Bangladesh: Operation clean-up of militant camps
Bangladesh: Operation clean-up of militant camps
Thu, 2009-05-07 00:05
By Vinod Vedi - Syndicate Features
India will be terribly remiss, once again, if it loses the opportunity presented by Bangladesh’s current campaign of cleaning up militant camps on its territory which it believes are involved in the mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles against Army personnel. India needs to bolster the security along the Indo-Bangladesh border so that the militants who have been harassing it over the past several decades are caught in a hammer-and-anvil situation between the security forces of the two countries. They are not wanted in Bangladesh and they should not be allowed to re-enter India.
The last time such a fortuitous turn of events happened was when Bhutan decided to rid itself of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) training camps and sanctuaries in its southern districts bordering India. Indian security forces were informed in advance and had deployed personnel to apprehend the fleeing militants but they made a mess of it and large numbers of ULFA cadres managed to sneak through India into Bangladesh to set up camps there under the tutelage of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The recent series of bomb blasts in Assam on the occasion of the raising day of ULFA is the legacy of that lapse in the maintenance of internal security and border management.
Now that there has been a change of regime in Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina is at the helm of affairs. Her government sees the mutiny in the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and the killing of dozens of senior military officers as a jihadi conspiracy against her regime; the crackdown against Islamist fundamentalists and India-specific terrorist groups who have built camps in Bangladesh should be taken full advantage of by India.
A coordinated effort by security forces on both sides of the border will bring greater fruit than just a unilateral effort on the Bangladesh side. Both countries will benefit immensely if inimical forces operating at the behest of Inter-Services Intelligence and the Al Qaeda-led United Jehad Council are pursued and decimated.
That this is a dual threat -–jihadi/militancy – faced by both countries is borne out by the kind of targets the Bangladesh security forces are engaged in the past few weeks. At Maulvi Bazaar in the north-east of the country and close to the Tripura border, the Rapid Action Battalion struck at an All Tripura Tiger Force camp inhabited by 15 terrorists. One was caught and the 14 others escaped into the forest with weapons and ammunition.
The area around Maulvi Bazaar is infested by Indian militants like the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur, the ULFA and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. With the change in regime in Dhaka, many of the militant groups have begun to feel insecure and there are reports that they were preparing to re-enter India and set up camps in the jungles on this side. In the light of the Bangladesh action Indian security forces need to be put on high alert and given the wherewithal like handheld thermal imagers and battlefield surveillance radars developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation to enable detection of movement at night.
That this is election season is all the more reason to be doubly vigilant given that Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence is making a determined effort to disrupt the polls in Jammu and Kashmir and has given similar instruction to its pawns and moles operating from behind the jihadi organizations like the Harkat-ul-jehad-i-Islami (HuJI) and the Jamaat-i-Islami and about half a dozen other offshoots. Their operatives have been arrested in various places deep inside India and it would be heartening to see that they are effectively stopped at the very border well before they can carry out bombing attacks against soft targets in India.
Indian security posture in the north-east during the election season must be one of "Looking in, Looking out". Looking in to counter those who are already inside the country like the ULFA, the Isak-Muivah and the Khaplang factions of the NSCN, the Manipuri, the Bodo and the Tripura rebels (apart from indulging in internecine warfare among themselves, these outfits are minting money through extortion rackets far removed from the original ideology), find in the elections an open season for disruption and random killings to make their presence felt in an era of diminishing returns.
The "looking out" component would be the sentries of the Border Security Force in their outposts hopefully coordinating with the Bangladesh security forces opposite them about the presence of inimical elements on the other side.
The intention should be to keep militants running, too occupied in saving themselves than committing indiscriminate mayhem. Over time, that will tell and the attrition rate due to surrenders and physical elimination will rise. This can happen only if Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, founder of Bangladesh, is at the helm of affairs.
India must, therefore, seize the opportunity that has been presented to it and make the best of it. It makes little sense to allow the terrorists to enter the country and then go chasing them after they have completed their nefarious missions. Some years ago it was promised by the security forces that terrorists would be stopped at the Line of Control. We are yet to see that day. In the north-east the wide open spaces left unfenced leaves a huge gap in territorial protection.
The seriousness and the concentration of effort on the part of the Government of Bangladesh can be seen in the manner in which it has tackled the twin dangers of mushrooming jihadi madrasas and foreign militants camping on its soil simultaneously. Even before its special forces struck at militant hideouts around Maulvi Bazaar a task force raided a madrassa run by a British national of Bangladeshi descent and discovered small arms, a large cache of ammunition and instruments to manufacture weapons very much on the lines of the arms bazaar that is prevalent in Pakistan’s notorious Dera Adam Khel where everything from handguns to rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices are manufactured in cottage industries.
Though the person who was running a charitable institution from Britain had been acquitted of charges of being involved in terrorist activity (his companion was jailed) he remained under suspicion of Britain’s internal intelligence agency MI-5. Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband during his visit to India appeared to make out a case for terrorism by brining up Kashmir in the context of the Mumbai carnage.
The British Foreign Office as reported by the BBC had no comment on the involvement of a British national in jihadi activity in the garb of charity and madrassa education. It leaves huge doubts about the commitment of those involved in the so-called War against Terror and leaves little room for the victims of jihadi terrorism like India but to rely on their own resources to curb the menace.
