Bangladesh/Myanmar: The Dangers of a Rohingya Insurgency Crisis Group Asia Report N°348, 18 June 2025 Page 2 Since late 2024, Arakan Army forces have advanced into neighbouring Magway, Bago and Ayeyarwady regions, working together with local resistance forces.7 Rather than toppling the regime, the group’s primary goals are to build up a buffer zone of allied resistance forces around the periphery of Rakhine State and to weaken the regime’s ability to enforce its blockade. It may also hope to hurt the military by threatening strategic targets, such as defence industries, many of which are in Bago and Magway, and divert Naypyitaw’s attention from Rakhine proper.8 With the military’s blockade of Rakhine State, the importance to the Arakan Army of its relations with neighbours Bangladesh and India has increased.9 To some extent, it is reliant on trade with these countries for its proto-state to function. Under long-time Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina, whose government was overthrown by mass protests in 2024, Dhaka had shied away from directly engaging with the group. The Arakan Army, however, has long maintained discreet ties with Bangladesh’s security agencies. These links began fraying in March 2024, when the Arakan Army rejected demands to engage with Rohingya armed group leaders and come up with a plan for large-scale refugee repatriation.10 Tensions mounted further over the group’s alleged mistreatment of Rohingya in northern Rakhine and Bangladesh’s perceived support for Rohingya armed groups (see Section III.B below). This report examines the build-up of Rohingya armed groups and the risks that they may launch an insurgency in northern Rakhine State against the Arakan Army. It explores how growing desperation within the camps is turning refugees into a recruitment pool and how the groups’ activities are undermining prospects for stronger relations between Dhaka and the Arakan Army. The report is based on field research in Bangladesh in February and March 2025, as well as on interviews conducted remotely over a period of six months. Interviewees included Arakan Army and Rohingya armed group leaders, Rakhine and Rohingya activists, civil society leaders and politicians, UN and NGO officials, donor representatives and diplomats from a wide range of countries, Bangladeshi government and security officials, independent experts, and dozens of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh. About 70 per cent of interviewees identified as men, and 30 per cent as women, reflecting the dominance of men in many of the institutions in question. 7 “Arakan Army, allies attack Myanmar military in regions bordering Rakhine State”, Myanmar Now, 4 March 2025. 8 “Arakan Army has Myanmar junta’s weapons factories in its sights”, The Irrawaddy, 6 January 2025. 9 For further discussion of India’s approach to Myanmar’s post-coup crisis, see Crisis Group Asia Briefings N°182, A Rebel Border: India’s Evolving Ties with Myanmar after the Coup, 11 April 2025, and N°181, Disquiet on the Western Front: A Divided Resistance in Myanmar’s Chin State, 19 March 2025. 10 Crisis Group Report, Breaking Away: The Battle for Myanmar’s Rakhine State, op. cit.