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.

I have extensively written about the ISI. Many other intelligence experts and authors have also written about this one fourth soul of Pakistan. Some Pakistani authors have also commented on ISI interference in domestic political affairs and its jihad against democracy. However, very little attention has been paid by Indian intelligence agencies and security experts about the intelligence edifices of Bangladesh especially the Directorate General of Force Intelligence (DGFI), the spy agency intricately dominated by the Army. It also controls the political destiny of Bangladesh and interferes in Indian’s security concerns. In fact, it is the cousin of the ISI.

Bangladesh intelligence machineries are pivoted around:

• The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI),
• The Directorate General of National Security Intelligence (DGNSI)
• Military Intelligence (MI)
• Intelligence units of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR)
• Intelligence units of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)
• Criminal Intelligence Department CID)
• Presidential Security Force (PSF).

Our focus is on the DGFI, a cousin of the ISI. Before we get down to elaborate the ISI, DGFI and Jiahdi Tanzeem collaborations in spearheading jihadist terrorist actions in India, it is necessary to understand certain basics.

There is no need to panic about Bangladesh being branded as one of the exporters of Jihad to India, besides exporting people to India with a steady flow. Migration from Eastern Bengal to the more developed Western Bengal, Bihar and Assam had been a historic feature, which took a communal turn with imbalance in demographic feature in several Indian states and involvement of Bangladeshi intelligence agencies and nationals in executing terror actions in India. Export of Jihad is a new development. But the use of East Pakistan / Bangladesh soil by the Inter Services Intelligence and its cousin, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, can be traced back to 1948, when Pakistan Intelligence Bureau smuggled out A. Z. Phizo, the rebel Naga leaders from India by securing him inside a coffin. Insurgency in the Indian Northeast and involvement of Pakistani and Bangladesh intelligence agencies are inseparable.

However, deep inside, the common people of Bangladesh are secular and left to the democratic elements, they would like to trim the fiery operations of the BDR, RAB, NSI etc organisations and ask the DGFI to function as a simple foreign intelligence gathering agency and supplementing the Military Intelligence. Unfortunately for Bangladesh and India the secular forces were crippled almost irretrievably by the Pakistan loyalist Jamait-e-Islami and its tentacles, Pakistan oriented cadres of the Armed Forces and assassination of Bangabandhu Mujib, his family members and most of the frontline freedom fighters. Bangladesh’s army coup was resourced by the ISI, the Pakistani State and the CIA. Under no circumstances Henry Kissinger like American hawks could allow a pro-India, therefore, pro Soviet Block power to be at the helm of Pakistan.

However, it may be noted that some Bangladeshi Diaspora have started voicing opposition to the DGFI and army domination. A few political leaders have also joined the struggle in a low key manner. I would mention about a few at the end of this short dissertation.

The proxy war operations against India by Pakistan IB and the ISI from East Pakistan had ceased temporarily after 1971 liberation war. However, the link was revived after President Zia-ur-Rahman, the fake Father of the Nation, visited Pakistan in September 1977. Zia permitted the Bangla Jamait chief Ameer Ghulam Azam to return to Bangladesh and reopen his shop. The Jamait later became a political partner of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). It is also described by secular Bangladeshis as—Bangla Name Pakistan.

President Zia-ur-Rahman had the privilege of receiving in Dhaka two distinguished but low profile foreign visitors some time in late October 1977. One of them, Lt. General Ghulam Jillani Khan, the ISI chief and the architect of Afghan mujahideen war, was one time boss of Zia. The other visitor, who flew in a special flight from Bangkok, was Michael Hayden, the CIA Chief. Their discreet visit was followed by formation of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence as a part of Military and external intelligence in November 1977.

In mid 1978 about twenty army officers assigned to the DGFI were deputed to the Camp Peary, “The Farm” training centre of the CIA in Virginia. Later in the same year another group was deputed to the Hartford training facility of the CIA in North Carolina. The DGFI started sending its officers to the ISI training Centre in Islamabad. The readers may like to have a visual glimpse of the Brown building where one of the most notorious fulcrums of evil, the ISI is located. For reasons of certain delicate bilateral considerations I desist from giving a tour of the internal areas of the hub of the fulcrum of evil.

ISI HEAD QUARTER IN ISLAMABAD Skirted by: Bagh Bhattar, Apara Bazar and Islamabad Sports Stadium on the flanks of Kashmir Road.

Presently the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) is headed by Major General Golam Mohammed. Till 2007 Ghulam Azam’s son Brig Azam Mir was the most influential Deputy Director of the DGFI. He was removed by the present Army dominated so called caretaker Government after Mir’s hands were exposed for involvement in large scale of Bihari labour killings in Assam by the ULFA.
During the BNP regime, in which the Jamait-e-Islami was a partner, the DGFI was saturated with officers ideologically loyal to Pakistan and Jamait-e-Islami and dormant elements of the Muslim League, who took shelter under the wings of the BNP and Jatiya Oikya Party. Present Bureau chiefs, Brigadier General A. T. M. Amin and Brigadier General Fazlul Bari, are two of the most powerful movers-and-shakers of this current military regime headed by Army Chief General Moeen U. Ahmed. Political leaders in Bangladesh allege that General Moeen uses the DGFI for total internal political manipulations.

The 14 storied building of the DGFI is located near Kachukhet (arum field) Bazaar near the army GHQ. It is also known as Key Point Installation. The readers may like to have a look at the location of the DGFI HQ, which is an equal partner of the ISI in exporting jihad to India. I desist from an interior tour for various reasons.

With about 10,000 officers the DGFI is spread over 64 districts and over 50 Upa-Zillas. Besides Dhaka, its large presence has been observed in Rajshahi, Jessore, Chattagram, Sylhet and Mymensingh. In internal matters the DGFI started open interference from the time of General Zia and it was intensified by General Ershad. General Zia is considered as the father of Islamisation of Bangladesh. His father, a chemist in pre-partition Calcutta, was a prominent Muslim League leader. His Muslim League chromosomes had the better of his Bengali nationalism that had prompted him to rise in protest against Pakistani genocide. General Ershad consolidated the Islamisation process and allowed the Jamait and other Islamist organisations and gave a free hand to the DGFI to collaborate with the ISI for operations in India’s Northeast.

Two DGFI heads before Golam Mohammad, Major General ASM Nazrul Islam and Major General Sadiq Hasan Rumi played important roles in establishing firm relationship with the Northeast insurgent groups and accommodating Pakistani Jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jais-e-Mohammad, Hijbut Tehrir etc. The Pakistan branch of the Harkatal- ul Jihad al Islami was allowed to train and motivate the Bangladesh branch of the HuJI. These tanzeems were used for Joint and Loner operations inside India under guidance of the ISI’s Dhaka station and the DGFI.

DGFI HQ, KACHUKHET BAZAAR, DHAKA

The DGFI is mostly staffed by military personnel with attached field units and detachments in the Bangladesh Rifles, which are equivalent to the Border Rangers of Pakistan, and to some extent, it follows the training and functional pattern of the Indian Border Security Force. The DGFI maintains intelligence unit components in the RAB, who normally liaise with the insurgents and terrorist groups in India.

The agency is divided into twelve Bureaus, each one handling subject and territory desks. Very back in November 2005 Colonel Shafiq was the bureau in-charge of India Division. In recent months, Colonel Rabiur Islam has replaced him. In India’s neighbourhood, Bureau 3 handles Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, though there is a separate Bureau for the SAARC countries. These officers report to the chief of the South Asia Division of the agency. The India desk has four distinct sections, which handle North Eastern states, West Bengal, rest of India and Muslim affairs in India. In 2002, a new Bureau X was started for overseeing activities of the internal and international Jihadi Tanzeems. Knowledgeable sources in Bangladesh opine that this particular Bureau also plans and gets executed subversive operations in India. A part of the Bureau, known as Dawa Section, handles Islamic NGOs, zaqat matters and supervises internal and external money flow to these organisations. Like the ISI, the DGFI has also an ISPR division, which works as the public face for Pakistan Army.

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.

Nationalism had dawned on Bengali Muslims much earlier than the Aligarh brand renaissance was spearheaded by Sir Sayyid Ahmad, a close associate of the British rulers. Alongside Hindu renaissance in Bengal, Muslim renaissance also started through vernacular media, association with Hindu elite and faster access to educational institutions. Both urban and rural Bengali Muslims were responsible for spearheading secular, linguistic, and cultural nationalism. However, the Urban based section of the Urdu speaking Muslim Ashrafs were influenced by the Upper and Northwest Indian Muslims who, from the beginning stuck to the historic belief of separatism and the need for separate Muslim nationalist identity. In present Bangladesh too these two distinct lines of division are clearly visible.

To make the analysis brief it is stated that Pakistan had never reconciled with the break up of its territorial integrity and defeat of religion based Two Nation theory. Sooner than latter, it piloted a conspiracy to eliminate the top freedom fighters and succeeded in giving rebirth to the Islamist forces. After the Afghan saga and emergence of Islamic International jihad, Pakistan regained firm foothold in Bangladesh. Acute Islamic fundamentalism and communalism are again threatening the gasping minority that believe in secular concepts. Bangladesh is emerging as the backup replica of Islamist Pakistan.

While the Jamait-e-Islami was revived by Zia-ur-Rahman, its student wing and former Ansar and Badr loyalists rallied around Islamic Chhatra Shibir (student group) with deep connectivity with Islamic Students Organisation of Pakistan and the International Islamic Students Federation. However, proliferation in Islamist jihadi Tanzeems was intensified after the CIA, ISI, DGFI jointly recruited over 30,000 Bengali and about 5000 Rohingiya (Arakanese Muslims) for the Afghan jihad, They were flown or shipped to Pakistan and were trained in ISI managed camps in Peshawar, Quetta, Chaman and later in certain mujahideen run training facilities inside Afghanistan. It may be noted that most of these Bengali recruits were attached to the Hizb-e-Islami group of Gulbuddin Hikmetyar, an ISI stooge, close to General Zia-ul-Haq.

About 8000 remnants of the highly trained Bengali jihadis returned to Bangladesh around 1989-90 along with unaccounted number of Arab Al Qaeda fighters. Bangladesh government headed by Begum Zia denied existence of Al Qaeda members in Bangladesh, but maintained mysterious silence about the Afghan veterans. On return from Pakistan, some even from Bosnia, Kosovo and far off Chechnya, these jihadis fanned out to interior districts and gradually started establishing shop in the form of masjids and madrasas.

There are about 32 listed Islamist terrorist groups in Bangladesh. However, for our purpose brief study of the following is sufficient. I have discussed this in details in my book Fulcrum of Evil-ISI-CIA-Al Qaeda Nexus. Curious readers may like to read the details. These jihadi organisations are used by the DGFI and the ISI for carrying out jihadi activities in India. Recent incidents of killing of 7 armed HUJI militants infiltrating through Barpeta areas of Assam and serial explosions in Agartala indicate that besides being involved in other parts of India the DGFI sponsored HUJI and other groups are activating the Northeastern part of the country as well.

The main Bangladesh based Tanzeems are: Jamait-e-Islami (JeI), Islami Chhatra Shibir, Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), The Jihad Movement of Bangladesh, Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) Jagrato Muslim Janata (JMJ), Hijbut Tehrir, Allhar Dal (Party of Allah), Jamait ul Mujahideen Balgladesh (Bangla Bhai),
Shahadat-i-Alam-al-Hiqma, Tablighi Jammat Bangladesh, Ahl-e-Hadis Movement (Hadith) Bangladesh and Sadhin Bangla Islamic Front etc.

Jamait-e-Islami was a political partner of the last BNP government during whose regime the jihadi fronts escalated their activities that included attack on the British High Commissioner, Sheikh Hasina and forty-nine serial bomb blasts all over Bangladesh in a single day. Very recently HuJI has also been registered as a political party, styled as Independent Democratic Party (IDP). Some un-established allegations have been made that a few pro-US Bangladeshi people and an Israeli are the brains behind the IDP. Whatever the truth is, it is a constant factor that most of these organisations have vast madrasa and mosque network all over Bangladesh which churn out jihadi warriors. These very tanzeems have been exploited by the ISI/DGFI sleuths for carrying out attacks in India. Some of the spectacular DGFI orchestrated attacks and attacks in partnerships with the ISI would be detailed in paragraphs below.

The readers may like to see the ground location of some of the major jihadi tanzeems in Bangladesh:

JIHADI HUBS IN BANGLADESH

Expanded forms of the abbreviations are: AD (Allhar Dal), HT (Hijbut Tehrir), HUJI (Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islam), and AQ BD (Al Qaeda-Bangladesh). For lack of space it has not been possible to show details of the locations and concentrations of other tanzeems. They are present in all the districts of Bangladesh.

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A humble effort to focus on the following operational aspects can be approached through some brief analysis of the following:
• Mechanism of sabotage and subversion in India (jihad),
• Operational tools and modalities of execution,
• DGFI’s loner operations,
• DGFI-ISI joint operations,
• Impact on India’s internal, external and strategic security.
• Motivation and objectives (including historiography) of the Islamist fundamentalist’s agenda and long-term vision in India

Mechanisms for carrying out sabotage and subversive activities (insurgency, terrorism, jihad, communal actions) involve certain key tradecraft ingredients, which are not normally understood by the media, political class and general analysts. The victims react spontaneously out of pain and memory declassifies the incidents as life advances inevitably. These mechanics involve indoctrination, intensive training, establishment of secret apparatchiks and, support from foreign governments/intelligence agencies and ideological fountainheads located in foreign soils.

