DHAKKA - Bangladesh has deployed secret police in the burgeoning refugee camps near its border with Myanmar, where Rohingya claiming to be members of a militant group say they have found fertile ground for recruitment.
Authorities in Bangladesh, which was already grappling with its own militancy problem before the latest mass influx of Rohingya refugees, have repeatedly said there are no extremists among the new arrivals.
But inside the camps are a number of self-proclaimed members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the group behind the August 25 attacks on police posts in Myanmar that sparked a military crackdown that the UN has likened to ethnic cleansing.
Capitalising on anger over the unrest that has forced half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee to squalid camps in Bangladesh, recruiters claim to have enlisted hundreds willing to fight back in Myanmar, where the minority faced decades of persecution.