Blood Brothers

The body of Major General Shakeel Ahmed, commander of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), was found on the second day of the mutiny — bullet-ridden and stabbed by the men of the force he commanded. From the manner in which BDR officers were hunted down, killed and buried in a mass grave; the use of mortars; and the snapping of communication links it is obvious that the massacre was pre-planned. All it needed was an occasion.

Several army officers are still missing, including Colonel Gulzar Ahmed who supervised the operation that led to the arrest and execution of Jamaat-ul Mujahedeen Bangladesh chief Sidiqul Alam (Bangla Bhai). It is not known if Ahmed was specially targetted or an accidental victim, but it is true that the fundamentalists were unhappy over the execution of Bangla Bhai and other jihadi leaders in 2007.

Bangladesh’s short history is steeped in blood, starting with the killing by the Punjabi army of West Pakistan of three million men, women and children. The countless rapes and torture left scars that have not yet healed in many cases. The assassination of Banga Bandhu in 1975 was meant to wipe out the entire family but the sisters, Hasina and Rehana, got away. Khandaker Mushtaque Ahmed, who became president after Mujib-ur Rahman’s murder, granted indemnity to the killers and General Zia-ur Rahman later incorporated this indemnity legislation in his constitution. Other leaders were similarly killed and the cult of violence ultimately led to the assassination of Zia-ur Rahman.

It was only 21 years after Mujib-ur’s assassination, after Sheikh Hasina Wajed won the elections in 1996, that a case for the murder was filed — indicating how entrenched interests had taken over early in Bangladesh’s life.

Sheikh Hasina’s announcement this January that the collaborators in the Bangladesh Liberation War would be tried has almost sent Pakistan scuttling for cover. Apart from misguided conviction about their cause, Islamabad cannot afford another slur now. Besides, the trial of right-wing fundamentalists would cause anger in Pakistan. The other announcement, that Anup Chetia, the ULFA leader, would be handed over to India, would embarrass the ISI by making public their links to the ULFA. So far under Khaleda Zia, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, an ISI clone, had been the loco parentis of the ULFA.

The man linked to these unsavoury deals is Salahuddin Qadir Choudhry who, it is believed, helped infiltrate the BDR with men from Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami, Al Badr and others owing loyalty to the Jamaat-e-Islami. This is ironic since the BDR had fought on behalf of the Bangla nationalists against the Razakars and the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, and has known pro-Bangla credentials. Salahuddin also figures in the list of culprits involved in brutalities during the 1971 war; he is associated with the smuggling of arms and ammunition meant for Indian insurgents through Chittagong; he is also believed to be the conduit for funds from Pakistan. As a reward for services rendered, Khaleda Zia had proposed his name as secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, presumably at the behest of Islamabad. Now that Sheikh Hasina is in power, it is likely that Salahuddin will be brought to trial soon. She had to be stopped because Salahuddin apparently knows too much.

It is difficult to re-construct the entire drama but maybe the calculation was that the army would react violently to the killing of its of ficers, chaos would result and the Awami League would have to be jettisoned as incompetent.

But it seems that Sheikh Hasina did not blink, the army did not react (some say even General Moeen’s U Ahmed’s life was threatened) and the immediate crisis has passed.

Source : Hindustan Times , 8th March 2009

Delhi needs to help, not smother Hasina

The revolt by the poorly paid troops of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) began on February 25 morning at their Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka and by the time the 33-hour standoff was over, 76 bodies of Bangladesh Army officers had been found while another 60 or so were missing. The surprise element seemed obvious and the revolt spread to some other cities. But the ferocity of the attack and the high rate of casualties was the most frightening part. Ill-treated and deprived of some of the basic amenities, the troops just could not take it anymore. Their chief had promised to have their grievances attended to but made no mention of these problems when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed visited BDR headquarters the day before. By the time the mutiny was over the director-general of the force, Maj. Gen. Shakil Ahmed, had been killed by the mutineers.

While inquiries in Bangladesh would endeavour to get at the truth, it does appear that the discontent against the officers was channelled by someone, the spark was then ignited and there was someone guiding the men to the targets — all Army officers. Conspiracy theories abound, alleging the foreign hand (Inter-Services Intelligence) and money, that the mutiny had been pre-planned, and there are accusations that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was involved and that the problems of the BDR were not really so acute. One aspect is, therefore, important: Was there an intelligence failure or was there suppression of intelligence? If it was the former, it’s incompetence and complacency; if it’s the latter, then it is far more sinister and Sheikh Hasina has a much bigger problem on her hands. She may find that she has to rely on the conspirators to discover the conspirators.

