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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

INDIA'S SECOND WAR FRONT

India tries to keep it a secret but the reality is that the Indian army is fighting a two border front wars with terrorist organizations. One on the Pakistani border and the other on the Bangladeshi one. Indeed, so busy is the army that it demands that state forces deal with the Maoists plotters of terror within their own territory. Indeed, Indian states such as the often threatened hi-tech center Bangalore are very slowly forming special units to deal with the problem which is beyond police capabilities. Very slowly because understandably India would much rather focus its development and on building its much needed infrastructure. Very slowly also because of the wide emotional support Maoist and their unofficial Jihadist allies enjoy in the country not to mention the fact that when Indians talk of "foreigners," most of the time they are talking about Indians from neighboring states. Thus, on the face of it, the ULFA terrorists who murder in same the cold blood poor Bihari (but NOT Bangladeshi) immigrants and Congress Party workers, are nationalists who want independence and are determined to stop immigrants from diluting Assam's "ethnic stock." But the former Indian director of its Intelligence Bureau, Ajit Doval, tells a different story, indeed, he warns of an Impending Storm:

No emigrant worker was killed in Assam, as made out by the media and even some government functionaries. All those killed and hundreds who fled were Indians working in their own country.
So far as emigrants go, according to the governor of Assam, 6,000 enter the state everyday. ULFA did start in 1979 as a violent movement to drive away foreigners who threatened their lands, jobs, culture, language and political voice.
But that ULFA has died. In its new incarnation it is a handmaid of those who it had vowed to fight to the finish.
After 1992, it has been inextricably caught in the web spun by Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence, becoming a tactical tool of short-term use in their long-term strategic plan. There is a continuity in Pakistani and Bangladeshi discourse on Assam.
Jinnah pronounced in Gauhati in 1946 that 'Assam was in his pocket'. In Eastern Pakistan: Its Population and Economics, Mujibur Rahman observed: 'Because Eastern Pakistan must have sufficient land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests and mineral resources, coal, petroleum, etc East Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong'.
Eminent Bangladeshi thinkers are busy making out a case of Lebensraum, emphasizing the north-east as a natural space for expansion.
Sadiq Khan, a former diplomat and an intellectual, said in an article: 'A natural overflow of population pressure is very much on the cards and will not be restrainable by barbed wire or border patrol measures'.
The meetings of Islamic parties in Bangladesh and closed door groups of their counterparts in Assam are regularly talking of Greater Bangladesh. . . .
In the north-east nearly a dozen Muslim extremist organizations, with estimated strength of 3,500, have mushroomed, most of them in Assam.
They are not indulging in violence but carrying out recruitment, sending youth for training to Bangladesh and Pakistan, dumping weapons and explosives and creating support structures along the border.
Based on interrogations of arrested Muslim militants, a former chief minister tabled a report in the Assam assembly, revealing that large numbers of Muslim youth from Assam were being trained by ISI and DGFI (Bangladesh intelligence) to destabilize Assam and facilitate illegal immigration. . . .
In their private confabulations, the party envisions itself as the political rallying point for Bangladeshi Muslims. Security implications of emergence of political Islam in a region with 38 per cent Muslim population, with portents of becoming a Muslim majority state in future, presence of nearly a dozen jihadi groups and over 1,500 km long border with a potentially radicalized Bangladesh should not become a casualty of political expediency.

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 5:21 AM | Comments (0) | Return

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