Bangladesh’s Mohammad Yunus government is playing a dangerous game. By refusing to address the deep alienation in the country’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and casting its indigenous people as outsiders or even conspirators, it is pushing the tribals into the role of the “new Jews” of Bangladesh — an internally othered minority, demonised by the state, and convenient to scapegoat in moments of crisis. 

That strategy may win Dhaka short-term political cover, but it risks setting ablaze not just the hills but the country’s fragile equilibrium in a volatile neighbourhood.

The spark came this Dussehra week, as the rest of the subcontinent celebrated the symbolic triumph of good over evil. In Khagragachi, a Chakma schoolgirl was raped, and when villagers gathered to protest, police opened fire. 

A tragedy that could have been resolved with justice and accountability instead spiralled into fury. Within days, the streets of Rangamati and Bandarban filled with demonstrators demanding not only redress for one crime but an end to decades of land seizures, army repression, and unfulfilled promises of autonomy. 

The chants quickly spread online, morphing from “justice” into calls for “self-rule” — and in some cases for “reunification with India.”

Othering Tribals

For Dhaka’s ruling circle, this was intolerable. The Home Office first denied the crime, then blamed “external influences,” pointing fingers at India or “fascist elements.”

The language betrayed a long-standing prejudice — the tribals are not “true” Bangladeshis, but a fifth column. 

It is the same logic that underpinned forced resettlement campaigns in the 1970s and the army’s decades-long dominance of the hills. But in 2025, in a fraught region where superpowers are engaged in a proxy war, the consequences of this othering may prove far more explosive than Dhaka realises.

Demographic Engineering

To grasp the stakes, one must revisit the history of the CHT, which has always been a land out of place. In 1947, the Chakmas and other mostly Buddhist tribes assumed they would join India. They hoisted the tricolor at Rangamati on August 15. 

Two days later, the Radcliffe Line consigned them to Pakistan. A Baluch regiment arrived to haul down the Indian flag and hoist Pakistan’s in its place. Ten years later, the Kaptai Dam drowned one-tenth of the hills, submerging villages and displacing nearly 100,000 people, many of whom fled across the Indian border.

After 1971, when Bangladesh emerged independent, there was hope of reconciliation. Instead, Gen. Ziaur Rahman embarked on demographic engineering, settling plains Bengalis in the hills with army support. 

Indigenous villagers lost land, often overnight, and responded with insurgency under the misleadingly named ‘Shanti Bahini’ (Peace Army). Two decades of guerrilla war and repression followed until the 1997 peace accord promised autonomy, land restitution, and army withdrawal.

Regional Ramifications

Nearly three decades later, those promises remain mostly unfulfilled. The land commission is paralyzed, the settlers continue to expand their footprint, and the army never really left. For the indigenous peoples, the sense of betrayal is visceral, a scar that the Khagragachi rape reopened with terrible force.

What makes this crisis more dangerous than past eruptions is the regional context. The CHT sits at the trijunction of Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where one of Asia’s most seminal wars is unfolding. 

The Myanmar junta, backed by China, is battling the Arakan Army, which controls most of Rakhine. At the same time, the Rohingya insurgent group ARSA, accused of collaborating with the junta, mounted raids from bases inside the CHT itself against the Rakhine people. 

Western agencies, eager to bolster the Arakan Army and weaken Myanmar’s junta, have floated ideas of a supply corridor through the CHT — a plan that could potentially drag Bangladesh into a war not of its choosing.

For China, the stakes are even clearer— Myanmar’s Kachin state, north of Rakhine, holds some of the world’s richest deposits of rare earths and critical minerals. These are the lifeblood of the green transition, and China, already the world’s dominant processor, is determined to keep control. 

The Kachin Independence Army, allied with the Arakanese, wants to seize those mines. Western intelligence has an interest in helping. Beijing has doubled down on the junta. The battlefield, however, is porous. Supply lines and insurgent sanctuaries snake through the Chittagong Hills, making this forgotten frontier suddenly a node in the world’s most consequential geopolitical rivalry.

Profound Miscalculation

Against this backdrop, Yunus’s government seems to believe that denial and scapegoating can restore order. It is a profound miscalculation. Bangladesh already shelters nearly a million Rohingya refugees in sprawling camps.

Another influx, coupled with indigenous unrest, could overwhelm its economy and fracture its social fabric. Alienating India with accusations of interference risks drawing New Delhi, which is wary of unrest in the neighbourhood, into the CHT. 

By positioning the tribals as enemies within, Dhaka risks reigniting an insurgency that would tie down its military for decades.

The lesson from the past half-century is simple: the hills cannot be pacified by force or ignored into silence. Treating the indigenous peoples as traitors or aliens has only deepened their estrangement. 

To cast them as Bangladesh’s “new Jews” — isolated, distrusted, blamed for crises not of their making — is to invite both moral and strategic disaster.

The real choice for Dhaka lies between reconciliation and repression. Fulfilling the promises of the 1997 accord, addressing land claims fairly, and scaling back the military presence could build trust. 

Unrest In The Hills

Engaging India not as an antagonist but as a partner in stabilising the frontier could help prevent spillovers. And above all, the Yunus government must resist the temptation to let global rivalries dictate its domestic policies. 

Washington and Beijing may see Rakhine and Kachin as squares on a chessboard. For Bangladesh, the hills are not a game. They are home to real people with long memories and unresolved grievances.

The danger is that Yunus, pressed by his own fragile legitimacy and seduced by the old tools of denial and scapegoating, will choose the easier path of repression. 

If so, Bangladesh risks not just unrest in its hills but becoming an unwilling participant in a global proxy war. The fires of Khagragachi may be small compared with the wars across the border, but left untended, they could burn far beyond Bangladesh’s control.

(The writer is a senior Indian journalist and geopolitical analyst. Views expressed are personal)