COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh ¨C One day in July, Rafiq slipped out of the world¡¯s largest refugee settlement, in southern Bangladesh, and crossed the border into Myanmar on a small boat. His destination: a ruinous civil war in a nation that he had fled in 2017.
Thousands of Rohingya insurgents, like 32-year-old Rafiq, have emerged from camps housing over a million refugees in Cox¡¯s Bazar, where militant recruitment and violence have surged this year, according to four people familiar with the conflict and two internal aid agency reports seen by Reuters.
¡°We need to fight to take back our lands,¡± said Rafiq, a lean and bearded man in a Muslim prayer cap who spent weeks fighting in Myanmar before returning after he was shot in the leg.
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