A move by the Bangladesh government to fully implement a peace deal in the rugged Chittagong Hill Tracts has settlers from other regions worried it will backfire and set off renewed fighting. That would be bad news for the administration of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, trying to demonstrate to aid donors and would-be investors that her impoverished country of more than 140 million people is entering a period of stability. The peace deal with tribal rebels in the heavily forested Hill Tract area has lasted for a decade and been generally effective in stopping violence between indigenous Buddhist groups and settlers from the country's densely populated plains. Like most Bangladeshis, the settlers are overwhelmingly Muslim, and have linguistic and cultural differences with the indigenous tribespeople. Phoolchand Mollah, 42, moved to the Tracts in the early 1980s from a village in Bangladesh's distant north, and now lives in the major Hill Tract town of Khagrachhari, perched on the Chengi river alongside lush green hills. “I remember hearing gunshots almost every night after I had arrived ... Now I am again haunted by fears and a sense of uncertainty as the tribals may try to settle their scores,” he told Reuters. Sparking such fears is the start of a Bangladesh army pullout from the 14,000 sq km (5,500 sq km) hill and forest region in the country's southeast bordering India and Myanmar. The move is part of a bid to fully implement the 1997 peace treaty. Mollah and others from the plains were unwelcome by some tribal groups, and the settlers worry the army's departure will leave a security vacuum. The government of Hasina, who won a second term in elections last December, has been trying to soothe the fears but many settlers are unconvinced. Some 300 km (180 miles) from the capital Dhaka, the Tracts are home to more than half a million Bengali-speaking settlers, who live alongside about 650,000 tribals from 13 ethnic groups. Most settlers came between 1979 and 1985, backed by governments that viewed the hills as underpopulated and the migration as a way for impoverished plains people to advance. Militants accused the settlers of occupying valuable land, taking away jobs, infringing on their culture and threatening to eventually outnumber them in their own homeland. The thousands-strong Shanti Bahini armed insurgency group anchored a 25-year hit-and-run war in which more than 8,500 soldiers, rebels and civilians were estimated killed. But over time many tribespeople and settlers befriended each other as they tilled land side by side, made homes in the same localities, and bought and sold products in the same markets. The insurgency formally ended through the peace treaty signed by Dhaka and Shanti Bahini chief Jyotirindra Budhipriya Larma. Larma promised to cooperate in restoring peace in the hills and allaying his followers' lingering fear of the settlers. But he never dropped his demands for a complete pullout of the troops and restoring all rights of indigenous groups, including return of illegally seized land. The government had committed to those terms but the specifics of implementation — such as what land was illegally taken — has been a subject of dispute, while the first major pullout — by a brigade of army troops — only began in August. An army official told Reuters the withdrawal of the brigade, comprising 1,000 soldiers, would be completed this month. Indigenous people heralded the pullout with jubilation and colorful parades. Settlers held protests and even barricaded camps to try to prevent departure of the soldiers.