These operations involve both Macro and Micro planning. The instances of Macro Planning by the ISI and the DGFI require some elaborations though solid instances:

1. In May 1969, a devastating explosion rocked Imphal town. The Manipur police revealed that some youths manufacturing firecrackers had accidentally caused the blast. Our intelligence network and investigation brought out a nasty story. Arambam Somorendra Singh had established the United Liberation Front of Manipur in 1964, after he broke away from Meitei State Committee and a faction of the Communist movement started by H. Irabot Singh. His deputies Oinam Sudhir and Naorekpam Biseswar had visited Pakistan in October 1968 to seek help from Pakistan for launching a Naga-type armed revolution in Manipur. Another group of three was sent in January 1969. The team was taken to Dacca and was debriefed by Choudry Ghulam Hussain of the ISI, East Pakistan unit. The ISI initially tried to bring about a marriage of the UNLF with the Naga Federal Government. This was not acceptable to the Meiteis, as the slogan of Naga integration had gathered momentum. On return they started experimenting with IED fabrication. The first major venture misfired killing two activists. Police did not go into the depth and allowed the under ground network to flourish. However, the serious 1969 blast ignored as an accident later developed into fully fledged armed insurgency.

2. I would like to pick up the Varanasi bomb blasts of March 7, 2006. This is a classical example of joint micro planning by the ISI and the DGFI. Police and intelligence officials have leaked details of the blasts, speculation about involvement of Lashkar-e-Qahar, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jais-e-Mohammad and HuJI of Bangladesh. Uttar Pradesh police arrested Imam Waliullah (supposed to be a Jais follower) and six others allegedly belonging to Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami, Bangladesh. The group was reportedly working under directions from Mulana Asadullah, HuJI chief. Several probable reasons that motivated the ‘terrorists’ to mount attack on Varanasi were voiced: retaliation for arrest of a LeT activist in Varanasi in February 2006 and efforts to incite communal trouble. The matter of the fact is that no jihadi tanzeem in Pakistan and Bangladesh are allowed to operate in India on the basis of their own battle-order (ORBAT). In most cases, these are well-orchestrated and controlled operations by the ISI/DGFI, guided directly by an officer of the DGFI located in Kolkata. Indian agencies have not yet been able to trace the footsteps of ISI/DGFI planning in this dastardly attack.

External tools used by the DGFI/ISI evolve out of continuous Intelligence Estimate Reports prepared by the JIM, JIX and JIN divisions of the ISI and India II division of the DGFI. Each country prepares such estimates from its own strategic point of view. Convergence takes place at operational level. Collaboration between the two agencies and Loner operations depend on the objectives outlined by the higher commands in the agencies and ruling military coterie, mostly without consultations with the political masters, if they happen to be around. The intelligence estimates pass through several stages:

1. Operational appreciation of the Intelligence Estimate of the targeted fault lines in India.
2. Political approval (in some cases as in Punjab and Assam) of the scheme of operation.
3. Finalisation of operational details by the concerned agency desk and selection of operations team
4. Identification of retired officers of the concerned agencies (in most cases) to work as buffer between the agency and the selected Tanzeem entrusted to execute the operation. This category is applicable to ‘lone operations target’ and ‘selected one-time job’, like serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, attack on Ayodhya and Varanasi.
5. The same category has a variation: retired officers, businessmen having transactions in the target country and area, and leaders of the disaffected groups living outside the aimed operations area. For example, the ULFA had initially used Bangladeshi a businessman to contact the ISI and DGFI in Dhaka. Later the leaders had frequented Pakistan to smoothen their transactional relationship. Earlier to this, the ULFA had started with drawing sustenance from Kachin and Shan bases and later switched over to Bangladesh and Pakistan after the Shans and the Kachins were persuaded by the government of India to join the pro-democracy movements against the Myanmar government. Delhi was advised that pushing the Kachins against Yangon might force the junta to mount operations in Shan and Kachin Hills and that could force both the ULFA and the NSCN groups to shift their bases to India and Bangladesh. It appeared that Delhi preferred ULFA and NSCN presence inside the country and Bangladesh and strengthening of the democratic movement in Myanmar. This is what is known as diplomatic hara-kiri!
6. The religious congregations play a substantial role. Jammats like Jamait-e-Islami, Deobandi, Wahhabi, Barelvi, Ahl-e-Hadith, Jamait al Salafi, Harkat-ul-Jiahd al Islami and Tablighi Jammat have presence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Protagonists of these jammats and some selected leaders, halqas, and Dawat-e-Islami Markazis (groups operating in qasbas, cluster of villages) also play significant roles in assisting the garlanded tanzeems across the subcontinent. In most cases, there is ideological convergence amongst the Salafi, Wahhabi and Jamait-e-Islami and Ahl-e-Hadith protagonists. The SIMI and the Indian Mujahideen are parts of this conglomerate. This ‘garlanding effect’ produces chain reactions and national boundaries are obliterated by the operating tanzeems. Master intelligence agencies guide them. Cells and modules of these groups (cell=1 to 3 persons; module=5 to 10 persons) are exploited for local safe housing, transaction of hardware and monetary resources, manufacturing of explosives etc.

For record it must be added that the Indian stream of Deoband do not support Jihad in the form of terror actions. Its counterparts in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan are actively involved in Jihad activities.

In case of ‘area operations’, these ‘garlanded’ fifth column elements work as important link chains with the internal forces of the insurgent groups. In cases of ‘job specific’ operations these hubs chaperon the infiltrated agents of the ISI and DGFI nominated tanzeems, provide safe houses, arrange lines of communication, hawala transaction, surveillance of the target area, conducting dry runs and carrying out the assigned operation. After execution the local markazis and collaborators help the ‘guest performers’ to cross border and evaporate in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan (in some cases J&K).
7. The markazis and cell and module members are gradually integrated with the tanzeem units of Pakistan and Bangladesh and various offshoots of Al Qaeda and Taliban brand Jihad Inc, which manage to set up own colonies (cells, modules) in areas dominated by favourable tanzeems. Foreign tanzeem cells often choose neutral locations to avoid suspicion. Neutral locations are normally headed by accomplished individuals (educated, professionals, educated or underemployed), who have undergone ideological transformation by electronic propaganda (internet etc), perceived grievances of discrimination and infusion of jihadi ideology from the ambience of perceived collision of civilizations between Islam and non-Islamic forces. These aspects have been detailed in training manual of the Al Qaeda.
8. Whenever and wherever possible the local markazis and guest jihadis set up havens in open safe places amongst compatible population areas. In urban areas such population live in exclusive ghetto-type concentrated areas, which are not easily accessible to police and intelligence. Take the instance of Jamia Nagar Batla House haven. There was no access to police and intelligence till the beans were spilled during interrogation of Abul Basir Azamgharia.
9. Frequently madrasas, maktabs, and mosques infiltrated by jihadi tanzeem elements are also used for sheltering and as launching bases. ISI and DGFI sponsored tanzeem members generally gravitate to Indian counterparts of their mother tanzeems. Madrasas and religious places owned and run by Ahl-e-Hadith in India are the normal and likely sheltering holes for Pakistani and Bangladeshi tanzeem members owing allegiance to Jamait Ahl-e-Hadith, Jamait-e-Islami, HuJI, JMB, LeT and Jash-e-Mohammad. For example, the Rahmani masjid (headed by Maulana Rahman) and madarssa in Delhi’s Azadpur area is known for its Salafi, Ahl-e-Hadith, and Jamait-e-Islami affiliation. Several other smaller mosques and madrasas in the NCR owe allegiance to this institute. Similarly, madrasas, and mosques dominated by Maulana Mukhtar Abbas Nadvi in Maharashtra are known as hub-centres of the same jammat conglomeration. Similar centers exist in several places in Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and other places. Our police and intelligence community are yet to learn about peculiarities and propensities of different schools of Islam towards global jihad. As a result they are mostly taken by surprise.
10. It is not necessary for the ‘visiting terrorists’ to make a beeline for the designated mosques and madrasas. Their Tanzeem and intelligence agency’s handlers give them a blue print of sympathetic hubs, cells, and modules. Such cell could be in a busy market place near Bandra mosque, Antop Hill, Wadala Bangali Tola, Memon Wada Bazar, and Jakarta Masjid Street in Mumbai or Batla House, Sunlight Colony and Seelampur in Delhi. In most cases, tanzeem collaborators in India arrange safe houses and provide logistics support.

DGFI Loner Operations are important for India’s long-term internal and external security considerations. Wherever necessary these operations are conducted in collaboration with National Security Intelligence, MI, BDR and RAB field intelligence units.

The DGFI runs its independent operations in West Bengal, certain areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, Nepal Terai, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura. These operations can be broadly classified into four categorised:

1. Classical intelligence gathering for political, military and commercial purposes.
2. Creation of long-term intelligence amongst print and electronic media, academia, literati, culterati, key business interests and general opinion makers.
3. Establishing deep sphere of influence among Muslim ulama, institutes, political figures, disaffected groups and correlated tanzeems operating in ‘sat bon champa’ and Indian Bengal areas.
4. Assisting Indian insurgent and terrorist groups.

Our discussions would be kept confined to the last two categories.

Besides formal visits through legal channels several Bangladeshi madaris and ulama affiliated to King Faisal University, Dhaka, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Darul Ishan University, Dhanmondi-Dhaka and Islamic Foundation, Dhaka visit mosques and madrasas in Muslim dominated areas in Assam, especially Tanjim-ul-Madaris at Hojai and Markazul Ma’arif Education & Research Centre. These informal contacts are rampant in madrasas and Islamic institutes in Barak valley. They also establish contact with several Muslim institutions in Manipur including People’s United Liberation Front, Darul Uloom, Rabeta Madaris-e-Arabiya, and Madrasa Alia etc.

Unofficial movements and contacts of Bangladeshi madaris and ulama have been reported from places like Markazi Ahle Hadis Hind, Delhi, and Indian HQ of the Tablighi Jammat, Maddis-e-Azam Mission, Gujarat; Silsila Shahiya Asrariya Khanaq at Jamshedpur, Bhagalpur, Azamgarh and Mumbai.

Operations experts of the DGFI also patronise formal and informal movements of the Tablighi Jammat activists between the North Eastern states, West Bengal, Nepal Terai and Bihar and Bangladesh. Such visits are used to locate and prime usable intelligence talents and talents who would promote the long-term ‘theopolitical’, and geopolitical interests of Bangladesh. Though touted as a non-political proselytizing body (born in India –1927), the Tablighi Jammat movement has assumed cardinal importance with branches in all the Muslim countries, and countries having sizeable Muslim population.

In Pakistan important leaders like Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, President Mohammad Rafique Tarar, and the former ISI chief Javed Nasir owed allegiance to the Tabilighi Jammat movement.

The DGFI’s loner operations involving disaffected Indian groups like Tripura Tribal Volunteer Force, Tripura National Liberation Front, Tripura Tribal Youth Force, (a splinter group of All Tripura Tribal Youth Force). The DGFI actively supports Achik National Volunteer Council and Hynniewtrep Achik Liberation Council of Meghalaya. However, the DGFI tries to handle the Meghalaya groups through the NSCN (IM) and ULFA, as the two big brothers of NE insurgent groups claim equal suzerainty on the Khasi-Garo and Jaintiya Hills. Besides the ULFA and the NDFB, the DGFI actively supports the Kamtapuri Liberation Organisation (West Bengal), Dima Halam Daoga, and United Peoples Democratic Solidarity of NC Hills, Assam.

Of the Manipur separatist groups the main tools of the DGFI are: United National Liberation Front, People’s Liberation Army, PREPAK, People’s United Liberation Front, United Islamic Revolutionary Army, North East Minority Front, Hmar People’s Convention-Democracy, and Indigenous People’s Revolutionary Alliance.

In Assam, besides the ULFA main clients of the DGFI are: The SIMI, Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, United Liberation Front of Barak Valley, Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA), United Liberation Militia of Assam, Islamic Sevak Sangh, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam and Revolutionary Muslim Commandos etc.

West Bengal does not have any geographically localized separatist group except the SIMI and the KLO-Kamtapuri Liberation Organisation. However, intensive infiltration by Bangladeshi nationals in at least 5 West Bengal districts has created a compatible demographic map. Several cells and modules of the SIMI exist alongside units of the HuJI, Bangla Bhai, Allhar Dal and JMB in the bordering districts, Kolkata and its industrial suburbs. These units facilitate infiltration by Pakistan trained terrorists, their safe housing, and transfer of explosive materials from Bangladesh to India and onward facilitation of personnel and materials to target areas to Indian heartland. There are several reports to indicate that Kolkata based DGFI operators maintain liaison with these elements and guide their operational activities.

DGFI and ISI joint operations do not beg detailed discussion. Connectivity of the NSCN (IM), ULFA and NDFB etc with the ISI and DGFI has been amply highlighted by various authors.

ISI operatives in Bangladesh do not run independent camps for Indian terrorist groups. Some of these camps in Chittagong Hill Tracts (3), Sylhet (4), Netrokona (2), Tangail (2), Jamalpur (2) and Rangpur (2) are patronized by the ISI and some Islamic NGOs supported by Arab countries and fronted by HuJI, JMB, and Ahl-e-Hadith tanzeems. It may be remembered that except the Afghan Bureau the JIN and JIX run terrorist camps for Kashmiri youths under cover of Pakistani jihadi tanzeems. The Afghan Bureau had conducted open camps under direct supervision and control of ISI officers.

Mission based ISI officers maintain liaison with the Bangladeshi tanzeems and some direct operational tasks are assigned to them. During last five years, only four instances of independent arms induction by the ISI through Bangladesh for Indian and Myanmar insurgents were reported. In one such case, (April 2006), the RAB had intercepted one consignment near Guimara in CHT adjacent to South Tripura border. The consignment meant for the NSCN (IM) was later released after Dhaka intervened.

