SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 2, No. 38, April 5, 2004

 

SRI LANKA

Disturbing Mandate
Guest Writer: Ameen Izzadeen
Deputy Editor, Sunday Times, Colombo

The message in the verdict was loud and clear. Though the people have voted out the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration, they have not voted in a party with a clear majority. A hung parliament scenario confronts Sri Lanka as its people prepare for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in the coming week, while the country faces multiple uncertainties regarding the nature of the new Government and how it would address the ethnic issue and the economic challenge. At the time of writing, the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) - a coalition between President Kumaratunga's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the ultra-national socialist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) - which emerged as the party with the largest number of seats, was all set to form a minority Government.

But the uncertainty with regard to the course of the peace process and the economy still remains.

In two years, the Wickremesinghe administration succeeded in stopping a 20-year separatist war and salvaging the economy, with the GDP recovering from a negative rate to a healthy 6 percent - achievements that were rewarded by the international community with a promise of US $ 4.5 billion in aid over the following three years.

With the election results returning a coalition that has radically different views on the economy and the peace process, the gains made over the past two years may be frozen or squandered, as the international community is unlikely to commit itself before it is confident of the direction and intentions of the new Government.

The results also demonstrate clearly that Sri Lanka has become a polarized nation. The South has responded in kind to the North's effort to rally behind the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which backed the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) - better known as the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

Election results show that more than 90 percent of the Tamils in the North and East have voted for the ITAK, while 55 percent of the people in the South have not voted in favour of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Front (UNF) in spite of the administration's relative success in keeping the guns silent for more than two years.

In fact, one of the main reasons for the defeat of the UNF was the erosion of its vote bank in favour of the all-monks party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), which has won nine seats, creating a landmark in the parliamentary history of Sri Lanka.

The UNF's defeat is an indication that the masses had accepted the opposition charges that the Wickremesinghe administration was corrupt and had made too many concessions to the LTTE. The economic dividends of peace, which the Prime Minister spoke highly of during the election campaign, it appears, have not traveled beyond Colombo to win over the support of the rural masses, for whom the most pressing issues are fertilizer subsidies and poverty-reduction doles. They have also, significantly, rejected the notion of peace at any cost and helped the anti-devolution JVP to gain a maximum number of seats. In fact, the JVP accounts for 40 of the 105 seats that the UPFA has won.

Ironically, the results of the April 2, 2004, general elections have only strengthened the hands of the LTTE, which had been somewhat weakened by the rebellion of its eastern commander, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna. While it will be a matter of time before the LTTE can overcome the Karuna crisis, the elections results have handed the LTTE-backed TNA, which won 22 seats, the power to make or break the Government.

Though the UPFA has emerged as the party with the largest number of seats, it still falls short of the magical 113 required to form the Government. With the JHU refusing to align with either of the main parties, the UPFA can only form a minority Government - meaning that Sri Lanka has once again slumped into political instability, putting the peace process and the economy into jeopardy.

In an effort to form a stable Government, the UPFA is reported to have made overtures to the Karuna faction, which has issued a directive to the five TNA members elected from Batticaloa and Amparai districts - where the Karuna faction's writ reigns. But it is unlikely that the five members would back the UPFA even if Karuna orders them to do so, because they would not dare to provoke the wrath of the LTTE's Wanni leadership. Besides, such a flirtation with the Karuna faction will certainly antagonize the LTTE's Wanni leadership, which holds the key to both war and peace. It needs also to be noted here, that the LTTE had obtained undated resignation letters from all TNA candidates even before they were elected as MPs.

The only option available for the UPFA is to woo the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC), which contested the elections on the UNF ticket and is projected to have won as many as six seats. Even if the CWC, which represents the plantation people of Indian origin, joins the UPFA in a coalition, President Kumaratunga's new alliance will still be two short of a simple majority.

At the time of writing, moves were under way to woo small parties. Even if the UPFA manages to garner 113 seats with the help of small parties, it is not clear how it would resume the peace process.

The LTTE has said that, whichever party comes to power, it wants the peace process resumed by the end of April with its proposals for an Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) forming the basis for negotiations. It has also said it will not renegotiate the ceasefire agreement.