It is also well-known that the relationship between the Awami League and the Army has been uneasy, somewhat like the Pakistan People’s Party-Pakistan Army relationship. It was conventional wisdom prior to the elections last December that if the Bangladesh Army, led by Gen. Moeen Ahmed, actually handed over charge of governance to an elected body they would do so only after managing the results. If this argument is correct then presumably the 2008 elections were as surprising for the Army as the 1954 elections which had resulted in the decimation of the Muslim League, and the 1970 elections which eventually led to the liberation of Bangladesh. Having received universal accolades for holding free and fair elections, it was just not conceivable that the Army could withdraw their gift to the people of Bangladesh.

The Awami League victory was simply too overwhelming; the youth and the women were the X-factors in an election in which the main issues were appallingly poor economic governance and corruption; neither India nor Mujibur Rahman were the issues. It is doubtful, though, that the Army would have deliberately had more than a hundred of its officers killed just to prove, in a convoluted and expensive way, that it is still relevant to the Awami League. Nevertheless, the Hasina government will have to depend more on the Army to handle the crisis, assuage growing anger in the Army which can be dangerous, provide immediate relief to the BDR, be seen to be fair and punish the mutineers. Unless this is done quickly, it will create the very real fear of reprisals and an enduring animus between the higher echelons of the Army and the BDR troops.
One of the long-standing promises of Sheikh Hasina has been that the Awami League would prosecute the collaborators of the 1971 war of liberation, in which the East Pakistan Rifles (now BDR) had fought against the Pakistan Army. These collaborators have friends in high places in Islamabad, some, in fact, are leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami and have close ties with Pakistan. The Bangladesh Army and its directorate-general of forces intelligence are considered to be clones of the Pakistan Army and the ISI. Neither of these Army establishments want the trial of collaborators and a worried Pakistan government had despatched a special envoy, Zia Ispahani, to advise against implementing the resolution to try the collaborators.

Meanwhile, the announcement that the Bangladesh government had decided to hand over Anup Chetia to India would have sent cold shivers down the collective spines of his handlers in Dhaka.
It would appear that elitism among the Bangladesh Army officers deployed to the BDR and their administrative indifference to the plight of the other ranks would have been the cause of the feeling of deprivation and discrimination among the troops. This would have provided fertile ground for those wanting to suborn the troops against the system, pit the BDR against the Army. It might have been calculated that the Awami League government should be tested in its early days before it settled down. The party may have won a massive mandate but somewhere the cries of "Bangladesh hobe Taliban" still resonate. Jamaat-e-Islami representation in Parliament may have gone down remarkably but the essential votebank is intact.

Apart from the usual suspects — failure of intelligence or deliberate suppression of intelligence — there was obviously a total failure of command. There is just no explanation for the deaths of so many Army officers and that too so brutally in many cases.

Trouble arises in uniformed and highly disciplined forces when the troops find that their officers do not identify themselves with the force, nor empathise with them. If the officers are on short-term assignments and have not grown with the force, the distance between them and the troops they command usually widens, sometimes to the point of breakdown. This is what apparently happened at Pilkhana.

It is politically and diplomatically correct for India to say that this episode is an internal matter for the Bangladesh government. But it is also true that India as a neighbour would be concerned, not just because there was a mutiny, but about the source and scale of the revolt. A friendly government now holds the reins of power in Dhaka; we cannot and must not smother it with love and affection. Instead, we need to strengthen that government because the alternative, as we can imagine, is far too dangerous. What we need to do is to quietly convey our security red lines stressing our political neutrality, and promise economic and financial generosity. Indo-Bangladesh dealings have to be lifted beyond the bureaucratic rigidities that endlessly seek equal concessions leaving no room for large-heartedness.