Another common platform of operation involves the Rohingya rebels of Myanmar. Besides Ukhia the DGFI and the ISI run camps and training facilities for the Rohingya groups at Teknaf, Sonaichhari and Rejupara. In some of these camps Muslim separatists belonging to Barisan Nasional Pember-Basan Pattani, Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movementand Pattani United Liberation Organization of southern Thailand are also imparted training. During the peak days of Afghan jihad, these training facilities were used as transit bases for the Filipino, Indonesian, and Malaysian jihadis recruited by the CIA.

The major areas of ISI and DGFI cooperation involve the following aspects of jihad inside India:

1. Induction of trained LeT, JeM, HuM and HuJI jihadis from Pakistan and their safe housing with compatible Bangladeshi tanzeem cells.
2. Extensive training to Pakistan based terrorist on India-Bangladesh borders for acquainting them with the terrain, people and their behavioural pattern.
3. Joint training with Bangladeshi jihadi talents for inculcating team spirit.
4. Identification of cells and modules in India for smooth passage to the target area, establishment of communication channel, preparation of retreat route.
5. Joint training in assembling of explosive devices to be used in a given operation.

For example journey of a group of four ISI-DGFI sponsored jihadis from Nawabganj (Rajsahi) to Delhi may involve safe housing at Purnea > Gaya > Mirzapur > Azamgarh> Fatehpur > Aligarh = Delhi. Sympathetic tanzeem members in India carefully select cells and modules in these transit houses. Recent serial bomb blasts have proved that innumerable modules and cells have been established in India and the SIMI and newly floated Indian Mujahideen have been involved in these joint or loner jihadi ventures.

Similarly, the ISI and the DGFI scout out appropriate and motivated Indian tanzeem members with helps from friendly cells and modules. In at least three cases, undercover ISI and DGFI officials were noticed contacting Indian tanzeem members belonging to SIMI, HuJI, Ahl-e-Hadith at places like Ajmer, Jaipur, Agra and Lucknow. Once chosen, these Indian tanzeem members are transported to Bangladesh and Pakistan through safe routes where they undergo tactical and motivational training for about three months. On return, these members are used for spawning new cells and modules in target areas. They later impart training in camps locally arranged by their master trainers. Some of the routes to Pakistan run through terrorist controlled territories in Kashmir and some chosen Kshmiri terrorists are used to activate these cells for carrying out selected operations.

Another aspect of joint operations includes funding of some of the Indian tanzeems through Islamic NGOs based in Bangladesh. Some of the suspected NGOs are Proshika, International Voluntary Service, Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad, Akota Palli Samaj Unnayan Samity, Islamic Heritage, Dawa committees run by the Jamait-e-Islami and several other listed jiahdi organizations. Such funds are liberally transferred to India purportedly for supporting poor students and enterprising ualamas. It is known that great quantity of such funds received from Arab NGOs and Pakistani sources are transferred to consolidate the separatist forces amongst Indian Muslims.

I would like to conclude these complicated technical aspects of joint ISI and DGFI operations by mentioning the tragic incidents of serial bomb blasts in Delhi on the eve of Deepavali festival in 2005.

There are plausible indicators to believe that Major Burhanuddin of the Special Operations Cell of the DGFI had crossed over to India with valid documents about ten days before the incident and spent three in days in Kolkata. About six days before the incidents, he was present in Delhi and was seen at a suspect guesthouse in Delhi with an undercover First Secretary of the Pakistan High Commission. Soon after he returned to Kolkata and exited for Dhaka, the Kolkata station chief of the DGFI S. A. Biswas traveled to Delhi and met another Pakistani diplomat. Biswas was present in Delhi on the day the serial blasts took place.

In the Varanasi serial blast incident both LeT and HuJI members with help from SIMI took leading roles after they were housed and trained at Char Gopalnagar (Khulna) and traveled to Varanasi through cell-points at Behampur (WB), Bhagalpur and Bare (Bihar). They were housed at the Ahl-e-Hadith madrassa-mosque near Varanasi cantonment station and at Madanpura behind Gudulia market. There is supportable information that an undercover officer of the ISI at Dhaka and a Captain of the DGFI Special Operations Cell had visited Isurdi to contact the HuJI area commander Barkatul Rahman Bablu. He was supposed to be the liaison man between the spy agencies and the tanzeem members that perpetrated the Varanasi incident.

Careful screening of the jihadist violent incidents in India outside Kashmir and the North East establish that the ISI and the DGFI have worked out two well-defined corridors to infiltrate and exfiltrate their home based operators and Indian tanzeem collaborators. These are not mere corridors. These areas and pockets have started emerging as free operational grounds controlled by ISI, DGFI operatives and their front paws inside Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian tanzeems. Over a period, unless appropriate political, administrative appraisal of these areas are made as important ingredients of internal and external security concerns, these corridors and penny pockets are likely to be emerge as unbroken links of a Grand Plan. The Grand Plan is to create jihadi tanzeems cells and modules all over India, carry out violent actions against targets assigned by Pakistan and Bangladesh, and demand other homelands for the Indian minorities.

Willy-nilly some caste based political and societal leaders are openly aiding and abetting these designs of Pakistan and Bangladesh simply for a few more votes. They even defend a known jihadi tanzeem like SIMI describe sordid encounters at places like Jamia Nagar as fake. Some of these leaders finance even Hindu owned Urdu newspapers which openly publish pro-jihadist and secessionist views. It is surprising that Indian political structure has also been polluted by these political ‘pehlwans’ and ‘vote-beggars.’

I have briefly outlined the modules and cells and corridors through which infiltration and exfiltration take place and used as safe housing purposes, launching bases, locating collaborative Indian tanzeem cells and modules, and the vast ground spread already achieved by the ISI and the DGFI in my earlier articles in this web site. Some readers may like refreshing memories.

The basic fact remains that Islamisation of Bangladesh by Zia-ur-Rahman and DGFI collaboration with the ISI and the CIA in Afghan jihad had transformed the secular soul of Bangladesh considerably. Steve Schippert, US journalist revealed that out of the 2500 Al Qaeda and Taliban jihadis arrested by Pakistan after 2001 war on Afghanistan by USA were released. Besides Algerians, Sudanese and Arabs this released contingent included Bangladeshi Talibans.

Abdulhadi Khalaf, Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden is working on a project to examine the success and subsequent fragmentation of the Afghan Jihad movement and its close connection to several simultaneous processes: a) the growth of Islamism, b) the regional ramifications of the Cold War, and c) the emergence of Jihad as an alternative ‘new space for collective action’. As a trans-national movement, that has its roots in the Third World; it presents some of the understudied aspects of globalisation processes.

The depth and extent of Islamisation of Bangladeshi Muslims can be inferred from the following excerpt, “While a great majority of the detainees on U.S. mainland are of Arab and Pakistan origin, the presence of a few Bangladeshis has been authenticated by reliable source. The American Taliban John Walker Lindh said in an interview that Afghanistan’s Mullah Omar’s bodyguards composed of Bangladeshis also. In a CNN interview, Walker Lindh said that two important languages spoken in al-Qaeda power center were Urdu and Bengali. Bangladesh born U.S. Navy Chaplain, Lt. Abu Hena M. Saiful Islam had joined the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay more than a month ago. In a recent interview with an American news agency, Lt. Islam said his media of communication with the detainees at Camp X-Ray were Urdu and Bengali. It is quite probable that there could be a handful of Taliban or al-Qaeda detainees at the camp who are of Bangladesh descent.” Resurrection of Talibans in Bangladesh in the Face of Her Historical Burden-Faith Freedom.org, 15.02.2005.

According to US intelligence agencies, about 8,000 members from different Bangladeshi organisations including the Freedom Party were trained in Libya in the early 1980s and 1990s. Sources said over 2000 Bangladeshi Jihadis were killed and 2000 wounded in battles in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine. When they returned from foreign frontiers, a number of them set up madrassas as cover, mainly toeing the Qwami line, which is the more orthodox system of Islamic education and needs no government registration. They chose the forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, mosques, and the Qwami madrasas mainly in the north to train their activists. They also set up their network in Dhaka, starting from Kamrangir-char, and later spreading to Kafrul, Adabar, Shekher Tek, Basila and Demra.” Zayadul Ahsan, Daily Star, August 21, 2005.

The story of jihad breeding and gradual marginalization of the secular process enhances security concerns for India. The Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi tanzeems aspire to convert Bangladesh as a platform for expansion of jihad amongst the eastern areas of India and in South East Asian countries.

I had promised the readers to include some instances of bold approaches of some Bangladeshi freedom loving and secular people to illustrate how the DGFI, like the ISI, interferes in internal affairs of the country.

Jacob Raihan, a Bangladeshi expat recently commented bitterly in his web site, “The DGFI in the name of so called Anti Corruption Drive slogan is arresting any of their targeted persons tightening their eyes, bringing to DGFI torture cell, throwing them naked in to ice cold black hole for hours together, next putting them in to hot chamber and electric shock center, interrogating alternately through couple of nights taking their written statements which is authorized by the tutored magistrate court to use it as confessional statement against themselves and their other political leaders to fabricate false cases with the charge of corruption. As per criminal Procedure code an arrested person must have to be produced before the nearest court within 24 hours after arrest. But DGFI is caring little to the binding of the law. They are picking a person in dead hour of nights with tights eyes taking him to unknown destination to their torture cell, detaining for couple of days without showing official arrest to avoid binding of law. This simply reign of terror has been prevailing in Bangladesh since 11 January 2007 like Sadam’s Iraq.”

Jamal Hasan, another Bangladeshi expat and a prolific writer on Bangladesh affairs described the present Army/DGFI government as “worse than military regime of Gen. Ershad.” Friends living in Bangladesh do not open mouth for fear of “cross-fire death” in RAB firing or indefinite internment in DGFI dungeon in the Kachukhet establishment. More can be written on DGFI’s interference in internal political matters. However, I intend to write more in another article in near future. Hopefully, General Moeen would allow the proposed election to take place in December 2008 and not catapult another BNP, Jamait and IDP (HuJI) coalition in power. That would mean burial of the legacy of freedom struggle.

Those living inside Bangladesh cannot afford to write against the Jamait, HuJI turned IDP and the Army / DGFI perfidy. Several journalists were picked up recently and brutalized in the DGFI secret houses. A few of them known to me have been incarcerated. Political leaders identified with Awami League and 14 Party Coalition are afraid of being charged with fake corruption charges and facing prolonged prosecution. Sheikh Hasina herself is facing innumerable charges. Therefore, I limit comments on brutal interference by the DGFI in internal political matters.

From Indian point of view political stability, restoration of secular democracy and weakening of stranglehold of the jihadis, Pakistan and the pro-Pak army elements are highly desirable.
While our diplomacy, trade and other bilateral relations should take better shape, India has a big stake in assisting the Bangla authorities to combat jihadist forces through constructive cooperation. Strengthening of secular democratic forces in Bangladesh alone can thwart expansion of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Pakistani brand of jihadist Islam in this part of Asia.

Since this column has limited space, inquisitive readers are recommended to read my contribution to the Penguin India published book- Frontier in Flames, edited by young Assamese writer Jaideep Saikia.

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The manner in which a small group of radical Islamists pulled down a baul monument at the airport roundabout last week speaks volumes about the path we are treading today. It is instructive to note that the government immediately backed away from taking a stance on the issue -  continuing its policy of appeasement of the religious right. This is not surprising though, since both the major parties would have perhaps done the same, whatever rhetoric we were force-fed on the local TV networks. What is far more significant is that powerful sections of the intelligentsia, the academia, and civil society have remained silent on the issue. While truncheons fall hard on the backs of garments workers demanding their back pay or students demanding restoration of their fundamental rights, the religious identity of these bigots was enough to grant them a sweeping immunity. Yes, Bangladesh is country where the dominant culture is deeply secular despite the religious fault-lines triggered by the partition some sixty years ago. And in the same breath it must be said ‘no, it will not matter, unless we pit that ideology with the one that the bigots preach.’ If we allow this depraved cabal of religious clerics to corner us over and over again, be it on the state’s women’s development policy or a sculpture ‘any sculpture ‘ we are ceding valuable public spaces in which we express diversity and dissent. In the week that has passed, a great number of people from the country’s mainstream have expressed their distress over what they see as an insult to Lalon Shah. Many say they are surprised at the ‘audacity’ of the bigots that they could attack such a potent and universal symbol of our culture and tradition. Don’t be surprised, this is the new milepost. When a women’s rights group attempted a public protest, the government was suddenly all too eager to enforce the Emergency Powers Rules, and they were denied a public platform. Once again, there was a murmur of protest, but those whose call to arms to defend the constitutionally guaranteed equality of the sexes would have mattered often stayed silent – for fear and for convenience. Now, Lalon Shah is just the new milepost.The reality that is emerging is that those who have a stake in power, or are beneficiaries of the existing power structure, will not take the lead in speaking up – and they have too much invested to make a choice that may prove politically unpopular. There are those, however, who have spoken up. A broad spectrum of artistes and cultural activists banded together on the Dhaka University campus for much of the past week and campaigned against what they saw as an invasion of the cultural space by the religious right. The numbers of people this programme attracted was a heartening testimony to the mass appeal of the counterargument to religious radicalism and intolerance.

by Mahtab Haider

TODAY, more than ever, we have become a society too cocooned in the comfort of wishful thinking, to recognise the reality we are living in. Afghanistan was not Talibanised in a day. It took years, even decades of Cold War indoctrination against the Soviet invasion, during which the culture of tolerance and diversity that characterises most rural populations by default was dismantled piece by piece. And as with Bangladesh today, throughout this process, Afghanistan’s general public had ceded what had seemed to be tiny spaces to the religious hardliners, until eventually they found themselves cornered by a cabal of depraved clerics who saw fit to slice off women’s thumbs when they painted their nails, or publicly whipped taxi drivers because a female passenger had failed to cover her face.

