Bangladesh/Myanmar: The Dangers of a Rohingya Insurgency Crisis Group Asia Report N°348, 18 June 2025 II. Page 3 Rohingya Armed Groups Armed groups purporting to represent the Rohingya community date to Myanmar’s independence.11 Among the most prominent of these has been the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), which formed in 1982 but by the late 1990s was widely considered defunct as an armed group.12 Outbreaks of communal violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2012 spurred the creation of another group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which launched its first attacks in October 2016, targeting Myanmar’s Border Guard Police.13 After further attacks in August 2017, the military responded with a brutal crackdown, forcing close to 750,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. A. Controlling the Camps When the Myanmar military pushed Rohingya out of Rakhine in 2017, ARSA members were also forced to leave. They gradually established themselves as the dominant force in the spawling refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.14 At first, the Bangladeshi government denied that ARSA had a foothold in the camps, but in late 2022 it began to take action against the group. Security agencies started rounding up ARSA members and dismantling the group’s administrative network. The dormant RSO also re-emerged – with the alleged backing of the security forces – and the group and ARSA waged a violent turf war for control of the refugee camps throughout 2023 and much of 2024. Feeling increasingly vulnerable, many low-level ARSA members defected to the RSO. Remaining ARSA members were forced underground but not eradicated from the camps; unlike the RSO, the group also preserved a presence within Rakhine State.15 Besides these two main groups, several other Rohingya armed outfits and criminal organisations have controlled or contested smaller areas of the refugee camps, including the Rohingya Islamic Mahaz, the Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA, first known as the “Nobi Hussain group”), and the “Munnah group”. The line between armed group and criminal network is often blurry, as all these groups, in addition to ARSA and the RSO, are involved to some degree in the illicit economy, particularly the thriving trade with Myanmar in methamphetamine tablets known as yaba.16 11 For background on the Rohingya refugee crisis, see Crisis Group Asia Reports N°335, Crisis Mounts for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, 6 December 2023; and N°303, A Sustainable Policy for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, 27 December 2019. 12 For background on Rohingya insurgency, see Crisis Group Asia Report N°283, Myanmar: A New Muslim Insurgency in Rakhine State, 15 December 2016. 13 Ibid. 14 Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°155, Building a Better Future for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, 25 April 2019. 15 Crisis Group Report, Crisis Mounts for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, op. cit. 16 Ibid.