Dhaka - Delhi defence pact a threat to South Asian stability
A controversial defence agreement between Bangladesh and India is set to be inked during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Delhi from April 7, pushing more of the Bangladeshis toward subscribing the radical Islamists’ agenda of turning Bangladesh into an Islamic state through an armed struggle that had already been launched by the Islamists.
Of late, militants had shown how regimented and strong they are; challenging police and, keeping the army’s para commando unit at bay for more than 111 hours during an operation in Sylhet in late March.
Overlooking political history
The deal overlooks the history of evolving Bangladesh politics which had already degenerated into a burgeoning civil war, and, the India factor stands at the center of it; which it historically did since the defeat by the British of the last independent Muslim Bengali ruler, Siraj –Ud - Dowla, in 1757, with the connivance of Hindu generals of the Bengali army. Amidst intense communal tension, the British had to temporarily divide Bengal in 1905, based on acute Hindu-Muslim cleavage.
Later, the creation of the Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906 showed the determination of the Bengali Muslims to carve out a separate homeland; a feat they had achieved only after fighting out the Pakistanis in 1971, with whom they formed a unified Muslim homeland in 1947.
Bangladesh today is the third largest Muslim nation in terms of population. Its major handicap stems from the geographic encirclement by Hindu-predominant India and Buddhist-predominant Myanmar. For years now, the country has been groaning under the pain of a silent revolution spearheaded by militant Islamists bent on turning this 165-million strong nation into an Islamic state.
Rationale and idealism
The Islamists are determined not to allow Bangladesh become a secular nation while no other Muslim predominant country is secular, per se; including Turkey and Indonesia. They think only a handful of Bangladeshis, including the nearly eleven percent minorities, want Bangladesh to be secular. This Islamic-Secular dichotomy had led to a renewed struggle since the 1990s following the Bangladeshi Afghan war veterans’ launching of their maiden struggle for the cause and, the post 9/11 global political turmoil stoking the cauldron further to help militants recruit more members.
In this tortuous struggle, the India factor shaped the agenda. In India, over 1900 anti-Muslim riots occur each year, in an average, killing thousands of innocent Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiments are so ripe across India that the Hindu-fundamentalist BJP is allowed not only to rule, but rule with a mandate to be anti-Muslim.
Lately, the state of Gujarat, of which current Indian PM Modi was once a premier, had imposed a penalty of life-long imprisonment for anyone slaughtering cow, the staple food and sacrificial animal of minority Muslims. In Myanmar, Muslims are not even recognized as citizen, and, the Myanmar army has been conducting genocide against the Rohingya Muslims for decades, which the global leaders digested without much compunction or backlash.
Added to the anti-Muslim political agendas pursued by the USA under Donald Trump, and many of the EU member states, the global and regional ambiance has been fuelling much of the tension among the Bangladeshi Muslims who find themselves crushed by India with the help of an incumbent regime that had already allowed Bangladesh to be an Indian playground for geopolitical jockeying with China, with US help.
Oblivious government
Since coming to power in 2009, the government in Dhaka has been too opportunistic to allow anything, so long its tentacles on power remained unfazed. Consequently, particularly since 2015, many other militant groups mushroomed, according to media reports. Shaheed Hamza Brigade (SHB), Bangladesh Jihad Group (BJG), etc. are among them; according to police who had arrested many of their members.
We warned of such dangers coming since the 2007 military intervention in politics, and the military’s reported machination with India to install the Awami League government in 2009 with two- third majority to enable it to change the country’s constitution. It was no coincidence that an externally-triggered uprising in the border forces (BDR) brutally slaughtered 57 army officers in February 2009, the army later knowing who masterminded the mutiny.
By then it was too late to regret; genie was out of the bottle. And, ever since, the Islamists became more emboldened and their ranks and files swelled by participation of students from elite educational institutions, including of cadet colleges, academicians, businessmen, engineers, doctors, and officers and soldiers of the armed forces.
One former army officer, Major Jahid, had already been killed by police while an absconding Major Zia, who is from the army’s engineering corps, is believed to be leading operations from the hiding. Rumours also has it that sacked Brig. Gen. Golam Azmi, son of deceased Jamat leader Golam Azam, is leading another faction of militants hailing from Jamat’s student wing, Chatra Shibir. Major Zia and BG Azmi are both sword of honour winning officers of the Bangladesh Military Academy (BMA), according to sources.
