The International Crisis Group (ICG) has expressed concern as the Rohingya armed groups in Bangladeshโs refugee camps ramped up recruitment, using religious language to mobilise refugees to fight the Rakhine armed group, the Arakan Army.
In its latest report released on June 18, the ICG said that the Arakan Army had seized much of the Rakhine State. It is in contact with Bangladeshโs interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is facilitating a humanitarian corridor to help the Rohingyas.
โRohingya armed groups … have already started carrying out attacks on the Arakan Army in Rakhine State and are training fighters in camps along the border,โ it said, adding that a Rohingya insurgencyโled by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)โagainst the Arakan Army is unlikely to succeed, but it would do grave damage to intercommunal relations in Myanmar.
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โRohingya in Rakhine State are likely to be caught between the armed groups, while prospects for the return of one million refugees living in Bangladesh would fade away,โ the organisation said, suggesting that the Bangladesh government step up informal cross-border aid and trade with Rakhine State while curbing the influence of Rohingya armed groups in refugee camps.
The Arakan Army should strive to govern for all communities in Rakhine, while foreign donorsโwhere possibleโshould limit aid cuts affecting refugees, it added.
Since the capture of power in August last year, the Bangladesh government has been assisting a US-backed, UN-assisted corridor in Rakhine via Coxโs Bazar or the hill districts. But all political parties and security experts have been opposing it.
Recently, Jamaat-e-Islami, militant groups Ansar al-Islam and Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the Pakistani High Commission assisted the ARSA and other armed Rohingya groups to wage an offensive in Rakhine.
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