Author: Hiranmay Karlekar
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 17, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/150451/Hasina-must-deal-with-ISI-clone.html
If Sheikh Hasina Wajed has to faithfully implement
the mandate of a secular, tolerant and corruption-free democracy that the
parliamentary election of December 29, 2008, has given her so overwhelmingly,
an institution she has to reform drastically is the premier intelligence agency
of Bangladesh, the Directorate-General of Forces Intelligence. Set up as Directorate
of Forces Intelligence by President Zia-ur Rahman in November 1977, it subsequently
became the DGFI. Established as an organisational clone of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate shortly after a visit to Dhaka by then ISI chief,
Lt Gen Ghulam Jillani Khan, it is linked almost umbilically to its Pakistani
counterpart. Many of its officers have been trained at the ISI's centre in
Islamabad.
In many respects, the DGFI is the over-arching
secret super authority of Bangladesh as the ISI is of Pakistan. One example
will reveal the extent of its influence. According to a report by Zahirul
Haq from Dhaka, appearing in Aajkaal, the Bengali daily published from Kolkata,
on May 29, 2002, Begum Khaleda Zia had reversed her earlier stand and was
prepared to grant Indian goods transit facility through Bangladesh to north-eastern
Indian States. The then Director-General of the DGFI, Maj Gen Sadik Hasan
Rumi, however, sent a note objecting to it. He cited no reason for it. The
facility was not given though that country's Commerce Minister had said Bangladesh
would gain a huge amount of foreign exchange and would be able to establish
much closer commercial ties with India by granting transit facility.
The DGFI's activities include not only collection
of intelligence but interference in politics and intimidation of the media.
In an article, "Enemy of the State: Surviving Torture in Bangladesh",
published in International Herald Tribune of March 2, 2008, Tasneem Khalil,
a member of the staff of Bangladesh's leading English-language newspaper,
The Daily Star, who also worked for CNNand Human Rights Watch, talks of the
brutal torture he suffered at the DGFI headquarters in Dhaka in May 2007 for
being critical of the caretaker Government that had seized power on January
11, 2007. Released after strong intervention by his paper and protests from
all corners of the world, he had to seek political asylum in Sweden, from
where he wrote the piece.
Situated in a 14-storeyed building at Kachukhet
Bazaar in Dhaka, the DGFI is also the hub of Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh
which now extends its tentacles not only to West Bengal, Bihar, and north-eastern
States like Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura, but even to Uttar Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Along with the Bangladeshi Army,
it was thoroughly infiltrated by Islamist jihadis during the tenure of the
four-party Government from 2001 to 2006, when the Jamaat's Amir, Maulana Matiur
Rahman Nizami, was the Industries Minister, and the general secretary, Ali
Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, was the Social Welfare Minister. With Begum Khaleda
Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which had 193 seats in the 300-member
Jatiya Sangsad, as its partner in power, there was no doubt that the Jamaat
called the shots in most critical areas.
The depth and extent of the Jamaat's influence
on the DGFI can be gauged from the simple fact that Brig Azam Mir was perhaps
the most influential Deputy Director-General of the DGFI until his removal
on January 19, 2007, following the discovery of his involvement in a series
of attacks on Hindi-speaking people in Assam. Brig Azam Mir is a son of Mr
Golam Azam, identified as the most notorious war criminal during the liberation
war in 1971 and accused of being instrumental to the murder of thousands of
men and the rape of thousands of women. Golam Azam, who fled Bangladesh just
before its liberation in December 1971, was allowed to return by Zia-ur Rahman
in 1978. He became the Amir of the Jamaat, which, banned in the aftermath
of the liberation war, was allowed to function again by Zia-ur Rahman in 1979,
while Maulana Abbas Ali Khan became the formal, titular Amir. He became Amir
in 1991 after his claim to be a Bangladeshi citizen was upheld by the judiciary.
The Jamaat and its students' organisation,
Islami Chhatra Shibir (Islamist Students' Camp) have, on their part, been
both the ideological fountainhead and the nursery and coordinating centre
of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Mufti Abdul Hannan, former 'Operations
Commander' of the HUJIB, who has recently been sentenced to death by a Bangladeshi
court, and Bangla Bhai or Siddiqul Islam, the 'Operations Commander' of the
Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, who was hanged on March 29, 2007, were both
alumni of the organisation. So was Mohammad Asadullah Al-Galib, the Amir of
the Ahle Hadith Andolan, Bangladesh, and Sheikh Abdur Rahman, head of the
Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh.
A clean-up of the DGFI will reduce the threat
of Islamist terrorism not only in South Asia but Bangladesh as well. It will
also be a major step in realising the full potential of India-Bangladesh friendship.
It is the DGFI which, through organisations like the Jamaat and the HUJIB,
runs training camps and sanctuaries for secessionist insurgent groups of north-eastern
India like United Liberation Front of Asom, All-Tripura Tiger Force, United
National Liberation Front of Manipur, National Liberation Front of Tripura,
in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina had closed most of the camps after becoming Prime
Minister in 1996 but had soon to retrace her steps under pressure from the
DGFI.
Of course, the DGFI will bitterly resist all
attempts to cleanse the organisation. It will lie low for the present and
wait for the time when, its bosses perhaps hope, Sheikh Hasina's popularity
dips from its present peak and they can begin their machinations to remove
her. She must strike now and not make the mistake her generous father did
in not taking the stern measures against collaborators that he should have
immediately after Bangladesh's liberation in 1971. For, one thing is very
certain: Pakistan and the ISI as well as their allies in the DGFI and the
Bangladeshi Army, the Jamaat and the Islamist terrorist groups in Bangladesh,
will not tolerate Sheikh Hasina for long if she tries to genuinely honour
her mandate. And unless she does the latter, Bangladesh will descend into
a fundamentalist nightmare at a none-too-distant future.