Policy blunders
Yet, the AL-led regime always banked on force as the panacea for this cancerous illness facing the nation. The brutal attack and slaughtering of Hefajat-e-Islam activists in May 2013; barring of the Jamat-I-Islami from contesting future polling; mass arrest and persecutions of hundreds of thousands of political Islamists; muffling mass media freedom and the lynching of top Islamic leaders under the war crime proceedings had further fuelled the growth of militancy in a nation otherwise known as moderate, pacifist and Sufiism-inclined.
As well, the base of the militants soared further since the January 2014 election drama and the lingering of a parliament where majority of the members were elected un-opposed. It’s an irony that the same country is hosting the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) gathering while its own parliament is composed of unelected members and a phantom opposition party having ministers in the incumbent cabinet.
Moreover, the main opposition party now out of parliament, the BNP, is also deadly opposed to any defence pact with India. In totality, over 70 per cent of Bangladeshis are opposed to such a deal.
External linkage
It was only likely under such a fast deteriorating situation that the global Islamists will take advantage of this fluid situation in Bangladesh, which they did with ease and confidence. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced in September 2014 that his outfit was establishing a branch in South Asia, to be known as Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). In February 2015, Zawahiri urged the Bangladeshis to launch an uprising in defence of Islam in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, AQIS and the Islamic State (IS) have claimed their presence in the country on number of occasions and the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), of which Major Zia is claimed by police to be an iconic leader, and which had declared its allegiance to AQIS, claimed responsibility for the murder of many atheist bloggers and publishers.
Yet, the government kept denying the local-global nexus, despite the AQIS claiming in a video posting on 2 May 2015 that it had consummated many of the ongoing targeted killings inside Bangladesh while the IS too claimed responsibility for a number of attacks conducted in late 2015, including those on foreigners. The most spectacular of those operations was the Gulshan Holy Artisan attack on July 1, 2016, in which 29 people were killed; including 18 foreigners, 2 locals, 2 police officers, 5 gunmen, and 2 bakery staff.
Defence pact with India
Amidst such a fluid situation, a defence agreement with India will only help the militants recruit more members and sympathisers. Lessons of history are not conducive either.
India did sign a comprehensive defence pact with Dhaka in 1972, soon after Indian soldiers helped liberate Bangladesh from Pakistan, which many analysts had attributed to as the main reason for the tragedy of August 15, 1975 in which Sheikh Mujib and most of his family members were murdered by a faction of the army.
Moreover, theoretically, having a defence pact with India is an oxymoron; due to Bangladesh’s threat perception being hinged on likely onslaughts from India or Myanmar. Delhi wants such a pact because, if it can tie up Dhaka into a binding defence pact, it can focus solely on Pakistan and China and carry troops across Bangladesh territory to the Indian Northeast to checkmate China across the snow-capped Arunachal Pradesh.
Decisive moment
It’s a decisive moment for Bangladesh; for a defence pact with India is virtually an anti-China pact, which has been the main source of arms and training for the Bangladesh military since the late 1970s and greased Bangladesh’s economic backbone constantly. Although the mask and the foil being used to justify signing such a pact is the increased instances of Islamic terrorism, the real reason lay somewhere else. That reason is geopolitical, which must be repulsed and rebutted at any cost.
It’s a little secret that public perception in Bangladesh is that, for decades, India only used Bangladesh as its market, corridor, and a hinterland to starve Bangladeshis with water deprivation from 54 common rivers. These anti-Indian anger lay behind the discovery of militant dens by police almost everywhere inside Bangladesh, and, behind the swelling of ranks and files of the militants by people and professionals of all denominations. As well, despite intelligence sharing remaining an ongoing process among many nation-states in this era of global terrorism, signing of any strategically collaborative agreement between Bangladesh and India will undercut and undermine the swagger, confidence and operational secrecy of Bangladesh armed forces and antagonize China that had invested huge economic and military fortunes inside Bangladesh over the decades.
And, in the long run, a defence deal between Dhaka and Delhi will be a disaster for both. The Islamists will not only cash on this new development, they will expand their sway and cross-border collaborations; triggering a full blown civil war inside Bangladesh and anti-Delhi uprisings among predominant Indian Muslims across the mutual borders.