In the light of the LTTE stance, can the President who is now a political hostage in the hands of the JVP, go ahead with the peace proposals she put forward in 2000? The Kumaratunga proposals contained an extensive devolution package, which the JVP had then rejected. The JVP still opposes devolution of power as a solution to the ethnic problem, but sees decentralization of the administration as a means of solving the national question.

The JVP has also rejected outright the LTTE's ISGA proposals, while the SLFP has given tacit acceptance to these as a basis for negotiations.

The JVP position is obviously unacceptable to the LTTE. The sharp difference in the policies of the two main coalition partners in the UPFA is likely to hamper the peace process and heighten the chances of a breakdown, and war. Both the SLFP and the JVP say they are for peace and will resume talks with the LTTE. But the difference is that, while the SLFP is ready for unconditional talks, the JVP wants to resume talks on what it calls 'reasonable' conditions.

The coalition partners do, however, agree that the LTTE is not the 'sole representative' of the Tamils, and such a position would certainly not be acceptable to the LTTE.

With the coalition partners divided on the approach to peace and not willing to recognize the LTTE as the sole representative of Tamils, the country could possibly be dragged back into war. The only factors that can hold the LTTE from tearing up the ceasefire and going back to war are: first, the Karuna rebellion; second, the post-September 11 global war on terrorism; and third, connected to the second, is the LTTE's effort to gain international recognition as 'freedom fighters'.

Added to this uncertainty are the questions regarding the direction of the economy. The JVP is pushing for a mixed economy with import restrictions and an anti-privatization drive, as opposed to the SLFP's free-market policies. Besides, the UPFA manifesto has promised welfare measures, which the country can ill afford, given the current weakness of the economy. Economists say that the resultant uncertainty will erode investor confidence, which in turn will result in a foreign exchange crisis, prompting the new administration to resort to austerity measures.

A minority Government and uncertainties regarding the peace process and the economy are a combination that creates a troubling picture of Sri Lanka's future.

PAKISTAN

'Why do they hate us?'
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

After the shock and horror of 9/11, many Americans turned inwards in incomprehension: 'Why do they hate us?' they asked, and a substantial literature of rationalization was constructed, drawing largely on America's past foreign policy errors and excesses, as well as the 'historical wrongs' inflicted on the 'Islamic world' by the 'West'. Not everyone was seduced by this literature of dubious justification, and at least some rightly pointed to the proliferating 'assembly-lines of jehad', the well funded 'schools of hatred' - the numerous and powerful marakiz (Islamic religious centres) and madrassahs (religious seminaries) that have systematically poisoned the minds of children, demonised non-Muslim cultures, and mobilized, motivated and trained armies of radicalised terrorists for their 'global jehad' against 'unbelievers', 'crusaders', Jews, Christians and Hindus. As attitudes towards terrorism hardened globally, some of the regimes that have historically sponsored and supported Islamist extremism and terrorism turned eagerly to seize upon this alibi, denouncing these 'aberrant institutions', and promising 'madrassah reforms'.

Prominent among these terrorist-sponsoring states has been America's new 'major non-NATO ally', Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf's regime has, over the past years, been insisting that the madrassahs and the radical clergy that leads the most extreme among them, will be 'regulated', and a process of registration - ignored with impunity by the overwhelming majority of such institutions - has been established.

Behind this elaborate smokescreen, however, not only have the madrassahs continued with their subversion of innocent minds, but a deeper and more sinister reality has been, till now, rather successfully concealed: the psalms of hatred are not only taught in some supposedly 'renegade madrassahs', but are an integral component of Pakistan's state administered public educational system. This has long and widely been known among those who study Pakistan with any measure of diligence, and has been systematically documented by several reports in the past - but has largely escaped the attention of most Western 'experts' on terrorism in South Asia. Even such experts may, however, find it difficult to remain ignorant, as a succession of controversies explodes in Pakistan on precisely these issues.

