India frets over Bangladesh blast
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI -
Greatly perturbed over the tragic developments in
neighboring Bangladesh, India has offered to help in the
investigations into the attempted assassination of
former prime minister and main opposition leader Sheikh
Hasina Wajed, in which 20 people, including important
functionaries of her party, died and over 200 were
injured on August 21.
The chief reason for
India's worry is that the few clues from the site
available so far have revealed a possible nexus between
Bangladeshi Islamic extremists and Kashmiri militants.
Dhaka has announced that it will seek Interpol's help to
track down those behind the grenade attacks on the
opposition rally.
Hasina is the only surviving
daughter of the father of nation and first prime
minister, Bangbandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had led
the movement for independence from Pakistan in 1971 and
was killed along with all members of his family in
August 1975 by army officers who are yet to be punished.
Hasina survived as she was abroad at that time.
Late General Zia-ur Rahman came to power a few months
after Mujibur's assassination, and after his own
assassination in May 1981, his wife, the current prime
minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, has been alternating in
power with Sheikh Hasina. There is no doubt that the
present attempt on Hasina's life is the most serious
tragedy to befall Bangladesh since August 1975 and, as
an editorial in the prestigious Daily Star of Dhaka
said, "In fact [it was] an attempt to destabilize
Bangladesh in a very fundamental way and thereby destroy
it as a democratic state."
India went to war
with Pakistan to help the liberation of Bangladesh.
Hailed as a liberator of Bangladesh in 1971, India has
gradually become quite unpopular in the country, and
even Sheikh Hasina, who is generally considered
pro-India, has to mouth anti-India slogans in order to
win elections. Friendship with India is said to
jeopardize both Bangladesh's sovereignty and ideology,
even though the two countries do not have any
substantive disputes to settle. While the problem lies
mainly with Bangladesh's internal politics, which has
seen fundamentalist forces and pro-army groups gradually
tightening their hold, New Delhi, too, can be blamed for
ignoring Bangladesh's concerns over a long period.
In the present instance, Bangladesh's law
minister, Maudud Ahmad, openly blamed India for the
events. "You have come from India, perhaps that is why
all these things are happening here now," he told Seema
Mustafa of the Indian newspaper Asian Age, who was in
Dhaka to cover the event. "There is a strong anti-India
sentiment running through Bangladesh that is apparent
even to a casual visitor," says Mustafa. Bangladeshis
admit this, with a senior journalist pointing out to her
that India-Bangladesh relations "are today very bad,
there is a lot of suspicion and no warmth at all".
It is important for India, therefore, that the
real culprits are found and the conspiracy exposed.
After a meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed
Khan, on Monday, Indian High Commissioner Veena Sikri
told the media, "We have offered to help in the
investigation. We want to work with Bangladesh on this."
Khan also held talks with the US ambassador and British
and Pakistani high commissioners. Though he did not
refuse any offer of help, he said Dhaka took the attack
seriously and would ask for assistance in the
investigation, if needed. Khan told the Indian high
commissioner that his government was committed to
nabbing the culprits and had appointed a judicial
commission. However, the opposition, as well as the
influential Supreme Court Bar Association, rejected the
one-man body, saying the government had forfeited all
trust. Sheikh Hasina herself has blamed the government
itself for the assassination attempt.
Bangladesh
media reported that so far detectives had found no
"clues" about the grenade attack on the Awami League
meeting convened in order to condemn terrorism and the
growing hold of Islamic extremism on local politics
since the Zia-led Bangladesh National Party (BNP) formed
the current government in alliance with the Islamic
fundamentalist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Some
Bangladeshi journalists are, however, questioning this.
For them, some unexploded grenades found at the scene
themselves were clues, but they have now been lost as
the army team detonated them at the site of the attack.
Newspapers and TV both reported, however, and viewers
saw on TV, that the grenades were marked "Arges" along
with some numbers (presumably arms codes). Daily Star
columnist A Rehman finds it strange that neither print
nor TV journalists offered us further information about
them. One TV reporter said that the grenades were of
Chinese origin and are used in the armed forces of a
number of countries in the sub-continent.
While
the government claims to be clueless, according to
Rehman, even a simple Internet search could yield a
number of clues. "Arges" is the acronym of Armaturen
Gesellschaft mbH, an Austrian company. It manufactures a
number of different types of grenades. The company's
website shows pictures of their grenades that are
exactly the same as the pictures of the unexploded
grenades used in the assassination attempt at
Bangabandhu Avenue and in Dhaka central jail.
Other information about "Arges" grenades is even
more revealing and worrying for India. Similar grenades
were used by militants in the attack on the Indian
parliament in December 2002, which led to the Indian and
Pakistani armies eyeballing each other for almost a year
in 2003. Indian authorities have identified these
grenades as the type used by several Kashmiri militant
groups. "Arges" grenades have also been used in
terrorist attacks in Pakistan. In fact, one type of
"Arges" grenade is manufactured, under license, by the
Pakistan Ordnance Factory at Wah, and is used by the
Pakistan army.
Since the Kashmiri militants are
or were armed by Pakistan, it is very likely that they
would use these (Pakistan-made) grenades, concludes
Rehman. That being the case, he asks, could the grenades
that caused such havoc in Bangabandhu Avenue have
Kashmir (or for that matter, Pakistan) as their origin?
"And if this is so," he goes on, "could not our
[Bangladeshi] investigators look for militant factions
here in Bangladesh that have links to Kashmiri
separatists? Is this not a clue, or at least a basis for
the beginnings of an investigation?"
Suspicions
about Islamic fundamentalist involvement in the
assassination attempt are strengthened by some other
developments. Hikmatul Jihad, a previously unheard-of
fundamentalist organization, for instance, has claimed
responsibility for the grenade attack on the Awami
League rally and vowed to assassinate Sheikh Hasina
within a week. "We are coming and this time we will
[accomplish] our target within seven days. It's a
promise," one Hyder Rob, representing the organization,
said in a message emailed to the Prothom Alo newspaper,
on Monday night.
The grenade attack on league's
political rally follows a succession of violent
incidents since the four-party right- wing ruling
alliance came to power in October 2001. The targets of
most of these attacks have been secular and progressive
intellectuals, journalists and senior opposition
leaders. Security analysts have accused the government
of inaction against the increasing fundamentalist and
extremist activity and mounting evidence of a growing
trade in small arms. The ruling coalition is in fact
accused of making efforts to shield the guilty and block
journalists from gaining access to information regarding
all such cases.
Growing Islamist terror in
recent months has indeed prompted the international
human-rights organization Amnesty International to urge
the government to ensure the safety and security of a
range of people it believes to be at risk of imminent
attack.
India has particular reason for being
concerned about growing fundamentalism in Bangladesh.
Not to speak of the Awami League, even the ruling
Bangladesh National Party (BNP0 used to be a secular
formation when it first came to power. But now Hasina's
League, too, finds it difficult to take a clear-cut
stand against fundamentalism. Several militant groups
from India's northeast and their leaders appear to be
hiding in Bangladesh. India feels that Dhaka is not only
not doing enough to smoke them out; it is in fact
harboring them and supporting them in some instances.
It is as good a time as any for India, too, to
take a look at its own policies towards Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government can try and
dispel some of the suspicions against India that cloud
the minds of Bangladeshi people, while demanding sterner
action from Dhaka against Indian militants hiding there
and conducting their activities from the safety of that
country. Some headway can be made right away if Dhaka
accepts India's offer of help in the investigations into
the attempted assassination of the former prime
minister.
Sultan Shahin is a New
Delhi-based writer.
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