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A controversial defence agreement between Bangladesh and India is set to be inked during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Delhi from April 7, pushing more of the Bangladeshis toward subscribing the radical Islamists’ agenda of turning Bangladesh into an Islamic state through an armed struggle that had already been launched by the Islamists.
Of late, militants had shown how regimented and strong they are; challenging police and, keeping the army’s para commando unit at bay for more than 111 hours during an operation in Sylhet in late March.
Overlooking political history
The deal overlooks the history of evolving Bangladesh politics which had already degenerated into a burgeoning civil war, and, the India factor stands at the center of it; which it historically did since the defeat by the British of the last independent Muslim Bengali ruler, Siraj –Ud - Dowla, in 1757, with the connivance of Hindu generals of the Bengali army. Amidst intense communal tension, the British had to temporarily divide Bengal in 1905, based on acute Hindu-Muslim cleavage.
Later, the creation of the Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906 showed the determination of the Bengali Muslims to carve out a separate homeland; a feat they had achieved only after fighting out the Pakistanis in 1971, with whom they formed a unified Muslim homeland in 1947.
Bangladesh today is the third largest Muslim nation in terms of population. Its major handicap stems from the geographic encirclement by Hindu-predominant India and Buddhist-predominant Myanmar. For years now, the country has been groaning under the pain of a silent revolution spearheaded by militant Islamists bent on turning this 165-million strong nation into an Islamic state.
Rationale and idealism
The Islamists are determined not to allow Bangladesh become a secular nation while no other Muslim predominant country is secular, per se; including Turkey and Indonesia. They think only a handful of Bangladeshis, including the nearly eleven percent minorities, want Bangladesh to be secular. This Islamic-Secular dichotomy had led to a renewed struggle since the 1990s following the Bangladeshi Afghan war veterans’ launching of their maiden struggle for the cause and, the post 9/11 global political turmoil stoking the cauldron further to help militants recruit more members.
In this tortuous struggle, the India factor shaped the agenda. In India, over 1900 anti-Muslim riots occur each year, in an average, killing thousands of innocent Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiments are so ripe across India that the Hindu-fundamentalist BJP is allowed not only to rule, but rule with a mandate to be anti-Muslim.
Lately, the state of Gujarat, of which current Indian PM Modi was once a premier, had imposed a penalty of life-long imprisonment for anyone slaughtering cow, the staple food and sacrificial animal of minority Muslims. In Myanmar, Muslims are not even recognized as citizen, and, the Myanmar army has been conducting genocide against the Rohingya Muslims for decades, which the global leaders digested without much compunction or backlash.
Added to the anti-Muslim political agendas pursued by the USA under Donald Trump, and many of the EU member states, the global and regional ambiance has been fuelling much of the tension among the Bangladeshi Muslims who find themselves crushed by India with the help of an incumbent regime that had already allowed Bangladesh to be an Indian playground for geopolitical jockeying with China, with US help.
Oblivious government
Since coming to power in 2009, the government in Dhaka has been too opportunistic to allow anything, so long its tentacles on power remained unfazed. Consequently, particularly since 2015, many other militant groups mushroomed, according to media reports. Shaheed Hamza Brigade (SHB), Bangladesh Jihad Group (BJG), etc. are among them; according to police who had arrested many of their members.
We warned of such dangers coming since the 2007 military intervention in politics, and the military’s reported machination with India to install the Awami League government in 2009 with two- third majority to enable it to change the country’s constitution. It was no coincidence that an externally-triggered uprising in the border forces (BDR) brutally slaughtered 57 army officers in February 2009, the army later knowing who masterminded the mutiny.
By then it was too late to regret; genie was out of the bottle. And, ever since, the Islamists became more emboldened and their ranks and files swelled by participation of students from elite educational institutions, including of cadet colleges, academicians, businessmen, engineers, doctors, and officers and soldiers of the armed forces.
One former army officer, Major Jahid, had already been killed by police while an absconding Major Zia, who is from the army’s engineering corps, is believed to be leading operations from the hiding. Rumours also has it that sacked Brig. Gen. Golam Azmi, son of deceased Jamat leader Golam Azam, is leading another faction of militants hailing from Jamat’s student wing, Chatra Shibir. Major Zia and BG Azmi are both sword of honour winning officers of the Bangladesh Military Academy (BMA), according to sources.
