Threats against national security: Will the real enemy raise hand?
M. Shahidul Islam
Some nations are concerned with perceived threats while others face
threats that are existential. Our nation faces a number of existential
threats which the PM might have grasped partially, though belatedly.
From the podium of a graduation ceremony at the National Defence
College (NDC), Sheikh Hasina had warned the perceived and real enemies
of the nation on December 20 that 'tough steps would be taken if the
country's independence and sovereignty are put at stake.'
The tenor of the speech is not indicative of it having been aimed
at anything domestic. Rather, the caution seemed to have targeted some
foreign entities as the PM added, "We believe in peace. We seek
peaceful resolutions to all disputed issues and are determined to
uphold the spirit of the SAARC. But we will definitely be firm if our
national security and independence are threatened."
Tip-toeing into the third year of her government's tenure, Sheikh
Hasina seems to be telling her opponents and distracters that she is
not as soft and gullible to some external powers as her opponents
would like to have us believe. She wants to prove her mettle by
highlighting on the magnitude of the inordinate arrays of external and
internal threats facing the nation.
Border dispute
The PM deserves our full appreciation for that. Like many of us,
she must have been awe-struck when the fanfare of an ostentatious
victory day celebration on December 16 -- amidst impressive display of
military hardware, parading and defence capability -- got overshadowed
by a grisly incident along the Bangladesh India border. The same day,
a group of Indian tribesmen intruded into Bangladesh along the
Sylhet-Jointapur frontier to occupy a chunk of uranium-rich
Bangladeshi marshland which Delhi had coveted for too long. Backed by
a company strength (about 120 personnel) BSF soldiers, the intruders
strove to occupy the area, but had to beat a hasty retreat once few
thousands Bangladeshi villagers -- armed with bare hands, bamboo
sticks and machetes -- chased them away.
This pocket of Indo-Bangla border has rattled relations between the
two countries since the conclusion of the 1971 war of liberation. In
April 2001, a battalion strong BSF (about 840 personnel) made a
similar intrusion, resulting in BDR's stiff resistance and killing of
16 BSF soldiers and injuring 45 others.
But the recent flare-ups seem more provocative and menacing. On
March 12 this year BSF dug as many as 25 bunkers inside Bangladesh
following an overnight intrusion through Padua - Protappur border.
Three days later, on March 15, at least 14 Bangladeshi civilians were
injured by BSF bullets when the BSF engaged in a two-hour long shoot
out with BDR. Similar occurrences have become routine of some sort in
recent times.
That may be why the PM decided to take a swipe against Delhi in
order to deflect an entrenched allegation that she and her government
are puppets of a foreign power. The warning also aimed convincing
Beijing that the AL administration was not Delhi's puppet,
irrespective of whatever the visiting opposition leader Khaleda Zia
might tell the Chinese Communist leaders.
Al-Qaeda threat
However, there is another angle to this cryptic, generalized
warning shot fired by our PM. It was on September 29 when the Taliban
warned Bangladesh of unspecified consequences if the latter complied
with a US request for troop contribution to the Afghan war. The threat
followed the request for troop made by Richard Holbrooke, US's special
envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (recently deceased), during a
meeting with Foreign Minister Dipu Moni in New York about a week
earlier.
Although there is no discernible indication as yet that Bangladesh
has either agreed to send troops to Afghanistan, or had done so, the
Taliban and its international mentor, al-Qaeda, have already
undertaken a series of offensives against Bangladesh. On December 19,
Taliban fighters killed a Bangladeshi engineer, Kazi Altaf Hossain,
and abducted and took hostage six other workers. The victims were
employees of a Korean construction company, Samwhan Corporation. The
following day, two of the seven hostages were released, the foreign
ministry said in a news release on December 20. According to the
ministry, the captives were in good health. Are they?
Cavalier ministry
What surprises many is that the foreign ministry officials are yet
to believe that the nexus of the crime is laced with many of the
domestic policy prerogatives of the government, although one senior
diplomat argued 'this is not the first time the Taliban took aim at
Bangladeshi workers.'
That is true. In October 2008, Taliban fighters abducted Mohammad
Shahjahan Ali and Akhter Ali, two officials of BRAC in Ghazni. Another
NGO official, Abdul Alim, was killed in September 2007. Few days
later, Nurul Islam, another BRAC official, was abducted from his
office.
These incidents may seem as random acts of banditry usually seen in
any civil-war, but the very fact that they started occurring only
after the coming to power of the army-backed caretaker regime, and,
intensified further since the AL-led regime's coming to power must
offer a different connotation to any thoughtful observer.
Hijacked ship
More significant is another recent incident. Before the latest
kidnapping and killing of the Bangladeshi engineer in Afghanistan,
al-Qaeda affiliated Somali pirates took aim at Bangladeshi sailors on
December 5 by hijacking a Bangladeshi-owned ship, MV Jahan Moni, from
the Arabian Sea, 1300 nautical miles off the Somali coast. Twenty-five
crew members and wife of the ship's chief engineer, all Bangladeshi
nationals, were aboard the ship. The ship was voyaging from Indonesia,
carrying 43,150 tonnes of nickel, to Greece via the Suez Canal.
