Ethnic strife returned to the Chittagong Hill Tracts in late February, for the third time since the 1997 signing of the accord that ended the two-decade-long insurgency in the area. Regardless of who holds power in Dhaka – the Awami League, which signed the accord; the anti-accord Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), in power during a similar incident of violence in 2003; or army-backed technocrats, in power during the last incident, in 2008 – peace in the Hill Tracts remains elusive.
The proximate cause of the latest round of violence is a road built in 2007 by the then-army-backed technocrat regime. Paharis (as the ethnic groups of the region are collectively known) had resisted this road for the previous 20 years, as they feared the road would mean more Bengali settlement and displacement of Paharis from the area. In recent years, this exact fear seems to have been materialising. Despite Pahari protests (which resulted in arson attacks against the community in 2008), Bengali settlement had been continuing, and a conflagration had been imminent. In late February, arson attacks by the settlers resulted in the burning of an estimated 434 Pahari homes and 29 Bengali homes in Baghaichhari, and an estimated 58 Pahari homes and 29 Bengali homes in Khagrachhari. There has been no independent investigation into the incidents. While the Bengalis claim the Paharis were responsible for the arson, the latter claim the Bengalis themselves burnt the houses. Either way, two Paharis in Baghaichhari and one Bengali in Khagrachhari were also killed. Meanwhile, this violence is alleged to have all taken place with the army and police as either silent observers or active supporters.
The chattering classes of Bangladesh have a tendency to see conspiracies in most things, and the ethnic strife in the CHT is no exception. Supporters of the ruling Awami League see this as an effort by the opposition to destabilise the government. Pointing out that the attacks took place days just prior to the first anniversary of the mutiny by some paramilitary soldiers that last year killed dozens of officers, they claim that the CHT violence was instigated to create a wedge between the army and the government. Meanwhile, senior ministers have claimed that the attacks might be part of an attempt by those who are alleged to have committed war crimes in 1971 to destabilise the country as a whole, and thus to foil the anticipated war-crimes trial.
Not to be outdone, supporters of the opposition BNP – which rejected the 1997 accord and preferred a military solution – claim that violence in the Hill Tracts is part of a larger ploy by regional and global powers to undermine Bangladesh's sovereignty. This is the same kind of conspiracy that the party campaigned against in the lead-up to the December 2008 elections, under the slogan 'Desh bachao, manush bachao' (Save the country, save the people). Indeed, conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political divide see the peoples of the CHT – Paharis and Bengalis alike – as pawns in a larger game, ignoring the much more mundane cause of the periodic outbreak of violence: the dispute over lands lost by Paharis over the past decades. Instead, the politicised pundits continue to propagate a number of misperceptions and myths that make peace even more difficult to achieve.