We have an excellent relationship with the soldiers on the other side,” says Khalilar Rahman, a Bangladesh Rifles commander at a remote outpost on a hillock in Ghumdhum, on the border with Myanmar. A Burmese outpost is a stone’s-throw away, across the paddy-field below, where Burmese labourers are frantically working to build a border fence. Concrete pillars stretch as far as the eye can see. The movement of people and goods here—in happier days earmarked as the route for a highway—has stopped completely.

As Myanmar prepares for elections next year, tensions along the 320km (200-mile) border with Bangladesh have risen. As usual, that involves more persecution for the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority whom Myanmar refuses to recognise as Burmese. Because of them, though no one says it openly, Bangladesh is probably quite happy with the fast-emerging fence.

However, a military build-up on the Burmese side last month prompted Bangladesh to put its border force on alert, and to deploy 3,000 more troops. But Bangladesh’s defence preparedness is woeful. So the government has sought to make light of rising tensions over Myanmar’s provocative exploration in disputed waters of the gas-rich Bay of Bengal.

Rohingyas, who fled Rakhine state in Myanmar in recent weeks for an unregistered refugee camp, speak of a systematic campaign of killing, rape, torture and religious persecution by the Burmese border force. Monwara, a 25-year-old woman, says that last month Burmese soldiers held her and her eight-year-old daughter overnight. She was raped and fled to Bangladesh. Other recent arrivals speak of slave labour and torture. One says the Burmese have set up camps in Muslim graveyards.

... contd.