The implications of trans-border terror traffic between India and Bangladesh are grave. The situation can get worse if Dhaka has a regime unfriendly to India
The report that land acquisition problems in West Bengal have stalled fencing along India's border with Bangladesh warrants serious concern. Smuggled goods and infiltrators, as well as terrorists and funds and weapons for them, have been traversing the porous border at will. According to a report by Anisuzzaman in Bangladesh's daily Prothom Alo of March 1, 2005, money came to Muhammad Asadullah al-Galib, Ameer of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, a fundamentalist Islamist organisation which international pressure had forced the Bangladesh Government to ban on February 23, 2005, across Bangladesh's border with India in Chapainawabanj and Rajshahi districts, opposite West Bengal's Malda and Murshidabad districts respectively. India's lalgola border (in Murshidabad district), the report further stated, was also mentioned in this connection, and it was said that Galib had a shelter there.
The Daily Star of Bangladesh reported on March 5, 2005, that investigations by the intelligence branch of police in West Bengal had revealed that Galib had visited several madarssas in the border districts of North 24 Parganas, Malda and Murshidabad without either he or his associates having valid travel documents. According to the report, West Bengal's intelligence branch also suspected that he had links with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India and perhaps the Jamaatul Mujahideen in India as well.
According to a report in The Daily Star of March 6, 2005, pursued by the police, Bangla Bhai, Operations Commander of the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (a violent fundamentalist Islamist organisation also banned on 23 February, 2005) had slipped into West Bengal in the early hours of March 3, 2005. Indeed, seeking refuge in West Bengal's border districts seems to have become a practice with Bangladesh's Islamist fundamentalists on the run. The Daily Star of March 20, 2005, reported that an activist of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the students' organisation of the fundamentalist Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, who had been identified as one of the four murderers of Professor Muhammad Yunus of Rajshahi University, had jumped bail in one of the several earlier cases and fled to India. He had returned to Bangladesh three days before the murder.
The trans-border traffic continues, though the terror threat it poses to India has declined following Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's firm measures both against the secessionist insurgents of North-East India who had been sheltered and helped by the Bangladesh Government during Begum Khaleda Zia's prime ministership, and Islamist terrorist organisations Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh and Hizb ut-Tahrir active on its soil. Bangladeshi sources claim that many of their leaders and activists have fled to India, with the majority of them being harbored in West Bengal by their fellow travellers. They also claim that organisations like Hefazat-e-Islam, which are trying to unleash a reign of terror against secular and democratic elements in Bangladesh with Hindus as special targets, are receiving arms and money from West Bengal.
The support Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and allied fundamentalist islamist organisations, all harbouring pathological hatred for India, command in West Bengal lends credence to their allegation. A demonstration by these in the heart of Kolkata against the trial of war criminals in Bangladesh caused massive traffic jams on February 22. On March 30, 16 Islamist organisations held a large and belligerent rally at the Kolkata maidan denouncing the death sentence pronounced against Delwar Hossein Sayedee, by a court trying those charged with war crimes during Bangladesh's liberation war in 1971.
Several persons in West Bengal who ought to know have told this writer on the condition of anonymity that the influence of fundamentalist Islam, bearing the Taliban and Al Qaeda's ideological imprimatur, is growing in the state where the ISI is also increasingly active. This can pose a serious threat to India's rear in case of a war with Pakistan, especially if a Government, hostile to this country — like the one headed by Begum Khaleda Zia — is then in power in Bangladesh. Completion of border fencing, backed by resolute action, can curb terrorism-related trans-border traffic, and help in significantly reducing the threat. The Government of West Bengal needs to act urgently in removing the hurdles in the way of progress.