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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| India frets over Pakistan-Bangladesh nexus |
| 2004-03-06 |
| Apologies for the length 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. 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. 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. 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: 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. The ISI has had a lucrative relationship with Dawood Ibrahim, so using other gangsters would be productive. The Indians have also made use of Bangladeshi gangsters in the past to assasinate various terrorist leaders. The ISI has plans to appoint Pakistan nationals, trained as maulvis in madrassas 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, a constituent of the present government, reportedly issued in January 2002 instructions to its districts amirs to provided help and shelter to ISI operatives. Its plans include setting up jihadi training camps in Moulvi Bazar and Chittagong with an ISI controller in Cox’s Bazar. Much like the Saudis, the Pakistanis tend to train Deobandi Mullahs, even though most Pakistanis follow the moderate Brehvli sect. The Bangladesh branch of the JeI is totally subservient to the Pakistani branch, and always has been. Top IIG leaders staying in Bangladesh, like Paresh Barua and Ranjan Daimary, have close links with the ISI. Others like Sashadhar Choudhary, ULFA, Julius Dorphang and Bobby Marwein (both HNLC), Dilash Marak and Jerome C Momin (both ANVC), 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. All of these men are Christians or Hindus BTW. 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 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. Most of the training of Indian Muslims has been conducted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, since the Wahabis have made inroads amongst some Indian Muslims after the massacres in Gujarat a couple years ago. 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 HUJI, 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. The DGFI is just like the ISI, an organisation riddled with extremists who are bitterly opposed to the liberals in Bangladesh, and have a symbiotic relationship with the Jihadis. 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. The favorable demographic pattern refers to the millions of Bangladeshi migrants who have crossed the border with India, and who now make up a majority or a plurlity of the border districts. As a result, many small Jihadi groups have sprung up, although they have had little impact so far. Probably because most Bangladeshis are just looking for a better life rather than a war. 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. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #1 All of these men are Christians or Hindus BTW. My guess is that the following are the B>Christians: Sashadhar Choudhary, Dilash Marak, Bishwamohan Debbarma,and Ranjit Debbarma, ... and the following are the Hindus: Julius Dorphang, Bobby Marwein, and Jerome C Momin. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-3-6 7:19:13 PM |