The Consequences of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Peace Accord at the Village Level : Case Study of Khagrachari Hill District in Bangladesh

Abstract

2who call themselves the “Jumma” nation. The region is differs from the rest of the Bangladesh in terms of history, landscape, ethnic composition, social organization, language, occupation, eating habits and religious practice of life. These differences are not black and white rather getting blurry. Due to the intrusion of the British (1860), Pakistan (1947) and Bangladesh (1971), the Jumma people have gradually been marginalized in the context of social, cultural, economic and political placing in the state. The problem of the CHT largely began when the government of Bangladesh initiated militarization in order to control the insurgent movements of Jumma people. Besides, the Bengali resettlement program between 1979 and 1987 was quite successful to create a massive and almost self-sustaining conflict between the resettled Bengalis and the local Jumma people. After a long process of political negotiation, a major turning point occurred when the Bangladesh government and the PCJSS signed a Peace Accord in 1997. Drawing my interviews with local people in the rural villages, I aimed to address the question how the local Jumma people negotiated with the peace process in their everyday lives. In recent decades, while the notion of peace has been used as a key concept in many disciplines, the aim of this paper is to address the understanding of peace in relation to the disciplinary approach of anthropology. In this article, I adopted two interrelated conceptual issues. First, the idea of peace and conflict in a particular region are shaped through its particular histories where cultural context and political economy are crucial (Fry & Kaj, 1997; Oda, 2007; Schmidt and Ingo, 2001; Montagu, 1994). Second, to understand local peoples’ role as cultural innovators which is particularly important in the study of peace and conflict. Here the relationships between people, places, beliefs and practices are continually in flux (Ferguson, 1984; Lederach, 1997). Grounded in these conceptual lenses, I try to locate the history of relationship, everyday negotiation, agency and conflict dynamics of the local people. While the Peace Accord was evidently signed in the CHT, I argue that the peace process remained detached from the local people. The Peace Accord was submerged by ideas and practices which were far from meeting the demands of the indigenous people, who had been struggling for their ethnic identities, land rights, and anti-militarization, a form of connection that was discordant to discourses on peace building and sustainability. I begin this discussion by adopting and re-conceptualizing the holistic approach of peace in theory and practice. After that I draw the historical background of CHT peace accord with recognition of the lived experiences of local people. My purpose is to understand the root causes of conflict. The next section addresses the consequences of peace accord in the village level. Finally, I conclude this article with the argument that a holistic understanding is essential to identify the peace dynamics of CHT.