Bangladesh-Chittagong Hill Tracts: Bonfire of triangular accord?

by M Rashiduzzaman | Published: 00:00, Jan 25, 2023

NOT a compact between two or more sovereign nations, the 1997 CHT Peace Accord — a triangular partnership between the then Awami League-run government, the Santu Larma-led Shanti Bahini and India, the not-so-hidden partner — carried the potentials for its own implosion. Even some of those who ceremoniously accepted the peace settlement reckoned that the accord was only the beginning of their ‘ultimate autonomy’ — a euphemism for secession. But the Bangladeshi political elite, irrespective of their ideological inclinations, could not relinquish the sovereignty over the strategically vital CHT, the 10 per cent of the total Bangladesh territory. Beyond the accord-transferred responsibilities to the ethnic minority-controlled three district councils and the larger regional council, the hill leaders demanded more closing of the military outposts, tough restrictions on the Bengali immigrants and more resources for the hills, to mention a few of those demands.

Stuck between the ancestral leaders’ unyielding pressure for more relaxation authority in the hills and the government’s comprehensible security fears, the much-vaunted accord was wedged in an impasse. Meanwhile, the humanitarian organisations and a few amongst the international bodies blamed the government for its presumed ‘non-implementation’ of the accord provisions. The Bengali incomers, on the other, complained that they faced ‘harassment and torture’ in all spheres of life in the hills.

Sprinkled with repeated violence, the CHT Accord gradually lost its earlier texture, but a full-blown guerrilla war did not return in the area, a plus point for the peace treaty. And yet, the contesting armed factions occasionally clashed with the security forces. As of 2021, 16-plus security persons and more than 200 Bengali civilians lost their lives and about 400 Bengalis were abducted, conversing with the available media and anecdotal reports. In 2022, several inter-ethnic clashes and military versus armed groups attacks took place in the hill stretches where several persons lost their lives.

In coherence with a few claims, more than 600 people belonging to the non-Bengali ethnicities lost their lives — mostly one dissident group attacking the other since the accord came into force in 1997. Additional losses of lives resulted from the skirmishes between the armed rebel groups and the security forces. Recurrent conflicts between the Bengali settlers and the indigenous inhabitants further resulted in more arson, deaths, injuries, and purported sexual assaults.

One of the intractable CHT challenges is to trail the rise and fall of the Pahari factions and the erosion of the earlier acknowledged parties like the Parbatya Chottogram Jana Samhati Samiti or the United People’s Democratic Front, and who is killing whom and what are the forces at the bottom of the intermittent violence. The first major JSS split happened in 1997 when Prasit Khisa, one of its leaders, broke away and formed the UPDF that renounced the accord. The JSS leaders then said that the military operatives contrived to divide the largest Chakma group and the sporadic tension and violence was a ploy for the continued military presence in the hills. The military, of course, denied that charge. The CHT has passed through agonised killings between the two well-known and the sprouting rival groups. Another PCJSS split happened in 2007 when Suda Sindho Khisha formed the PCJSS-Reformation. A further PCJSS breach happened in 2010. Santu Larma is still the senior mentor of the PCJSS, but the outfit’s old control has frayed. Maintaining equilibrium between those swirling factions was the biggest undertaking for the military and the bureaucracy of the region even though the indigenous leaders and their humanitarian allies did not accept that posture.

But the UPDF, too, went through its own tear when a new group surfaced as the UPDF-D led by Tapan Jyoti Chakma in 2017 and its internal rupture did not end there. Those fragments plus the Sama Adhikar Andolan and the Parbatya Bangalee Chhatra Parishad set as the regional local parties for the hill population — they, too, had tenuous liaison with the country’s larger political parties. Beyond those ethnic groups, the Bengali settlers have their own organisations and alignments with the major national parties of different stripes — they campaign for their own security and the right to live in the CHT.

