Holbrooke Requests Bangladeshi Troops to Afghanistan: Taliban Threatens Attacks

It seems Bangladesh has now become involved in the Taliban’s game of threats and offensives.

The Daily Star reports that Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan forwarded on a request to Foreign Minister Dipu Moni that the government of Bangladesh send troops to help secure Afghanistan against Taliban advances.  The Taliban have responded by taking threatening stance against any such move.  No doubt, Taliban proxies already well-ensconced in Bangladesh will be mobilized against the current government if such a request is indeed ratified.

Agence France Presse quotes the monitoring service SITE translation of the message Taliban partisans put out on online:

“(We) believe that the leader of Bangladesh has enough Islamic knowledge and political wit not to involve his people in the fight against Islam and against the Afghan people by sending a few hundred soldiers to Afghanistan,”

“Assuming that the leader would commit such a historic mistake, the religious Muslim people of Bangladesh will not allow their leaders to assist the eternal enemy of Islam against an Islamic neighboring country.”

It is too early to tell whether the government will respond favorably to Ambassador Holbrooke’s request.  But the politics of the request turns in interesting ways.

In the first instance, the request was made last week in New York at the U.N. Assembly.  Bangladesh is a major supplier of U.N. peacekeeping troops, whereby the U.N. has curried favor with successive Bangladeshi government. Though it does not have any troops whatsoever in Afghanistan, sending a small number of soldiers could raise Bangladesh’s international profile outside of ventures in Africa.  There are those, however, in leadership positions in Bangladesh that have proffered the advice that sending troops to Afghanistan could only make sense if the U.N. offered to send a peace-keeping mission to Afghanistan. At this juncture, that is not likely to happen.

Secondly the move could create a fissure between the BNP and its Islamist clients.  Already four militant groups have been banned in Bangladesh, while at least one NGO has been shuttered for allegedly helping to fund terror activities.  The current government might wager that the BNP can ill-afford to stand against a U.S. request; that move would help de-establish links between the mainstream BNP leadership and Jamaat-e-Islami, ties that are already worn, approaching shorn tatters.

Nevertheless, public sentiment is squarely against such a move.  A government of a Muslim majority country would not fare well amongst many populations that think the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan is squarely one of religious doctrines. The memory of U.S. inaction to protect Bangladeshi lives in 1971 still ring as nearly clear, lived experiences.  This, at a time when the Genocide of 1971 is being publicly discussed.  This, at a time when many known culprits complicit in those crimes are being brought to justice.

It is very likely that principle will win out over politics.  In this case, this may be a worthwhile triumph of principle.