Rohingya Militants in Bangladesh: Is the Threat Moving Toward the CHT?

The men in the photographs do not look like the poorly equipped ARSA fighters the world first saw years ago. They appear in coordinated camouflage, tactical helmets, radios and modern combat gear. Many carry AK-pattern rifles.

The photographs cannot tell us who supplied the equipment or how widely such gear is available. But they raise a much bigger question about Rohingya militants in Bangladesh: what kind of armed environment is developing along the frontier connecting Myanmar, the Rohingya camps, the Chittagong Hill Tracts and eventually India?

The geography alone should make Dhaka pay attention. Cox’s Bazar sits beside Myanmar. Just north are Bandarban and the wider CHT, while India’s Mizoram and Tripura lie beyond these hills.

Bangladesh understandably continues to see the Rohingya crisis mainly as a humanitarian and repatriation problem. Ordinary Rohingya refugees should never be confused with armed organizations. Many refugees themselves have faced threats, kidnapping, extortion and forced recruitment.

Yet the security situation inside and around the camps has changed. Reuters reported in 2024 that an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 fighters had been recruited from the refugee camps, with some reportedly pressured into joining and others attracted by money or promises connected to their future in Myanmar.

ARSA is also far from the only armed actor.

A 2023 Bangladesh Defense Ministry report identified at least 11 armed groups and criminal gangs operating around the Rohingya camps. The reported list included ARSA, the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), Master Munna Gang, Islami Mahaz, Nabi Hossain Gang, Putia Gang, Zakir Gang, Salman Shah Gang, Khaleque Gang, Jabu Gang, and a group described in the report as the “Chakma Robber Gang.”

That last name requires special caution. Publicly available information does not establish that this group represented, was organized by or had any institutional connection with the Indigenous Chakma people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Yet the use of the word “Chakma” can easily create the impression that the Chakma community was somehow connected with Rohingya camp militancy or criminal activity. I reproduce the name here because it appeared in official reporting, not because there is evidence linking the Indigenous Chakma community to that group.

The armed landscape has continued to change. A 2026 protection-monitoring report identifies four major organized Rohingya armed groups: ARSA, RSO, the Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA) and Rohingya Islami Mahaz (RIM), alongside other criminal networks.

The important point is therefore not whether there are exactly ten, eleven or twelve groups at any particular moment. Bangladesh is dealing with a fragmented armed environment where militant organizations, criminal gangs and trafficking networks can compete, reorganize and sometimes cooperate.

That makes the issue of Rohingya militants in Bangladesh much larger than clashes between rival groups inside refugee camps.

And rifles may not be the most dangerous things moving through this frontier.

The same region is one of Bangladesh’s main gateways for yaba from Myanmar. Recent operations in Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban have recovered hundreds of thousands of yaba tablets. Some operations in Bandarban have also recovered firearms and ammunition alongside drugs.

Drug trafficking needs routes, guides, money, transport and people who know how to move through difficult terrain without being detected. A drug network is not automatically a militant network, but the same hidden routes can also become useful for moving weapons, people or money.

Guns can destabilize a frontier quickly. Yaba can destabilize a generation slowly.

For the Chittagong Hill Tracts, there is another reason to worry. The CHT is one of Bangladesh’s most heavily securitized regions, yet Bangladeshi authorities previously said members of Jama’atul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya, an al-Qaeda-inspired militant organization, received weapons and combat training in remote hill areas.

Security forces later arrested suspected militants and recovered weapons, explosives and other materials. The episode exposed an uncomfortable reality: a large military presence does not necessarily mean every forest, valley and remote border route is under effective control.

Then came another warning in August 2026. A United Nations Security Council monitoring report warned that Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, was seeking to establish dispersed cells and logistical or financial networks using Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi police increased surveillance but also stressed that the warning itself does not prove an operational AQIS structure already exists in the country. That distinction matters.

There is no public proof that Al-Qaeda or another international jihadist organization currently controls territory or maintains an operational headquarters in Bangladesh. But absence of proof should not become an excuse to ignore warning signs.

Bangladesh’s southeast now contains an increasingly complicated mix of Rohingya armed organizations, criminal gangs, narcotics traffickers and extremist networks. They do not need to belong to the same organization to create a serious security problem.

Different networks can use the same border routes, underground economy and weak points. A route carrying yaba today can potentially carry weapons or people tomorrow.

Bangladesh is not ignoring the danger. Security forces have increased surveillance, conducted anti-drug operations and arrested suspected militants. But the scale of recruitment, trafficking and cross-border instability raises a harder question: Is the government responding fast enough to threats that increasingly overlap in the same region?

For the Indigenous peoples of the CHT, the question is especially serious. Chakma, Marma, Mro, Tripura and other communities have already lived through displacement, armed conflict, land disputes and decades of militarization.

Many of these Indigenous communities are Buddhist, Christian or followers of traditional faiths. There is no evidence that ARSA is preparing a religious campaign against them, and it would be irresponsible to claim otherwise.

But the growth of Rohingya militants in Bangladesh, Islamist extremist networks, narcotics routes and weapons trafficking beside an already fragile non-Muslim Indigenous region cannot simply be dismissed. If these networks become more deeply rooted, Indigenous communities would be among those living closest to the consequences.

Now pull the map back.

Beyond the CHT lie India’s Mizoram and Tripura. An unstable corridor connecting Myanmar, southeastern Bangladesh and the edge of India’s Northeast would eventually become more than a Bangladeshi domestic problem.

India does not need evidence of an imminent ARSA attack to understand the danger. Drugs, weapons, militants and criminal networks do not necessarily stop because an international border appears on a map.

Bangladesh should be even more concerned. It cannot afford to treat Rohingya militancy, yaba trafficking, jihadist networks, border insecurity, and instability in the CHT as unrelated problems. They are increasingly overlapping in the same southeastern region and may feed into one another.

Perhaps the photographs show only one unusually well-equipped ARSA unit. Perhaps some of the equipment was displayed mainly for propaganda.

But the rifles are no longer the most important part of the picture. The real warning is everything developing around them.

Bangladesh does not need to wait until an international terrorist organization plants its flag on a Bandarban hilltop before connecting the dots. By then, the warning signs would no longer be warnings.

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