HuJI Hunts and is the Hunted in the North East

A lot has happened in the recent times. After a spate of terrorist bomb blasts in various Indian cities, including the capital, in the period of festivals in September-October 2008, “guest terrorists” are now visiting the North East. It may be recalled that in Jammu and Kashmir, when the tap of Valley-based Kashmiri youth had run dry by mid 1990s, Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) that directs anti-India terrorist operations, had begun sending Pakistani and other foreign terrorists into the state. In the northeast too, with United Liberation Front of Asom's (ULFA) no longer able to recruit Assamese youth, Bangladesh-based ISI has arranged Bangladeshi Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI-B) to be inducted to continue mayhem in Assam and Tripura.

 

On 26 September, 2008, the Indian Army foiled major terror strikes in Assam by killing seven HuJI-B terrorists in a fierce pre-dawn gun battle near Basbari village, Dhubri district, about 270 km west of Guwahati. Capt Kuldeep Singh of 21 Jat Regiment who led the operation based on specific intelligence collected by mobile interceptors, received two bullets. Guwahati was one of the main targets of the seven HuJI terrorists who had entered through Dhubri district bordering Bangladesh and were planning several blasts. Seven automatic pistols, three radio sets, a large quantity of explosives, mainly gelatin and detonators, besides Bangladeshi, Indian, and Chinese currency notes were recovered from the dead terrorists.

 

On June 23, 2007, a Special Task Force in Lucknow arrested Jalaluddin aka Amanullah alias Manda Babu, reportedly a HuJI  Area Commander, who disclosed his involvement in Shramjeevi Express and Varanasi's Sankat Mochan temple bomb blasts.  In December 2007, interrogation of arrested HuJI terrorists following the November 2007 attacks in UP and Hyderabad revealed that explosives used in both were of similar make and sourced from ULFA. In fact, terrorist organisations operating in UP, who are targetting top VIPs and lawyers, have been getting arms, ammunition and explosives directly from ULFA.

 

HuJI is a Pakistan-based terrorist group, whose Bangladeshi wing became active in 1992, after it became free from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Since then, it had been in close touch with ULFA and other terrorist organizations operating in India. Becoming a constituent of International Islamic Front (IIF), HuJI-B increased its violent attacks on the Hindu minority, progressive intellectuals like poets, journalists, and liberal Muslims. It had allegedly planned to kill 28 prominent intellectuals, including Prof Kabir Choudhury, writer Taslima Nasreen, and the Director General of the Islamic Foundation, Maulana Abdul Awal. It was also alleged that HuJI-B mobilised support for killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founder of Bangladesh with a view to assassinate his daughter, Sheikh Hasina. Although, Awami League Government did attempt to crackdown on HuJI-B, its operatives escaped into India. Bangladesh Home Minister Mohammed Naseem, in an interview with BBC Bengali Service on 11 December 1999, disclosed that during his visit to India in 1999 he had confided to then Union Home Minister L.K.Advani and Buddhadeo Bhattacharya, then Minister in Jyoti Basu cabinet in West Bengal about the presence of HuJI-B operatives in India. He said, "his government had definite information about HuJI militants taking shelter in India, particularly in West Bengal, to flee the crackdown unleashed by Awami League Government after the bombing attempt of Kotalipara".

 

HuJI-B's activity is mainly in the coastal area stretching from Chittagong south through Cox's Bazaar to the Myanmar border. It has been actively involved in piracy, smuggling and arms running, which co-exists with trafficking of narcotics. It reportedly maintains six training camps each in Chittagong Hill Tracts and Cox's Bazaar.

 

With support from ISI, and patronage of radical Islamists, it has been easy for HuJI-B operatives to merge among the Muslim groups in states like Assam, West Bengal, UP and Delhi and set up cells there. Various reports suggest that in addition to the ULFA, it also maintains links with terrorist groups outside Bangladesh, including Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) in Pakistan. HuJI B has coined a slogan - "Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban, Bangla Hobe Afghanistan" ("We will all become Taliban and we will turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan"). It has emerged as one of the most militant Islamist outfits and an important link in the chain of the wider network of Al Qaeda.

 

The tenure of Bangladesh National Party under Begum Khaleda Zia saw HuJI B grow exponentially, hand in glove with ISI, Al Qaeda and Taliban to transform Bangladesh in to an emerging Islamist State. Although the present military backed regime assures India that it would not allow any terrorist infrastructure on Bangladeshi soil, its stand at the two-day Home secretary level talks between the two countries on August 3-4, 2007 in New Delhi belied these claims. Despite ULFA leaders Paresh Barua, Arabind Rajkhowa etc continuing to live luxuriously in Bangladesh and remote-controlling operations from there, Mohammad Abdul Karim, Home Secretary of Bangladesh did not admit to their presence.

 

The possibility of HuJI-B's hand in the October 1, 2008 serial blasts in Tripura cannot be ruled out as the National Liberation Front of Tripura are not known for this modus and targeting of innocent civilians.

 

India’s north eastern states that share borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh need many more battalions of Border Security Force for better border management, but there does not appear to be any such plan. It remains to be seen what kind of an attack or atrocity will make the Indian political establishment wake up and begin asserting itself in the Asian subcontinent.

 

 

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies)