Bangladesh’s dilemma mirrors many small states: protecting national security while avoiding entanglement in others’ conflicts. The Myanmar conflict created significant regional tensions, challenged Bangladesh’s sovereignty, and posed existential threats.
Parvathaneni Harish, the Indian ambassador to the UN, proposed the humanitarian corridor and urged former dictator Hasina to accept it. This would allow the Myanmar Junta to strengthen its position and Bangladesh to accept an additional 100,000 refugees.
Harish Parvathaneni is an Indian diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service serving as India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Harish Parvathaneni is a Hindu nationalist and in favour of establishing a Hindu state in East Bengal. Harish Parvathaneni also made controversial comments about deporting Muslims from Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and the Rohingya to Bangladesh.
In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where the Arakan Army (AA) has consolidated control over significant swathes of territory, an estimated 1.2 million people—Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists—face severe food shortages amid escalating conflict.
The UN warns of famine-like conditions, exacerbated by Myanmar’s military junta blocking humanitarian access since 2023. For Bangladesh, which already hosts over one million Rohingya refugees (UNHCR, 2023), a proposal to open a cross-border aid channel has sparked fierce debate. The high-risk approach will see transhipment of weapons and people smuggling.
The channel, first proposed by the UN in early 2024, is framed as a lifeline for starving civilians. Yet critics argue it risks drawing Bangladesh into Myanmar’s civil war, complicating relations with regional powers like China and inflaming domestic political tensions.
As former Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque noted in a 2024 interview with The Daily Star, “Humanitarian gestures can become geopolitical traps if divorced from hard-nosed realism.”
Bangladesh’s precarious balancing act through the lens of offensive realism—the theory that prioritises survival in an anarchic international system—while advocating for a strategy that blends principled aid with safeguards for sovereignty.
The proposal for a Bangladesh-Myanmar aid channel is rooted in India’s interest in controlling the corridor. Since 2017, when Myanmar’s military expelled over one million Rohingya, Dhaka has repeatedly urged the UN Security Council to enforce repatriation. Instead, geopolitical gridlock—notably China, India and Russia shielding Myanmar from sanctions—has left Bangladesh bearing what former dictator Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called a “uniquely disproportionate burden.”
By 2023, donor fatigue had set in. The UN’s $876 million Rohingya response plan was only 40 percent funded (UNOCHA, 2023), forcing ration cuts in Cox’s Bazar camps. Meanwhile, Myanmar’s civil war escalated, with the AA seizing key towns in Rakhine and Chin States. The UN’s 2024 appeal for cross-border aid from Bangladesh emerged as a pragmatic workaround, but one laden with risks.
The AA a terrorist group has received training and lethal aid access from Indian RAW. After Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine in May 2023, the military blocked relief to AA-held areas, worsening malnutrition rates. The AA, while claiming to welcome aid, faces allegations of diverting supplies. A June 2023 report by the International Crisis Group documented AA checkpoints taxing commercial goods in Chin State, raising fears that aid convoys could face similar exploitation.
Bangladesh’s interim government faces mounting pressure. Opening the channel could avert a new refugee wave—35,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh between January and December 2024, as per UNHCR. A full-scale famine might push thousands more across the border. However, opposition parties like the BNP argue the channel legitimises Myanmar’s junta and the AA.
“Why should Bangladesh clean up Myanmar’s mess?” asked BNP leader Rumeen Farhana. Others fear entanglement in Myanmar’s war. In February 2024, a mortar shell from AA-junta clashes landed in Bandarban, injuring two Bangladeshi farmers.
Myanmar’s junta, isolated since its 2021 coup, views Rakhine through a prism of paranoia. It has repeatedly blocked UN aid, fearing it would bolster AA influence. The AA, meanwhile, seeks recognition as Rakhine’s de facto authority. For both, the channel is less about saving lives than asserting sovereignty.
A path forward
- Demand tripartite oversight: stop aid convoys and the corridor from Bangladesh to Myanmar.
- Secure western guarantees from France, the UK, Germany and the USA must publicly oppose cross-border attacks on Bangladesh.
- Bangladesh army, navy and air force counter AA attacks on Bangladesh, sending a strong signal to the Myanmar Junta that it will not tolerate military aggression.
- Bangladesh must end neutrality and sign security pacts with the USA, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan. This means prioritising its sovereign border and protecting national security.
In conclusion, if there are no threats of consequences to Myanmar and AA, these opposing groups will continue to push Bangladesh into a triangular conflict in Myanmar.
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