There are two lessons from Afghanistan. That the radicalisation of an entire populace rarely happens overnight. and the mileposts for such radicalisation are often token concessions of public spaces which seem too insignificant to matter. And that it is not a requirement for a whole nation to believe in extreme ideology for an extreme ideology to become the dominant one. Often, as was the case with Afghanistan, the public whose collective endorsement is sought and secured for the practice of violent ideologies are also the victims of it at an individual level. In Afghanistan, as in Iran after the ‘Islamic revolution’, it was a small gang of clerics who seized the mantle of state power and morality and perpetrated the most tragic violence on the populace who were held hostage by their fear. The problem was not that a majority of the country believed in hard-line Islam, it was that a majority of the country were cowed into silence, with no leaders to stand up for rights and justice.

The manner in which a small group of radical Islamists pulled down a baul monument at the airport roundabout last week speaks volumes about the path we are treading today. It is instructive to note that the government immediately backed away from taking a stance on the issue -  continuing its policy of appeasement of the religious right. This is not surprising though, since both the major parties would have perhaps done the same, whatever rhetoric we were force-fed on the local TV networks. What is far more significant is that powerful sections of the intelligentsia, the academia, and civil society have remained silent on the issue. Some of them because party politics dictates a wait and watch policy for now, some because it will hurt their business, some because they remember what happened to Humayun Azad or Shamsur Rahman, and all of them because it is more convenient to say nothing.

While truncheons fall hard on the backs of garments workers demanding their back pay or students demanding restoration of their fundamental rights, the religious identity of these bigots was enough to grant them a sweeping immunity. Yes, Bangladesh is country where the dominant culture is deeply secular despite the religious fault-lines triggered by the partition some sixty years ago. And in the same breath it must be said ‘no, it will not matter, unless we pit that ideology with the one that the bigots preach.’ If we allow this depraved cabal of religious clerics to corner us over and over again, be it on the state’s women’s development policy or a sculpture ‘any sculpture ‘ we are ceding valuable public spaces in which we express diversity and dissent.

In the week that has passed, a great number of people from the country’s mainstream have expressed their distress over what they see as an insult to Lalon Shah. Many say they are surprised at the ‘audacity’ of the bigots that they could attack such a potent and universal symbol of our culture and tradition. Don’t be surprised, this is the new milepost. Three years ago when the four-party alliance under Khaleda Zia banned Ahmadiyya publications after Islamist bigots demonstrated Friday after Friday in Dhaka’s Tejgaon area, that was a milepost too. Ahmadiyya mosques were ransacked in many places across the country, followers of the faith were beaten up, and the bigots wanted the government to declare them ‘non-Muslim’. At the time, many who are outraged today felt no need to defend the rights of the followers of a small Muslim sect, because the attack was on what was sacred to ‘them’ and not ‘us’.

In May this year, when the military-controlled interim government announced a draft Development Policy for Women, religious hardliners poured onto the streets of the capital after Friday prayers at the national mosque, asking for the policy to conform to the Qur’an. Under orders from the government, the police showed incredible restraint as the mob blocked the streets and damaged public and private property, beating up a surprisingly docile police force with their own truncheons. The following Friday, the leaders of the movement announced after Friday prayers that the government had given in to their demands, amid cheers and chants. When a women’s rights group attempted a public protest, the government was suddenly all too eager to enforce the Emergency Powers Rules, and they were denied a public platform. Once again, there was a murmur of protest, but those whose call to arms to defend the constitutionally guaranteed equality of the sexes would have mattered often stayed silent – for fear and for convenience. Now, Lalon Shah is just the new milepost.

The German poet Martin Niemller who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust as German intellectuals remained tragically silent captured the perils of that apathy and fear in words that have now become immortalised:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
‘Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

The reality that is emerging is that those who have a stake in power, or are beneficiaries of the existing power structure, will not take the lead in speaking up – and they have too much invested to make a choice that may prove politically unpopular. There are those, however, who have spoken up. A broad spectrum of artistes and cultural activists banded together on the Dhaka University campus for much of the past week and campaigned against what they saw as an invasion of the cultural space by the religious right. The numbers of people this programme attracted was a heartening testimony to the mass appeal of the counterargument to religious radicalism and intolerance. The problem, of course, is that those sections of society that do believe in democracy and tolerance are content to exist as a counterargument ‘a reaction to a threat’  rather than the argument itself. Over the past four decades, since former president Ziaur Rahman rehabilitated the discredited stalwarts of religion-based politics, and another military strongman HM Ershad amended the constitution to make the state religion Islam, and with the dawning political reality of both major parties courting Islamist parties, the secular fabric of our mainstream has been soiled and stamped upon by venal power politics. But just as that is the case, we must recognise that radical Islamists are singling out adversaries at their own time, on their own terms, and jostling for greater influence in the national mainstream. We are all engaged in what is essentially a political battle against intolerance and violence, but we are each of us fighting alone, as cultural activists, as writers and poets, as women, or as Ahmadiyyas. Not as citizens who are united in a belief that respect for diversity, ethnic, cultural, religious, philosophical, to name a few, together constitute the foundation for a healthy society.

‘Notice has been given: this is just the beginning,’ wrote Arundhati Roy in 2002, in the wake of the riots in India’s Gujarat state, when Muslim neighbourhoods were raided by armies of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, Muslim women raped, babies impaled on tridents, and men doused with petrol and set on fire. ‘Is this the Hindu rashtra that we’ve all been asked to look forward to? Once the Muslims have been ‘ shown their place, will milk and Coca-Cola flow across the land? Once the Ram Mandir is built, will there be a shirt on every back and a roti in every belly? Will every tear be wiped from every eye? Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically- Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans, or speak English, or those who have thick lips, or curly hair? We won’t have to wait long. It’s started already.’

In Bangladesh too, notice has been served. The baul monument was a milepost.

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THE attack on the baul sculpture is not an attack on religion or values, let alone culture, but is a description of the political mess we have landed into. Bigots and murderers, social misfits and traitors have taken centre stage, thanks to the policy of political convenience of our leadership. If the present government had any moral authority which they claim through their Anti-Corruption Commission and Truth and Accountability Commission activities, it would have taken a position on a piece of heritage art it had itself commissioned and stood by it. Instead, it ran away fearing a backlash from the same group it has given indulgence to including their street agitation against rights of women even as it assiduously claimed no politics was allowed under the emergency. It is a sorry reminder that the elite class is so mentally bankrupt that they are unable to take a position on what is a religious and what is a political standpoint. By allowing the same forces that have continuously made advances against the cultural icons of the people, we have morphed into becoming a race without identity and confidence. One wishes that the debate was about a statue or two and limited only to disagreements about whether it constitutes an inadmissible act as per scriptures but, as it happens in the world of politics, it is essentially about carving out a space for those who see in this act a victory of their views and an endorsement of their belief that the forces against extremism are weak and flabby, unable to defend themselves. It seems we have been sending that message for a long time and the latest is once again a statement of our enfeeblement and their strength. If only they had broad support in society! Had they had that, they would have been in power by now. For the moment, nervous governments will do for them.

By Afsan Chowdhury

THE attack on the baul sculpture is not an attack on religion or values, let alone culture, but is a description of the political mess we have landed into. Bigots and murderers, social misfits and traitors have taken centre stage, thanks to the policy of political convenience of our leadership. What began as a political move by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party allowing Jamaat-e-Islami after 1975 has travelled a long distance to become a full-blown attack by the forces of the same ilk while we stand by apparently helpless and frothing in our mouth out of fear. It has been going on a while.

The Awami League, a party that rose to prominence on the platform of opposing Islamic extremism amongst other issues, has also capitulated and its leader Sheikh Hasina even tried to craft a political agreement with the obscurantist forces giving them fatwa rights which got busted in the end but it shows a clear trend concerning the patterns of unprincipled politics that dominates our landscape. If the present government had any moral authority which they claim through their Anti-Corruption Commission and Truth and Accountability Commission activities, it would have taken a position on a piece of heritage art it had itself commissioned and stood by it. Instead, it ran away fearing a backlash from the same group it has given indulgence to including their street agitation against rights of women even as it assiduously claimed no politics was allowed under the emergency. It is a sorry reminder that the elite class is so mentally bankrupt that they are unable to take a position on what is a religious and what is a political standpoint. By allowing the same forces that have continuously made advances against the cultural icons of the people, we have morphed into becoming a race without identity and confidence.

The attack on baul sculpture was carried out by the same forces that had attacked the sculpture ‘Duranto’, now housed in the Shishu Academy, quite a few years ago. Many other instances have occurred over time but whatever has suited the ruling class has happened. If the sculpture of a child can seem offensive, one can imagine the mindset of the people behind such attacks. It is our duty to counter such quarters but our political history has become a long narrative of capitulation to the very same forces that we claim to be opposing. One wishes that the debate was about a statue or two and limited only to disagreements about whether it constitutes an inadmissible act as per scriptures but, as it happens in the world of politics, it is essentially about carving out a space for those who see in this act a victory of their views and an endorsement of their belief that the forces against extremism are weak and flabby, unable to defend themselves.

It seems we have been sending that message for a long time and the latest is once again a statement of our enfeeblement and their strength. If only they had broad support in society! Had they had that, they would have been in power by now. For the moment, nervous governments will do for them. Why this lack of confidence? In 1971 the religious practice structure was simpler. People were living through extreme situations and were so anxious that they needed faith to survive. At the same time, people saw the extremities committed in the name of Islam, both by the Pakistani forces and also by their local supporters, almost all of whom were located in the religious orthodoxy establishment. This configuration allowed people to advance their own belief structure and almost no one was tempted to join the Pakistanis or commit atrocities in the name of religion. In fact, during this period, religion was personalised and turned into a matter of personal and social communion which militates against the public interpretation of Islam as enforced occupier of all spaces.

During this extreme period, there was no conflict of faith and reason, and no religious invocation in the name of the scripture and the text could whip up popular sentiment as humanity enveloped religious expressions. This triumph was possible because the social and political objectives involved everyone and the legitimacy of those pursuits was not questionable. That situation changed after 1971 when political parties in an independent state mismanaged and misruled enormously creating the alienating space between the ruler and the ruled. It is in this narrow band of discontent that the religious caravan of orthodoxy found a safe place to park. It came out as rejection of ’secularism’ during the Mujib era but as no secular policy was in place, it was in essence a rejection of the governance and, by extension, of those policies. It had become a religious question because the constitution was used by the then government for its own purpose. What the people had achieved in terms of carving out their independent space in relation to faith, religion and politics was severely damaged in just three years.

The Zia regime extended the cynical application of political logic. It used anti-Awami League sentiments to allow these retrograde forces to enter the Bangladeshi scene from which they had been socially discarded since 1971. They were given a welcome mat when they were desperately jostling to find a new space in a new land. By allowing Jamaat-e-Islami, the crime was not just of extreme political cynicism and convenience but, more significantly, that of negating the force of social judgement of the people. People had rejected them and Zia brought them back. Mujib created the space and Zia opened the door. Once inside they have been able to exert influence like never before. Ershad’s enactment of the eighth amendment and declaring Islam as a state religion was not out of any miscued notion of piety but again using politics for private gain, his own and that of his cronies. It is no surprise, therefore, that the BNP took the next step in the continuously unfolding scenario of manipulation and politics with the assistance of the religious extremists and orthodoxy in 2001.

Looking at the history of Bangladesh, it is no surprise that the present government has failed to take a position on the issue because no government faced with the wrath of the Muslim bigots have ever dared to face them. This is largely because of their own moral cowardice as they have always used various forces to come to or sustain their power. The crisis that we see today is not of the rise of the extreme religious but the rise of the callous to the extreme in politics. Such people are never confident and this episode is a good illustration of that. What the latest means? It does mean that Lalon occupies a smaller space in public life and contests from those who are opposed to him in every form and shape will have ascendancy. In effect, the extremist orthodoxy is deciding what the nature of the socio-cultural expression of the people can be and should be. The force that stood by or assented to the dismantling of the Lalon sculpture in effect became party to the same process.

In this demolition job, political convenience has won again. Should one ask if the decision was linked to the stance adopted by the present government towards Jamaat-e-Islami as they weave in and out of the political framework? After all, the mysterious refusal of the authorities to rein in Jamaat leaders when they are seen in public while the government says they are on the run is a good example of a group ready to make itself flexible. It is not religious bent but politics. It is this stance that dogs this government, its journey from a position of self-proclaimed ‘moral force’ to that of a facilitator of political forces. One supposes that the presumption of morality brought about by the failure of political parties at a point of time needs to be tested at another point of time.

It is, therefore, necessary to explore the character and nature of this government, its strange mixture of opposites such as trashing the confidence of people in the judiciary by manipulating bail arrangements and the orders relating to the separation of the judiciary from the executive. It is a government which has in a period of only two years turned ‘elasticity’ into a virtue claiming it is all for the common good. Which is why the government’s claim to be interim should not be taken seriously because it is part of the essential sequence under which all past governments have run through our history. It is no accident that the powers that sit should refuse to try war criminals arguing that it should be left to political governments when it has jailed so many politicians on corruption charges and continuously manipulates politicians and politics. It has never explained why crimes against humanity should be lesser than corruption crimes. Although it has deliberately kept some members of the ruling class from scrutiny, it has claimed to be even-handed in meting out justice of the caretaker variety. It too has a constituency, it too has an identity and it too functions in the same way as past governments have done.