Source : Asian Age , 3rd March 2009

Living on the edge

The warmth with which Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus greeted Amartya Sen, the other Nobel laureate from the subcontinent, when the two met in Dhaka recently, does not unfortunately transmit itself to political masters of the two countries. It definitely does not get transformed into even bare civility between the two ‘Ladies’ of Dhaka. Instead, they have now had years of mutual suspicion and unremitting hostility visible in absolute obduracy and violence on the streets.
Domestic compulsions and truculence translate into not even wanting to help themselves economically, simply because that might help India in the process. Thus, instead of using India’s vast neighbourhood markets and resources as an opportunity, Bangladesh politics demand that India is considered a threat. This can only be countered by cosying up to China, which had opposed Bangladesh’s creation, and Pakistan, which had oppressed it for 25 years, and by using the terrorist weapon as a force equaliser of some sort with India.
New Delhi has taken the right decision to bypass Bangladesh and signed a gas pipeline agreement with Myanmar. Bangladesh has to quickly decide whether it wants to be a member of the South Asian community or metaphorically anchor itself somewhere else or stay in a time-warp.
The endless feud between Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia has polarised Bangladesh politics and given political space to various jehadi groups, allowing them to mushroom all over the country. Quite often this has been with the active encouragement or tacit approval of the Khaleda Zia government. Apart from Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, whose notoriety emanates from the 459 simultaneous bomb blasts it organised on August 17, 2005, there are several other jehadist outfits like Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, Hizbul Mujahideen, Al-Haramain Foundation and Al Mujahid.
The prominent Bangladesh newspaper, The Daily Star, had carried out a survey and published some startling findings on August 21, 2005. It spoke of the jehadi nexus with mainstream political parties, about their access to arms and official and political tolerance. Many of the members are Afghan jehad veterans, and funding from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait continues with the aim of introducing a more orthodox system of Islamic education and governance. The argument cannot be that they are fanciful groupings of a few or that they may not be effective; instead the fear is that this shows an evolving mindset in our neighbourhood.
Changes in ideology take place incrementally; these are like continental drifts until it is too late and then tectonic changes occur. In this age of modernity, there is also a move towards religious fundamentalism mixed with politics and militarism. Our neighbourhood is not immune from these influences. All three major parties in Bangladesh have contributed to this shift. General Zia-ur Rahman (now fondly known as Shaheed Zia) resorted to introducing religious concepts in the principles of State policy and removed the word ‘secular’ from the Constitution. His successor, General Ershad, in an electoral alliance with the Awami League, but hounded out by a BNP-inspired campaign for his impudence, declared Islam as the State religion. Both these leaders encouraged the rehabilitation of fundamentalists who had collaborated with Pakistan in 1971. Khaleda Zia cobbled an arrangement with the radical Jamaat Islami and Islamic Oikya Jote as part of a four-party alliance in governance since 2001.
The sudden decision of the Awami League, known for its liberal and secular credentials, to have an election arrangement with the ‘fatwa’ party, the Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis, sent shock waves in sections of Bangladesh society. This rather cynical electoral politics alarmed the minority who had always assumed that the League’s secular credentials would keep it relatively safe. The last bastion for the minorities in Bangladesh — the Hindus, Buddhists and Christians — seems to be crumbling.
Apart from electoral compulsions, there is immense significance in the symbolism of this five-point ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ as the Awami League calls it. One of these is that no law would be enacted that contradicts Quranic values, the Sunnah and the Shariat. The League’s problem has been to counter a vociferous and powerful opposition that insists on describing this adherence to secularism as disrespectful to Islam. Besides, secularism in the subcontinent is too Indian a concept to be readily acceptable in Bangladesh where sections want the country to become increasingly Islamic.
The League has nominated two veterans from the Afghan jehad from, Sylhet-1 and Narail-2 constituencies, apart from other Islamist candidates. Whether or not the arrangement Sheikh Hasina has worked out will last or whether or not she gains from this, the important point is that today the daughter of Sheikh Mujib feels that this alliance could lead to gains that would be greater than the loss from the annoyance of the minorities. And, therefore, considered worth it. In India, we play vote-bank politics by playing to the minorities; in Bangladesh and Pakistan, they play the majority tune all the time.
The stage is now set for the elections scheduled for January 22. The run-up to this has been one of the most violent in recent years and October 28 was the high point. There have been attempted assassinations. Sheikh Hasina had a lucky escape in August 2004 while former Minister S.A.M.S. Kibria was not so lucky in January 2005. Sections of the media have been intimidated very often and the authorities have been more amenable to taking action against minorities than against the majority. The Awami League has suspected, not without good reason, that there would be enough skullduggery so that the League is kept away from governance. The mastaans, who run organised crime syndicates and protection rackets, have had their political patrons but are now striking out on their own and are now part of the problem. The line between politics and crime, business and crime, has blurred.
India has chosen to stay out of any advisory roles because anything we say or do will be held against us. The West has been more explicit in expressing its worries at what might be and Dhaka-based British, US and Canadian envoys have given gratis advice on democracy and the need to hold free and fair elections. They have also been urging the young to exercise their franchise, several of whom are not on the voter lists or have been removed from the lists, because of selective revision. Usually, such mysterious omissions are names of those who belong to the minorities.
It is difficult to predict the outcome of the elections but the BNP government that has handed over power to the caretakerauthority would be carrying the usual baggage of the ‘anti-incumbency factor’ — common in our region unless one is ruled by a military dictator. The threat to boycott elections that the League sounds from time to time is another worrying factor, because sometimes, a threat repeated very often develops its own momentum. That would be tragic and the BNP would get elected unopposed and untested.
It is important for Bangladesh, indeed for the entire region, that free, fair and participatory elections are held. If not, it will be easy for Bangladesh to slip into fundamentalist chaos and radicalism. This will be a retrograde step that could lead the country to violence and extremism.