Early in March, the fundamentalist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) disrupted the National Assembly and staged a walk-out on the grounds that a certain reference to jehad as well as other Quranic verses had been 'excluded' from the new edition of a state prescribed biology textbook. Later, the Punjab Teachers Union announced its decision to launch a protest movement from Gujranwala, commencing April 15, if the verses were not 'reinstated'. On March 30, 2004, however, Education Minister Zobaida Jalal clarified that no chapter or verses relating to 'jehad' or 'shahadat' (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbooks, stating further that the particular verse referring to jehad had only been 'shifted' from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI & XII) to the 'matriculation level courses' (Class X). The education ministry in Pakistan has not found it expedient to inquire - as most people familiar with the discipline of biology would - what references to jihad were doing in the biology curriculum in the first place. This is unsurprising, since it is the Ministry of Education, and its subsidiary Curriculum Wing, that put these references there.

The systematic slanting of the state prescribed curricula for all levels of the public education system in Pakistan has, once again, been exposed in great detail by a report recently published by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, titled The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan, which is attracting a storm of protest from Islamist fundamentalist groupings in Pakistan. The report is abundantly clear on where the responsibility for these persistent distortions lies: "Over the years, it became apparent that it was in the interest of both the military and the theocrat to promote militarism in the society. This confluence of interests now gets reflected in the educational material." The state's curriculum directives demanded, and textbooks included, according to the Report,

• Material creating hate and making enemy images
• A glorification of war and the use of force
• Incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of Jehad and Shahadat ·
• Insensitivity to the actually existing religious diversity of the nation, and perspectives that encourage prejudice and discrimination towards religious minorities.

"It is clear," the SDPI Report notes further, "that in the presence of such material, peace and tolerance cannot be promoted."

The process began in the 1960s, and has been consistently sustained and elaborated since then. Despite "subtle and significant differences" in curricula during the Ayub, Bhutto and Zia era, however, "there is an immense overlap which lends credence to the argument that Pakistan has remained essentially a military state even during ostensibly civilian rule."

To understand, within this scheme, how jehad ends up in a biology textbook, it is useful to note the "basic principle that recurs repeatedly in the Pakistani curriculum documents":

In the teaching material, no concept of separation between the worldly and the religious be given; rather all the material be presented from the Islamic point of view. [Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, 1995, p. 41]

This principle conforms to the position argued by Syed Abul A'la Maudoodi, the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and an inspiration to many contemporary radical Islamist ideologies, that "all that is taught would be in the context of the revealed knowledge, therefore every subject would become Islamiat."

The process begins at the earliest stage of schooling, and permeates every single subject - language, literature, the sciences, social studies, and, of course, the specialized courses in Islamiat. The last of these are compulsory for all Muslim students, but the minority of non-Muslims is also offered an incentive of 25 marks for taking up the subject.

It is useful to see how the state imposed curricular requirements work their poison. The National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, issued by the Curriculum Wing in March 2002, (very much within the tenure of the present 'moderate' regime headed by the 'democratising dictator', General Pervez Musharraf') for instance, provides the following instructions:
"Concept: Jehad
Activities: To make speeches on Jehad
Learning outcome: Evaluate the role of India with reference to wars of 1956 (???) (sic), 1965 and 1971 AD.
Evaluation: To judge their spirits while making speeches on Jehad, Muslim History and Culture."

These instructions, it is useful to note, are for classes of students in the age group 5-11 years, and constitute part of a 'Social Studies' curriculum.

The SDPI Report notes "four primary themes that emerge most strongly as constituting the bulk of the curricula and textbooks of the three compulsory subjects" (Social Studies/ Pakistan Studies, Urdu and English):

1. that Pakistan is for Muslims alone;
2. that Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all the students, whatever their faith, including compulsory reading of Qu'ran;
3. that Ideology of Pakistan (sic) is to be internalised as faith, and hate be created against Hindus and India;
4. and students are to be urged to take the path of Jehad and Shahadat.

The 'Ideology of Pakistan', the Report notes further, is Islam, and curricular policies insist, is to "be presented as an accepted reality, and never be subjected to discussion or dispute" or to "be made controversial and debatable." Further, "Associated with the insistence on the Ideology of Pakistan has been an essential component of hate against India and the Hindus… the existence of Pakistan is defined only in relation to Hindus, and hence the Hindus have to be painted as black as possible."

