Bangladesh is becoming enmeshed in the broader regional strategy by which political Islamists in Bangladesh and Pakistan might bring down secular governments and establish a wider Islamic emirate. I want to propose that Bangladesh has been chosen as the alternative ground from which Pakistani militants will launch attacks into India.  

Before I get to how this may be the case, it is useful to round out the recent news on Indian and Pakistani moves to deal with the repercussions of the Mumbai attacks.

Tomorrow, November 26th, will be the first year anniversary of the Mumbai attacks.  Anticipating a big P.R push in India and from India’s allies–principally the U.S– the Pakistani government has chosen to charge 7 individuals for planning the attack.  (It’s hardly a coincidence that Indian P.M. Manmohan Singh was invited to meet Pres. Obama in the White House less than a week before the anniversary and was the first guest of honor at the first White House State Dinner.)

Of those charged, 1 individual, Zakhiur Rehman Lahkvi is thought to be the operational commander of Lashkar E Taiba.  This is a small victory, but important an important move because even though it has taken 20 hearings and one year of legal haranguing, Pakistan has decided to criminally sanction members of LeT.  Whether or not the charges warrant merit, as many in Pakistan claim, the government will have to carry through the charge whatever the consequences, since the counterfactual outcome will be the slackening of whatever confidence the Obama administration has in President Zardari.

Quite apart from the need to assure the U.S. government that the PPP can be a valuable partner in the U.S. Af/Pak strategy to secure Pakistan’s internal security and nuclear arsenal, the moderate Indian Congress Party needs a prosecution.  As the New York Times reported yesterday,

“Unlike the United States, India did not create the equivalent of a Homeland Security Department. While a high-profile bipartisan American commission published a best-selling report on the failures that led to the 2001 attacks, Indian lawmakers have kept secret a similar report about the Mumbai attacks.”

“Almost all the political officials who resigned as a result of the attacks either are back in their old jobs or have been promoted. No senior members of the police force were fired or reprimanded.”

“The failures are all the more unsettling as conditions in India’s neighbor to the west, Pakistan, deteriorate by the day, making the risks of another Mumbai-style attack from Pakistan-based militants impossible to ignore. A similar event could scuttle any hope of restarting peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals, and raise the specter of an India-Pakistan war.”

“During and after last year’s attacks, government officials were widely criticized for their bungled response. As video cameras rolled, the 10 Pakistani militants wreaked havoc for nearly three days, a humiliating and seemingly interminable display of India’s impotence in the face of terrorism. Federal commandos who eventually wrested control from the attackers took more than nine hours to arrive at the scene from their base near New Delhi.”

The ruling Congress party needs to show that it can put enough pressure on Pakistan to eat its own children.  Otherwise, if some group were to succeed in perpetrator another attack on Indian soil, Congress is likely to lose the next round of national elections.  

Nevertheless, Lashkar E Taiba is coping well even through this delicate time.  As Matthew Rosenberg writes for the  Wall Street Journal:

“Pakistani officials also worry about taking on a potent enemy as they are trying to beat back the Taliban, which has killed hundreds of people in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since early October.”

“U.S. officials and analysts also say factions within Pakistan’s military still see Lashkar as a potential weapon to be used in any future conflicts with India. Lashkar “has historically been Pakistan’s most reliable proxy against India and elements within the military clearly wish to maintain this capability,” according to a report this week by security analyst Stephen Tankel in the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point”.

Given all this intense scrutiny, might not strategists for political Islamic groups in Pakistan refocus their attention on India from another direction?  Bangladesh already has the network infrastructure to support an underground move to destabilize local governments.   As Bhaskhar Roy writes,  the BNP led rightist government,

“allowed several Al Qaeda connected foreign NGOs like the Al Harmain Foundation of Saudi Arabia and the Revival lslamic Heritage Society (RIHS) of Kuwait to set up base in Bangladesh and bring in money to fund jihadists in the country. A research report developed in Bangladesh in 2005 [by noted professor of Economics, Dr. Abul Barkat] says there were 125 Islamic  organizations  functioning under NGO cover that were either militant or supported militancy. Their ideological tenets were controlled either by the rigid Moududism, or JEI [Jamaat E Islami] or ISI controlled Wahabism”

Moreover in 2004 Bangladeshi security forces intercepted a cache of arms at the Fertilizer Jetty at the Chittagong Port.  Bhaskar Roy writes:

“The huge quantity of arms including rocket launchers, were meant for North-East Indian militants, the United Liberation Force of Assam (ULFA). Had this consignment reached its destination, the mayhem in Assam and other areas in that region can be imagined. “ 

“The conspiracy footsteps go to the highest level of the BNP and JEI involving BNP senior Joint General Secretary Tareque Rehman, and the JEI Amir Motiur Rehman Nizami, who at that time was the Industries Minister and controlled the Chittagong Fertilizer Jetty. Former top intelligence officers from the Director General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and the National Security and Intelligence (NSI), including their former heads are in custody today undergoing interrogation. Lutfozzaman Babar, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s political adviser, Harris Choudhury and others were also involved and are being questioned. The scale and reach of this conspiracy suggest that Prime Minister Khaleda could not have been unaware of it.”

