When Donald Trump returned to the Asian stage this week, global attention largely fixated on his confrontational remarks about China, trade disputes, and shifting security arrangements in the Indo-Pacific. Yet behind the dramatic headlines lies a quieter, unexpected opportunity – the possibility that Washington, under a renewed Trump brand of foreign policy realism, could revive meaningful action on one of the world’s most neglected humanitarian catastrophes: the future of the Rohingya people.

For nearly eight years, the Rohingya crisis has drifted in and out of the world’s consciousness. More than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees remain trapped in the massive camps of Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char in Bangladesh, living in overcrowded shelters, dependent on steadily shrinking humanitarian aid, and with no realistic hope of returning to their ancestral homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Those who remain in Myanmar face severe restrictions on movement, education, land use, and access to health care – a suffocating existence shaped by apartheid-like policies. The global audience that once expressed outrage has since faded away, leaving the Rohingya stranded between diplomatic paralysis and geopolitical indifference.

Western governments have long responded to the crisis with a predictable formula: condemnations of Myanmar’s military rulers, waves of sanctions, and diplomatic statements urging accountability. These gestures may have satisfied moral expectations at home, but they have done little to alter power dynamics inside Myanmar. The military junta still controls significant territory; powerful ethnic armed groups such as the Arakan Army dominate vast areas of the country, including most of Rakhine State; and China quietly deepens its foothold on all sides, expanding economic corridors and securing strategic access. In this fractured landscape, the Rohingya have been reduced to spectators in a conflict that determines their fate but rarely includes their........

© Blitz