The 140-page SDPI report illustrates the many and complex ways in which these ideologies of hatred are disseminated through the state's educational system, creating a fanatical and unrelenting mindset at an early age, and systematically reinforcing such tendencies throughout the schooling process. While the report does not cover University education, the same processes continue at work there. Very significantly, the Federal Public Service Commission, which selects the country's superior bureaucracy, in its competitive examination (according to the Rules issued on August 25, 2003) also prescribes a compulsory paper on Islamiat with a full 100 marks, which includes the concept of Jehad among the "Fundamental Beliefs and Practices of Islam".

It is, thus, not renegade madrassahs that have seeded the hatred in the minds of the people of Pakistan, raising armies of international terrorists. On the one hand, these madrassahs themselves have been supported and sponsored by the Pakistani state. There are, moreover, only a small part of the elaborate structure of indoctrination that has systematically been exploited by successive governments over the past three decades and more.

When the rich don't understand a problem, they throw money at it. So it is with Western aid to Pakistan. Uncomprehending of the floodtide of hatred they provoke among Muslims, Western policy makers are trying to 'solve' the problem of the radicalisation of the Pakistani mind by investing very substantial sums of money in 'madrassah reform' and investment in education. Part of the investment is going towards creating the infrastructure for 'technical and scientific education' and the teaching of English in Pakistani madrassahs and schools. But if you combine technical competence with a fanatical mindset, the probabilities are - as terrorists coming out of the 'Gucci mosques' of Europe demonstrate - that you will only produce more efficient terrorists. Investing in these spheres can only increase the distortions inherent in these systems.

PAKISTAN

Riding the Jehadi Tiger
Guest Writer: Praveen Swami
New Delhi Chief of Bureau, Frontline magazine, and also writes for its sister publication, The Hindu

Terror, like chickens, comes home to roost. Arrests made earlier this month near Baghdad have blown the lid off links between the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Islamist groups fighting the United States military in Iraq: evidence that ought to cause at least some embarrassment to USA's South Asia establishment, currently in the throes of a grand détente with Pakistan. Part of the deal seems to have been to give Pakistan's military considerable freedom to continue its support to officially-authorised jehadis. If nothing else, the Iraq arrests illustrate the profound unwillingness of the US' counter-terror czars to learn that riding the jehadi tiger is a profoundly dangerous occupation.

In March - and possibly even earlier - United States forces detained Pakistani national Dilshad Ahmad and four others in Baghdad. Details of these detentions, and of the LeT's activities in Iraq, are hazy. However, Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative from the Bahawalpur area of the province of Punjab, had played a key role in the Lashkar's trans-Line of Control (LoC) operations, serving between 1997 and 2001 as the organisation's commander for the forward camps from where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) with Pakistani military support. Ahmad is believed to have made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in J&K during this period. He also authored several articles on the now-defunct Lashkar website, one describing in particularly macabre terms the merits of severing Indian soldiers' limbs from their bodies.

A close associate of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the second-in-command in the Lashkar military hierarchy, Ahmad long had a key role in shaping the organisation's ideological and military agenda: a fact that raises obvious questions about his work in Iraq. In 1998, he addressed a major LeT conference in Muridke, arguing for the need to extend the organisation's activities outside J&K. Ahmad is believed to have played a key role in building the infrastructure for the dozens of Lashkar cells, which have since carried out bombings in several major Indian cities. At least four other Lashkar operatives are known to have been arrested in the intelligence-led operation that ended in Ahmad's arrest, but nothing else is publicly available on their intentions or origins. US officials had kept a tight lid on news of the arrests until it was first reported in The Hindu on April 1.

For the US, the arrests are a potentially embarrassing election-time reminder that the LeT, proscribed by all major western capitals including Washington, continues to operate freely in Pakistan. In January, as politicians across the sub-continent prepared for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit in Islamabad, Pakistan took stern measures to put a lid on the LeT's anti-India polemic. The Lashkar's web-site was shut down, and its overall political and religious chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed was barred from addressing a rally in the town of Multan. Soon after SAARC, however, the restraints on the Lashkar were lifted. In February, Saeed was allowed to travel to Islamabad to attend the funeral prayers organised by Pakistani bureaucrat-businessman Zahoor Ahmad Awan, whose son, a Lashkar operative, was killed by Indian troops. Saeed told the assembly that the fighting in Jammu and Kashmir was "the greatest jehad in the entire history of Islam."

