al tribal people were against the decision.
Since Bangladeshi independence
In the late 1970s, a policy of forced settling of Bengalis into Chittagong Hill Tracts to change the demography of the region was pursued, which later gave rise to much violence against the hill people and the insurgency led by Shanti Bahini. There has been an attempt to create a division among tribal cultural lines between the Chakmas, who led Shanti Bahini, and the Mrus, by creating an anti-Shanti Bahini militia out of them. Now, after the peace treaty, Bandarban stands as a locally governed ethnic region together with the two other hill districts. Representation of numerous tribes of the district in the Hill Council now stands as a thorn of dispute here. Contemporary history of Bandarban has not been a happy one, despite much development initiatives taken by church organizations and UN agencies like UNICEF, UNDP and UNFPA as well as Bangladesh Army present in large numbers here. The district is still under a quasi-military rule. Insurgents from across the border as well as drugs and arms smugglers play a large role in the jungles here. Newspaper reports of discovering poppy fields or arms caches are not rare for Bandarban. There also is much tension between Bengali settlers and ethnic minorities, as well as between early Hindu settlers and recent Muslim settlers and between dominant tribes and lesser tribes