Needless to say, the moment is ripe to take effective counter-measures against cross-border jihadi terrorism that is afflicting both India and Bangladesh.
- Asian Tribune -
India will be terribly remiss, once again, if it loses the opportunity presented by Bangladesh’s current campaign of cleaning up militant camps on its territory which it believes are involved in the mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles against Army personnel. India needs to bolster the security along the Indo-Bangladesh border so that the militants who have been harassing it over the past several decades are caught in a hammer-and-anvil situation between the security forces of the two countries. They are not wanted in Bangladesh and they should not be allowed to re-enter India.
The last time such a fortuitous turn of events happened was when Bhutan decided to rid itself of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) training camps and sanctuaries in its southern districts bordering India. Indian security forces were informed in advance and had deployed personnel to apprehend the fleeing militants but they made a mess of it and large numbers of ULFA cadres managed to sneak through India into Bangladesh to set up camps there under the tutelage of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The recent series of bomb blasts in Assam on the occasion of the raising day of ULFA is the legacy of that lapse in the maintenance of internal security and border management.
Now that there has been a change of regime in Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina is at the helm of affairs. Her government sees the mutiny in the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and the killing of dozens of senior military officers as a jihadi conspiracy against her regime; the crackdown against Islamist fundamentalists and India-specific terrorist groups who have built camps in Bangladesh should be taken full advantage of by India.
A coordinated effort by security forces on both sides of the border will bring greater fruit than just a unilateral effort on the Bangladesh side. Both countries will benefit immensely if inimical forces operating at the behest of Inter-Services Intelligence and the Al Qaeda-led United Jehad Council are pursued and decimated.
That this is a dual threat -–jihadi/militancy – faced by both countries is borne out by the kind of targets the Bangladesh security forces are engaged in the past few weeks. At Maulvi Bazaar in the north-east of the country and close to the Tripura border, the Rapid Action Battalion struck at an All Tripura Tiger Force camp inhabited by 15 terrorists. One was caught and the 14 others escaped into the forest with weapons and ammunition.
The area around Maulvi Bazaar is infested by Indian militants like the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur, the ULFA and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. With the change in regime in Dhaka, many of the militant groups have begun to feel insecure and there are reports that they were preparing to re-enter India and set up camps in the jungles on this side. In the light of the Bangladesh action Indian security forces need to be put on high alert and given the wherewithal like handheld thermal imagers and battlefield surveillance radars developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation to enable detection of movement at night.
That this is election season is all the more reason to be doubly vigilant given that Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence is making a determined effort to disrupt the polls in Jammu and Kashmir and has given similar instruction to its pawns and moles operating from behind the jihadi organizations like the Harkat-ul-jehad-i-Islami (HuJI) and the Jamaat-i-Islami and about half a dozen other offshoots. Their operatives have been arrested in various places deep inside India and it would be heartening to see that they are effectively stopped at the very border well before they can carry out bombing attacks against soft targets in India.
Indian security posture in the north-east during the election season must be one of "Looking in, Looking out". Looking in to counter those who are already inside the country like the ULFA, the Isak-Muivah and the Khaplang factions of the NSCN, the Manipuri, the Bodo and the Tripura rebels (apart from indulging in internecine warfare among themselves, these outfits are minting money through extortion rackets far removed from the original ideology), find in the elections an open season for disruption and random killings to make their presence felt in an era of diminishing returns.
The "looking out" component would be the sentries of the Border Security Force in their outposts hopefully coordinating with the Bangladesh security forces opposite them about the presence of inimical elements on the other side.
The intention should be to keep militants running, too occupied in saving themselves than committing indiscriminate mayhem. Over time, that will tell and the attrition rate due to surrenders and physical elimination will rise. This can happen only if Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, founder of Bangladesh, is at the helm of affairs.
India must, therefore, seize the opportunity that has been presented to it and make the best of it. It makes little sense to allow the terrorists to enter the country and then go chasing them after they have completed their nefarious missions. Some years ago it was promised by the security forces that terrorists would be stopped at the Line of Control. We are yet to see that day. In the north-east the wide open spaces left unfenced leaves a huge gap in territorial protection.
The seriousness and the concentration of effort on the part of the Government of Bangladesh can be seen in the manner in which it has tackled the twin dangers of mushrooming jihadi madrasas and foreign militants camping on its soil simultaneously. Even before its special forces struck at militant hideouts around Maulvi Bazaar a task force raided a madrassa run by a British national of Bangladeshi descent and discovered small arms, a large cache of ammunition and instruments to manufacture weapons very much on the lines of the arms bazaar that is prevalent in Pakistan’s notorious Dera Adam Khel where everything from handguns to rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices are manufactured in cottage industries.
Though the person who was running a charitable institution from Britain had been acquitted of charges of being involved in terrorist activity (his companion was jailed) he remained under suspicion of Britain’s internal intelligence agency MI-5. Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband during his visit to India appeared to make out a case for terrorism by brining up Kashmir in the context of the Mumbai carnage.
The British Foreign Office as reported by the BBC had no comment on the involvement of a British national in jihadi activity in the garb of charity and madrassa education. It leaves huge doubts about the commitment of those involved in the so-called War against Terror and leaves little room for the victims of jihadi terrorism like India but to rely on their own resources to curb the menace.
Needless to say, the moment is ripe to take effective counter-measures against cross-border jihadi terrorism that is afflicting both India and Bangladesh.
- Asian Tribune -
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