Even without a widespread insurgency since the 1997 Peace Accord, the government believes that ongoing factional rivalries and turmoil demand additional military resources in the hills, which the indigenous leaders vehemently opposed. Out of hundreds of temporary army camps, only 30 or more such outposts were conceivably abandoned by the military to partially satisfy the accord terms. When the dissident factions or armed rebel bands captured those empty spots, the army hesitated about the camp-abandonment process for safety reasons. As many as 16 security persons and 190 Bengali civilians were killed from 1997 to 2021 and the casualty figures could rise higher if the up-to-date data are available. (see also ‘Bangladesh: CHT and Violent Factionalism – Analysis’, in Eurasia Review, August 31, 2022).

Not long ago, a huge destabilising news come into view that the Kuki-Chin National Front (KCNF/KNF), a relatively new outfit and the Marma National Party, surfaced as the new-fangled separatist group that rejected the accord and denounced both the PCJSS and the UPDF. An added dimension was the KCNF’s alleged link with a not-so-well-known Islamist terror group, the Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindel Sharquiya. The KNF claims to represent the spectrum of Bawm, Pungkhua, Lushai, Khumi, Mro and Khyang tribes. In the new outfit’s political vocabulary, those clans represented the earliest CHT habitants, a provocation for the other eminent hill and Bengali groups. The KCNF is the hill people’s new political forum, but the Kuki-Chin National Army is its armed wing. Through its Mizo and Chin constituents and the reports of 250 Bangladeshi ancestral people recently seeking shelter in India’s Mizo state, the KCNF is ostensibly tied with the neighboring states in India and Myanmar. What do the new armed groups really want and who are their shadowy backers?

Is the KCNF a glimpse of the CHT’s troubled potential? Sometimes, the smugglers, gunrunners, criminals, and drug carriers masquerade as terrorist groups to scare off their competitors and the law enforcers. By massively pushing the Rohingya refugees in the already troubled expanse, Myanmar has further unsettled the insurgency-prone region. The international humanitarian help to the displaced people has only increased the Bangladeshi security burdens in the region. A complex network of cross-border separatists from India’s northeast, Myanmar and Bangladesh destabilises the hills by way of dripping violence across the landscape. While the accord still survives, few can objectively project its future trajectory.

My substantive inference now is not dramatically different from what I wrote in ‘Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord: Institutional Features and Strategic Concerns’, Asian Survey, University of California Press, Berkeley, July 1998. It was an open secret that the CHT’s Shanti Bahini separatists received active help and shelter in the adjoining Indian territories — in a way, it was New Delhi’s stick to beat up on the post-1975 non-Awami League administration in Bangladesh. India offered a diplomatic carrot to the new AL government by goading the hill insurgents to accept a peace agreement and call for a cessation of hostilities. But the strategic convergence between New Delhi and Dhaka over the hill districts would not sustain in the event the CHT’s pinch of peace crumbles for the predictable or unpredictable reasons.

Five possible strategic scenarios wrap the CHT’s future gamut: (i) In the event of a dramatic slide towards violence, chaos, uncertainties, new state, and non-state actors entwining with the protracted clashes, the major neighbors, bordering the three hill districts, would not remain silent partners. (ii) Myanmar, already spurring the CHT in multiple ways, might escalate further if the unstable hill districts host more of the Myanmar dissidents foraying across the border. (iii) With New Delhi’s increasing interests in coupling the Indian northeastern districts with the sea via the Chittagong port, the potential CHT conflict might spin up to the River Feni that nearly cuts the Chittagong swathe from the rest of Bangladesh. (iv) If India towers over the terrain that leads up to the Bay of Bengal, China, already present in the area for Bangladesh’s infrastructural activities, may not be a non-partisan spectator. (v) With China, an actor in the possible tumult on the rim of the Bay of Bengal, can the US and western powers remain far off from the CHT and Chittagong port areas?

A good conflict management could, however, stave off such catastrophic failings in the CHT and its neighborhood. Above all, the Bangladeshis must acknowledge the CHT’s compelling importance to the country’s future.

 

M Rashiduzzaman, a retired academic, writes on Muslim identity, history and politics.

The article appeared in the New Age Bangladesh

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