Bangladesh: the Next Staging Arena for an Islamist Emirate?

Bangladesh is becoming enmeshed in the broader regional strategy by which political Islamists in Bangladesh and Pakistan might bring down secular governments and establish a wider Islamic emirate. I want to propose that Bangladesh has been chosen as the alternative ground from which Pakistani militants will launch attacks into India.  

Before I get to how this may be the case, it is useful to round out the recent news on Indian and Pakistani moves to deal with the repercussions of the Mumbai attacks.

Tomorrow, November 26th, will be the first year anniversary of the Mumbai attacks.  Anticipating a big P.R push in India and from India’s allies–principally the U.S– the Pakistani government has chosen to charge 7 individuals for planning the attack.  (It’s hardly a coincidence that Indian P.M. Manmohan Singh was invited to meet Pres. Obama in the White House less than a week before the anniversary and was the first guest of honor at the first White House State Dinner.)

Of those charged, 1 individual, Zakhiur Rehman Lahkvi is thought to be the operational commander of Lashkar E Taiba.  This is a small victory, but important an important move because even though it has taken 20 hearings and one year of legal haranguing, Pakistan has decided to criminally sanction members of LeT.  Whether or not the charges warrant merit, as many in Pakistan claim, the government will have to carry through the charge whatever the consequences, since the counterfactual outcome will be the slackening of whatever confidence the Obama administration has in President Zardari.

Quite apart from the need to assure the U.S. government that the PPP can be a valuable partner in the U.S. Af/Pak strategy to secure Pakistan’s internal security and nuclear arsenal, the moderate Indian Congress Party needs a prosecution.  As the New York Times reported yesterday,

“Unlike the United States, India did not create the equivalent of a Homeland Security Department. While a high-profile bipartisan American commission published a best-selling report on the failures that led to the 2001 attacks, Indian lawmakers have kept secret a similar report about the Mumbai attacks.”

“Almost all the political officials who resigned as a result of the attacks either are back in their old jobs or have been promoted. No senior members of the police force were fired or reprimanded.”

“The failures are all the more unsettling as conditions in India’s neighbor to the west, Pakistan, deteriorate by the day, making the risks of another Mumbai-style attack from Pakistan-based militants impossible to ignore. A similar event could scuttle any hope of restarting peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals, and raise the specter of an India-Pakistan war.”

“During and after last year’s attacks, government officials were widely criticized for their bungled response. As video cameras rolled, the 10 Pakistani militants wreaked havoc for nearly three days, a humiliating and seemingly interminable display of India’s impotence in the face of terrorism. Federal commandos who eventually wrested control from the attackers took more than nine hours to arrive at the scene from their base near New Delhi.”

The ruling Congress party needs to show that it can put enough pressure on Pakistan to eat its own children.  Otherwise, if some group were to succeed in perpetrator another attack on Indian soil, Congress is likely to lose the next round of national elections.  

Nevertheless, Lashkar E Taiba is coping well even through this delicate time.  As Matthew Rosenberg writes for the  Wall Street Journal:

“Pakistani officials also worry about taking on a potent enemy as they are trying to beat back the Taliban, which has killed hundreds of people in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since early October.”

“U.S. officials and analysts also say factions within Pakistan’s military still see Lashkar as a potential weapon to be used in any future conflicts with India. Lashkar “has historically been Pakistan’s most reliable proxy against India and elements within the military clearly wish to maintain this capability,” according to a report this week by security analyst Stephen Tankel in the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point”.

Given all this intense scrutiny, might not strategists for political Islamic groups in Pakistan refocus their attention on India from another direction?  Bangladesh already has the network infrastructure to support an underground move to destabilize local governments.   As Bhaskhar Roy writes,  the BNP led rightist government,

“allowed several Al Qaeda connected foreign NGOs like the Al Harmain Foundation of Saudi Arabia and the Revival lslamic Heritage Society (RIHS) of Kuwait to set up base in Bangladesh and bring in money to fund jihadists in the country. A research report developed in Bangladesh in 2005 [by noted professor of Economics, Dr. Abul Barkat] says there were 125 Islamic  organizations  functioning under NGO cover that were either militant or supported militancy. Their ideological tenets were controlled either by the rigid Moududism, or JEI [Jamaat E Islami] or ISI controlled Wahabism”

Moreover in 2004 Bangladeshi security forces intercepted a cache of arms at the Fertilizer Jetty at the Chittagong Port.  Bhaskar Roy writes:

“The huge quantity of arms including rocket launchers, were meant for North-East Indian militants, the United Liberation Force of Assam (ULFA). Had this consignment reached its destination, the mayhem in Assam and other areas in that region can be imagined. ” 

“The conspiracy footsteps go to the highest level of the BNP and JEI involving BNP senior Joint General Secretary Tareque Rehman, and the JEI Amir Motiur Rehman Nizami, who at that time was the Industries Minister and controlled the Chittagong Fertilizer Jetty. Former top intelligence officers from the Director General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and the National Security and Intelligence (NSI), including their former heads are in custody today undergoing interrogation. Lutfozzaman Babar, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s political adviser, Harris Choudhury and others were also involved and are being questioned. The scale and reach of this conspiracy suggest that Prime Minister Khaleda could not have been unaware of it.”

So I propose that a feasible strategy might be the following: attack India through Bangladesh, for any attack on India through known Pakistani associates will only result in the proscription of those Pakistani militant organizations.  Attacking India through Bangladeshi soils implicates Bangladesh in the wider regional Islamist conflict and furthermore serves to energize the young Bangladeshi Islamists waiting their turn to declare jihad against non-believers and apostates, alike.