India frets over Pakistan-Bangladesh
nexus By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - According to Indian intelligence assessments,
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is actively
trying to realize its plan for a sovereign Islamic state
in India's northeast, with full support from
fundamentalist elements within Bangladesh government,
army, bureaucracy and intelligence.
Sources in
India's Ministry of Home Affairs have told Asia Times
Online that it has regularly been receiving reports of
increased ISI activity in Bangladesh, and of tacit
support extended to the ISI by the authorities there.
With the ceasefire on the Kashmir border, militant
outfits are increasingly using Bangladesh as a training
ground rather then Pakistan-administered Kashmir,
according to the sources.
There are also reports
that Pakistan nationals owing allegiance to different
terrorist outfits have been using Dhaka as a transit
point for entering India and Nepal, as well as an escape
route. Delhi has on several occasions raised the issue
with Bangladeshi authorities. But Dhaka has repeatedly
denied all similar reports and statements made by Indian
government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister
and Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani.
Though
ruling Indian politicians will not make an issue out of
the alleged ISI activity for the next couple of months
until general elections are over - the achievement of
peace on the borders is a major poll plank for the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - Asia Times Online has
learnt that central as well as state intelligence
officials are deeply concerned at the growing influence
of the ISI at various levels in Bangladesh, and of the
activities of a variety of secessionist militants and
Islamic fundamentalists, many of whom have found refuge
in Bangladesh.
This has been particularly the
case since the Bangladesh visit of Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf in July 2002, when additional
ISI personnel were posted at the Pakistan High
Commission in Dhaka. The situation became even more
favorable for the ISI after the assumption of power in
October 2001 by the present four-party coalition led by
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP), with the help of pro-Pakistan
fundamentalist elements.
Also, in recent months
militants have been flushed out from illegal camps in
Bhutan and Myanmar, making Bangladesh an increasingly
attractive alternative.
India's seven northeast
states are home to more than 200 different ethnic groups
that include Christians, Hindus, animists, Muslims and
even a tribe believed to be Jewish. More than 7,400
civilians, 2,100 security personnel and 4,500 alleged
militants have died in a dozen ethnic and religious
conflicts throughout the northeast since 1992.
Asia Times Online has acquired a document
prepared by a central security agency for top officials
in the government. It makes the following points, inter
alia:
1. The ISI has been instrumental, either
directly or through the Pakistan High Commission in
Dhaka, to develop a nexus between Indian insurgent
groups (IIGs), Islamic fundamentalists and criminal
elements in Bangladesh. Besides assisting terrorists in
the procurement of arms, ammunition and explosives, the
ISI has been arranging meetings of terrorists of
different hues to coordinate their activities. The ISI
has also been helping IIGs in obtaining weapons and
explosives from different places, including Thailand.
The ISI has also been using the local media to generate
anti-India sentiments. The editors of two newspapers,
Prathan Alo and Itafaq, are said to be close to the ISI.
2. The ISI has plans to appoint Pakistan
nationals, trained as maulvis (religious
instructors) in madrassas (religious schools) and
mosques in Bangladesh, particularly the ones that are
situated on the India-Bangladesh border. They will also
be used for a variety of anti-India activities.
Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh (JEI/BD), a constituent of
the present government, reportedly issued in January
2002 instructions to its districts amirs [heads]
to provided help and shelter to ISI operatives. Its
plans include setting up jihadi training camps
(including those of HUJAI [Bangladesh militant outfit
Harkat-ul-Jehadi-al-Islami] ) in Moulvi Bazar and
Chittagong with an ISI controller in Cox's Bazar.
3. Top IIG leaders staying in Bangladesh, like
Paresh Barua and Ranjan Daimary, have close links with
the ISI. Others like Sashadhar Choudhary, ULFA [United
Liberation Front of Assam, Julius Dorphang and Bobby
Marwein (both HNLC [Hynniewtrep National Liberation
Council] ), Dilash Marak and Jerome C Momin (both ANVC
[Achik National Volunteers Council ]), Bishwamohan
Debbarma (NLFT - National Liberation Front of Tripura )
and Ranjit Debbarma (ATTF - All Tripura Tiger Force )
are also known to have contact with the ISI through
Bangladeshi security agencies.
