Asia Times: Bangladesh in a bind over Indian rebels


	October 5, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Bangladesh in a bind over Indian rebels
By Sarbari Majumder

DHAKA - Leaders of separatist groups from India's troubled northeastern states, holed up in Bangladesh, were initially jubilant at the victory of Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the October 1 parliamentary elections.

"We are very happy with the results. The BNP treats us not as terrorists but as freedom fighters," said Major Yamrock, spokesman for the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) from a hideout in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The NLFT, which has been waging an armed insurgent struggle for the liberation of India's Tripura state, has been banned by the Indian government. Yamrock said Zia, whose BNP has a pronounced anti-India political stance, had, in the past, assured the NLFT that its sanctuaries within Bangladesh would not be disturbed.

However, soon after the BNP victory became known, Zia said in the capital Dhaka that Bangladesh sought good neighborly relations with India.

In sharp contrast to the BNP, the Awami League, which led Bangladesh's liberation from Pakistan in 1971 and was unseated in the polls, has a pronounced pro-India image that goes back to the time when New Delhi decisively intervened in the movement.

Awami League leader and until recently Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, did not countenance the use of Bangladesh by insurgents from India's northeastern states, which include Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura.

A spokesman for the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), Rubi Bhuyan, said, "The Hasina government was harassing us. It was allowing Indian agents to attack us in this country."

Bhuyan said that the BNP victory was a reflection of sympathy for the ULFA by the people of Bangladesh, who "fought for their own independence and understand our aspirations and have now given a befitting lesson to the Awami League".

During the Awami League's regime, ULFA leader Anup Chetia was arrested, convicted and jailed, while there were up to four attempts on the life of the leader of the group's armed wing, Paresh Barua.

Indian intelligence officers say that Paresh Barua, who was forced to leave Dhaka for Karachi during the Awami League's rule, may now return. "He must stay close to Assam to run his group. Karachi is safe but too far off," said an Indian intelligence officer posted in Dhaka.

Barua owns a string of businesses in Bangladesh that funded his once-powerful group. These include a tannery, department stores, garment factories, travel agencies, transport companies and investments in the capital markets.

Six major separatist groups from northeast Indian states are believed to run a total of 30 bases in the jungles of the Sylhet and Chittagong Hill Tracts areas of eastern Bangladesh.

Indian intelligence officers say that the hideouts are used as camps for the cadres and to hold hostages regularly kidnapped for ransom from the northeastern states, while the leaders have homes in the cities of Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong.

Paresh Barua escaped three attacks in Dhaka this year - one in front of the posh Basin Leaf restaurant in the upmarket Gulshan area, another in a house owned by a Jatiyo Party politician in the same area, and the third in the office of the Challenger Transport company in the Segun Bagicha locality.

"After these attacks he fled to Karachi, helped by his patrons in Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence," alleges G M Srivastava, a police officer in Assam. Barua, he said, was behind sporadic raids over the international border into Assam.

The chief of another militant outfit called the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), Ranjit Debbarma, stays in house close to the residence of Paresh Barua and the two enjoy close relations.

Indian diplomats in Dhaka say that Zia's new government may be deterred from sheltering separatist groups in view of growing international opposition to terrorist activities following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But some of them thought that Bangladesh's Directorate of General Forces Intelligence, or DGFI, may continue to find use for the insurgent leaders in "offensive intelligence" activities.

"They [DGFI] sheltered them even under huge pressure from Sheikh Hasina's government. There is no way they are going to hand these rebels to the Indians, despite changes in the global situation," said an Indian diplomat on condition of anonymity.

But a Bangladeshi journalist commented that Bangladeshi agencies would want to avoid retaliation by India through its support of the Shanti Bahini (Peace Force) run by tribal insurgents in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. However, Indian officials say that there is no way India, which projects itself internationally as a victim of trans-border terrorism, would want to be caught promoting insurgencies in neighboring countries.

Assam's leading security analyst Jaideep Saikia and author of the book Contours on insurgencies, thinks that common interests will get the better of local politics, which trigger off conflicts between the neighbors. There is growing cooperation between the two countries and the Indian interior establishment cannot go back to the days when it promoted the Shanti Bahini, he said. Added Saikia, "This will be self-defeating."

(Inter Press Service)