One may think that this government is neutral and on the surface it carries no party colour but it certainly belongs to a cluster of positions and values and in the geometric arrangement of power, it too has a space and a colour. In serving that power base, both civil and military, it is unfair to expect that they will stand up as people did in 1971 and claimed their space. All powers that be that have ruled Bangladesh have always sided with extremism, be it one-party rule or religious orthodoxy. In that process, we have a state where homage to Lalon is censored and outlawed and bigots rule the streets. It’s about the price we all have paid for our lack of character and identity and our ever-present sense of denying our own shame. It is not about Lalon, it is about who we are and have become.

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The word ‘democracy’ can be manipulated and moulded into a matter of convenience. It has become, in Bangladesh, an empty word stamped on the country’s ‘international file’, a smile on a mad clown’s face. ‘Human Rights’ can be said to be examined, probed, and discussed to their fullest extent, in order to keep the world’s tired ears, now merely attuned to these proper catch phrases, dulled. The word ‘democracy,’ in the sense of majority rule, doesn’t provide a foolproof guarantee that human rights will be respected. Surely, democratic process requires a government to be publicly justified at every step save in the interests of national security: transparency. The processes of the government must be open to public scrutiny if a democracy is to function. But in addition to instilling a true democratic process, a country committed to human rights makes itself truly accountable to other world democracies. In turn, those ‘other’ democracies in the UN must examine whether all its members are just talking sweet words. his illegitimate government functions because it has no fear, because the world does not instil fear into it, because when the world hears of a National Human Rights Commission being established, a commission that is akin to a carnival mask, the world only wants (or tries) to see this mask. Ultimately, the current Bangladeshi government wards off international critics, allowing those in power to continue with impunity. As New Age reported on September 3 in ‘A toothless human rights commission’, human rights violations are ‘too serious an offence to be left for arbitration or alternative dispute resolution. Any act of human rights violation should be tried in a court of law and the perpetrator punished; there should be no two ways about it.’ The editorial goes on to state the harsh truth: political interest of Bangladesh in human rights is ‘correlated with funding from foreign lending agencies; [the past governments] have only done so much as can ensure uninterrupted flow of external development assistance,’ and the current is no exception.

by Nora Khan

As a young Bangladeshi-American, I have often found it a great task, over the past years, to stay fully cognisant of all the frenetic, complicated movements in the Bangladeshi political scene. However, the nation’s current military-controlled government and its assumption of unchecked power in the name of  ‘emergency’ look remarkably familiar and startlingly clear to me as a former history student: the manipulations of illegitimate governments with unconstitutional power have been played out for centuries on many a continent and island, from Haiti to Zimbabwe, here in the US (as some claim) to Peru. I would hope Bangladesh’s citizenry will rail against and demand exemption from this tired game, if the lessons of the past and the nation’s subjection to many bloody military coups are studied closely.

I would note, first, that I write as an individual with great belief in Bangladesh and its immense potential and power as a nation. My experience of the nation of my origins often ranges from detachment from some cultural mores, as would be expected, to an extreme pride in Bengali literature and art, which are the most amenable mediums through which I try to understand the ethos of the nation’s people, my parents and their experiences. I’ve tried to transcribe their experiences to memory, to writing, deeply aware, of course, that there is much left to learn. So, I must speak here not just as an American bound in understanding by limits of circumstance and space, but instead as a global citizen who can only look forward to learning and promoting the beauty of Bangladesh to everyone I meet.

Bangladesh boasts a legacy of the some of the brilliant minds this world has ever seen: poets, thinkers, writers, doctors, economists, renowned for their perspicacity and depth, and their compassion. As I learned in a course with Dr Sugata Bose almost six years ago, the Bhasha Andolon (language movement) was a great true flowering of Bengali pride and first nationalism, when the vernacular of the people was a direct manifestation of identity. In language, in ownership of speech, was ownership of self, and freedom. Merely reading about the Bhasha Andolon in a history text, I felt a deep (perhaps premature) pride in the Bengali language and people. I think it is a testament to the power of the Bengali language that someone with only a cursory knowledge of its nuances can still want to lay claim to it.

In direct, inimical contrast to the ideals of that first movement are today’s headlines about the political crisis in Bangladesh (The adolescence of an ancient land, published by the Institute for Security and Development Policy, being a prime example), about horrifying, thuggish abuse of critics of the current government.

Working in the human rights field in the US, I’ve become acutely sensitive to the popularity of certain phrases, and their currency in editorials, blogs, radio talk shows and political speeches: ‘human rights viability’ and ‘democratic ideals’ being the two bandied about, and usually in tandem. The actual ideas behind human rights and democratic ideals aren’t newly in fashion; rather, both liberal and conservative pundits demand these ideas be put vaguely ‘into motion’ in countries where abuses are reported. Human Rights Watch will print another fat report on abuse of refugees in Ethiopia; students march for justice in Bhutan in front of the White House lawn. I simply want to convey how far these ideas have permeated American collective discourse, to the point of almost losing meaning.

Of course, without those Human Rights Watch reports, I’d never have read about the case of Tasneem Khalil’s torture. I would not have read about the many extrajudicial killings and ill-fated journalists and citizens languishing in jail, without the relative advantages of Khalil, who was able to find asylum. Yet, even the Human Rights Watch report on Tasneem Khalil had its share of mealy-mouthed verbiage, as it noted ‘the government’s failure to address [the torture] seriously is a black mark on its record,’ as though the government could care less that it has a black mark on its record, like an errant school boy or girl who skipped class or insulted a teacher. There is no ethical rationale behind a government with a proven and ongoing history of extrajudicial abuse. This illegitimate government functions because it has no fear, because the world does not instil fear into it, because when the world hears of a National Human Rights Commission being established, a commission that is akin to a carnival mask, the world only wants (or tries) to see this mask. Ultimately, the current Bangladeshi government wards off international critics, allowing those in power to continue with impunity. As New Age reported on September 3 in ‘A toothless human rights commission’, human rights violations are ‘too serious an offence to be left for arbitration or alternative dispute resolution. Any act of human rights violation should be tried in a court of law and the perpetrator punished; there should be no two ways about it.’ The editorial goes on to state the harsh truth: political interest of Bangladesh in human rights is ‘correlated with funding from foreign lending agencies; [the past governments] have only done so much as can ensure uninterrupted flow of external development assistance,’ and the current is no exception.

One can’t stress enough that a country with a government that does not truly value universal human rights is effectively doomed. Even more difficult to reform is a government that pays lip service to human rights, but, in fact, has no intent of defending them. It is hard to say which state is more appalling; I’d say the latter, if only because a two-faced approach to such a fundamental, universally accepted credo irreparably damages a country’s reputation and credibility. The interim government continues to damage the citizens’ faith in its ability to protect and serve (as a true democratic government is wont) because it simply does not believe all citizens should be equally protected and served.

So, understandably, one questions the use of the word ‘democracy’ in the same breath as ‘modern-day Bangladesh’. I read about this purported democracy in Bangladesh quite often, along with reports of ‘monitors’ assigned to journalists, and arbitrary arrests, the abdication of due process, the manipulation and manufacturing of news stories in certain outlets. I can only imagine what the reality is. These are not new issues in Bangladesh, but what is particularly unusual, to me, is the coupling of the word democracy atop these abuses. Other governments in other nations who have effected such abuses have called themselves military governments, have owned up to their lack of scruples. Few have the gall to continue to call themselves democracies. This duplicity requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a deep and unshakable cynicism that can make me almost sputter angrily in disbelief.

In brief, the word ‘democracy’ can be manipulated and moulded into a matter of convenience. It has become, in Bangladesh, an empty word stamped on the country’s ‘international file’, a smile on a mad clown’s face. ‘Human Rights’ can be said to be examined, probed, and discussed to their fullest extent, in order to keep the world’s tired ears, now merely attuned to these proper catch phrases, dulled. The word ‘democracy,’ in the sense of majority rule, doesn’t provide a foolproof guarantee that human rights will be respected. Surely, democratic process requires a government to be publicly justified at every step save in the interests of national security: transparency. The processes of the government must be open to public scrutiny if a democracy is to function. But in addition to instilling a true democratic process, a country committed to human rights makes itself truly accountable to other world democracies. In turn, those ‘other’ democracies in the UN must examine whether all its members are just talking sweet words.

When faced with these semantic quibbles and ambiguities about meaning, it might be useful to consider the work of thinker Peter Singer, namely his premise that a common, universal law is not just useful, but essential in the global community we live in. Most brilliantly, he discusses the nature of national sovereignty, and its reach. He notes, critically, that ‘the limits of the state’s ability and willingness to protect its people are also the limits of its sovereignty’. When a state does not protect its citizens, he argues, other countries may intervene in the name of international human rights. A true global ethic should never stop at national boundaries, because ‘national sovereignty has no intrinsic moral weight’ when that nation has abused human rights. I believe, in Bangladesh, only a real, pervasive fear of international retribution would keep the government from committing crimes against humanity in the name of power and profit. Whether through physical intervention or economic sanctions, or the cessation of foreign aid, the international community should examine its support of the interim government that is destroying the integrity of the nation and is endangering the life and health of its people.

When human rights workers urge the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights at the UN to intervene in the current situation in Bangladesh, we all know what this means; this call is another invocation of ‘waiting for the UN.’ The Human Rights ‘experts’ cannot stop military abuses; they are just journalists and researchers and officials, perhaps with a conscience, but no critical power. The reasons for this are various: the International Criminal Court faces great hostility from the US, which is often criticised for having one set of rules for its citizenry and another set of rules for the rest of the world. If the US allowed the UN to be the last resort protector it was always meant to be, and would provide the court with means to enact its mission, the world will be knit together better ethically.

Since these solutions are not effected overnight, I wonder if shame is the final possible deterrent, when fear of economic retribution and cultural implosion don’t seem to sway politicians. I wonder if the Bangladeshi interim government can recognise its actions do and will have global ramifications, both economic and political. I wonder if it can recognise, beyond its shortsighted bickering and reckless endangerment of the country’s founding principles, that it is potentially opening the country to extremists. I wonder if it sees that when it makes a mockery against its own bans against torture, the whole constitution, and by extension, Bangladesh, becomes a mockery on the world stage.

I must applaud and cheer on New Age from an ocean away for its bravery, its commitment to open distribution of information. In its September 3rd editorial, again, the New Age editors made some frank and open remarks on the irony of promulgating a government-backed human rights commission. New Age seems to resist self-censorship, and this deserves commendation in a difficult environment. Moreover, this newspaper’s commitment makes a resounding point: a journalist cannot actually, single-handedly, ‘tarn[ish] the image of the country,’ a charged leveled against a well-known journalist some time ago. It is the government that tarnishes its own image. The media simply holds up a mirror to the face of modern Bangladesh. When the organs of legal and military power are orchestrated in the favour of violence against citizens, critics, opponents, that process, that system, certainly has a name, and it is not democracy.

Our capacity to reason is a universal quotient, a sublime and universal value. Moral reasoning transcends national sovereignty. If Bangladesh is to try to regain respect in the world, it must make a visceral commitment, not a show of dedication, to global ethics. The need to address corruption does not require suspension of the very system a government is seeking to defend. It must bring to trial members of the military and intelligence corps who have created an atmosphere of fear through torture, extrajudicial killings and the harassment of journalists and citizens. No elections will bring justice to those arrested without reason, to those abused. Ending illegal arrests and torture should not await an election.

Speaking truly, speaking one’s own words well and with pride, words as testament: these were some of the tenets at the heart of the Language Movement. This alignment of words with truth, with freedom, must be reexamined. Let words regain their meaning. Let ‘human right’ mean what it should, let ‘democracy’ be manifested as in its meaning. Even as one of Bangladesh’s many displaced descendants, I do pray and hope for the nation’s triumph, that this government will come to its senses. If not, its members will be forgotten soon enough.

Nora Khan is a 2005 Harvard University graduate living in Washington, D.C. with a passion for advocacy, nuclear non-proliferation and global human rights.

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True, Pakistan does have a newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, but let’s not kid ourselves about his ability (or even desire) to turn his country around. During his last stint in office (as minister of investment in the government led by his late wife, Bhutto), Zardari became known as “Mr. Ten Percent” for his alleged propensity for skimming funds from lucrative government contracts. And Zardari’s probable replacement, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, may be even more corrupt and incompetent. Simply put, Pakistan is facing an existential crisis — on its streets and in its courts, barracks and parliament. American pundits and politicians might be hoping for the best for the country whose lawless border regions are widely thought to harbor Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. But I don’t see much chance of a happy turnaround. If, as both John McCain and Barack Obama have claimed, a strong, dependable Pakistan is the key to winning the war in Afghanistan, then we are waging an unwinnable war.

So can Pakistan be reformed, or is it doomed to collapse? Despite the country’s post-Musharraf return to civilian rule, its prospects are grim. As of last month, the ISI has a new leader, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, handpicked by the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, to replace a predecessor whom Bush administration officials suspected of having ties to the Taliban. But there is little reason to believe that Zardari’s weak, fractious government will be able to reform the ISI. In July, according to the Economist, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani “tried to bring the ISI under the control of the interior ministry. His decision was reversed within hours.”

Here’s an alarming thought: Pakistan is in even scarier shape than most of the so-called experts are willing to admit.

