One day in July, Rafiq slipped out of the world’s largest refugee settlement in southern Bangladesh and crossed the border into Myanmar on a small boat. His destination: a ruinous civil war in a nation that he had fled in 2017.

The 32-year-old is among thousands of Rohingya insurgents who have emerged from camps housing over one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, where militant recruitment and deadly violence has surged this year, according to four people familiar with the matter and two internal aid agency reports seen by Reuters.

“We went to fight… because we believe we have rights in our own country,” said Rafiq, a lean and bearded man in a Muslim prayer cap who spent weeks fighting in Myanmar before returning when he was shot in the leg.

The Rohingya, a mainly Muslim group that is the world’s largest stateless population, started fleeing in droves to Bangladesh in 2016 to escape what has been called a genocide at the hands of Myanmar’s military.

A long-running rebellion in Myanmar has gained ground since the military’s 2021 coup, involving a complex array of armed groups – with Rohingya fighters now entering the fray.

Many have joined groups loosely allied with their former military persecutors to fight an ethnic army that has seized much of the western Myanmar state of Arakan (Rakhine), from which many Rohingya have fled.

Reuters interviewed 18 people who described the rise of insurgent groups inside Bangladesh’s refugee camps and reviewed two internal briefings on the security situation written by aid agencies in recent months.

The news agency is reporting for the first time details about the scale of recruitment by Rohingya armed groups, which totals between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters, building on previous coverage of the militancy.

Reuters is also revealing specifics about failed negotiations, inducements offered by the military regime in Naypyidaw such as money and citizenship documents, as well as about the cooperation of some Bangladesh officials with the insurgency.

Several of the people – who include Rohingya fighters, humanitarian workers and Bangladesh security officials – spoke on condition of anonymity or that only their first name be used.

The Bangladesh government did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

Naypyidaw denied it has conscripted any “Muslims” to fight alongside its soldiers. “Muslim residents requested protection. So, basic military training was provided in order to help them defend their own villages and regions,” it said in response to questions from Reuters.

The emergence of trained Rohingya fighters and weapons in and around the camps is regarded as a ticking time bomb by Bangladesh, one security source said. Some 30,000 children are born each year into deep poverty in the camps, where daily violence is rife.

After a boat-ride from near Cox’s Bazar to the western Myanmar town of Maungdaw around the mid-year monsoon, Abu Afna said he was housed and armed by regime troops.

In the seaside town where the military is fighting the ethnic Rakhine-led Arakan Army (AA) for control, Rohingya were sometimes even billeted in the same room with regime soldiers.

“When I was fighting beside the [regime] army, I felt these were the same people who raped and killed our mothers and sisters,” he said.

But the AA is backed by the majority Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community that includes people who joined the military in purging the Rohingya.

Reuters this year reported that the AA was responsible for burning down one of the largest remaining settlements of Rohingya in Myanmar and that armed groups had reached a “battlefield understanding” with the Myanmar military to fight alongside each other.

“Our main enemy isn’t the Myanmar government, but the Rakhine community,” Abu Afna said.

The military provided Rohingya with weapons, training and cash, according to Abu Afna. The regime also offered the Rohingya identification documents certifying Myanmar citizenship.

For some Rohingya, it was a powerful lure. They have long been denied citizenship despite generations in Myanmar and are now confined to refugee camps where Bangladesh bans them from seeking formal employment.

“We were not seeking money,” Abu Afna said. “We needed the [national verification] card.”

About 2,000 people were recruited from the refugee camps between March and May through drives employing “ideological, nationalist, and financial inducements, coupled with false promises, threats, and coercion,” according to a June aid agency briefing seen by Reuters.

Many of those brought to fight were taken by force, including children as young as age 13, according to a U.N. official and two Rohingya fighters.

Back in Cox’s Bazar, there is turmoil in the refugee camps, where two Rohingya armed groups: the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) are jostling for influence.

Fighting and shootings are common, terrifying residents and disrupting humanitarian efforts.

Sharit Ullah, a Rohingya who escaped from Maungdaw Township with his wife and four children in May, described struggling to secure regular food rations.

The one-time rice and shrimp farmer said he worries the most about the safety of his family amid spiraling violence.

“I don’t have a job here,” he said. “I just want safety and security.”

REUTERS