Northeastern View | Hasina government’s collapse could reshape refugee dynamics around the Chittagong Hill Tracts
The political shift in Bangladesh offers a window is opportunity to India to settle shared anxieties over refugee crossings and border security.
In the last article under this column, I explored the broad ramifications of the downfall of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on the security environment in Northeast India.
While long-term dynamics are harder to predict, a brief scrutiny of one specific issue that may have short- and medium-term domino effects on the Northeast is in order: The influx of refugees into Mizoram due to resurgent armed conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), and the likelihood of a terrain shift after the collapse of the Hasina government.
Churning in CHT
Since late 2022, Bangladeshi security forces, under the Hasina government’s directions, have been conducting military operations against Kuki-Chin insurgents in the CHT affiliated to the Kuki-Chin National Front, also known as “KNF” or “KCNF” in short. The notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) have largely led these campaigns.
Founded by Natham Bawm, a Dhaka University student, in 2008, the KNF was born as the Kuki-Chin National Development Organisation (KNDO). According to one 2023 report by the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, it was rechristened as a separatist group in 2017 with the intent of carving out a separate Kuki-Chin nation from CHT. KNDO became the Kuki-Chin National Volunteers (KNV).
Four years later, KNV transformed into its current iteration, KNF. According to some media reports, a nondescript Islamist outfit known as the Jama’atul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya (JAFHS) was financing the outfit, which alarmed Dhaka. In October 2022, following an incident of civilian killings in CHT’s Rangamati district, the RAB launched a major counterinsurgency drive against KNF fighters.
By the end of November, Dhaka’s operations had pushed at least 420 Chin-Kuki refugees across the border into Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district. In the following months, refugees continued to trickle into southern Mizoram as Bangladesh continued its operations in phases, amid infrequent and largely ineffective peace talks between the KNF and Dhaka.
Last April, the fighting flared after a series of alleged bank robberies by the Kuki-Chin fighters in CHT. It was then that the Bangladeshi army stepped in to take charge of the CHT operations to conduct joint raids with the RAB.
Concerns over asylum movements
The renewed fighting continued to push Chin-Kuki asylum seekers into southern Mizoram in multiple waves through the summer, amid serious accusations of human rights violations by Dhaka’s forces against the tribal community.
The Mizoram government, driven by fraternal ethnic ties, has welcomed them. Around 2000 of them took refuge in the Northeastern Indian state, in addition to some 33,000 refugees from Myanmar’s Chin State.
New Delhi is likely uncomfortable with the continuous trickle of refugees into India but can do little in the face of overwhelming Mizo-Chin solidarity. In July, Mizoram’s current chief minister, Lalduhoma, even told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Aizawl would not push the refugees back months after the state’s sole Rajya Sabha MP, K Vanlalvena, accused the Border Security Forces (BSF) of pushing some 150 of them back to Bangladesh.
The Centre’s concerns revolve around its security-centric view of the situation, which in turn, is partly premised on the KNF’s purported links with the little-known JAFHS. Last year, some Indian media reports also indicated that KNF cadres were masquerading as refugees to cross over into India – either to take shelter or travel onward to Myanmar’s Chin State for training and arms procurement.
While most of these claims are backed by little more than unverified intelligence reports, they have done much to shape New Delhi’s security anxieties over the situation, some of which were shared by the Hasina government in Dhaka. These common paranoias came to the surface when Hasina in a speech in May claimed that there was a foreign-sponsored attempt to carve out a “Christian state” from what was understood to be the Kuki-Chin-dominated areas straddling CHT, Northeast India and western Myanmar.
In that context, New Delhi has long worried that the KNF’s alleged use of Indian territory as a staging base and conduit to Myanmar could sour relations with Dhaka.
What could happen now?
Hasina’s departure has not just ended the Awami League’s dreary 15-year rule, it has comprehensively shaken up the country’s core institutions. These include the RAB and the army, which have been at the forefront of operations in the CHT. Both these institutions were known to have been captured by Hasina loyalists. The RAB, especially, was known as her personal enforcer.
Hasina’s departure, therefore, has pushed her loyalists within these forces to the margins. On August 7, RAB even got a new director general, with AKM Shahidur Rahman replacing M Khurshid Hossain. These changes could result in a reduction of kinetic operations in the CHT, which in turn, would reduce the outflux of refugees into India. In fact, relative stability in the hills could allow the asylum seekers currently in southern Mizoram to return home.
Moreover, the interim administration, with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus as the Chief Advisor, that took over from the Hasina government last week may revisit Dhaka’s CHT policy. This government would likely prioritise human rights and dialogue with the Kuki-Chin armed factions over military operations in an attempt to do things differently from its more abrasive predecessor.
This creates a window of opportunity for India to engage transparently with Dhaka to mutually resolve the political-security dilemmas over CHT and the attendant refugee crisis. India must exploit this opening to settle common concerns and shared anxieties while ensuring that human rights violations in the CHT are probed through just mechanisms and displaced people are given humanitarian aid.
This would not only make the Northeast safer and more stable, but it would also create fresh synergy between India and Bangladesh at a time when both are confronting a new diplomatic conundrum.
Angshuman Choudhury is a New Delhi-based researcher and writer, formerly an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and focuses on Northeast India and Myanmar. The views expressed are personal.
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