Bangladesh - News And Discussion

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Defiant Bangladesh
Our neighbour is crying for military punishment.

9 March 2005: On Monday, Bangladesh told the Indian foreign office that it would not deport ULFA’s founding general secretary, fundraiser, money-launderer and much-wanted terrorist, Anup Chetia. On the other hand, Indian investigators could question Chetia, provided they produced specific changes (Intelligence, “Bangladesh refuses to deport ULFA leader,” 8 March 2005). The suggestion here is that Bangladesh is a liberal democracy, which protects human rights, while India is a monster state, where rule of law is nonexistent.

The Bangladeshi rejection has not been taken up by the Union cabinet, preoccupied with the self-inflicted wounds in Goa, Jharkhand and Bihar, but the foreign office is expected to take the lead soon. The conditional access granted to Indian investigators won’t be accepted, and pressure will be mounted to deport Chetia. The foreign ministry believes it can do the job of pressuring Bangladesh adequately, but for that, foreign minister Natwar Singh has to show more steel towards anti-India SAARC countries than he has shown so far.

Chetia ended a seven-year-three-month jail sentence for illegally entering Bangladesh on 25 February (Intelligence, “Bangladesh extends Anup Chetia’s custody”). Since India’s deportation request was pending, Chetia should have been given up promptly, there being no other case against him. But Bangladesh’s home ministry intervened to cancel a prison release order, and almost simultaneously, a Dhaka-based human-rights group moved a petition in the high court saying Chetia was personally threatened and ought not to be deported to India.

To the Indian foreign office, Bangladesh has taken the plea that Chetia faces fresh trials in cases of kidnapping in the country and money laundering, and therefore cannot be given up. India has protested that Bangladesh never mentioned these cases before. “It is a transparent attempt to hold Chetia indefinitely in Bangladesh,” said an official. “But this time, we are going to call Bangladesh’s bluff.”

Since Khalida Zia came to power in October 2001, rollercoaster relations with India have steadily plunged, starting with government-backed pogroms against the Hindu minority. Since the Jamaat-e-Islami is part of Zia’s coalition government, Islamists have taken growing control of the country. Al-Qaeda leaders and leaders of allied terrorist groups like the Jamah Islamiyah have found sanctuary in Bangladesh from Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is pumping in huge funds to advance Wahabism through mosques, madrasas, and terrorists training camps, some of which have come up near the border with India.

The ISI, for its part, is using this entire established terrorist infrastructure to destabilise India’s North East. Last year’s violence in the North East originated from Bangladesh. More recently, General Pervez Musharraf ordered Pakistan’s terrorist leadership to relocate its cadres in Bangladesh, and use that country as a base for terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir (Commentary, “Compromising season,” 3 March 2005).

Add to this growing Bangladeshi links with the druglords of South-East Asia. Bangladesh has become a major world centre for refining heroin, and heroin is among its major exports to Singapore and Thailand, whence they are taken by couriers to the European mainland and America. As a failed state, Bangladesh needs terrorist and Saudi funds to keep afloat, and large sections of the population are being sucked into the drug trade or to provide hospitality to visiting terrorist leaders and groups.

India’s concern which generally flows from this rapid Islamisation, Wahabisation and terrorisation of Bangladesh also has a specific root in the alarming spread of North East militant camps in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Sylhet, Jessore, Cox Bazaar, Mymensingh, and other places. The camps have grown from about sixty-five five years ago to over three hundred of them. The most dominant of the North East groups in Bangladesh is the ULFA, and such is its hold on the Bangladesh government, financial and otherwise, Zia is willing to go out on a limb to protect Anup Chetia. The measure of ULFA’s importance for Bangladesh can be judged by the fact that it is willing to confront India, although India’s easy-going attitude to Bangladeshi terrorism so far, infiltrations into India, and illegal migrations, have also contributed.

So, what to do?

When the UPA came to power, it believed the NDA had exaggerated the threat from Bangladesh, and it was in this light that defence minister Pranab Mukherjee overruled offensive action against the holed up North East terror groups there. He hoped that exerted pressure on Bangladesh would force terrorist leaders to flee to distant countries in the West, from where it would be difficult to control terrorist actions. What Mukherjee did not count on was Bangladeshi resistance to Indian pressure, Khalida Zia believing that the UPA would be softer towards her than the NDA.

But UPA attitudes changed after the attempted assassination of the Bangladesh opposition leader, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, and the agencies reflected anger for being kept out of the April-2004 Chittagong arms haul investigations. The government wanted to adopt a carrot-and-stick approach, agree to buy anything that Bangladesh exported, provided it shut the terror camps and acted against the operating North East groups like Bhutan and Myanmar. Typically, the stick was never hinted at much less displayed. The refusal to deport Anup Chetia establishes a new high point of Bangladeshi defiance of India, and now India has to show it is willing and able to wield the stick as well.

Being a pipsqueak, ragtag state, even a token offensive mounted by the Indian military, particularly the IAF, is sufficient to get Bangladesh on its knees. For some months now, the Indian Army has been pressing for air raids against the established North East terror camps in Bangladesh. “If we destroy about fifty camps either in the CHT area or Sylhet with precision bombing,” said a general staff officer, “child’s play really for the IAF, Bangladesh should come to its senses pronto. We don’t necessarily hide the raids. We do it and tell Bangladesh we did it, and to be prepared for worse unless it heeds India’s security concerns. Bangladesh will come crawling, and then we can provide salves in the form of opening our markets to them, buying whatever they produce, etc. But you have to wield the stick first.”

The military understands more than any institution the necessity of bilateral friendships, but its patience is worn thin with Bangladesh. There is general disbelief about the foreign office’s capacity or inclination to coerce Bangladesh, but for the moment, the military is willing to go along. But pressure is mounting on the government to show Bangladesh its place. “Everyone accepts,” said an official, “that Bangladesh needs solution, otherwise it could turn a worse problem than Pakistan.” <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->