4. Bangladesh has
been used as a staging point for sending members of both
IIGs and jihadi groups to Pakistan and Afghanistan as
well as their infiltration into India. The surrendered
ATTF militants (3), revealed in October 2002 that its
cadres (8) who were flown via Dhaka had received six
months training at Kandahar (Afghanistan). Two senior
leaders of NDFB [National Democratic Front of Bodoland]
(Dhiren Boro, vice president and Gobinda Basumatary,
general secretary) arrested in December, 2002 and
January 2003 respectively also revealed the help they
received from the ISI in training of its cadres in
Pakistan. These, too, were sent through Dhaka. The
interrogation of ULFA leaders including Pradip Gogoi
(vice chairman, presently in jail) and Lohit Deori
revealed that several batches of ULFA cadres were flown
to Pakistan from Dhaka for training arranged by the ISI.
5. The interrogation of Asghar Ali (resident of
Nalgonda, Andhra Pradesh), the person believed
responsible for the killing of Haren Pandya, former
Gujarat home minister, revealed that Indian Muslim
youths (8) were sent in December 2002 through Bangladesh
to Pakistan for training. Qari Salim, an ISI operative
and a Hizbul Mujahideen cadre who was arrested in
Guwahati in 1999, had revealed that he had come via
Bangladesh and was tasked to carry out sabotage on the
Leh-Manali Highway. The persons involved in conspiracy
of the hijacking of [flight] IC-814 from Kathmandu in
December 1999 had used Bangladesh for their movement to
India from Pakistan.
6. Pakistan Intelligence
Officers (PIOs) in Dhaka are becoming increasingly
active in espionage against India. In 2002, three
modules being run by PIOs from Dhaka, and using some
Bangladesh operatives, was busted. A large number of
secret documents and photographs of sensitive defense
locations were recovered from one Ziauddin Ahmed Biswas
(resident of Murshidabad in West Bengal), arrested on
November 17, 2002. Later, the arrest (December 2002 in
Lucknow, UP) of a Bangladesh national, Mohammad Mamunur
Rasheed, led to the recovery of fake travel documents
and also incriminating documents indicating a plan to
recruit Indian Muslim youths for training in Bangladesh
and Pakistan for subversive activities within India.
Another report submitted to top officials by
Indian central and state intelligence agencies said
earlier that Bangladesh's soil was being used by at
least 80 militant training camps run by "rabidly
anti-Indian Islamic militant organizations". The report
says that these training camps were set up by
secessionist militant organizations like ULFA, NDFB and
the NLFP and the Chakma National Liberation Front
(CNLF), with the active support and patronage of the
Bangladesh government.
It is hardly any secret
that the ISI has close links with Bangladesh's
Directorate General of Forces' Intelligence (DGFI) and
operates openly and freely in that country. It not only
helps coordinate the activities of al-Qaeda and
fundamental Islamic militant groups like the HUJAI, but
actively assists, through organizations like the latter
as well as the DGFI, secessionist outfits operating in
northeast India. According to an intelligence report,
HUJI, which is often called the Bangladeshi Taliban, and
which has close links with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden,
runs six training camps for ULFA terrorists in the
Chittagong Hill Tracts across the border from Tripura in
India.
According to West Bengal state
intelligence officials, while ULFA training camps have
been organized by the sector headquarters of the
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), training camps of the CNLF have
been organized partly by 103 and 105 Infantry Brigade of
the Bangladesh Army at Khagrajori and Rangamati.
The location and other details of
training camps as reported by intelligence agencies, run
in different areas of Bangladesh, are as follows:
Seven camps set up by Jamat-ul-Mujahideen, a
splinter group of the HUJAI in Rajshahi zone. The number
of trainee militants is around 110.
Nine camps set up by the al-Hikma in Rajshahi zone.
The number of trainees is around 260.
Sixteen camps of Islamic militant and extremist
organizations in the Khulana zone. The number of
trainees is around 405.
Twenty-three ULFA training camps in the Sylhet zone.
The number of militant trainees is around 450.
Eleven camps of the Chakma National Liberation Front
in the Chittagong zone. The number of trainees is around
225.
Fourteen training camps in the Rangpur zone. The
number of trainees is around 155.
While the
central intelligence agencies are concerned about the
manner in which Bangladesh is allowing its soil to be
used for anti-India activities in the overall security
context, the West Bengal state government is
particularly worried because it shares a border with
Bangladesh, and there have been several instances of
Indian militants using the state and its capital as a
transit point for entry into Dhaka.
