Why India's anti-terror strike in Pakistan is a lesson for Bangladesh
Bangladesh has again started to help raise insurgent groups for subversive activities in India’s northeast, after interim government led by Yunus assumed power
India’s anti-terror strike in Pakistan should be an eyeopener for Bangladesh, which has started harbouring terrorists and anti-India forces, cozying up with Islamabad.
In a throwback to the pre-Awami League era, when the eastern neighbour, along with Pakistan, was a major haven for anti-India forces, Bangladesh has yet again started helping to raise insurgent groups for subversive activities in India’s northeast.
The rise of TUNF
The Tripura United National Front (TUNF) is the latest northeast-based insurgent outfit incubated by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the defence intelligence agency of Bangladesh, according to credible intel with Indian security agencies.
Additionally, Bangladesh-based Islamic terrorist groups are also trying to revive their sleeper cells in India, as reported earlier by The Federal.
The TUNF in its letterhead (in the possession of The Federal) claims to have been established in 2019, but recent interrogations of its arrested members revealed it has been formed in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts area towards the end of 2024 that is after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government.
The members of the group were mostly former National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) cadres (from Riang/Bru community), who refused to surrender after the group signed a peace accord in September last year.
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It is an offshoot of the Tripura Hambagra Ta Army (THBTA) that the Bangladesh Army’s 203rd infantry brigade, based in Khagrachari, helped raise last year along with another ethnic group, the Mog National Party (MNP).
Mogs are a small tribe of Arakanese descent residing mostly in the southern part of Tripura.
Call for sovereign Tripuri state
The objective of the THBTA was to establish a Riang state carving out Riang-dominated areas of North Tripura while the MNP’s avowed goal was to press for an autonomous council for the Mog community.
The two groups merged this year at the behest of their Bangladeshi handlers to form the TUNF, to give it a larger Kokborok-speaking Tiprasa identity encompassing diverse tribal groups including Tripuri, Reang, Mog, Jamatia, Noatia, and Chakma, Tripura police sources said.
After assuming the new nomenclature, the group changed its objective to creation of a sovereign Tripuri state through armed struggle.
The security agencies got insights into the group’s latest evolution after grilling its three leaders Yangpu Reang, Salpa Reang and Goniram Reang arrested by the Tripura police in February-March this year.
Role of Bangladesh army and ISI
Yangpu is one of the self-styled commanders of the nascent outfit and he was regularly in touch with Bangladesh army officials.
The outfit at present is operating from its two bases in Bangladesh, sources said. The bases are at New Zopui Jhum Hut areas in Sajek hill ranges and Kachalong Reserve Forest areas of Bangladesh’s CHT close to India’s Tripura and Mizoram states.
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Apart from providing shelter and training, the Bangladesh’s army at the behest of the DGFI reportedly also provided arms to the group, which presently has a cadre strength of around 70. It has AK-type rifles, Single Barrel Breech Loading (SBBL) rifles, 12-bore, and .22 rifles in its armoury, it is reliably learnt.
The role of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) in charting the Bangladesh army’s covert gambit involving India’s northeast cannot be ruled out. More so, as a high-level ISI delegation, led by Major General Shahid Amir Afsar, during its visit to Bangladesh early this year reportedly met the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) chief Paresh Barua, and visited “sensitive areas” near the Indian border.
Hub of anti-India activities
Such ISI-backed operations had turned Bangladesh into a hub of anti-India activities in the late ‘90s and mid-2000s. There were as many as 117 camps of various northeast militant groups active in Bangladesh, as per a list India handed over to the neighbouring country seeking action in April 2008.
These camps were gradually dismantled after Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government came to power in 2009. At least 25 top leaders of various northeast-based insurgent groups operating from Bangladesh were arrested and handed over to India by Hasina’s government during 2009-14.
Her government had also cracked down on Islamist terror groups active in her country such as Al-Qaeda-linked Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami-
The scenario drastically changed after an interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus took charge after Hasina’s government was dislodged in August last year.
Several terror-group leaders either escaped or were released from jail following the August “uprising.”
ABT Chief Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani and JAFHS founder Shamim Mahfuz were among the long-list of terrorists released from jail. The ABT’s India operation head Ikramul Haque alias Abu Talha escaped from jail.
The ABT and other Bangladesh-based terror groups of late have been reconnected by Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to explore ways to use Bangladesh’s soil for exporting terror to India. Arrests of some sleeper cell members of the Islamist terror groups in West Bengal and Assam in December last year unearthed a sinister plan of the terror groups to destabilise the Siliguri corridor.
Two senior Hamas leaders Sheikh Khaled Mishal and Khalid al-Qadoumi also reportedly visited Bangladesh in October last year.
Khalid al-Qadoumi, the spokesperson of the Hamas, is believed to be spearheading the organisation’s anti-India activities. He also had meeting with leaders of terrorist groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) in February this year.
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Rahmani in September last year called for secession of West Bengal and northeastern states and sought assistance from Pakistan and Afghanistan to "liberate Kashmir".
A JMB leader Golam Sarowar Rahat, an accused in the 2014 Khagragarh blast in West Bengal was seen with Yunus in February this year, a clear indication that Bangladesh’s interim government is not averse to hobnobbing with anti-India forces, much to India’s security concern, particularly in the eastern front.
