Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) has initiated “specialised” guerrilla warfare training for select groups of Rohingya refugees living in the Kutupalong area of Cox’s Bazar, as part of a broader strategy to counter potential attacks by the Arakan Army.
The decision to provide this training, which includes the use of weapons and intelligence gathering, was finalised during a meeting between DGFI officers and Rohingya representatives on January 19 at the 1W refugee camp in the Ukhia sub-district of Cox’s Bazar.
The guerrilla fighters will be equipped with weapons drawn from a large cache of arms and ammunition that the refugees had collected last year, when Myanmar junta soldiers fled amid heavy fighting in Rakhine State.
The meeting was attended by representatives from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), marking the first such meeting hosted by the DGFI since the fall of Maungdaw to the Arakan Army in December 2024.
The Arakan Army now controls nearly 80% of the Rakhine State in Myanmar.
In December 2024, a massive fire broke out at the 1W camp, destroying 746 makeshift shelters and 198 key facilities, affecting nearly 4,000 refugees.
Out of over 1 million refugees living in Bangladesh, 968,981 are located in the Kutupalong and Nayapara camps, with another 36,539 residing in Bhashan Char.
These refugees fled Maungdaw and Buthidawng in Myanmar after armed attacks against them in August 2017.
Sources within Bangladesh’s security services revealed that key decisions made at the meeting included the selection of seven potential fighters from each of the 33 refugee camps in the Kutupalong area, who would form the main “committee” to liaise with the DGFI.
Additionally, a Rohingya man, Dil Mohammad, was chosen to lead the fighters undergoing training under the DGFI’s supervision. A first batch of 27 fighters will be selected from each refugee camp to begin their training.
However, there were concerns expressed by some refugees at the meeting about Dil Mohammad’s leadership.
It was noted that he had previously “collaborated” with the Arakan Army, raising reservations about his role in the new initiative.
The first result of the training appears to be a joint attack launched by ARSA and RSO fighters against the Arakan Army in Myanmar on January 24 at Dell Fara (Nga Rang Chang) in north Buthidaung.
According to information from Indian security agencies, the attack resulted in the deaths of 14 Arakan Army fighters, with 17 others seriously wounded.
Earlier reports from Northeast News indicated that the Indian security establishment has held several rounds of talks with the leadership of the Arakan Army, sometimes in third-party countries.
A number of Arakan Army rebels have occasionally crossed into Zorinpui in Mizoram, a region bordering Myanmar’s Chin State.
The collaboration between the DGFI and the Rohingya refugees is expected to significantly intensify activity along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, with potential spillover effects in Indian states along the border.
