In regional policy and security circles there’s been a bit of a buzz for the past few weeks over talk that India has invited rebels of Rakhine and Chin states for talks this November. Among other things, it would demonstrate India’s much-delayed overture to key ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in Myanmar’s convoluted conflict parlance.
It would be done to secure India’s interests in energy and transportation hubs in coastal Sittwe in Rakhine. In Chin state, the interest is both to secure a transportation pipeline to India’s neighbouring Mizoram state; and to stanch any ethnic spillovers of conflict in that state, and further north in Myanmar’s Sagaing Division which borders the conflict-wracked Indian state of Manipur.
This is billed as Track 1.5 initiative. In diplomatic gobbledygook, Track 1.5 offers an interface that has a mix of both official and “non-state” officials. In this instance, organizations like New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation could provide the arms-length that such an overture needs: Off the government’s books but entirely in the government’s interests and driven by the government’s policy.
Some in Bangladesh’s policy circles -- even though it is difficult to place exactly what those shape-shifting circles are in Bangladesh 2.0 -- have interpreted this as a go-ahead moment for Bangladesh’s own engagement with Myanmar and its many actors, for the solution to the Rohingya problem.
Fat chance.
To be fair, this bitter truth isn’t new to post-August 5 Bangladesh. It’s been evident for some time. And it remains a truth that is difficult to acknowledge, let alone swallow and work within that truth’s disturbing ambit.
Here is an instance from a meeting last year.
As the meeting was governed by Chatham House rules, I cannot disclose either where the meeting was held (beyond it being a South Asian capital) or who all attended (beyond stating that it also contained a mix of Bangladesh’s “civil society,” analysts, retired army officers, and retired diplomats).
One day during the retreat, as we broke away to form small groups to discuss possible ways ahead -- the standard approach at such gatherings -- one prominent Bangladeshi civil society voice declared that she didn’t “trust the Indians.”
My suggestion in response: As far as Rohingya are concerned, Bangladesh also had nobody it could trust among China, Myanmar’s junta, that country’s many ethnic armed organizations, several members of Asean, the European Union, the United States, several multilateral agencies, even the United Nations, beyond the point of barebones funding for Rohingya refugee relief. So, the practical way ahead might be to understand various positions and work within those limitations than immediately seek a trustworthy partner for what would end up being little more than a photo-op.
There was an understandable reluctance to accept this, as we must all be rooted in a humanitarian pivot, but that is not how politics works. To put it brutally, there is nobody to take Bangladesh’s Rohingya concern to, with a view to repatriation, because besides Bangladesh, the Rohingya themselves -- and well-meaning folk in the human rights universe -- nobody really cares about the Rohingya. They are at the lowest end of Myanmar’s food chain, and the region’s geo-political and geo-economic food chain which is entirely predicated on protecting various national interests in the areas of security and trade in Myanmar. It is most certainly not to rehabilitate the Rohingya, whom successive regimes of Myanmar have assiduously sought to systemically and systematically demonise, discredit, and then, expel.
Recall what happened in the summer of 2023. There was much credence given to a China-sponsored move -- to assuage Bangladesh with a token effort -- of a controlled experiment of repatriating a thousand Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar before the onset of the monsoons.
Beginning with a few dozen Rohingya volunteers from the million or so refugees in Bangladesh, the initiative sought to pilot a transition for these refugees from camps in Bangladesh to vetting camps in Rakhine, and then decant them to holding camps. And, after a month or so -- if everything went well -- their resettlement in former homes. Indeed, Myanmar's military junta, the rebel Arakan Army, and geo-political pressure permitting, their eventual rehabilitation.
It was a daunting arithmetic, as I wrote at the time: A thousand refugees out of an estimated million. Zero point one percent. Yet, for refugees in the teeming, seething camps beset by malnutrition, hopelessness, joblessness, and growing incidence of trafficking and crime, it was a slim, desperate lifeline. It also threw Bangladesh a slim, desperate lifeline from the spectre of perpetual care for the refugees.
The initiative tanked. Indeed, it was clear to nearly all except naïve policymakers and optics-led bureaucrats that it would. Because the initiative offered zero guarantees of rehabilitation of the Rohingya as Myanmar nationals. In effect, potentially setting off another cycle of de-nationalization and denying citizens’ privileges to the Rohingya.
Bangladesh’s foreign policy establishment finally got this. Many leaders, both from within and without the interim government -- it is sometimes difficult to gauge which is which in an environment of relative opacity -- have not.
Surely it must be galling some that border guards of Bangladesh 2.0 sent back several dozen prospective Rohingya refugees from the country’s southern border. At one level it was a signal to the world that Bangladesh will not accept any more Rohingya and that it is well past the time other countries and institutions stepped up beyond occasional aid to feed, clothe, and house Bangladesh-based refugees.
On the other hand, it will remain akin to an empty threat until people realise that an implosion in the Rohingya refugee settlements has the power to destabilise southern Bangladesh and further destabilise Rakhine and Chin provinces. And, altogether, it has the potential to take that entire geopolitical G-spot, as it were, down the chute.
Take another instance, of the high-profile and welcome visit of Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to Bangladesh on October 4. It again showcased the prestige that the Chief Advisor to the Interim Government Muhammad Yunus, enjoys among numerous global leaders. The visit will lead to bilateral gains, including increased trade, possible investment, and opportunities for greater number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia.
But it will likely do little or nothing for the pitch, made as stridently, for Malaysia’s help -- and the world’s help -- to resolve the Rohingya issue. For starters, Asean, of which Malaysia is a member, doesn’t even acknowledge the Rohingya. Any push would set off a pushback within Asean, not just from Myanmar, but also from Thailand and Singapore which have major economic interests in Myanmar. Indeed, even as you read this, Thai authorities are engaged in negotiations with a Karen rebel group which hold sway in the regions abutting northwestern Thailand, to secure Thai exports and imports, and the hassle-free operation of a major trans-border highway.
Let’s see this through another lens, one of Myanmar attempting to settle its great churn -- here I refer to the outreach on September 26 by the military junta to various ethnic armed groups for peace talks.
Bangladesh will likely find that the only real Rohingya-related conversation it can now have even in this space is about how best to deal with Rohingya already in southern Bangladesh’s teeming refugee settlements, and the 35,000 or so thus far settled in the offshore tidal island of Bhashan Char.
Indeed, this looks less and less like an interim solution and more like one in which the world, and certainly all those who claim to be Bangladesh’s friend, will outsource their Rohingya conscience to Bangladesh as they cynically go about the bigger project of calming -- and claiming -- Myanmar.
Sudeep Chakravarti works in the policy-and-practice space in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region.