As important, the Lashkar has again been given considerable freedom to continue building its military infrastructure. In the build-up to the Eid festival in March, the organisation, now operating under the new label of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was reported to have raised Rs. 780 million from the sale of hides of sacrificial animals donated by followers. The Lashkar proclaimed, through advertisements and announcements by loyal clerics, that the proceeds would be used for the "Mujahideen who have sacrificed their lives for Islam" and for "the parents, widows and children of martyrs who waged jehad in Kashmir and Afghanistan." Although this activity seems in express violation of the Pakistan Government's ban on raising funds for jehad-related activities, no real action appears to have been taken against those involved. Two Lashkar cadres were briefly detained in Karachi during the fundraising drive, a purely token gesture.

Such activity has serious consequences for India. Police authorities in New Delhi recently arrested three members of a Lashkar squad tasked to attack the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The organisation has also been active in targeted attacks on candidates involved in the ongoing Parliamentary elections in J&K, and have issued warnings to voters not to exercise their franchise. According to police officials in J&K, a little over half of all terrorist acts in the State are now committed by the organisation. This escalating military activity is part of a pattern. Pakistan formally banned the LeT in the wake of the 2001-2002 'near-war' with India, but soon allowed the organisation to resume operations under a new label, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is on a terrorism watch-list in Pakistan, but publicly collects funds and recruits cadre for its operations.

In other words, Pakistan seems willing to temporarily close the terror tap - cross-border infiltration is at an all time low, and violence levels in J&K have fallen significantly. But it is becoming clear that the country's military establishment isn't willing to seal the pipeline that feeds terror just yet. Washington's tolerance seems to be driven by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's claims that he cannot take on the entire religious right without provoking a major backlash. As a result, Pakistan's military establishment has been able to keep the infrastructure of anti-India terrorism intact. It is worth noting that this infrastructure has, historically, imposed great costs on the US. General Zia-ul-Haq's diversion of Afghan war equipment for jehadis in J&K helped build the LeT in the first place, as well as allied jehadi groups now active against Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.

Jehadi groups seem to have largely respected the unspoken US-Pakistan deal - a romance that obviously cannot speak its name - this time around. Although Lashkar cadre were in the past believed to have fought in northern Afghanistan and Chechnya, no similar global activity was noticed in Iraq until the recent arrests. The Lashkar's house journal, Majallah ad Dawa, has been relatively restrained in its criticism of the US occupation of Iraq. In the current issue of the magazine, Saeed calls on believers to "never to make friends with Jews and Christians," but there is no express call for jehad directed at the US. By contrast, Majallah ad Dawa's position on India is more aggressive. One article claims that Indian Muslims have come to realise that "without migration and jehad there is no future"; another, in a recent issue, asks Pakistani school-children to join the jehad and advises them on how to identity Indian soldiers to be attacked.

The lessons seem fairly obvious to anyone who doesn't work in the President George Bush's Administration. "As long as someone has a gun in his hand," says a senior Indian military official, "he decides when he wants to use it, not you. If someone is walking around with a gun, and you want to stop him from using it, the only really sure-fire solution is to take it away."

 

BANGLADESH

Arms Trafficking: Transit Route or Destination?
Anand Kumar
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

The Bangladesh police and coastguard stumbled across what could be the largest-ever consignment of sophisticated illegal arms and ammunition, when they raided the Government-controlled Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL) jetty on April 2, 2004. The weapons and explosives were being unloaded from two fishing trawlers, MV Khawja and FT Amanat, on the east bank side of the river Karnafully by about 150 labourers when the police arrived. The seizure list of the Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) states that the arms and ammunition recovered include 690 7.62 mm T-56-I Sub-Machine Guns (SMGs); 600 7.62 mm T-56-2 SMGs; 150 40mm T-69 Rocket launchers; 840 40mm rockets; 400 9mm semi-automatic spot rifles; 100 'Tommy Guns'; 150 rocket launchers; 2000 launching grenades; 25,020 hand grenades; 6,392 magazines of SMG and other arms; 700,000 rounds of SMG bullets; and 739,680 rounds of 7.62 mm calibre; and 400,000 bullets of other weapons. Most of the arms and ammunition were reportedly of Korean, Italian, Chinese and American make.

