One neighbour outsourcing terrorism to another: New Delhi

Leaflets and cassettes seized from radical Bangladeshi Islamic groups spew venom against America, Britain, India and Israel accusing them of forging a global anti-Muslim axis.

“Islamic hardliners, from Algeria to the Philippines, are pathologically opposed to the United States, United Kingdom and Israel, but Bangladeshi militants are also exploiting strong, and probably well-deserved, anti-India feelings among ordinary Bangladeshis to fuel their campaign,” said a western diplomat in Dhaka.

“The militants speak of India, the US, UK and Israel in the same breath, branding them Bangladesh’s enemies,” the diplomat added.

Banned groups Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) — believed to be behind a new terror campaign to impose sharia law — openly propagate the notion that Bangladesh has no option but to assert its Islamic identity to keep the Hindu-majority India at bay. New Delhi, for its part, insists its nuclear adversary Pakistan has outsourced terrorism to exert strategic pressure on India’s east and northeast, where several separatist conflicts are being waged.

Indian diplomats say the JMB and JMJB are led by Bangladeshis who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and, in doing so, met Pakistani jihad groups and members of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). “Hundreds of Taliban-trained Bangladeshi fighters, including Afghan war veterans, left after the US-led invasion,” said a senior Indian embassy official. “On their return (to Bangladesh), they went underground but created a communication network. Now they’ve emerged from the shadows and are targeting India at the behest of the ISI and Pakistan-based Islamic groups, which are in regular contact with the JMB and JMJB leadership,” the embassy official said.

Indeed, New Delhi has said Kashmiri militants and separatists from the northeast conduct hit-and-run attacks from Bangladesh. Dhaka denies the charge. Independent commentators say the militants have an audience in Bangladesh because of what they call ‘Big Brother’ India’s record of bullying the country for decades.

Some analysts say New Delhi’s tactic of shooting Bangladeshis loitering near the country’s 4,000-km frontier, its persistent refusal to open India’s huge market to Bangladeshi goods to ease a staggering trade deficit, its threat to block rivers flowing into Bangladesh and its labelling of Bangladesh as a “failed” state are breeding anti-India sentiments that the extremists are exploiting.

Indian security forces accuse Bangladeshi militants of aiding recent bomb attacks in New Delhi and last month’s terrorist strike on a university in Bangalore that killed a professor and wounded four other people.

India responded by deploying more troops along the border with Bangladesh to block “radical ideologies and illegal trespassers”.

“We are seriously concerned about the situation in Bangladesh,” said a senior Indian Border Security Force officer.  JBM leaflets identify UK as an “adversary” for sending troops to Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to fight alongside American forces. British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury, an ethnic Bangladeshi, was wounded in a bomb blast at a Muslim shrine in Sylhet in 2004. Three people were killed and nearly 50 wounded in the blast.

The US embassy in Dhaka said in a statement that the JMB and JMJB have not only threatened to blow up the mission but also target newspapers and charities which receive funding from the US government. Quoting JMB leaflets, the statement said that militants condemn Western social and political concepts as un-Islamic and identify the governments of US and UK as enemies of Islam.