This nuclear-armed state of 168 million is no stranger to political upheaval, of course. But this time, things are different. Today’s ongoing crisis — marked by a rash of suicide bombings, the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto last December, inflation as high as 25 percent and a resurgent Taliban movement — could spell doom for the Pakistani state itself. The global financial crisis has only made matters worse: Pakistan’s foreign-exchange reserves are collapsing, and credit markets are worried that it could soon default on its debt payments. The grim truth is that Pakistan is becoming something alarmingly close to a failed state. And that could have disastrous consequences for the United States, NATO and Afghanistan’s struggle to hold back its own Taliban insurgency.

True, Pakistan does have a newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, but let’s not kid ourselves about his ability (or even desire) to turn his country around. During his last stint in office (as minister of investment in the government led by his late wife, Bhutto), Zardari became known as “Mr. Ten Percent” for his alleged propensity for skimming funds from lucrative government contracts. And Zardari’s probable replacement, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, may be even more corrupt and incompetent.

Simply put, Pakistan is facing an existential crisis — on its streets and in its courts, barracks and parliament. American pundits and politicians might be hoping for the best for the country whose lawless border regions are widely thought to harbor Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. But I don’t see much chance of a happy turnaround. If, as both John McCain and Barack Obama have claimed, a strong, dependable Pakistan is the key to winning the war in Afghanistan, then we are waging an unwinnable war.

I have studied Pakistan for nearly 20 years and have traveled throughout the country several times. Yes, I am ethnically an Indian, but I am a U.S. citizen and harbor no animosity toward Pakistan or its citizens. After spending so much time studying the place, I’ve grown rather fond of it. But I worry that many Pakistanis — and Americans, for that matter — don’t want to hear the bad news.

Look, for example, at the reaction to the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last month, which may well have been designed to kill Zardari and decapitate the Pakistani government. For a few days, a sense of urgency filled the airwaves; the attack was called “Pakistan’s 9/11,” a wake-up call to a society facing grave security threats from Islamists and other radicals. But like most wake-up calls in Pakistan, it was soon drowned out by nationalist bombast. Pundits began to argue that it was U.S. pressure on Pakistan to “do more” about al-Qaeda that had gotten the tribal militants and mullahs riled up in the first place. “Now after helping create this chaos,” Ayaz Amir, one of the country’s most influential columnists, wrote several days after the bombing, the Americans “are expecting the battered state of Pakistan to bestir itself from the ashes and perform miracles.” Amazingly, the Marriott attack is now considered the United States’ problem, as if that crater in the center of Pakistan’s capital magically belonged to another world.

The source of Pakistan’s problems can be traced back to the failure of the state’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to plant deep democratic roots and create a tradition of compromise. After Jinnah’s death on Sept. 11, 1948, his successors proved incapable of dealing with the myriad challenges facing the new country.

Confronted with millions of refugees, rising ethnic and sectarian tension and material shortages of every sort, Pakistani leaders quickly turned to the military to restore order. In 1958, the military seized power and set in motion a long string of coups, distracting the country from the crucial task of building a strong state and weakening the civilian governments that occasionally managed to take the reins.

The military has dominated the nation ever since, with disastrous results. The generals helped spark the 1971 civil war that resulted (partly because of Indian intervention) in the creation of Bangladesh. In the 1980s, the military ruthlessly suppressed fratricidal violence in Karachi, the capital city of the southern province of Sindh. Not surprisingly, such moves left deep ethnic fissures in Pakistani society. And the military played with fire again in the 1980s when, following the disastrous lead of dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, it brought more and more Islamist sympathizers into its ranks.

The United States was fully aware of this ugly history when it partnered with the military’s intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to launch a holy war to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. That policy funneled billions of dollars to the Pakistani military and greatly expanded its reach — and its willingness to stoke tensions with Pakistan’s old nemesis, India. Starting in 1990, the ISI helped fuel a full-blown, religiously charged insurgency inside the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir. And with India to their east, Pakistan’s leaders were eager for a quiet border to their west. That led the ISI to become the leading ally of the Taliban after that band of Islamist zealots came out on top of the nasty civil war that followed the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan in 1989.

Nor has the ISI cut its ties to its Afghan friends in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that al-Qaeda plotted from its Taliban-granted haven in southern Afghanistan. Despite Pakistan’s angry denials, both India and the United States have now fingered the ISI as the principal instigator of the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July.

The ISI’s leaders and the generals who run the Pakistani military have been playing a duplicitous game with the United States for nearly two decades. The country’s former dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, supposedly chose to break with the Taliban after 9/11. But in fact, the ISI has been against us as often as it has been with us. Pakistan has been accepting vast amounts of U.S. funding and weaponry for supposedly helping the West rout the forces of bin Ladenism even as the ISI has been fueling those very forces in its ongoing drive to gain a strategic foothold in Afghanistan and get the upper hand in the conflict with India.

Even during the short periods of civilian rule in Islamabad, the power of the military and the ISI has continued to grow. In the mid-1990s, for instance, the military was racing headlong to acquire nuclear weapons even as Bhutto was assuring U.S. diplomats of Pakistani nuclear restraint. And today, the ultimate authority over the country’s nuclear weapons complex rests with the military, which has yet to account for the freewheeling nuclear marketing program — reaching into Libya, North Korea and who knows where else — of A.Q. Khan, who, although under nominal house arrest, is still regarded by many Pakistanis as a national hero.

Pakistan’s tragedy is that, from the beginning, no government, civilian or military, has fixed the underlying fragility of the state’s basic institutions. Instead, democrats and dictators alike have subverted political parties, threatened journalists and cowed the civil service in their quest for short-term political gain and personal advantage. Musharraf, who finally resigned last August under threat of impeachment, had a particularly pernicious tenure; during his nearly nine years in office, the military’s long tentacles reached deeper and deeper into Pakistani life. Under fitful pressure from the United States after 9/11, he briefly clamped down on a range of Islamist organizations and Kashmiri radical groups, but within weeks allowed them to reconstitute themselves under different names.

So can Pakistan be reformed, or is it doomed to collapse? Despite the country’s post-Musharraf return to civilian rule, its prospects are grim. As of last month, the ISI has a new leader, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, handpicked by the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, to replace a predecessor whom Bush administration officials suspected of having ties to the Taliban. But there is little reason to believe that Zardari’s weak, fractious government will be able to reform the ISI. In July, according to the Economist, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani “tried to bring the ISI under the control of the interior ministry. His decision was reversed within hours.”

The country could once again make a desultory return to military rule as its troubles mount. The generals may well be able to restore some semblance of stability, but their ties to the Islamists and the ISI’s ongoing soft spot for the Taliban will only lead Pakistan further into the vortex. Meanwhile, Pakistani troops have fired on U.S. forces launching raids across the Afghan border; Obama has promised to strike inside Pakistan if Islamabad refuses to act upon good intelligence about the whereabouts of al-Qaeda leaders; and McCain has vowed to pursue bin Laden “to the gates of hell.” It’s not a soothing picture.

We need a stern, serious international effort — led by the United States — to put Pakistan back together again, reform its institutions and reorder its priorities. If not, we will face a terrifying prospect: Pakistan’s collapse (slow or otherwise) into a full-blown failed state, armed with nuclear weapons, riven by ethnic tensions, suffused with resentment and zealotry, and with roving bands of Taliban sympathizers and bin Ladenists in its midst.

Sumit Ganguly is director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University and an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

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Some Bangladeshis ’still carried away by the present military-backed caretaker government’s drive against corruption ‘ may think that it will help clean up corruption. As a blogger had commented in drishtipat: ‘Like driver’s license renewal or getting cars inspection every year, the national ID card… will have huge impact on and spectacular change in the society.’ Those pro-ID cards probably don’t know that computer disks containing detailed personal information on 25 million individuals, and 7.25 million families in Britain, went missing last year. Personal information included names, addresses, national insurance numbers, and data on almost every child under 16. According to experts, the information ‘could allow crimes beyond identity theft,’ since some people use a child’s name or part of their address as password on their bank account. In other words, a combination of these details could allow criminals to break their code. Another critic says, if a government or criminal wanted to frame someone, amending, erasing, or adding to the details on one’s medical records, employment history, could be easily done, since all information would be stored on a single device.

Khushi Kabir had left a comment on my column at Shahidul’s blog, speaking of her own disturbing experiences: ‘What was also worrying was the religious and other profiling done, albeit arbitrarily in majority of cases, despite that this information was not asked for in the form filled up prior to getting photographed or finger printed. My big teep must have confused them, so they asked for my religion, which I did not find necessary to provide them, or any other information that was not on the form. Others were not asked but religion was put on the basis of their ‘assumption’. When challenged as to why they needed my religion or to keep it blank they stated that they were required by the ‘authorities’ to profile it. Shireen Huq had a similar experience. They informed her there was only space for four religions in the database, i.e. Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian. No scope for others. This kind of information can be potentially frightening.’

Against surveillance: more on the national ID card
by Shahidul Alam and Rahnuma Ahmed

Rahnuma Ahmed writes
My last column had ended with these words: ‘The current regime’s voter registration list has, in all probability, lessened  the likelihood of fraudulent votes. But it also has, in all likelihood, laid the groundwork for installing a new regime of surveillance, one that will be deployed against the citizens of Bangladesh National ID Cards: In the Interest of Surveillance? New Age, September 29).

Little did I know when I wrote it that Bangladeshi bloggers had intensely debated the pros and cons of national ID cards four weeks earlier (see http://amarblog.com/ashique-hasan/6501#comments). The discussion in amarblog.com had been generated by Ashiq’s Amra O Pari post, eulogising the electronic registration of voters, a feat that was termed a ’silent revolution’. Ashiq wrote, at first, no organisation had expressed its willingness to complete the task within the period stipulated by the government, not even foreign companies. Sky-high figures had been quoted. But fortunately, the Bangladesh army had submitted its own proposal to the government, just like any other organisation. Its budget was also the lowest.

A person who writes under the name of Incidental Blogger had raised these questions:

The Bangladesh army’s budget was the lowest:  what is your source of information? Do you know who were the second and third bidders? Do you know why the latter failed to secure the contract?

Who was in charge of the selection process? Who were the committee members? Could you tell us how much freedom they had in reaching their decision, and your source of information? Was any internationally-recognised independent evaluator assigned?

What were the criteria for selection?

Chor, another blogger, commented further down, the national ID card project is the task of the Election Commission. Of course, the EC can request the help of the army, this is not the problem. The problem is when public money is used to charge the public for services rendered.

Incidental Blogger further wrote, the ID card issue is linked to the issue of individual freedom, privacy, etc, this is why western governments are finding it difficult to get their own electorates to agree. Not mincing words, he wrote, does the caretaker government in Bangladesh have the right to make a decision on something as fundamental as the national ID card, something that is a matter of state policy? Did it not happen very conveniently, almost too easily? Are you sure this information will not be shared with western intelligence agencies? He went on, you may look at it positively, but I look at it as the first step in Bangladesh turning into a fascist state.

I read and re-read the blog. It is good to know that my fears are shared by others.

While researching for my previous article, I had surfed the internet for information, and learnt that the voter roll project in Bangladesh was a ‘co-operative venture’ between BIO-Key in the US, TigerIT in Bangladesh (their systems integrator on the ground), and the Bangladesh army.

I had asked Shahidul when he came home whether he knew of TigerIT Bangladesh. No, never heard of them, he said. Hmmm, I said, their webpage says, the cofounder and chairman is Ziaur Rahman, it lists a Joseph Fuisz, as the cofounder. And guess what, a Daily Star Weekend magazine article on Info-Tech says, `TigerIT Bangladesh Limited is an offshore technology campus of TigerIT, USA, with its corporate headquarters located in Northern Virginia (March 2, 2007), but this is not mentioned in their website.

Shahidul became curious. Read what happened next, in his words.

Shahidul Alam writes

I knew about Tigers. There were the Bengal Tigers, our cricket team, even Tiger Beer. TigerIT was new. Having initiated DrikTap, the pioneering email network in Bangladesh in the early nineties, I thought I knew about the IT scene in the country. So when Rahnuma told me about this ‘cutting edge’ Bangladeshi company, I asked around amongst IT savvy peers. No one had heard of TigerIT. A quick search of the ‘who is’ database revealed that the domain tigeritbd.com had only been registered on 21st August 2007. So when on the 1st May 2007, the chief election commissioner had said the ‘countdown of the 18-month timeframe starts from today,’ the domain www.tigeritbd.com did not even exist!

A quick search on Joseph Fuisz, the cofounder of the company, revealed that he was based in Washington DC. Since I was scheduled to give a presentation at the National Geographic in DC, I dropped Mr Fuisz a line asking if I could interview him. The ‘out of office’ response was followed by a mail saying he was away on a family holiday in Miami. It just so turned out, that I was presenting at Miami University on 30th September. I suggested we meet in Miami and provided my itinerary. Upon arrival at Miami, I received the following mail, ‘Unfortunately, I have been tied up in meetings all day today. Thus, I am sorry that it does not appear I will get to see you in Miami.’ This was the man who was away on a family holiday for a week. I offered to meet papa Fuisz (Richard C Fuisz, MD), in Washington DC. I should have anticipated the response: ‘I am so sorry ‘your prior email did not come through (I just found it) and so I did not forward it to my Dad’s assistant. I think it is too late to schedule now. Please accept my apologies. I will email you some things about Tiger and hope to meet in you Bangladesh some day ‘ very best, Joe Fuisz.

I’ve had no further correspondence from Fuisz.

Rahnuma Ahmed writes

If you had met him, what would you have wanted to know, I ask Shahidul. His list of questions was ready:

(1) What were the factors leading to a newly formed company, TigerIT BD, being able to obtain such a prestigious and lucrative contract?

(2) What are the implications of having a biometric database for Bangladesh? Who might benefit from this data, nationally and internationally?

