M A I N   N E W S

Jehadis send danger signals in region
Rajiv Sharma
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 17
Knowledgeable circles in the Government of India believe that the 370 bomb blasts that rocked 63 out of 64 districts of Bangladesh today bear signatures of Al-Qaeda or Al Qaeda-affiliated outfit, signalling that sinister Jehadi forces are now firmly entrenched in India’s eastern neighbourhood.

The development — probably the first case in the history of international terrorism when so many bomb blasts have covered such a wide swath of a country in one single day— was reviewed at the highest levels in the government. Till this evening, there was no indication whether the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) was being scheduled to discuss the development and its fallout on India, though it looks certain that the CCS would hold a brainstorming session on this whenever it meets next.

History seems to be repeating itself in the context of the next SAARC summit because just about six months ago the summit had to be postponed because of worsening law and order situation in Bangladesh and the February 1 royal coup in Nepal. However, the fact that the much-postponed SAARC summit, now scheduled in Dhaka in the second week of November, has once again come under a cloud is a minor or no issue for New Delhi.

The Indian Government’s topmost worry is the dangerous fallout of fast-spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh with which India shares a 4095 km-long border, largely porous.

The Ministry of External Affairs’s reaction was terse, though loaded, when it said: “The scale and coordination of these explosions countrywide raises a number of questions.” The MEA statement, relating to the hundreds of explosions all over Bangladesh, also said: “Our sympathies go out to the victims and their families. We have no reports of injuries to Indian citizens as yet. Our diplomatic personnel are all safe.”

New Delhi’s preliminary assessment is that Bangladeshi radical outfit Jumait-ul-Mujahideen, banned in 2003 after a series of blasts in Dinajpur, northern Bangladesh, is behind today’s blasts. Its commander Shahbul Islam was arrested in connection with the Dinajpur blasts. The Jumait-ul-Mujahideen is known to be getting help from Jamiat-e-Islami of Bangladesh which is one of the four parties in the ruling coalition.

Today’s blasts, though low-intensity ones, are being seen as a demonstration of the Islamists’ capability and intent. The perpetrators have conveyed a point home that they could have wreaked havoc, if they so wished, but they just left it at that — a warning that much worse could happen if Bangladesh were not to become a theocratic Islamic state.

The developments in Bangladesh today assume all the more sinister proportions considering that raw uranium was recovered in the last week of May 2003 from the possession of a Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen terrorist, an outfit which is extremely close to Osama-bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda. The uranium had originated from a Central Asian country.

More shocking recoveries, made by Bangladesh Rifles, were a catalogue and a manual which gave directions how to assemble a radioactive bomb or a “dirty bomb”. A “dirty bomb” can be a crude nuclear device containing cobalt, beryllium, and radioactive uranium or radioactive-laced conventional explosives.

While there is not a single case of a “dirty bomb” explosion by terrorists anywhere in the world, it is estimated that thousands of people may be killed in one single such attack. Though further details of the uranium seizure in Bangladesh were not available, the macabre terrorist plot of Al-Qaeda could be deciphered. A couple of weeks later, US Secretary of State Colin Powell made an unscheduled four-hour stop-over in Dhaka in June 2003.