Feared India separatist leader invests millions in Bangladesh
The military leader of a rebel group seeking independence for India’s isolated north-eastern state of Assam earns millions of dollars each year from investments in Bangladesh, a Bangladeshi intelligence report seen by a local news agency revealed.
The news could test warming relations between the south Asian neighbours who for years clashed over the issue of rebels finding shelter in Bangladesh.
Paresh Barua heads a hardline faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and is now believed to operate from camps in Myanmar, which borders Assam. The news of his investments sheds light on how he keeps his unit running. The U.S. State Department in 2006 estimated ULFA had several hundred fighters.
The report published by the Press Trust of India agency said Barua earns $1.5 million every quarter as remittance from businesses including real estate, shipping, textile and power, and another $500,000 through foreign exchange.
Barua invested $14 million in three Dhaka-based real estate firms in the name of a London-based businessman, the reports said. It was not clear where the money came from.
In recent years, Bangladesh arrested and deported a number of guerrillas operating from its territory, greatly improving ties with India, which has for decades fought armed groups that want independence in the distant north-eastern states.
Funding of multiple small insurgencies in the north-east, which is geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of India, has always been a topic of hot political debate, with fingers often pointed at arch-rival Pakistan.
South Asia’s failing states
Foreign Policy magazine has just released its 2009 list of failing states or those at risk of failure and South Asia makes for sobering reading.
All of India’s neighbours, except for tiny Bhutan, figure in the list of top 25 states that are faltering, although their rankings have improved marginally over the previous year.
So Afghanistan remains at number 7 in the table of failing states topped by Somalia. Pakistan is ranked 10th, just marginally better than its 9th position in last year’s table which perhaps reflects the belief that the state has begun to fight back the militants who threaten its existence.
(The higher you are on this list, based on 12 indicators measuring state cohesion and performance, the closer you are to failure)
You can see the full report of The Failed States Index 2009 here.
But just to distil it, here are the rankings for South Asian nations as they changed over the past year. Myanmar is ranked 13th which is what it was in 2008.
How can India survive in this environment when US, EU and China are actively investing in evil forces to destabilize India?
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Change of guard in Bangladesh, hope for the region?
Sheikh Hasina, the leader of an avowedly secular party, is set to return to power in Bangladesh, the other end of South Asia's arc of instability stretching from Afghanistan through Pakistan to India.
And because the teeming region, home to a fifth of the world's population, is so closely intertwined Hasina's election and the change that she has promised to bring to her country will almost certainly have a bearing across South Asia, but especially for India and Pakistan.
Bangladesh, as far as New Delhi is concerned, is the eastern launching pad for Islamist militants hostile to it, complementing Pakistan on the west. So even if the heat is turned on the militants in Pakistan as India is demanding following the attacks in Mumbai, they or their controllers can unleash groups such as Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) based in Bangladesh.
India's new Home Minister P. Chidambaram told a parliament debate this month that Bangladesh had a responsibility to control the HuJI.
Hasina has said she wouldn't allow her nation to be used to attack other countries, and her election has been welcomed in New Delhi. In particular the defeat of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party and an ally of Hasina's bitter rival Khaleda Zia, is seen as a sign that the country wants to stick to a secular democratic path. In that, New Delhi is hoping Hasina would act against the hardline forces who have attacked her as well .
But how far can she really go? She has a huge parlimentary majority but no politician in Bangladesh can been seen as doing India's bidding. India, which was instrumental in Bangladesh's birth as an independent nation from what was then East Pakistan, has over time been seen as a big brother, a hegemonic power.
chircut:
You have raised some very good points (sorry I am replying to your post so late).
Yes, if India were to give up Kashmir to independence, Pakistan would have to give up their portion also. There’s no doubt about that.
On your second point, yes, India is a secular democracy. But Kashmir is a special case. It seems more like Kashmiri nationalism nowadays than Muslim nationalism. Pandits must return to Kashmir, Buddhists in Ladakh must be included in all decisions, and Hindu Dogras of Jammu also. But your concern about secularism and the plight of other Indian Muslims is a very real concern. I cannot give you answer on that.
But on your comment that “Pakistan is a hellhole for minorities”, I cannot agree with you there. In the past 20-25 years there has been progress, though slow, on the betterment of minorities in Pakistan. It was accelerated under the Musharraf regime. Hindu temples restored and functioning, Sikh gurdwaras and pilgrimages proliferating, minorites inducted into the armed forces, their last chief justice a Hindu. The situation still needs improvement, but treatment of minorities in Pakistan has vastly improved.
I myself have no answers about Kashmir except to say India and Pakistan should continue dialogue on it, there should be no interference from outside powers and perhaps, through goodwill on all sides, there can be a uniquely South Asian solution that satisfies all parties.
With Islamist militancy, has India passed the tipping point?
The bombings that killed 45 people in the communally sensitive city of Ahmedabad have shaken India’s establishment. It is now sinking in that India faces homegrown Islamist militant groups operating with a scale and sophistication unheard of in previous years.
