevent further infiltration. Two camps of the 20 built in Bangladesh in the early '90s remained in Nayapara and Teknaf. 

Hand in hand with their refugees, however, Myanma religiously sent one more thing that has aggravated Bangladesh's misery – drugs. They are coming in millions of pieces. 

When the Department of Narcotics Control seized only 1, 687 pieces of the yaba pills in 2006, its number went up to over 36,000 in two years and to over eight lakh pieces in 2010. And from 2010 to 2022, within a decade, yaba seizures rose to around 4.5 crore of pieces from some eight lakh, meaning it was 50 times higher. It only shows the amount that eventually flowed into the market could be much higher. 

And just like the country continues to dillydally on the Rohingya repatriation issue, a similar lackadaisical approach is evident regarding measures to prevent drug trafficking. In 2013 when Bangladesh's Narcotics Control sent a list of 37 yaba factories inside Myanmar, the authority there responded that they couldn't find them and if Bangladesh could "put the location on the perspective map and send us back." 

Bangladesh's Myanmar troubles, however, also prevails in other areas besides refugees, drugs and the spill-over of their internal conflicts. 

Early November in 2008, for example, Myanmar arbitrarily deployed four ships escorted by two naval ships for exploring oil and gas in Bangladesh's maritime territory. They ignored Bangladesh Navy's warnings. Bangladesh in response positioned three ships at the spot, which was increased to four after BNS Kopothakka, a British-made frigate, was also deployed around 30 miles south of St Martin. 

Around a week later, the Myanmar authority withdrew its vessels and equipment from the disputed area. The issue was later resolved in arbitration at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in 2012. 

There have also been reports of killings of innocent Bangladeshis at the bordering areas by Myanmar forces. According to a Reuters report, Myanmar guards killed two Bangladeshi fishermen in 1998 near St Martin. 

Myanmar forces firing on Bangladeshi fishermen was repeated. In 2016, they opened fire on a fishing boat near Chera Dwip, whereas tension was also building with an unfolding Rohingya refugee crisis.  Some 27,000 Rohingyas poured into the Bangladesh border following the attacks on Myanmar police posts on October 9 in Rakhine and the subsequent crackdown on the Rohingyas by the troops which killed 80. 

In August 2017, armed attacks, unprecedented violence and ethnic cleansing forced tens of thousands of Rohingyas fleeing their home in Myanmar's Rakhine State. The exodus turned to a perilous journey to the Bangladesh border. After Bangladesh opened its border for the most persecuted minority in the world, as described by the UN , around a million refugees finally took shelter in Cox's Bazar. 

Years have passed since the Rohingyas took shelter in Bangladesh, but their repatriation question hasn't progressed much. And after Suu Kyi's incarceration and the civil war, which is only intensifying and leading the junta to lose more and more territory, it is hard to see an agreement or future for the refugees to return to their homeland.

And until the Arakan Army drives the military from the Rakhine State or vice versa, the border may hardly see the guns going silent. And therefore, Bangladesh's Myanmar problem may not be over anytime soon.