was more of a liability than an asset to Bangladesh in its subversive campaigns against India. This isolated gesture, unless followed by the unlikely event of several repetitions in the near future, with cadres of far more dangerous terrorist and insurgent outfits that have secured permanent safe havens on Bangladeshi soil, will stop drastically short of addressing the numerous problems between the two countries.

The ATTF militants who were handed over, were reportedly arrested during a BDR raid on the long-established ATTF ‘headquarters’ at Satcherri in Habiganj District of Bangladesh, across the North District of Tripura, on October 10, 2004. Bangladesh Police later booked all the militants under the Arms Act and charge sheeted them in the District and Sessions Court in Habiganj. All the militants then were sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment which ended in July 2008. The BDR then decided to hand them over to the BSF. Significantly, these militants were all lower rung cadres and had joined the outfit only a year and half prior to their arrest.

This is not the first time that the BDR has created the appearance of cooperation with Indian authorities. The July 24, 2007 surrender of the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) chairman Julius Dorphang in Meghalaya was indirectly facilitated by BDR personnel. The HNLC chairman, along with four of his fellow cadres, travelled from the outfit’s camp in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and crossed over into Indian territory at Lyngkhat village, near the India-Bangladesh border. Again, on April 3, 2008, acting on BSF’s request, BDR personnel conducted raids against Borok National Council of Tripura (BNCT) militants at an unspecified location in the CHT area, forcing them to release two abducted villagers from Tripura. More recently, on August 22, 2008, BDR personnel handed over Jackson Arengh, a militant of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), who had served a four year prison term in Bangladesh.

There is, however, a clear pattern to these incidents of ‘cooperation’ by the BDR. It is certainly not a coincidence that, so far, the militants who have been handed over by BDR belong to outfits that have been more or less neutralised in the States where they primarily operated. Tripura, for example, till 2004, recorded significant militancy related activities, but has since, through effective and forceful Police action, managed to virtually neutralize the principal insurgent groups. Thus, from a peak of as many as 514 fatalities in 2000, and 167 in 2004, the State recorded a total of 169 deaths in the three years between 2005 and 2007. During the current year, till September 23, only 19 fatalities, including those of 13 militants, were reported from the State. Both the active militant groups in Tripura, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the ATTF, have been thoroughly marginalised and are, today, a pale shadow of the disruptive forces they were a few years ago.

Similarly, the HNLC in Meghalaya is in a shambles. Effective Police action, withdrawal of popular support and high-profile surrenders like that of outfit’s Chairman Dorphang, has broken the back of the organisation. The outfit’s cadre strength, once in the range of over 250, has been reduced to under 50. With the other militant group in the State, the Achik National Volunteers Council (ANVC), observing a ceasefire with the Government since July 23, 2004, militancy in Meghalaya is all but over. Only seven deaths, all of militants, have been reported in the State in the current year (till September 23). Likewise, the NDFB is under a tripartite ceasefire agreement with the Assam State Government and the Union Government since May 25, 2005. Most of its cadres are presently based in designated camps set up by the Government.

Indian insurgents, once described by the former Prime Minister and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Khaleda Zia as "freedom fighters", have served as critical instruments of the anti-India policy of successive Bangladeshi regimes. As a part of this policy, jointly authored by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh has provided safe haven to militants from virtually every organisation operating in India’s northeast and, over the years, consistently rebuffed Indian pleas to act against them. These militants have been financed and trained by the ISI-DGFI combine and unleashed regularly on the north-eastern states with full knowledge and cooperation of BDR. Even the ascendancy of the ‘India’s friend’, the Awami League (AL)’s Sheikh Hasina, failed to bring about any significant change in Bangladeshi policy towards the Indian insurgents. The leverage and facilities provided to these militants by the Bangladeshi authorities remains proportionally linked with their nuisance value in India. It is, consequently, not surprising that the neutralisation or marginalisation of individual outfits in their parent States downgrades their footing and the concomitant provision of support within Bangladesh.

Outfits like the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), however, remain in a different league. ULFA, in spite of the setbacks it has suffered due to the ceasefire recently declared by two of its major military formations, is still seen to be useful within the ISI/DGFI’s action plans in Assam. ULFA cadres continue to be pushed into Assam from Bangladesh with explosives. On September 8, 2008, for instance, an ISI agent was arrested along with a ULFA cadre in the Nalbari District of Assam with three kilograms of explosives which he had procured from Bangladesh. Given the operational utility of ULFA to the Bangladeshi establishment, a Bhutan type flush-out operation or an irregular raid on the lines of Myanmarese military operations against the outfit are virtually unimaginable in Bangladesh. The outfit’s utility to the twin intelligence agencies ensures the safety of its top leadership and the ULFA establishment in the country. ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua and chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa not only live under State protection in Bangladesh, but have been allowed, on numerous occasions, to fly out of the country to locations in Pakistan and South-east Asia.