So I propose that a feasible strategy might be the following: attack India through Bangladesh, for any attack on India through known Pakistani associates will only result in the proscription of those Pakistani militant organizations.  Attacking India through Bangladeshi soils implicates Bangladesh in the wider regional Islamist conflict and furthermore serves to energize the young Bangladeshi Islamists waiting their turn to declare jihad against non-believers and apostates, alike.

The Supreme Court of Bangladesh delivered judgment on an appeal brought by 5 former Army officers who were held responsible for the 1975 murder of the founding leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.  Rahman, known hagiographically as Bangabandhu–the Friend of Bengal– was the  first Prime Minister of Bangladesh.  After electing to switch to a presidential form of government in 1975 he assumed the presidency, and was assassinated later that year.   The verdict: guilty.  The Supreme Court upheld a lower court verdict.  The 5 former officers now face the death penalty. 

Speaking in Rome yesterday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, one of two surviving children of the assassinated leader deferred questions on the judgment and said “I just want justice.”  However, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who is the leader of the ruling Awami League and its coalition has put the states security forces on alert in anticipation of civil unrest.

Security forces maintained control over the grounds of the Supreme Court, the Dhaka Central jail and the homes of the judges involved in the case.

 Acts of violence and the threat of directed harm already have come from unidentified sources.  Jay Shanker reporting for Bloomberg writes:

“Unidentified attackers last month threw a bomb at the car of legislator Fazle Noor Tapas, an Awami League member, Reuters reported at the time. At least a dozen people were injured in the attack. Tapas, who escaped unhurt, is one of the lawyers taking part in the trial process, according to the report.”

Moreover the attorney general received a letter threatening his family if the 5 former officers were not released.

This case resonates deeply with Bangladeshis.  A cadre of Army Officers assassinated the left-leaning and increasing dictator-like, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his extant family–save his two daughters–and were later indemnified from prosecution by a series of right leaning dictatorial governments.  When Sheikh Hasina came to power in 1996 she set in motion the trial of the named individuals and was able to secure a guilty verdict.  However on appeal, the Supreme Court delivered a split decision and when, in 2001, the Awami League lost power, the case ground to a halt.  

When running for office again in 2008 Sheikh Hasina campaigned on the platform to deliver a “just” and satisfactory verdict.  Since the appeal was brought back to the docket, Sheikh Hasina has sent directives to the members of her cabinet and to her supporters, generally, urging them to be wary of political and civil disruptions.  

This judgment could prove cathartic for the nation.  Bangladesh can finally salve its own self-inflicted wounds.  Alternatively, this news could degenerate the political discussion–already retrograde–to a series of accusations and indictments of blame.    Though the rightist BNP has claimed that it will respect the verdict, some party members are sure to suppose that verdict had been made years ago; it is the full-throated declaration from an arm of the state which, until now, had been missing in the proceedings.

The Foreign Minister of Bangladeshi, Dr. Dipu Moni declared that member states attending the UN Climate Change Conference soon to be held in Copenhagen must give grants–not loans–to countries that are victims of the consequences of global climate and environmental change.

Addressing the Climate Vulnerable Forum in the Maldives, Begum Moni said “River erosion, land slide, soil degradation, deforestation, and salinity intrusion in the coastal areas are the other forms of impact we are suffering,”

“We have been running from meetings to meetings, seminars to symposiums for many years now. The series of meetings has so far eluded us of a just and equitable solution.”, she said.

The Daily Star reports that Foreign Minister Moni said:

 ”the Copenhagen outcome must include provisions for assured, adequate, predictable and easily accessible funding mechanism for adaptation and transfer of green technology to the Least Developed Countries, low-lying coastal and island states and other climatically vulnerable countries at an affordable cost.”

“She said the climate vulnerable countries were not the polluters, but sufferers of global warming. Bangladesh spent over $10 billion to build structures such as coastal polders and embankments to fight natural calamities.”

Claiming that Bangladesh needed more resources to dredge rivers and reclaim flooded land, Minister Moni said, “such activities will entail huge costs and, therefore, I call upon the international community to underwrite these expenses.”

Everything turns on whether donor countries think the issue is one of prospective political development in which case, like student loans, funding through bilateral loans is a bet on a greater economic development and better policy and socio-economic pay-offs in the future.  If, however states view the funding issue as an unsecured debt paid out as a consequence of rapid industrialization in China, India and other countries, then it makes more sense to think of foreign aid and grant funding as an ameliorative approach to foreign aid.