While this is the largest, it is by no means the only significant arms seizure in the country, and the last year alone has seen several. Substantial caches of arms have been recovered from Chittagong and its three hill districts; Bogra in northwestern Bangladesh (this was the largest earlier seizure); and even from the capital, Dhaka. But the latest seizure in Chittagong is the biggest in the history of Bangladesh and marks the emergence of the country as a major transit point for arms smuggling in South Asia.

Crucially, reports indicate that, in this latest seizure, the smugglers were unloading the weapons with help from local police. An eyewitness, Kazi Abu Tayeeb, Ansar (paramilitary force) Commander at the Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Limited jetty where the arms were seized, has alleged that weapons were being offloaded in front of local police officials and the managing director, Mohsinuddin Talukder, of the state-owned urea factory. The cargo handling reportedly stopped only when a huge contingent of police, led by a senior local police officer, reached the spot. But the two arms traffickers along with the workers melted away in front of police reinforcements.

The origin of this consignment of arms and its end-users still remain a mystery, though unconfirmed and conflicting reports are trickling in. However, if the previous record of the Government is anything to go by, the truth may again never be known. The Government has already started taking steps to weaken the probe. The police officer who was reported to have been overseeing the unloading of the consignment at the CUFL jetty, hence one of the main accused in the case, has been tasked by the Government to 'probe' the incident. Local police units are also reported to have threatened the Ansars (paramilitary force personnel) who revealed police involvement in the gunrunning operation. Opposition parties have alleged that the arms traffickers were patronized by the ruling alliance, and that the involvement of Government officials and elements in the local police gives substance to this. Suspecting links of ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party to the smuggling of sophisticated arms into Bangladesh, the opposition leader Sheikh Hasina has also demanded an 'international inquiry' into the incident. The Government, on its part, appears to think that it has done enough, in turn, by blaming the Opposition. The State Minister for Home, Lutfozzaman Babar, has claimed that the weapons were smuggled in as part of a 'conspiracy of subversion' and did not rule out links to the April 30 deadline set by the main opposition party, the Awami League, for the fall of the Government.

The kind of arms and ammunition recovered, however, suggest strong linkages with the growing force of radical Islamists in the country. Ordinary criminals in Bangladesh do not have a significant history of the use of such weapons, and partisan political violence in the past has not graduated to the level of sophistication reflected in the present arms cache. Over the past decade, however, a number of extremist Islamist groups have become active in Bangladesh, with at least some of these linked to the international terrorist network. The Al Qaeda-allied group, the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), has a strong base in Chittagong. With a committed cadre estimated at about 15,000 men, most of their training camps are located in the Chittagong area. The Harkat maintains six such camps in the hilly areas of Chittagong, and another six training camps near Cox's Bazar. They are also reported to be using camps vacated by the Rohingya refugees, and a number of Rohingyas are known to be involved in the smuggling of arms and ammunition in Bangladesh. Some other prominent Islamist groups that have been active recently include the Jama'atul Mujahidin, Shahadat-e-Al-Hikma, Hizbut Touheed and Islami Shashontantra Andolan. Of these, the Jama'atul Mujahidin has created training camps in 57 districts.

Opposition parties in Bangladesh believe that arms are being smuggled into the country by the radical Islamists to subvert democracy. Awami League General Secretary, Abdul Jalil, is quoted by the local media as having stated that, "The cache suggests a conspiracy to undermine the country's democratic process." He also alleged that, "Arms were smuggled into the country many times earlier in the same way, with visible patronisation (sic) of the Government." Suspecting the involvement of the Islamists, the Communist Party of Bangladesh General Secretary, Mujahidul Islam Selim, demanded, "Those who want to establish a Taliban-like rule in Bangladesh and return to a Pakistani state should be investigated immediately. The origins of such conspiracies against sovereignty should be tracked down and crushed immediately." Worker's Party President Rashed Khan Menon similarly stated that, "Parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, which is using force to establish a certain type of government… should be investigated and we have to make sure that probe findings are not suppressed again."