Policy blunders
Yet, the AL-led regime always banked on force as the panacea for this cancerous illness facing the nation. The brutal attack and slaughtering of Hefajat-e-Islam activists in May 2013; barring of the Jamat-I-Islami from contesting future polling; mass arrest and persecutions of hundreds of thousands of political Islamists; muffling mass media freedom and the lynching of top Islamic leaders under the war crime proceedings had further fuelled the growth of militancy in a nation otherwise known as moderate, pacifist and Sufiism-inclined.
As well, the base of the militants soared further since the January 2014 election drama and the lingering of a parliament where majority of the members were elected un-opposed. It’s an irony that the same country is hosting the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) gathering while its own parliament is composed of unelected members and a phantom opposition party having ministers in the incumbent cabinet.
Moreover, the main opposition party now out of parliament, the BNP, is also deadly opposed to any defence pact with India. In totality, over 70 per cent of Bangladeshis are opposed to such a deal.
External linkage
It was only likely under such a fast deteriorating situation that the global Islamists will take advantage of this fluid situation in Bangladesh, which they did with ease and confidence. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced in September 2014 that his outfit was establishing a branch in South Asia, to be known as Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). In February 2015, Zawahiri urged the Bangladeshis to launch an uprising in defence of Islam in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, AQIS and the Islamic State (IS) have claimed their presence in the country on number of occasions and the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), of which Major Zia is claimed by police to be an iconic leader, and which had declared its allegiance to AQIS, claimed responsibility for the murder of many atheist bloggers and publishers.
Yet, the government kept denying the local-global nexus, despite the AQIS claiming in a video posting on 2 May 2015 that it had consummated many of the ongoing targeted killings inside Bangladesh while the IS too claimed responsibility for a number of attacks conducted in late 2015, including those on foreigners. The most spectacular of those operations was the Gulshan Holy Artisan attack on July 1, 2016, in which 29 people were killed; including 18 foreigners, 2 locals, 2 police officers, 5 gunmen, and 2 bakery staff.
Defence pact with India
Amidst such a fluid situation, a defence agreement with India will only help the militants recruit more members and sympathisers. Lessons of history are not conducive either.
India did sign a comprehensive defence pact with Dhaka in 1972, soon after Indian soldiers helped liberate Bangladesh from Pakistan, which many analysts had attributed to as the main reason for the tragedy of August 15, 1975 in which Sheikh Mujib and most of his family members were murdered by a faction of the army.
Moreover, theoretically, having a defence pact with India is an oxymoron; due to Bangladesh’s threat perception being hinged on likely onslaughts from India or Myanmar. Delhi wants such a pact because, if it can tie up Dhaka into a binding defence pact, it can focus solely on Pakistan and China and carry troops across Bangladesh territory to the Indian Northeast to checkmate China across the snow-capped Arunachal Pradesh.
Decisive moment
It’s a decisive moment for Bangladesh; for a defence pact with India is virtually an anti-China pact, which has been the main source of arms and training for the Bangladesh military since the late 1970s and greased Bangladesh’s economic backbone constantly. Although the mask and the foil being used to justify signing such a pact is the increased instances of Islamic terrorism, the real reason lay somewhere else. That reason is geopolitical, which must be repulsed and rebutted at any cost.
It’s a little secret that public perception in Bangladesh is that, for decades, India only used Bangladesh as its market, corridor, and a hinterland to starve Bangladeshis with water deprivation from 54 common rivers. These anti-Indian anger lay behind the discovery of militant dens by police almost everywhere inside Bangladesh, and, behind the swelling of ranks and files of the militants by people and professionals of all denominations. As well, despite intelligence sharing remaining an ongoing process among many nation-states in this era of global terrorism, signing of any strategically collaborative agreement between Bangladesh and India will undercut and undermine the swagger, confidence and operational secrecy of Bangladesh armed forces and antagonize China that had invested huge economic and military fortunes inside Bangladesh over the decades.
And, in the long run, a defence deal between Dhaka and Delhi will be a disaster for both. The Islamists will not only cash on this new development, they will expand their sway and cross-border collaborations; triggering a full blown civil war inside Bangladesh and anti-Delhi uprisings among predominant Indian Muslims across the mutual borders.
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