A Rationalist Explanation for Violence and Peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Despite a checkered history of conflict, Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) has failed to attract scholarly attention to the fundamental questions of the onset and duration of violence, timing of a settlement with a peace treaty, and longevity of such a settlement. This paper addresses these questions within game-theoretic models offering a unified analytic narrative of the conflict. It argues that while engaged in a protracted insurgency with the Bangladesh state, Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS)—the rebel party—had to solve two collective action problems: first, with the state, and second, with the ethnic groups that required assurances before joining the costly fight against the state.