Across the border, there are concerns in India that the arms and ammunition were intended for end-users among the terrorist groups operating in India's troubled Northeast. The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) - both of which have their top leadership in safe havens in Bangladesh, have used the Bangladesh route for arms acquisition in the past. Most significantly, in the June 27, 2003, arms haul at a nondescript village in the northwestern Bogra district, about 100 kilometers off the Indian border, the Bangladesh police recovered 100,000 bullets and about 200 kilograms of explosives from an abandoned truck. The truck owner - Jogesh Dev Barman, a top leader of the Tripura Cooperatives Association, a front organization of the ATTF - was arrested from a forest in the southeastern border district of Habiganj. The Investigation of the Bogra weapons haul was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on July 16, 2003. However, investigators have failed to 'trace the masterminds' or to identify the intended end users. There has been no progress in the investigation even after some of the operators were taken into custody. Bangladesh intelligence sources indicate that that the 'godfathers' behind the smuggling of ammunition and explosives were not named in the charge sheets under pressure from political high-ups. The local police, on the other hand, insist that the CID made no real efforts to arrest the smugglers. Charge sheets in the four cases filed on the Bogra seizure were hurriedly submitted to the Court, apparently to victimise political opponents rather than to arrest the actual perpetrators. All charge sheets stated that the ammunition and explosives were smuggled into Bangladesh by Awami League leaders and blamed them for conspiring to unseat the Government by spreading disorder. An unnamed CID official has reportedly alleged that statements of only three of the arrested persons were recorded by the Court under section 164, but that no one mentioned the names of the smugglers in their confessionals.

There is, consequently, a strong possibility that the present consignment may also have been intended for use of terrorists active in India's Northeast, particularly the ULFA, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) or some of the groups operating in Tripura, including the ATTF. After the Bhutanese crackdown on terrorist groups earlier located in that country, these outfits have regrouped in Bangladesh and have been planning to strike in the run-up to the national elections in April-May. Sources indicate that a meeting of top ULFA leaders was held in Dhaka on March 4 at the house of a 'prominent personality' in the Gulshan-II area. The meeting was reportedly attended by ULFA 'Commander-in-Chief' Paresh Barua and the head of the military wing, Raju Barua, in a bid to reorganize forces after their expulsion from their camps in Bhutan.

Some former Bangladeshi Generals have suggested that the specifications and volume of the present consignment suggest that they were to be used against a regular military force. Intelligence officials believe that the consignment was possibly headed towards Assam in Northeast India, from the Golden Triangle or Southeast Asia, with Bangladesh as a transit point. In mid-2000, an Arakan rebel called Selim was arrested in Chittagong, and later confessed that he was involved in arms smuggling. He also disclosed that arms from the Thai and Myanmar insurgent networks were smuggled into Bangladesh through Chittagong Port and the Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT), and that these were then sold in the underground market. A pattern of arrests and seizures has gradually helped identify a number of established routes. Arms brought into Chittagong are transported up to Bhutan. The route from Kalikhola in Bhutan to Cox's Bazar, passes through north Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya and into Chittagong. The terrorists cross the hilly terrain of Bhutan through the forest of Buxa Tiger reserve, the banks of the Sankosh river, then move to Cooch Behar (Bengal), from where they enter Assam. From Assam, they move to Tura (Meghalaya), and then to Cox's Bazar. The return route is marginally different with the point of entry into India from Chittagong located at Mancachar in Assam.

At least 37 illegal arms smuggling syndicates are reported to be active in Chittagong, controlling the illegal arms market and the supply to terrorist groups. A number of Rohingya and Arakanese groups are also involved in the arms smuggling. Around 60 kilometres of the border area at Teknaf in the Cox's Bazar district, where there is little Government security presence, is one of the main routes for arms smuggling. The gunrunners face little resistance here and maintain several offices in the port city of Chittagong, the hill districts of Khagrachhari and Bandarban, Cox's Bazar and Dhaka, where they maintain close contacts with various terrorist groups.

Though authoritative confirmation of the intended end-users of the latest seized consignment of weapons may never be available, it is clear that the movement of such volumes and types of arms and ammunition constitute a serious threat to security, both in Bangladesh and in India. Though Bangladesh recently allowed US arms inspectors to visit CHT to inspect seized arms and ammunition and to trace smuggling routes, nothing significant has changed, as demonstrated by this latest seizure. Such exercises at 'transparency' seem to be intended to placate donors ahead of the upcoming Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) meeting, and possibly to satisfy the US that Bangladesh was 'doing enough' to provide security to its nationals.