Source : Hindustan times 23rd feb 2007

Bangladesh Elections

The warmth with which the Bangladesh Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus greeted Amartya Sen, the other Nobel Laureate from the subcontinent when the two met in Dhaka recently does not unfortunately transmit itself to political masters of the two countries. It definitely does not get transformed into even bare civility between the two Ladies of Dhaka. Instead, they have now had years of mutual suspicion and unremitting hostility visible in absolute obduracy and violence on the streets.

Domestic compulsions and truculence translate into not even wanting to help themselves economically simply because that might help India in the process. Thus, instead of using India’s vast neighbourhood markets and resources as an opportunity Bangladesh politics demand that India be considered a threat. This can only be countered by cosying up to China who had opposed Bangladesh’s creation and Pakistan who had oppressed it for 25 years and by using the terrorist weapon as a force equaliser of some sort with India.

New Delhi has taken the right decision to bypass Bangladesh and signed a gas pipeline agreement with Myanmar. Bangladesh has to quickly decide whether it wants to be a member of the South Asian community or metaphorically anchor itself somewhere else or stay in a different time warp.

The endless feud between Hasina and Khaleda has polarised Bangladesh politics and given political space to the various jehadi groups allowing them to mushroom all over the country. Quite often this has been with the active encouragement or tacit approval of the Khaleda Zia government. Apart from Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh whose notoriety emanates from the 459 simultaneous bomb blasts it organised on August 17 2005, there are several other jehadist outfits like Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, Hizbul Mujahedeen, Al-Haramain Foundation, Al Mujahid.

It was the prominent Bangladesh newspaper, the Daily Star that had carried out a survey and had published some startling findings on August 21, 2005. It spoke of a nexus with mainstream political parties about their access to arms and official and political tolerance. Many of the members are Afghan jehad veterans and funding from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait continues with the aim of introducing a more orthodox system of Islamic education and governance. The argument cannot be that they are fanciful groupings of a few or that they may not be effective; instead the fear is that this shows an evolving mindset in our neighbourhood.

Changes in perceptions and ideology take place incrementally; these are like continental drifts until it is too late and tectonic changes then occur. In this age of technological innovation and modernity, there is also a move towards religious fundamentalism mixed with politics and militarism. Our neighbourhood is not immune from these influences. In a way, all three major parties in Bangladesh have contributed to this shift. It was General Zia ur Rahman (now fondly known as Shaheed Zia) who first resorted to introducing religious concepts in the fundamental principles of state policy and removed the word ‘secular’ from the Constitution. His successor Gen. Ershad, in an electoral alliance with the Awami League but hounded out by a BNP-inspired campaign for his impudence, declared Islam as the state religion. Both he and his predecessor encouraged the rehabilitation of fundamentalists who had collaborated with Pakistan in 1971. Khaleda Zia cobbled an arrangement with the radical Jamaat Islami and Islamic Oikya Jote as part of a four party alliance in governance since 2001.

The sudden decision of the Awami League, known for its liberal and secular credentials, to have an election arrangement with the ‘fatwa’; party, the Bangladesh Khilafat Majlish, sent shock waves in sections of Bangladesh society. This rather cynical electoral politics alarmed the minority who had always assumed that the League’s secular credentials would keep it relatively safe. The last bastion for the minorities in Bangladesh – the Hindus, Buddhists and Christians - seems to be crumbling.