A group called “India Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for the attacks, the same group that said it carried out the bombings in Jaipur in May that killed 63 people.
For years, India had been seen as country that had largely rejected the attractions of global militancy spurred on by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. President George W. Bush notably said there were no Indians in al Qaeda.
But mainly Hindu India is home to one of the world’s biggest Muslim populations, around 13 percent of its 1.1 billion people.
It only takes 0.0001 percent of India’s roughly 150 million Muslims to form a nucleus of 15,000 militants, as Uday Bhaskar, former director of New Delhi’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, told me.
And the attacks on Ahmedabad may have involved dozens of people.
“We have crossed the tipping point,” he said.
Lets be more analytical and less of stereotypes by blaming only a particular community and rather understand it from a macro level as to who is gaining from all these…
0.0001 % or whatever percentage of minority …nobody is going to gain whatsoever by bringing distrurbance at home …
Its time for us to be more tactical in approach and tackle this global problem of terrorism ..
as it has been said time and again that the perpetators of Terror dont cling to any community or religion but to their short term needs .
Jai Hind ….
Time for India and Bangladesh to work together
For years India has always looked west to Pakistan when bombs exploded in its cities, powerless to influence its old foe.
Now, it is talking peace with Pakistan, and casting aspersions eastwards to Bangladesh, a country it helped establish and should have much more leverage over.
Isn’t it time for some serious diplomacy, to improve relations with Bangladesh and work together to combat violent Islamist extremism?
While homegrown Indian Islamists may have carried out the attack in Jaipur, and a previously unknown group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility, initial investigations have also thrown up a possible link to Bangladesh .
Police have released a sketch of a man in his mid-20s who was seen near the site of one of the bombings, who was apparently speaking Bengali. Dozens of Bangladeshi migrant workers have also been rounded up for questioning.
Police say they also see similarities between these blasts and others in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad last year, which were blamed on Indian Muslims backed by the Bangladeshi group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami.
HuJi, whose name means the Movement of Islamic Holy War, was first established in Pakistan to fight in the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then moved into Kashmir.
Look, Bangladesh handeles terrorism cases better than any country in the region. When Bangladesh was attacked by fundamentals, it took the crinals to justice and hanged them (some HUJI top leaders are also being trialed). Some of the stupids in India say that Bangladesh govt. is a fundamental islamist govt. They should know that People of BD have never elected a right wing religious party like INDIANS (as they elected hindu nationalist BJP) to power.So get your info. right first before commenting. And BANGLADESH also have the best record in communal relationship in the region (way better than india as we never had any incidents like gujrat) and it is termed as the MOST PEACEFUL NATION in the region according to WORLD PEACE INDEX.
Timing of Jaipur blasts will raise suspicion of Pakistani hand
Are militants, or even hawks within the Pakistani establishment, trying to undermine the peace process with India, now that President Pervez Musharraf has removed his uniform and civilians are squabbling for power?
The dust has scarcely settled on another horrific bomb attack in India, and the investigation has only just begun into the synchronised blasts in Jaipur that killed around 60 people .
It is still far too early to be drawing any firm conclusions, but the timing of the blasts is already making some people wonder whether Pakistan was involved.
The explosions came a week before India‘s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was due to visit Islamabad to review the peace process, his first visit since a new, civilian government took over in Pakistan.
It also came just a few days after some of the worst violence this year in Kashmir . India was unhappy that its soldiers came under heavy fire from Pakistani last Thursday along the Line of Control as armed militants tried to sneak into Kashmir .
It was also ten years since India conducted five nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13, 1998.
Now that the army is no longer running Pakistan, is the powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, flexing its muscles again and warning its new civilian “bosses” to abandon the cause of Kashmir at their peril?
How long Indian keep blaming Pak for the problems they have in their society or country,like cast, injustice in ruling other ehnics, unfair class systems, poverty. It is time for Indian to face reality and fix these very difficult problems.
Having gone through the synopsis of subject under consideration I find revealing facts of the terrible situation prevailing in India which some printing media high lights for the information of the people of the country and also for the people of the world.
From the information herein the synopsis and the statement made in the UN by the PM of Bangladesh seems to contradict with each other because of the fact that She stated that she would not allow any terrorist to use Bangladesh land for terrorist activities. On the contrary her country is doing business with the terrorist, How can then one avoid terming her to be an International Shameless lair.
The Community of Nations should take such hardened lairs to severe task for stating lies to hoodwink the world. However, the matter should be taken up with her in Press conference during UN Secretary General’s visit to Bangladesh in coming November 2011 in the presence of the Foreign Ministers of both the countries. This is a very serious allegation against Bangladesh.
From reports revealed by the press people they expressed surprise to the fact of having no knowledge. They however, said that may be PM’s family members or people having connection with the people doing business with them know the matter but public is absolutely unaware.
The matter being very serious needs a thorough open inquiry under UN supervision in the presence of both the country’s representatives .