This high sea heist was the first of its kind against any
Bangladeshi ship, and it does have global implications. The pirates
immediately sailed the ship toward the Somali coast and allowed the
crew to contact their families and the ship's owner. According to the
victims' relatives, around 30 pirates, armed with heavy weapons, were
guarding the ship while the captive crews remained confined into a
secluded room.
Nations sensitive to national security matters usually make
desperate bids, including military operations, to rescue their hostage
citizens. Our tale is different. Almost drowned in the hula bola
created by the arrest on December 16 of BNP leader SQ Chowdhury, the
kidnapped crews remained untraced and there was little effort so far
to rescue them, although, as per international law, the attack on a
Bangladeshi ship constituted an attack on the nation itself.
That is why, in a written statement on December 20, victims' family
members expressed their utter desperation and claimed the pirates
contacted the ship's owner company on December 12 and demanded a
ransom of $9 million within five days. The statement said, "Otherwise
they would kill the crew. But we didn't see any concrete step from the
government or from the ship's operating company to rescue them."
Somali pirates are not known for mincing words. Unless their
demands are met within five days, which expired on December 19, the
crews might face the worst.
Threats from extremism
These increased incidents of reprisals against Bangladeshis show
how the al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including the Afghan Taliban, are
desperately trying to impact the policy making of our government with
respect to how it views the ongoing NATO war on terror against the
political Islamists. More than the al-Qaeda, its South Asian variant,
the Lashker E Toiba (LeT), seems to be dead set against Bangladesh.
That proves the threats to our national security stems from
multifarious sources; from big neighbour to radical political fringes
of the leftist and the Islamist variants.
What in fact went wrong? Since coming to power in early 2009, the
AL-led government's approach to handling domestic and international
extremism has been as blunt and reckless as was the failed and
disastrous policy pursued by the former US President, George W Bush. A
particular example may suffice to prove this strand of assertion. On
the other hand, it had conceded to India anything Delhi had wished
for.
Provoked LeT
In October 2009, the U.S. authorities arrested one David Coleman
Headley, reportedly a Pakistani-American living in Chicago, for
allegedly conducting surveillance on behalf of LeT for the Mumbai
attacks in 2008. Intelligence sources later claimed Coleman and other
LeT operatives had planned to attack other targets in South Asia while
there are also reports that Coleman was a paid FBI agent being used
for what in the intelligence parlance is known as 'false flag
operations.'
That controversy notwithstanding, and reportedly acting on
information provided by Coleman to the FBI, authorities in Bangladesh
arrested a number of alleged LeT operatives in late 2009 for an
alleged plot to launch attacks on the American and British embassies
in Dhaka. The incident created intense uproar among US policy makers,
or, it might have been orchestrated to do so. Ambassador Daniel
Benjamin, the U.S. State Department's top counterterrorism official,
later told reporters in January 2010 that "Very few things worry me as
much as the strength and ambition of LeT, a truly malign presence in
South Asia."
Although the Ambassador did not specify where in South Asia he has
discovered LeT's massive presence, the likely spots were Pakistan,
Kashmir and Bangladesh, according to US officials.
That alone makes Bangladesh a target of external intervention,
although any sweeping conclusion that Bangladesh is infested with
LeT-like operatives is as fantasy-laden as was the existence of the
Iraqi WMD. Yet, many within the government believe the PM's warning
aimed at the bubbling domestic threats against the government and the
external connotation they embrace.
According to one reliable source within the government, BNP leader
SQ Chowdhury is suspected of having ties with external extremist
forces, for which, however, there is no probative evidence. The
absence of any evidence did not, however, prevent our PM to say that
she fears the arrest of Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury to trigger unrest
in the country, (according to bdnews24.com; December 19.) The report
says the PM has urged the ministers, state ministers, MPs and party
leaders to not rely only on the intelligence agencies and to stay
alert to such threats.
Being a lawmaker, SQ Chowdhury is immune from arrest without
issuance of a warrant by a competent court. Yet, he was arrested, and
then, according to media reports, tortured in custody. This particular
incident has given some potent legal wherewithal to the BNP to go into
an offensive to dislodge the government and to demand anew the holding
of a mid-term poll. It also testifies how nebulous the thread of
democracy has turned into.
Make no mistake that the blood-soaked nostril of SQ Chowdhury has
rattled human rights watchers all around the world while BNP activists
at home and abroad are making serious moves to draw global attention
to the allegedly illegitimate arrest and torture in custody of their
lawmaker. "We will report to international communities, including the
UN, about the "police torture" of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury,"
Opposition Chief Whip Zainul Abdin Farroque said on December 20.
The precedents that the leader of the opposition can be evicted
from her domicile pending to the final outcome of a legal battle, and
that an incumbent lawmaker can be arrested without warrant are not the
kinds of anecdotes that can help this feeble democracy to survive and
move on. Quite to the contrary, they serve as the main recipes for
instability, which in turn aggravates the existential threats to our
national security.
http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#01
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