Apart from electoral compulsions there is immense significance in the symbolism of this five-point Memorandum of Understanding as the Awami League calls it. One of these is that no law would be enacted that contradicts Quranic values, the Sunnah and Shariat. The League’s problem has been to counter a vociferous and powerful opposition that insists on describing this adherence to secularism as disrespectful to Islam. Besides, secularism in the subcontinent is too Indian a concept to be readily acceptable in Bangladesh where sections want the country to be increasingly Islamic.

The League has nominated two veterans from the Afghan jehad from Sylhet-1 and Narail-2 constituencies, apart from other Islamist candidates. Whether or not the arrangement Sheikh Hasina has worked out will last or whether or not she gains from this, the important point is that today the daughter of Sheikh Mujib feels that this alliance could lead to gains that would be greater than the loss from the annoyance of the minorities. And therefore considered worth it. In India, we play vote bank politics by playing to the minorities; in Bangladesh and Pakistan, they play the majority tune all the time.

The stage is now set for the elections scheduled for January 22. The run up to this has been one of the most violent in recent years and October 28 was the highpoint of this. There have been attempted assassinations. Sheikh Hasina had a lucky escape in August 2004 while former Minister S. A. M. S. Kibria was not so lucky in January 2005. Sections of the media have been intimidated very often and the authorities have been more amenable to taking action against minorities than against the majority. The Awami League has suspected, not without good reason, that there would be enough skullduggery so that the League is kept away from governance. The mastaans, who run organised crime syndicates and protection rackets, have had their political patrons but are now striking out on their own and ar enow part of the problem. The line between politics and crime, business and crime has blurred.

India has chosen to stay out of any advisory roles because anything we say or do will be held against us. The West has been more explicit in expressing its worries at what might be and Dhaka-based British, US and Canadian envoys have given gratis advice on democracy and the need to hold free and fair elections. The EU Vice President was concerned at the deployment of the Army. They have also been urging the young to exercise their franchise, several of whom are not on the voter lists or have been removed as from these lists that have been revised very selectively. Usually such mysterious omissions are names of minorities.

It is difficult to predict the outcome of the elections but the BNP Government that has handed over power to the Caretaker Authority would be carrying the usual baggage of an “anti-incumbency factor” so common in our region unless one is ruled by a military dictator. The threat to boycott elections that the League gives from time to time is another worrying factor because sometimes a threat repeated very often develops its own momentum That would be tragic and the BNP would get elected unopposed and untested.

It is important for Bangladesh, indeed for the entire region that elections are not only held, but are free, fair and participatory. If not, it will be easy for Bangladesh to slip into fundamentalist chaos and radicalism. The alternative to a flawed election could be another bout of military rule. This will be a retrograde step that could lead the country to violence and extremism.

