Eight years after a violent crackdown by the Myanmar military forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, a growing number of young refugees are taking up arms in hopes of returning home by force. Confined to a city-like maze of 33 sub-camps, they have reached adulthood unable to work legally, reliant on dwindling aid, and, in some cases, increasingly drawn to militant groups.
When Crisis Group visited Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in early 2025 as part of our research on the nascent Rohingya insurgency, many of the young people we spoke to had a tale of a sibling, cousin, or neighbor being lured or coerced into an armed group. Although there were few outward signs of militancy in the camps, hushed conversations with young people hinted at their unease at the increasing support for armed struggle.
“My cousin joined one of the Rohingya groups and crossed to Myanmar to fight,” whispered 26-year-old Ali. “We managed to get him back alive. But the others didn’t return.”
Until late 2024, rival Rohingya armed groups, including the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), were locked in turf wars for control of the camps. They have since set aside those rivalries to confront a more powerful adversary: the Arakan Army, a Rakhine Buddhist insurgent group that has seized control of most of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where the refugees came from – and hope to return to.
The Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine communities have long had a troubled relationship. In 2012, communal violence broke out between them. The clashes in the state capital, Sittwe, and elsewhere killed hundreds from both communities and displaced more than 140,000 people, most of them Rohingya. That distrust deepened in 2017, when ARSA staged coordinated attacks on police outposts in northern Rakhine State and the Myanmar military responded with a brutal counter-insurgency campaign that resulted in more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border into Bangladesh.
More recently, it has been the Arakan Army that has been on the march in Rakhine State. Its offensive in the majority Muslim northern Rakhine State last year pitted it against not only the Myanmar military but also Rohingya armed groups like ARSA and RSO, which collaborated with their one-time adversary in a failed attempt to prevent the Rakhine group from taking control of the border area. Many ordinary Rohingya in Rakhine State were forced into militia units controlled by the Myanmar military, while thousands of refugees were also forcibly recruited from the camps in Bangladesh and smuggled over the border to fight.
The Arakan Army has been accused of serious human rights violations against Rohingya civilians during its offensive to gain control of northern Rakhine State, including the burning of dozens of villages and a drone attack in August 2024 that killed scores of people on the banks of the Naf River, which marks part of the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. The allegations of Arakan Army atrocities have continued since the group took full control of northern Rakhine in December 2024, fueling anger in the camps across the border and strengthening refugee support for the Rohingya armed struggle.
Since ARSA, RSO, and other Rohingya factions reached a truce in late 2024, inter-group violence in the camps has declined significantly. But the calm has not translated into stability. “Our boys are being targeted” for recruitment, a group of young women told Crisis Group, their voices rising in unison. Among them was 19-year-old Sultana, who was candid about her disapproval of the armed groups. “One of my relatives joined ARSA. But when he got to Myanmar, they had no arms to fight with, nothing to save themselves. How can they fight for our people in such conditions?” she said. Her 27-year-old cousin, she told us, died on the battlefield last year.
While many refugees remain critical of the groups, accusing them of abuses and wary of their motivations, camp residents say that support for the idea of armed struggle is nonetheless growing, driven by a combination of anger at the Arakan Army’s atrocities against Rohingya civilians still in Rakhine State, and frustration at the lack of alternatives. “I think it’s good for us that all the Rohingya armed groups are cooperating and fighting against the Arakan Army for our rights and homeland,” said a 25-year-old teacher.
At the same time, recruitment is ramping up. In some camps, armed group leaders have compiled lists of young men and told families they must contribute a male member to their ranks. “It’s not forced recruitment like last year, but it’s also not really voluntary,” said a Bangladeshi researcher. “There is a lot of pressure.”