(3) Does your company TigerIT (the parent company of TigerIT BD) have any previous experience of working in Bangladesh or the region?

(4) Why did you choose to work with relatively inexperienced people in Bangladesh and set up a new company rather than teaming up with existing IT companies with a track record?

(5) Who are the main clients of your company TigerIT (the parent company)?

(6) What is your equity in TigerIT BD?

He grinned and added, but of course, I sent him a very general note saying we were fascinated by the news of what they had done and wanted to do a feature on the company for DrikNews.

So, why are western citizens concerned? As Peter Boyle asks, what’s the fuss behind another little piece of plastic? What is dangerous is not the card itself, he says, but ‘the mother of all databases that is behind a compulsory national ID card system.’ Chris Puplick, a former Liberal Senator who was a member of the joint select committee on the Australia Card, speaking of his ‘fear’of national ID card systems wrote, ‘Should 20 million Australians have their liberties trashed so that we might – I repeat might – detect the two or three mad jihadists in our midst? Will files now be created on the basis that people belong to a certain religion, attend particular places of worship or hold specific political opinions?’

Does the national ID card system help to combat terrorism? Privacy International (PI), a global human rights group, in a 2004 study on the relationship between national ID cards and the prevention of terrorism was unable to ‘uncover any instance where the presence of an identity card system’ was a significant deterrent to terrorist activity. I remember coming across a blog comment somewhere: ‘Want to be rid of terrorism? Pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.’ Another blogger had said, ‘Governments quite often frighten me more than terrorists.’

Some Bangladeshis ’still carried away by the present military-backed caretaker government’s drive against corruption ‘ may think that it will help clean up corruption. As a blogger had commented in drishtipat: ‘Like driver’s license renewal or getting cars inspection every year, the national ID card… will have huge impact on and spectacular change in the society.’ Those pro-ID cards probably don’t know that computer disks containing detailed personal information on 25 million individuals, and 7.25 million families in Britain, went missing last year. Personal information included names, addresses, national insurance numbers, and data on almost every child under 16. According to experts, the information ‘could allow crimes beyond identity theft,’ since some people use a child’s name or part of their address as password on their bank account. In other words, a combination of these details could allow criminals to break their code. Another critic says, if a government or criminal wanted to frame someone, amending, erasing, or adding to the details on one’s medical records, employment history, could be easily done, since all information would be stored on a single device.

Khushi Kabir had left a comment on my column at Shahidul’s blog, speaking of her own disturbing experiences: ‘What was also worrying was the religious and other profiling done, albeit arbitrarily in majority of cases, despite that this information was not asked for in the form filled up prior to getting photographed or finger printed. My big teep must have confused them, so they asked for my religion, which I did not find necessary to provide them, or any other information that was not on the form. Others were not asked but religion was put on the basis of their ‘assumption’. When challenged as to why they needed my religion or to keep it blank they stated that they were required by the ‘authorities’ to profile it. Shireen Huq had a similar experience. They informed her there was only space for four religions in the database, i.e. Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian. No scope for others. This kind of information can be potentially frightening.’

Of course yes, Khushi. As Jim Fussell of Prevent Genocide International points out, ethnic classification on ID cards in Rwanda, instituted by the Belgian colonial government and retained after independence, spelled a death sentence for Tutsis at any roadblock. No other factor, says Fussell, was more significant in facilitating the speed and magnitude of the 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda that left 800,000 dead.

The near-deafening silence of Bangladeshi human rights organisations and activists on the national ID card issue is remarkable. I wonder why? Are their campaigns waged against ‘locals’ only ‘the neighbourhood bully, the local rapist, the village acid-thrower? Do they shy away when human rights violations are caused by ‘big’ actors? Does speaking out against Big Brother’s ‘war on terror’ fall outside the prescribed terms of reference?

Do not misunderstand me, fighting against local power structures has not always been easy or convenient, as their own records of struggle show. But it is a global world, and we should learn from the African feminist who had said, I am oppressed not only by my patriarchal village headman, but equally so by the IMF and the World Bank. And I add, by western regimes who are waging terrorist wars against the world’s peoples.

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India has long been looking for an opportunity to flex its muscles in the Afghanistan imbroglio. It has been traditionally using the Afghan card to spell gloom and doom in Pakistan. As early as the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, India urged the then Afghan government to deploy its armed forces along the Durand Line to dissuade Pakistan from any adventurism against India and exploit its weakness when it was being routed by the Chinese along Ladakh. During the 1965 and 1971 Pakistan-Indian wars too, Afghanistan sided with India. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the decade of seventies, Pakistan became a front-line state and with the help of USA and its allies, helped thwart the Soviet invasion and limited to the Durand Line and ultimately force the Soviets into retreat. India aided the Soviet secret service KGB and Afghan spy agency Khad to attempt to destabilize Pakistan through sabotage, sedition, subversion and acts of terrorism. The seeds of rebellion were sown in Balochistan, the fires of which are now again being stoked by Indian spy agency RAW. The advent of Taliban Rule in Afghanistan threw a damper on Indian machinations to use Afghan soil to destabilize Pakistan; however, 9/11 provided a fresh impetus to Indian nefarious aims towards Pakistan. Since its erstwhile allies the Northern Alliance rose to power in Afghanistan, following the US-led invasion, India made the most of it by deploying Indian personnel working on various projects with the Afghan people and government for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the country. There are approximately 3,000-4,000 Indian nationals working on several such projects across Afghanistan. India has committed aid to Afghanistan in the 2002-09 period amounting to $750 million, making it the fifth largest bilateral donor after the United States, Britain, Japan and Germany. India has used these trade centers and its four Consulates to man with RAW and its four Consulates to man with RAW personnel to hatch plots against Pakistan. Indian forces will give respite to the ISAF and NATO forces but sink the Indians deep into the Afghan quagmire. The choice is theirs if they want to face the humiliation and ignominy of another disaster.

by Sultan M Hali

Recent media reports that India has signed an understanding with Afghanistan to deploy 150,000 of its armed forces personnel in Afghanistan to support the ISAF and NATO forces fighting insurgency in the war-ravaged country is not only disturbing but also bodes ill for the region. Indian defense planners are convinced that a significant Indian military presence in Afghanistan will alter the geo-strategic landscape in the extended neighborhood by expanding India’s power projection in Central Asia. India has historically had a friendly relationship with both Iran and Russia. With Iran, India can also ride on the goodwill created by Zaranj-Delaram highway, which has provided a road link between Afghanistan and Iran. These nations could well be more amenable to an Indian military presence than they have been to the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan.

Sushant K Singh, in his article titled, ‘Security Watch – Indian presence essential in Afghanistan’ comments: “The Pakistani state will be denied the strategic depth it seeks by installing a favorable dispensation in Afghanistan. The Pakistani establishment will be compelled to divert its energies from their eastern to their northern borders. Loud protests can be anticipated from Pakistan against India’s active military involvement in the region, but the involvement of the United States will restrict Pakistani antipathy to voluble complaints. US officials have, moreover, long been frustrated at what they view as Pakistan’s failure to do enough to combat militants along its border with Afghanistan. An Indian military involvement in Afghanistan will shift the battleground away from Kashmir and the Indian mainland. Targeting the jihadi base will be a huge boost for India’s anti-terrorist operations, especially in Kashmir, both militarily and psychologically. Until the time Islamic fundamentalist forces are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, India’s battle to contain terrorism in Kashmir will always be a defensive one. This is because ISI and other jihadist forces across the border have the ability to calibrate the level of terrorism in India. India can counter this effectively only if it has the capacity to strategically ratchet up pressure either of Pakistan’s fronts.”

He further surmises that “The presence of Indian military in Afghanistan and provision of aid for infrastructure development and human resource training in the war-ravaged country are not mutually exclusive options. In any case, the ferocity of the enmity of jihadist elements against the Indian state will not be subdued, if India shuns military deployment in favor of solely executing developmental projects. Moreover India will find it much easier to successfully execute civil projects once it has stabilized the security climate by taking military control of a region. Soft power has to be an important component of any successful counterinsurgency operation; but it has to be augmented by hard power – of having military boots on ground. It will also send a strong message to the local Afghan nationals that India is in there for a long haul, putting lives of its soldiers to risk, and not restricting itself to merely throwing some alms at them, through developmental aid or projects.”

India has long been looking for an opportunity to flex its muscles in the Afghanistan imbroglio. It has been traditionally using the Afghan card to spell gloom and doom in Pakistan. As early as the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, India urged the then Afghan government to deploy its armed forces along the Durand Line to dissuade Pakistan from any adventurism against India and exploit its weakness when it was being routed by the Chinese along Ladakh. During the 1965 and 1971 Pakistan-Indian wars too, Afghanistan sided with India. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the decade of seventies, Pakistan became a front-line state and with the help of USA and its allies, helped thwart the Soviet invasion and limited to the Durand Line and ultimately force the Soviets into retreat. India aided the Soviet secret service KGB and Afghan spy agency Khad to attempt to destabilize Pakistan through sabotage, sedition, subversion and acts of terrorism. The seeds of rebellion were sown in Balochistan, the fires of which are now again being stoked by Indian spy agency RAW. The advent of Taliban Rule in Afghanistan threw a damper on Indian machinations to use Afghan soil to destabilize Pakistan; however, 9/11 provided a fresh impetus to Indian nefarious aims towards Pakistan. Since its erstwhile allies the Northern Alliance rose to power in Afghanistan, following the US-led invasion, India made the most of it by deploying Indian personnel working on various projects with the Afghan people and government for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the country. There are approximately 3,000-4,000 Indian nationals working on several such projects across Afghanistan. India has committed aid to Afghanistan in the 2002-09 period amounting to $750 million, making it the fifth largest bilateral donor after the United States, Britain, Japan and Germany. India has used these trade centers and its four Consulates to man with RAW and its four Consulates to man with RAW personnel to hatch plots against Pakistan.

It has also been aspiring and preparing its troops to be deployed in Afghanistan. It has been training its armed forces with British Armed Forces. Three years of intense interaction between the Royal Marines (RM) mountain leaders and the Indian Army’s Gulmarg-based High Altitude Warfare School

(HAWS) culminated last year in a 25-day exercise code-named, Himalayan Warrior comprising specialist high altitude training in the Ladakh region of the Kashmir Himalayas to enable both forces to operate in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.India seems to have forgotten its sad experience in its intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war in the late 1980s, which ended in disaster. Its armed forces late entry in Afghanistan also spells doom and gloom. Since 2002, the Taliban has demanded the departure of all Indian personnel working in Afghanistan. It has conducted multiple attacks against Indian targets. Many of these have been concentrated in the southwest province of Nimroz (which is at the heart of the strategic Zarang-Delaram highway project being built under the auspices of the Indian army’s Border Roads Organization (BRO). They include the abduction and murder of Ramankutty Maniyappan, an employee of BRO in November 2005; the killing of two soldiers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police on 3 January 2008 in the first-ever suicide-attack on Indians in Afghanistan; and the killing of another ITBP trooper on 5 June 2008. The suicide car-bombing in front of the Indian embassy in Kabul on the morning of 7 July 2008 that killed at least fifty-four persons and wounded more than 140 should be a stark reminder to Indian forces, what lies ahead. If they think that they can bask in the glory of a “victory” in Afghanistan along with other international armies, they are sadly mistaken. The ISAF and NATO forces in Afghanistan are exhausted and seeking face-saving truce and power sharing with the Taliban.

Indian forces will give respite to the ISAF and NATO forces but sink the Indians deep into the Afghan quagmire. The choice is theirs if they want to face the humiliation and ignominy of another disaster.

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U.S. is deliberately creating opportunities for terrorism inside Pakistan. The objective is to create a situation where a U.S. political and military intervention in Pakistan becomes inevitable. Segments of the Pakistani ‘leadership’ are part of this agenda, since it cannot be completed without inside help. Pakistani Pashtuns, the most loyal citizens of Pakistan, are being turned into rebels.  If the present trend continues, we may eventually confront a civil war across the country. This is exactly the situation the U.S. is seeking so that it can intervene and establish a puppet regime in Islamabad. Is anyone In Islamabad or Rawalpindi paying attention? Clearly, it involves the U.S. creating space within the tribal areas to move in militarily and eventually restructure the whole Muslim nuclear entity of Pakistan. Attacking civilians and thereby creating chaos and panic which would inevitably lead to a mass displacement and add to the pressure on the central government in Islamabad. Also, knowing full well – after all if we can conclude that such killings will create more space for extremists and terrorists, one can assume the U.S. analysts and advisers must have done the same – that by unleashing a war against our tribals and abusing our sovereignty they will create more space for the terrorists; and thereby more reasons to further destabilize us from outside while we face increasing attacks from our home-grown terrorists. Let us not fool ourselves – the U.S. is no friend but a powerful enemy and its ultimate aim is to defang us in terms of our nuclear assets. Already the statements have become more honed in terms of our nuclear assets – both directly, in terms of a bizarre fear that our nukes will fall into “terrorist” hands even though it is the U.S. that seems to have a problem of loose nukes (remember the U.S. planes flying with such weapons only last year?); and, indirectly, by having their politicians and some international agencies build up a crescendo of Pakistan being the most dangerous country in the world and a new “war zone”.

By SHIREEN M. MAZARI

The big picture for Pakistan should be more visible now in terms of what the U.S. agenda is for this country. But that agenda has been carefully operationalized since the opportunity presented itself to the U.S. in the form of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 – in which, by the way, no Pakistani was involved. Some of us have been highlighting that agenda for some years since, and also pointing out how complicity of our leadership was a requirement for that agenda to continue moving ahead. And what is that agenda?