However, I think that there’s only approach to foreign aid that makes credible sense.  And that’s Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s argument that foreign aid is an exchange of goods for policy concessions. Leaders in donor countries make foreign aid contribution if it increases their tenure in office, say in the next election cycle.  Though Bangladesh as a recipient country  fits the parameters of the model Professor Bueno de Mesquita ascribes to the political game, most donor countries would not fit into the model so described.  This is because the leaders of most donor countries think the consequences of global climate change are too dispersed to affect their political survival.  At most, even if donor countries acceded to treaties capping  emissions at the level required, nevertheless, they are not likely to pay  for ameliorative foreign aid for economic and infrastructure development.  After all, ameliorative foreign aid, of the kind that Begum Moni claims Bangladesh deserves does not involve policy concessions.

Hence, if  aid funds are appropriated for victim countries like Bangladesh, much of it will be donated as loans, not grants.  Nevertheless, I want to point out that the  stronger moral opinion sides with Begum Moni.

I look at the news of the day as either a sign or a signal.  A sign is a piece or stream of data that serve as declarative propositions about the world. Signs describe the world contemporaneously, as true or false through argument, news, video, photographs or–for that matter– blog posts.  Signs carry no prescriptions about the world; they are, finally, symbols of the world we already know.  After all signs tell us exactly, to the foot and meter, where we are in relation to it.

Signals, on the other hand, convey novel information.  They carry prescriptions about the world, prescriptions that are not abundantly clear to us, precisely because the information they carry are, to us, novel and still unchallenged.  It is this novel and, sometimes, predictive information, that often alerts us to new possibilities and new ways of thinking, that makes signals the kind of things we actively seek.

Nevertheless, the search for a new signal is never a fool’s waiting game.  It is one of parsing out fat from meat, though the fat be succulent.  And it is performing this act of separation, served by this distinction, that will be the active pursuit of this blog.

Bangladesh creeps under the radar of many South Asia analysts.  This most densely populated country of Muslims often goes unnoticed but for its annual Monsoon season; though, Nicholas Kristof is paying attention.  I’d like to suggest that politics and political developments in Bangladesh are signals of things to come in South Asia.  We, in America, and other leading countries, would do well to be a bit more like Kristof and pay attention.

Consider the following short breaking news article from the “Daily Star” on the arrest of three men in Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh:

“[The] Detective branch of police Wednesday night arrested three suspected Lashkar-e-Taiyeba (LeT) leaders from a madrasa in Chittagong in connection with a plot to attack the US embassy in Dhaka.  The detained are identified as Mufti Harun Izahar, 33, son of Mufti Izaharul Islam who is the ameer of a faction of Islami Oikya Jote, Shahidul Islam, 26, and Al Amin alias Saiful.  They have reportedly worked also for Harkatul Jihad al Islam (Huji), another banned Islamic outfit.”

Lashkar -e- Taiyeba, a militant organization based in Pakistan, has been suspected of master-minding the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 163 people dead.  Even though, charges against Lashkar’s founder Hafiz Muhammed Saeed were dropped, nevertheless, much more than blood and guilt hangs suspended in the air.  Claims of an abiding desire to establish an Islamic caliphate in Central and South Asia, notwithstanding, Lashkar does not have a estimable presence in Bangladesh.

This is not the case for the other group cited in the brief article, Harkatal Jihad al Islami.  Harkatal Jihad al Islam, Bangladesh (Huji) is a militant organization that sprang up in the Af/Pak border in the 1980’s and enjoyed strong ties with the leading Islamist party in Bangladesh, the Jamaat-e-Islami during the right leaning Bangladesh National Party’s term in office from 2001 until 2006.  In 2000, they were implicated in an assassination attempt on the current incumbent Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina. Only in 2005, under international pressure to proscribe all such groups, the BNP finally outlawed Huji.

This news is a sign, if and only if we can take these arrests at face value and suppose the deed done, the attack forestalled.  I think this is too quick a move.  These men are only the three caught of thousands of men training in madrassa’s all over the country.  In fact, though Huji-Bangladesh is an independent operation, its Pakistan based mother organization is a powerful corporate entity that, though considered a major organizing force in Kashmir has deep and extended international connections.  For example, the leader of the 7/7 London bombings is thought  to have had contact with members of the Huji in Pakistan.

Rather, it is the case that this news is a signal of things to come.  International media attention on the problem of home grown and international terrorism in Bangladesh–sowed from the seeds of domestic political grievance–focused  as it is on Bangladesh’s neighbors, is terribly lacking.  News outlets like The Daily Star and the Daily Ittefaq, a Bengali language newspaper, and blogs such as Unheard Voice and E-Bangladesh are doing a creditable job in communicating the news in, and about, Bangladesh to an international readership.  It is my hope that this blog will travel some distance in bridging that gap between unheard voices and international awareness of those voices.