Rohingya women queue to purchase lentils, rice, and fresh produce with electronic vouchers at a World Food Programme (WFP) grocery store in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 2025. (Crisis Group/Margarite Clarey)
Aid Cuts and Economic Strain Fuels Recruitment, Abductions
Alongside anger at the Arakan Army, global reductions in humanitarian aid – in particular, the Trump administration’s massive cut to U.S. foreign assistance – are also creating a level of desperation among displaced Rohingya that is fueling support for armed struggle. Those cuts have already had a severe impact on refugees in Cox’s Bazar, given that USAID provided over half of the funding for the humanitarian response in the refugee camps in 2024. Earlier this year, the World Food Program warned that it would have to cut rations in almost half if new funding wasn’t secured, from $12.50 to $6 per person per month. While a last-minute pledge from the U.S. staved off the reduction, funding is only secured until December. Essential services like health care, education and waste management have also been slashed, and NGOs have had to lay off many Rohingya paid “volunteers,” eliminating the only legal source of income in the camps.
Young people are particularly vulnerable to the ongoing recruitment campaign. According to the World Bank, as many as 69 percent of Rohingya youth – 41 percent of young men and an alarming 93 percent of young women – are neither employed nor enrolled in school or training programs. Job prospects are scarce, as the camps have been fenced and refugees are officially prohibited from working legally outside its confines, although in practice some still do.
“It was easier for my cousin to be influenced by the groups because he couldn’t find any financial support for his family,” said Ali. With limited resources and rising pressures, boys and young men are joining armed groups or criminal networks in exchange for income and status. Women and girls are more likely to be married off by families looking to reduce the number of mouths they have to feed, including to single Rohingya men in Malaysia who often pay people smugglers to bring them by boat from the camps.
“I am not ready to marry. I do not want it at all. But if my parents decide that I have to get married, I cannot go against them,” said Sultana. There are also reports of women and girls being married off to fighters, a practice that effectively amounts to forced recruitment.
The recruitment drive in the camps has been accompanied by a rise in abductions for ransom. This seems to amount to a fundraising drive by criminal gangs and armed groups, one that has understandably contributed to a growing atmosphere of fear and confusion among the refugees. “A month ago, two adolescent girls were kidnapped,” recounted Sultana. “One was killed because her family couldn’t afford the ransom. The other girl was saved as her family managed to pay.” While individual accounts are difficult to verify, they reflect a broader climate of fear in the sprawling refugee camps.
That said, some refugees feel more vulnerable than others. “The camps are like a city of a million people. Some have safer neighborhoods, others more dangerous ones,” one humanitarian worker explained. The levels of violence and armed groups’ control over residents varies, as does the willingness of people to speak about insecurity and how modestly girls cover themselves. This variance exists not only between the 33 sub-camps but even between blocks within the same camp.
Responsible for security in the camps, the Bangladesh authorities have denied that armed groups are conducting a recruitment campaign. But the large gatherings that Rohingya armed groups have been able to organize within the camps, and the fact that militant leaders have been allowed to meet with high-level visitors, have fueled suspicion that these groups are being tolerated by the authorities, if not discretely enabled, in an effort to pressure the Arakan Army to take back the million-plus Rohingya refugees.
Since the start of the year, Rohingya armed groups have carried out a series of attacks in northern Rakhine, targeting both Rakhine civilians and Arakan Army fighters. On the night of August 10, for instance, residents along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border reported extensive gunfire in northern Rakhine; ARSA later released photos of what it said were the bodies of five Arakan Army soldiers.
Conflict Endangers Repatriation
This strategy is not likely to work. As young refugees continue being drawn across the border into the conflict in Myanmar, new families displaced by conflict in Rakhine State are arriving in the camps. The U.N. estimates that at least 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh over the past 18 months, the highest number that fled Myanmar since the 2017 mass exodus. Many have squeezed into overcrowded shelters with relatives or acquaintances. This puts additional strain on already limited resources and makes new arrivals even more vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups.
Many of the new arrivals say they are fleeing violence at the hands of the Arakan Army. Rohingya civilians believed to be supporting or harboring militants face brutal reprisals, to the extent that there have been reports of entire Rohingya villages being torched or forcibly relocated.
Further offensives by Rohingya armed groups are unlikely to alter the course of the conflict. ARSA and its allies remain fragmented and outgunned by the Arakan Army, which now controls much of Rakhine State. But continued fighting risks drawing more refugees into a conflict they cannot influence, and further derailing hopes for repatriation. Unless conditions in the camps improve and recruitment pressures are reduced, a growing number of Rohingya may find themselves pulled into a war not of their choosing, with no path home in sight.
