Indian NSA described Bangladesh as on the precipice
Dhaka, Oct 9 (UNB) - With Washington gradually coming around to sharing New Delhi's view regarding policy towards Bangladesh, India's then-National Security Adviser RK Narayanan met with visiting US Assistant Secretary of State (South Asia) Christina Rocca on April 18, 2005 and described Bangladesh as "on the precipice" due to poor governance, the growth of Islamist influence, and "the crisis in the Awami League".
The meeting took place in the presence of the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in New Delhi at the time, Robert O. Blake, Jr who recounts the discussion that took place in a cable sent to Washington the next day, part of the huge cache of US embassy cables released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
Rocca's visit was part of a regional security dialogue taking place at the time, and cables reported by UNB on Friday show how the period coincided with Washington and New Delhi converging in their assessments of the situation on the ground in Bangladesh, with the growth of terrorist attacks disrupting public life, and also targeting the Awami League, which was in opposition at the time.
One of those cables revealed how Indian Joint Secretary Neelam Deo had already expressed her government's "satisfaction" that Washington's assessment of trends in Bangladesh had moved "closer in line" to Delhi's.
Narayanan it seems, aimed to cement this convergence, and as part of these efforts described to Rocca during his own meeting with her how rural areas in Bangladesh were becoming "badly saturated by radical Islamist forces", which in his view presented a major challenge to "fragile democratic structures" and moderate Muslims.
He described the Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ) as "very influential", and with palpable trepidation, said the Jamaat was "feeling very, very strong". New Delhi, he said, had "very little leverage" with the BNP-Jamaat ruling alliance of the time, and whatever pressure it was able to exert was "difficult to maintain".
He then lamanted the state of the Awami League, which he said was "in crisis"- losing its best people, "offering no opposition" to the governing coalition, and "unable to decide" what to do next.
Narayanan expressed "particular concern" about the state of what he considered to be the "Bangladeshi intellectual class". Whereas once they had enjoyed vigorous interactions with their counterparts in India, Narayanan reports the then-chief minister of West Bengal (Poschimbongo) Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as having told him how he had not heard from Bangladeshi poets and writers for months, taking that to mean they had been "totally silenced".
Narayanan said this was "unnerving and could lead potentially to a black hole". He also said the assassination of former Foreign Minister SAMS Kibria had had a "chilling effect" on state structures, fearing they were "getting hijacked".
Before moving on to other matters, Narayanan also described how the Harkat Ul Jihad Al Islami terrorist network was becoming "one of the worst in Asia", and claimed that it was "very deeply involved" in India's troubled northeastern region.
http://www.unbconnect.com/component/news/task-show/id-60960
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