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Insurgent outfits like United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa). All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM) have found sanctuaries as well as conductive climate to launch business ventures in Bangladesh.
In what represents an audacious diversion from their stock in trade of terror and narco trafficking and gun running, these groups have established businesses in collaboration with senior figures in Dhaka's political establishment. The ULFA brass has moved into hotel business and garment industry. Hotel Surma International (Tajmahal Road Dhaka), Hotel Mohammadia (Mirpur Road, Dhaka), Hotel Padma International (Banaani, Dhaka), Hotel Keya International (Jinda Bazar, Sylhet), Hotel Yamuna (Sylhet), Hotel Vasundhra (Chittagong) and Hotel Rajking (Pahartali, Chittagong) have one thing in common: they all owned by Ulfa.
At a time when global sensitivity has led to efforts to choke off funds to terror groups, after 9/11. Ulta has been comfortably running business establishments like Usha International (Dhaka), Anirban Garments Ltd (Pahartai, Chittagong) and Karachi Garment Industry (Chittagong). Some Ulfa-run business establishments in Chittagong and Cox's Bazar are personal properties of top ULFA leaders Paresh Baruah and Arvind Rajkhova, who have also acquired a couple of tea gardens.
A list of all such business establishments was scheduled to be handed over to the Bangladesh authorities on Wednesday by a delegation headed by India's home secretary Dhirendra Singh.
India was aware of the growing business interests of Ulfa all along but had kept quiet. However, stung by Dhaka's charge about its role in the recent attack on the Awami League rally, New Delhi has decided to confront the Bangladesh authorities with 'impeccable evidence" about the patronage that Ulfa and other insurgent groups have received in the neighbouring country.
India's case is that a thriving business network would not have been possible without the support of the authorities. Sources pointed without that the strings of local administration were in the hands of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's son Tariq Zia and her brother Salahuddin Qader Chaudhary.
Top intelligence sources said that the name of Tariq Zia had also figured during the inquiry into the Chittagong arms haul of May 2, 2004. However, the matter was hushed up, and till date no details of the investigation, on the interception of two armsladen trawlers which off-loaded a huge consignment of arms at Chittagong port, have come out.
When contacted, a spokesman in the Bangladesh High Commission, Anwarul Haq, denied this. "This is far from truth,' he said, adding that the Chittagong case investigation was still going on and about a dozen people had been charged. The arms haul had to be carried in 10 trucks. The US authorities as well as Indian authorities have been pressing the Bangladesh government to reveal the outcome of the inquiry, but to no avail. The ruling Bangladesh National Party has no compunction in allowing anti-India insurgent groups to function from the Bangla soil, because it considers New Delhi to be favourably disposed towards its chief adversary , the Awami League. That its coalition partner, Jamaat-e-Islami, is avowedly anti-India has only worked to the benefit of the insurgents .
Indeed. For the current ruling establishment
in Dhaka, support to the Indian insurgents serves, apart from harrying
India, another purpose as well. In exchange for the support to these
groups, their patrons have been extracting huge amounts to enrich
themselves as well as to finance the organizational needs.
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