Source : Hindustan Times 31st dec 2006

Dhaka comes to roost

They don’t send flowers to each other any more — just the occasional bomb blast. In fact, the two ladies of Dhaka find it exceedingly difficult being in the same place together. The animus between the BNP leader and prime minister, Khaleda Zia, and the Awami League leader of the Opposition, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, has given enough space to the Right wing Jamaat-e-Islami, the radical Islamic Oikya Jote and other Islamists elements to play a pivotal role in Bangladesh politics.
For a long period now, Bangla-desh rulers have been in denial mode — denying the existence of Islamic fundamentalism, which has now led to the virtual Talibanisation of Bangladesh. They have denied that Islamic fundamentalist parties and the madrasas, funded with Arab money, were mushrooming in the country. They have denied the existence of training camps where Pakistani and Bangladeshi ex-servicemen have trained cadres for jehadi service in Myanmar and further into South East Asia. Similarly, there is bland denial that Indian insurgent groups have been provided shelter in Bangladesh. Whenever in trouble, deny and be brazen about it, seems to be the motto.
As a neighbour, India is naturally concerned with the rise of violence and the growth of Islamic fundamentalist politics. Some openly state that their aim is to Talibanise their country. This trend worries the liberal and secular elements in Bangladesh but their voice is lost in the din of jehadi fervour.
The 459 bombs that burst all over the country on August 17 this year was a serious warning about the shape of things to come. This time around, the intention was not to cause casualties but to show the extent of reach and sympathy the organisers have all over the country. It showed that Bangladeshis could no longer deny the direction their country had taken and that unless it was changed, there was going to be only one outcome.
What is a matter of serious worry for India is that the operation was carried out with extensive planning, logistic and financial support, training and supply of material and a large willing manpower. The entire operation was carried with precision and in complete secrecy.
The ruling party, the BNP, remains culpable because of its inability to do anything beyond successive eyewash crackdowns which arises from its dependent coalition arrangements with the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamic Oikya Jote. The question is, did the intelligence know about the attacks and ignore it or were they not aware at all? Neither option brings any solace. Given our porous borders and the continuing immigration, connivance or ignorance will help such trained terrorists escape into India.
Bangladesh has been going down this fundamentalist route for some decades now. Even the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who believed in secular politics, resorted to Islamic symbolism at times, fearing that close alignment with India was not politically expedient. He even stopped concluding his speeches with the famous salutation “Jai Bangla” in favour of “Khuda hafiz”. He was reaching out for an identity other than pro-India.
Then came the generals, Zia-ur Rahman and Ershad. These two were ready to wear the mantle of ‘protectors of Islam’. Zia dropped the word secularism from the Constitution in 1977 and Ershad named Islam the religion of the State after he overthrew Zia. Jamaat-e-Islami, the party of collaborators during the freedom struggle, had now become a party of the fauji darbar. The trauma of the pre-liberation genocide was allowed to fade and secular values were discouraged.
Twenty years of Islamisation could not be reversed in the short reign of Sheikh Hasina that began in 1996 because the seeds of Talibanisation had germinated by then. Bangladeshi nationals had been participating in the Afghan jehad since the Eighties and later some would be inmates at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo.
Sheikh Hasina has been the target of assassination attempts as Bangladesh keeps showing increasing propensity to settle political disputes through violence. There have been more than 1,000 blasts in the country since 1999; politicians, journalists, teachers, professors and other intellectuals are the favourite targets. Even diplomats are not spared as the British High Commissioner, a person of Bangladeshi origin, found to his horror.
As Islam, the religion of the majority, gave way to Islam, the political idiom of the vociferous few, cultural policing by these self-styled protectors of the Faith is now commonplace. Cinema houses, music and circuses are considered symbols of decadence while fatwas decree beards for men and burqa for women.
Zayadul Ahsan, in his detailed exposé in the Daily Star, put it succinctly. He said “A deep pocket filled by oil rich hands, virtually unrelenting access to arms, an insidious nexus with mainstream political parties and the government’s blind eye to them — the deadly concoction that has made it possible for the religious terrorist groups to thrive in Bangladesh.” Ahsan says that there are now more than 30 religious militant organisations that have set up countrywide networks with the main aim of establishing an Islamic State. Many of the cadres have been given training on how to conduct jehad and they have many veterans from the Afghan, Lebanon and Palestine theatres.
Training is mostly given in the jungles of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the north of the country. Recruits could be from Bangladesh, Myanmar or South-East Asia. The favourite districts of the extremists are Naogaon, Rajshahi, Kushtia, Bogra and Pabna, bordering West Bengal. The main activist here is the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh. This unit claims the allegiance of 30,000 activists, while the Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen boasts 10,000 full-time, and 100,000 part-time, workers. In Chittagong the districts are Rangamati, Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban and Khagrachari bordering Mizoram, Tripura and Myanmar where the main activities are those by Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami, a close associate of the Pakistani HUJI and the Osama-inspired International Islamic Front. It has 25,000 trained activists.
Several NGOs and qaumi madrasas have received hige sums of money from shady Kuwaiti, UAE, Saudi and Pakistani sources since 1989, ostensibly for opening mosques, schools and hospitals. Instead, they finance militancy. Funds are also diverted into business ventures and it is estimated that these NGOs earn about Rs 1,200 cr taka annually.
It was the BNP-led collation that seems to have emboldened al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers to raise slogans like ‘Amra sobai hobo Taliban. Bangla hobe Afghanistan” meaning ‘We will all become Taliban and Bangla will become Afghanistan.’ Some ambition that. Even as these slogans were being raised in her country, Khaleda Zia thought it fit to announce in Parliament on July 1, 2003, that no al-Qaeda terrorist was present in Bangladesh. Once again, she was following the twin policy of denial and appeasement.
Unless both political parties in Bangladesh go beyond their short-term political interests, something that is not easy as we know in India, a disaster looms for Bangladesh and for India. Meanwhile, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Islamic cadres and trainers continue to strengthen their inter-operability, provide new safe havens for jehadis in transit. This only spells more trouble for India and the rest of the world fighting terrorism.

Source : Hindustan Times 11th oct 2005