The problem
of illegal immigrants from the neighboring country is
another area of concern. The issue has figured
prominently whenever West Bengal chief minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has met Advani in the past
months, either in Delhi or in Kolkata. He has been
urging Advani to find an early solution to the problem.
Indian Intelligence agencies have been concerned
for several months now over reports that ISI agents
based in Bangladesh are spreading their dragnet in
Jambudwip and other parts of the Sunderbans. This is
considered particularly dangerous from an Indian
security point of view. Because of its
near-inaccessibility, the Sunderban area has become an
ideal zone for militant operations. The ISI has been
reportedly eyeing the Sunderbans as a major route for
future operations, ever since security measures were
stepped up on the western theater. This is also believed
to be the ISI's response to the Indian army's increasing
presence in the northeastern sector during recent months
that may have made anti-India operations increasingly
difficult in that region.
Between April and May
last year, Bangladeshi agents of the ISI reportedly had
at least three meetings with representatives of
Jambudwip fishermen, trying to establish a rapport with
them. The agents reportedly tried to convince the
fishermen groups to help them ferry their "consignments"
to fixed locations in India through the Sunderbans, and
to ensure the entry of some of their trusted men from
across the border into Indian territory. In return, the
fishermen were promised lucrative rewards and fishing
rights in Bangladeshi waters. The move has reportedly
been in response to close vigil having been intensified
along the North Bengal corridor and Nadia. Several
Bangladeshi ISI agents, including one Tariq Aziz, are
said to be involved in the operation. The idea is to
facilitate the transport of trained militants as well as
weapons cargo meant for insurgent groups in the
northeast through specific locations in West Bengal and
Orissa that have been already earmarked by ISI
officials.
All this is believed to be part of
the ISI pursuing the objective of creating a separate
Islamic country. This has been known since at least
August 8, 1999 when Assam police achieved a major
breakthrough, busting an ISI network in the state,
nabbing 31 people, including two ISI officers and 27
militants belonging to different Islamic militant
outfits.
The arrest led to the unearthing of an
ISI design to convert Assam and some parts of its
neighboring states, including Tripura, into a separate
Islamic country. During interrogation, confessions were
made that they had been sent by the ISI to carry out
specific operations in the northeast. They also unveiled
the plan of the ISI in the northeastern region, mainly
in Assam. Its objectives were:
To raise a large group of Muslim youth fighters from
Assam and launch a holy war to liberate Assam; establish
an Islamic country comprising Assam and some parts of
other northeastern states, including Tripura.
To use ULFA and other militant groups to create
large-scale disturbances in the entire region.
To launch a two-pronged economic warfare by carting
away money collected by the underground elements to
Pakistan and by inundating the area with fake and
counterfeit currency notes.
To foment communal trouble in Assam by inciting
innocent and law-abiding Muslim citizens.
To introduce the business of narcotics and link it
with terrorism as a source of self-financing for
large-scale militant activities. (A narco-terrorist
module captured from one ISI man arrested from Jalandhar
in September 1999 also confirmed this report).
Indian intelligence agencies believe that the
northeast has become the new and safe destination,
mainly due to a virtually open Bangladesh-Assam and
Bangladesh-Tripura border and a favorable demographic
pattern along the border villages. The present lull in
militant activities on the Jammu and Kashmir border as
also the need of the ruling politicians to keep quiet
has come in handy for the ISI to intensify its
activities in Bangladesh and on the Bangladesh-India
border.
Anticipating allegations of harboring
militants by New Delhi during the recent South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in
Islamabad, Dhaka cracked down on militants. Indian
intelligence officials, who monitor Bangladesh, had told
the Hindustan Times that they had credible information
that the Bangladesh Rifles had seized a huge quantity of
arms and ammunition - including anti-tank and
anti-personnel mines, grenades and rocket-launchers -
from two different places in the past 48 hours. The arms
and ammunition belonged to the ULFA, the intelligence
officials said.
But it now seems that following
the SAARC summit, Dhaka has resumed its quiet
cooperation with the ISI and militant Islamic
fundamentalists who are bent upon destabilizing the
region, something that has the potential of emerging as
a bigger headache for India than even Pakistan.
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