As mentioned the officer corps of the DGFI and personnel of the NSI have been extensively trained in Pakistan and the CIA and the MI6 have also imparted occasional trainings. There exist special arrangements with Pakistan for training of Bangladeshi military and civilian intelligence officers by the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan. The special units of the DGFI are also required to undergo CIA type commando training. Most of them are expert in handling explosives, sophisticated weapons and other black arts of intelligence trade.
Officers of the DGFI and occasionally NSI are assigned cover postings to diplomatic missions in countries considered important to strategic intelligence to Bangladesh. According to Indian intelligence departments, there are about 9 Bangladeshi cover intelligence operators in its Delhi and Kolkata missions.
With personal knowledge and knowledge borrowed from institutions it can be safely asserted that the DGFI has excellent penetration in India, including numbers of penetrations amongst the intelligentsia, academia, print and Kolkata based electronic media (TV channels), political parties, business community and certain minority organisations and institutions. The allegation that the DGFI has achieved penetration in the National Security Advisory Board cannot be shrugged off. Top Indian agencies require hard examination of these affirmative statements.
Besides the DGFI and NSI, intelligence units exist in the BDR and RAB. While the BDR generates shallow trans-border intelligence, the RAB is tasked to generate intelligence on the Communist and Maoist (santrasbadi) organisations and several Indian terrorist groups operating from Bangladesh soil. The RAB is better known for ‘cross fire’ killings of suspected ‘santrasbadis’ euphemism for groups operating against the BNP alliance. Both the BDR and RAB report to Home Department but the DGFI is mandatorily kept informed.
To understand the growth and stranglehold of the DGFI and related Islamist groups on secular Bangla Muslim psyche, a little diversion to past history pages is necessary. Pakistan ideology was conceived in Punjabi and United Province’s Muslim minds, but the political movement was spearheaded by a section of Urdu speaking Muslims; a handful of Bengali speaking Ashraf and most others Ajlaf Muslims were mobilised by the ulama and a few Muslim landlords. Economic clashes against Hindu landlords and business houses and advanced Bengali Hindu dominance in the services had strengthened the separatist tendency.