The dubious Bangladeshi stand on ULFA is most evident in the case of Anup Chetia, the outfit’s ‘general secretary’. Chetia alias Golap Barua was arrested in December 1997 along with two of his associates, Laxmiprasad and Babul Sharma. In March 1998, the Bangladesh Government filed a chargesheet under Clause 25 (B) of the Special Powers Act for illegal entry into the country, possession of foreign currency notes of 16 countries, a satellite phone and forged Bangladesh passports. Even as Dhaka refused to deport Chetia to India, the Supreme Court handed out a seven-year-three months’ imprisonment on Chetia, which ended on February 25, 2005. Since then, Chetia remains in protective custody, shielded by a Dhaka-based human rights organisation – Manobadhikar Bastobayon Sangstha. The Bangladesh Government cites the absence of an extradition treaty with India for Chetia’s prolonged stay in that country. The absence of the treaty, however, acted as no hurdle in the September 14 handover of ATTF militants as well as that of the NDFB cadre in August.

The dubious Bangladeshi stand is further evidenced in the position of the Caretaker Government on Harkat-ul Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B). Although this outfit’s involvement in terror activities in Bangladesh is limited to few incidents, such as the 2004 grenade attacks on the AL rally in Dhaka, it has been a keen participant in several terror attacks on Indian urban centres beginning with the January 2002 attack on the American Center in Kolkata. HuJI-B cadres regularly cross over the porous Indo-Bangladesh borders and melt into the population before engaging in subversive and terrorist activities. On September 26, for instance, security forces in Assam killed seven Bangladeshi cadres of HuJI-B in an encounter at Bashbari area of Dhubri District. Six revolvers, three grenades, two gelatin sticks, six detonators, two kilograms of explosives, some Bangladeshi currency notes, a Bangladeshi mobile SIM card and addresses of some hotels in Bangladeshi were recovered from the slain militants’ possession. Reports in September indicate that, notwithstanding numberless Indian requests to rein in the outfit, HuJI-B has been allowed to float a political party, the Islamic Democratic Party (IDP), by the Caretaker Government. Intelligence agencies in Bangladesh, in spite of the confessions made by HuJI-B operations commander Mufti Abdul Hannan of involvement in the attack on the AL rally, have reportedly found nothing that links this outfit with terror activities. Kazi Azizul Huq, an adviser of the IDP claimed on September 27, "The intelligence agencies gathered that we have no relations to any terrorist networks." On September 26, IDP held an Iftar party at the Diploma Engineers Institution in Dhaka, which was attended by several newspaper editors and human rights organisations. Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner Naim Ahmed told the media that they allowed IDP to arrange the function as it was a ‘religious’ one.

The Caretaker Government’s 21 months’ stint in power has ensured that a number of anti-India elements, especially some retired generals of the DGFI, have been placed in critical positions, from the Election Commission to the National Coordination Committee heading the anti-corruption drive. A former DGFI director Maj. Gen. (Retd.) M. A. Matin has even been made the Adviser (Home Affairs) in the Caretaker Government, one of the 11 advisers who assist Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed to run the Caretaker Government. In his book The Continuation of our Liberation Struggle, released in July 2008, Matin criticised the secular character of Bangladeshi culture, termed the Ekushey February (Bengali language day) celebrations as Hindu cultural activities, lambasted AL leader Sheikh Hasina as an Indian agent and spewed venom at India for Bangladesh’s woes.

The BSF, in its Directors General-level talks with the BDR on August 24, 2008, handed over a list of 263 militant leaders and cadres presently settled within Bangladesh and the detailed location of 110 militant camps / safe houses. The list of militants included the top ULFA leadership, the NLFT chief Biswamohan Debbarma, the ATTF Chief Ranjit Debbarma, the HNLC ‘commander-in-chief’ Bobby Marwein and ‘general secretary’ Cheristerfield Thangkhiew and the NDFB chief Ranjan Daimary. The BDR reportedly agreed to the joint verification of militant camps indicated by the Indian side. Very little, however, is expected to be achieved from such an unlikely venture, due to the very fluid nature of these facilities in Bangladesh and the procedural delay between action proposed and actual implementation.

[South Asian Intelligence Review]