Clearly, it involves the U.S. creating space within the tribal areas to move in militarily and eventually restructure the whole Muslim nuclear entity of Pakistan. Attacking civilians and thereby creating chaos and panic which would inevitably lead to a mass displacement and add to the pressure on the central government in Islamabad. Also, knowing full well – after all if we can conclude that such killings will create more space for extremists and terrorists, one can assume the U.S. analysts and advisers must have done the same – that by unleashing a war against our tribals and abusing our sovereignty they will create more space for the terrorists; and thereby more reasons to further destabilize us from outside while we face increasing attacks from our home-grown terrorists. Let us not fool ourselves – the U.S. is no friend but a powerful enemy and its ultimate aim is to defang us in terms of our nuclear assets. Already the statements have become more honed in terms of our nuclear assets – both directly, in terms of a bizarre fear that our nukes will fall into “terrorist” hands even though it is the U.S. that seems to have a problem of loose nukes (remember the U.S. planes flying with such weapons only last year?); and, indirectly, by having their politicians and some international agencies build up a crescendo of Pakistan being the most dangerous country in the world and a new “war zone”.

That was the first phase of the plan for Pakistan. As the U.S. war on terror has unfolded in our part of the world, we have suddenly seen the emergence of a Tehrik-i-Taliban, Pakistan and countless other militant groups – some of whom were raised and funded by the CIA in earlier years and may well have sustained that linkage. The most aggressively loyal Pakistanis of the tribal belt have now been turned into challengers of the writ of the Pakistani state. Is it not worth understanding why and how? We are being forced into accepting the U.S. war now as “our war” although in reality while we are facing a severe threat from extremists and home grown terrorists, our fight against these forces has to be different from the U.S. war on terror. That is still not our war but is in fact fuelling and aggravating our terrorist problems.

Now the U.S. has moved to phase two where it is actually seeking direct intervention on the ground before it finally puts international pressure on us to hand over our nuclear assets – showing the world how Pakistan has indeed become a “war zone” in which the international community must intervene to take charge of the nuclear assets. Of course, the U.S. would then offer to head such a mission. Seems far fetched? Then recheck what has been happening in terms of U.S. policy vis a vis Pakistan since 9/11 and the statements emanating from the U.S. at the official and media levels.

As for us Pakistanis, we are being confronted with a two-front war: against a qualitatively new terrorist threat in terms of suicide bombings and the growth of a violent extremism; and, against an indirect war being conducted by the U.S. against our long term survival as an independent nuclear state. But, as I stated at the beginning, none of the U.S. agenda would be feasible without the support of the Pakistani rulers. Unfortunately this support has been there from the start but now it has reached new proportions.

During the Musharraf government we were given many briefings to the effect that the U.S. and NATO/ISAF could only intrude aerially into our space with our permission. As a perturbed pilot informed me the other day, he was shocked to learnt that apart from the UAVs flying into Pakistani air space, NATO and ISAF aircraft are flying round the clock tactical missions in Pakistan. Apparently, they have been cleared by our controllers’ to fly tactical in FATA, “Pukhtunkhwa” and Balochistan. The Musharraf government had also given unprecedented access to the U.S. in terms of bases and intelligence. But our democratic leadership has gone even further in affecting unilateral compromises, including it now appears permission to hit and kill our own people, which impact our very survival as an independent nuclear entity.

Regardless of how our own Goebbels tries to explain away the Zardari interview to the Wall Street Journal, the quotes speak for themselves and nor has a correction been sought or offered on either side. First there is the absurd style of reference President Zardari uses when talking of Pakistan and its institutions as his personal fiefdom, “my F-16s”, “my security personnel” (that is the military) “my war” and so on. And of course he wants the world to “give me” $ 100 billion!

More damaging though is his declaration that not only is he “an American friend” but that the U.S. is carrying out Predator missile strikes on Pakistani soil with his government’s consent. His logic for insisting the U.S. support his government also undermines Pakistan because he seeks to show that if he falls our nukes will fall into terrorist hands. Is this how he protects our national interests? Now if his wish of accessing our strategic institutions with his cronies and the like is fulfilled, we may as well hand over all our assets to the U.S. – and now, by default, given the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership, to India.

But then, they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it seems our president has no understanding of our history since he declares grandly, “India has never been a threat to Pakistan“. Please, Ms Rehman, at least teach him some basic history and you do not have to use Pakistani sources either! As for his comment on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal – which even more rational U.S. analysts have decried as a factor in upping the nuclear arms’ levels in South Asia, our ignorant President sees it merely as the “largest democracy” in the world “getting friendly” with the “oldest democracy” in the world!

In fact, he sees his own country simply as a backyard to serve Indian development. As for the poor Kashmiris, they have been labeled “terrorists” for seeking liberation from Indian occupation! To our shame, a Pakistani ruler’s effigy was burnt for the first time since 1979, in Baramulla town in Occupied Kashmir with 400 Kashmiris defying curfew to express their anger at the Zardari labeling of the Kashmiri freedom fighters as “terrorists”. So far, Zardari has certainly been good news only for the U.S. and India!

If Musharraf was forced to compromise with the U.S. – although now his compromises appear miniscule when compared to what the present government is giving to the U.S. – to ostensibly sustain himself in power then what is our present leadership so worried about in terms of the U.S.? Are there still some dangerous skeletons despite the NRO that the U.S. can utilize to keep the democratic dispensation in line with its eventual goal of ending the nuclear Pakistani state as we know it?

If the present trends continue we may well eventually confront a civil war across the country. This is exactly the situation the U.S. is seeking to come in fully and set up its own quisling set up. As we and the U.S. know, there have always been many in our leadership only too willing to play that role. As for the present leaders, their embarking on the road to power may well have been prepared in Washington, but it is Pakistan’s realities that will ensure their stay in or removal from power. Can they manage to get out of the U.S. embrace to see their own realities?

The writer is a defense analyst.

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The quality of violence characterizing Bangladeshi society at all levels today has an irreducibly political context. Overt and visible violence has been coexisting with invisible violence that in effect destroys the identity of human beings. Visible violence being situational can be dealt by law and order solutions through political intervention. In Bangladesh today, we are witnessing the politics of violence, which in practical terms means resorting to physical violence to promote a political objective. We also observe violence of politics which denotes violence built into the institutional structure of politics. Although our major political parties would deny the existence of violence of politics the people see violence in all politics. The events necessitating 1/11 of 2007 lend credence to the premonition of our citizens. The much discussed phenomena of terrorism may be viewed as the illegal use of violence for inflicting punishment or taking revenge or influencing behavioural change. The roots of political terrorism require careful analysis. The skeptics would say that in defining terrorism there is a bias against people and in favour of governments. Of late, religious zealotry has been a source of terror. Often, there is an expression of anger and a sense of betrayal. Underlying some violent actions are government policies that have failed to address the democratic concerns of the citizens. There is, thus a need, to ensure that State agencies do not go beyond the legal boundaries.

FOR the governance scenario to register substantial improvements and thus to secure the foundations of democracy in our volatile polity, the phenomenon of violence or specifically, the spectre of political violence needs to be studied in a serious manner. Its urgency would be felt in the coming months as the nation prepares for the election with a view to returning to democratic governance. Without fear of contradiction it can be said that an overall assessment of the subject of contemporary political violence in Bangladeshi society and authoritarian response thereof has been neglected.

There is no denying that every civilian death linked to conflict amounts to a violation of human rights. Such risks are heavily weighted against people living in poorest countries like ours. There is, undoubtedly, a pressing need for safety from chronic threats and protection from sudden disruptions in the patterns of daily life. Political violence undermines human security in several dimensions because there is a strong association between serious violence and low human development. Therefore, prevention of such violence must be at the centre of planning for poverty reduction.

It would be topical to observe that violence and violent outcomes are more likely in societies marked by deep polarization, weak institutions and chronic poverty. We cannot win in the campaign against violence unless human security is extended and strengthened. Therefore, security strategy must not make the mistake of adopting an underdeveloped human security response. Bangladesh scenario lends credence to such apprehensions.

In Bangladesh serious political violence has occurred when the underprivileged were materially and socially controlled or excluded by the government and the market. Such victims have often been economically marginalized. Violence has been mostly perpetrated on those in the lowest rungs of the social order. In such circumstances, physical violence has manifested itself as the weapon of the oppressed against the authority.

The quality of violence characterizing Bangladeshi society at all levels today has an irreducibly political context. Overt and visible violence has been coexisting with invisible violence that in effect destroys the identity of human beings. Visible violence being situational can be dealt by law and order solutions through political intervention.

In Bangladesh today, we are witnessing the politics of violence, which in practical terms means resorting to physical violence to promote a political objective. We also observe violence of politics which denotes violence built into the institutional structure of politics. Although our major political parties would deny the existence of violence of politics the people see violence in all politics. The events necessitating 1/11 of 2007 lend credence to the premonition of our citizens.

It has been our unfortunate experience to see the state-sponsored development programs becoming tools of oppression in the hands of ruling political elite. In addition, electoral politics pursued by the political parties often lead to violence and persistence of violence against the weak.

Interestingly enough, one has to look into the relationship between violence and power. Though violence in society is perceived as a breach of law, often the law itself becomes equally violent and has an anaesthetizing impact on account of systematic ruthlessness that is sanctioned officially. One has to remember that the rule of law, apparently a civilizing factor, has led to the deployment of violence for purposes of governance. There is, therefore, a need to check the indiscriminate use of power and violence.

We in Bangladesh need serious policy discussions of the phenomenon of violence, though there has been plenty of scattered discussion in the media. One must not be under the mistaken impression that violence is a mere by-product of under development, which will disappear as development takes place. We would do well to remember that violence has serious ramifications for families, children and communities. The lives of non-partisan and non-combatant people are affected by being caught between two opposing parties, by the security operations, summary justice, the curbs on individual freedom and the lack of trust among people living through violence.

There is a need to appreciate that several factors aggravate violence. Such factors include the failure of multi-party representative democracy, poor governance, emergence of fundamental ideologies, dispersal of unauthorized firearms, development-induced displacement, drugs trafficking, and money laundering and associated phenomena. In addition, we have to recognize that criminal behaviour is becoming more apparent than the obvious rise in the number of law-enforcers and that young people including even females are increasingly taking to violent criminal acts. There is also the threat of the use of arms becoming more common and the increasing tendency to resort to violence.

The much discussed phenomena of terrorism may be viewed as the illegal use of violence for inflicting punishment or taking revenge or influencing behavioural change. The roots of political terrorism require careful analysis. The skeptics would say that in defining terrorism there is a bias against people and in favour of governments. Of late, religious zealotry has been a source of terror. Often, there is an expression of anger and a sense of betrayal. Underlying some violent actions are government policies that have failed to address the democratic concerns of the citizens. There is, thus a need, to ensure that State agencies do not go beyond the legal boundaries.

If there is any serious attempt by caring Bangladeshis to understand the incidences of the malfunctioning of our polity by placing them in the historical, sociological and political context then that may turn out to be an agonizing experience. One suspicion could be whether our concern for democracy amounted to merely a false consciousness or worse, was it a crude legitimization of the so-called politically driven conflict. Should we look for the roots of the problem in the phenomena of social exclusion, economic marginalization, contests for power and other contingent factors?

A question that should bother right-thinking citizens is as to where do the State fit into a scenario as apprehended above? Have widespread abnormalities surfaced during the stock-taking process because we did not quite realize that the State could not satisfactorily deliver the required services including security to its citizens? If this is perceived to be a failure then what are the circumstances in which such a failure has occurred? One could also wonder if the State through the government machinery was a participant rather than a neutral umpire in situations of conflict.

Although politics, without doubt, is an edifying activity, not many in Bangladesh would talk reverentially about politicians. Some would even go to the extent of depicting our politicians as active participants in the creation of disorder. Their malevolence has been criticized as planned and diabolically purposeful.

In Bangladesh, unfortunately, we have witnessed violence that has been purposive. In our polity we have seen political motivations ranging from local turf wars to more ugly and vulgar race for quick riches; from teaching a rival group a ‘lesson’ to polarizing communities into voting blocs.

Politics did enter into a situation in which hired thugs who perpetrated violence were assured of protection from prosecution. Very few felt ashamed as politics in our parlance acquired a pejorative connotation by the fact of its manifest association with conflict and violence. The civil society has been undermined by the stimulation of politics based on division and acrimony.

Cynical observers of our social scene are of the distressing view that there is a functional utility of violence for politicians. Such opinions point an accusing finger towards the suspected State complicity in the perpetration of organized acts of violence and the inordinate delays in securing justice for the victims. This delay is alarming as it sends a clear message to potential delinquents that no harm will come to them in the event of repeat performances of criminal activities.

In Bangladesh we need to seriously acknowledge the significance of authoritative approval or condoning of violence because such action is construed as social approval. The so-called political circumstances have often obstructed accountability of the culpable individuals. There is good reason to doubt that considerable number of officials abnegated their responsibility to protect all citizens regardless of their identity.

The politicians have to realize that violent incidents and assassinations of political personalities in particular have made an adverse impact on all segments of the state and the outside world has taken a note of that. We cannot afford to have any further delay in the proper investigation of the relevant cases because the nation must come out of the saturated pool of pathetic inaction into a pragmatic realization that political disputes must be settled in a civilized manner and violence cannot be a way of life in a democratic polity.

In respect of fighting violence, there is no visible earnestness at the heart of the Bangladeshi political system. Countering violence now should be the conjoint responsibility of the State, the civil society and the market, entailing a shift in analysis from the State to the society as a whole. In ensuring the security of the state, it must not exceed the limits of legitimacy and resort to unacceptable levels of violence. The provider should not be a predator.

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