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Terrorist threat to Indian cricket team visiting Bangladesh |
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The death threat by a little known terrorist group in Bangladesh against the Indian cricket team Bangladesh delayed their departure and at one time it was proposed to drop Chittagong from the itinerary until the tour, as originally planned was cleared following the visit of an Indian investigative team to review the security situation. The threat was faxed to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka which was however, dismissed by the Bangladesh government lightly saying that it was not aware of the militant outfit called the Harkat-ul Jihad which threatened to kill the Indian cricketers if they visited the country.
The departure of the team on December 7 was, however, slightly delayed and some matches rescheduled in the wake of the death threat by a radical Islamic group. This followed a handwritten faxed message by the Harkat-ul Jihad to the Indian High Commisison in Dhaka saying, “in revenge of the killing of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat we are going to kill the Indian Cricket team if they visit Bangladesh”. Despite assurances from the Bangladesh Government, conveyed through diplomatic channels that the threat was a hoax, India took no chances. It sent a security team headed by Yashowardhan Azad, Joint Director, VIP Security, Intelligence Bureau, to assess the situation. The team visited the venues of the matches including those in Chittagong and Dhaka and assessed the resource-mobilisation capacity of the terrorist group Harkat-ul Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI) in terms of explosives and man power. In its initial report the team cleared Dhaka as the venue but had second thoughts on Chittagong. On its recommendations the Government initially gave only partial clearance to the tour, that too, on the condition that the hosts make special security arrangement, the same as provided by Pakistan earlier this year. The reservations of the Indian security team about Chittagong were because the cricket stadium there is, ringed by tall buildings, dream vantage point for a sniper or somebody carrying a hand held missile. Chittagong has also for long been a base from where the Islamic movement throughout Bangladesh and beyond is coordinated. The madrasas, which have mushroomed in Cox’s Bazaar and the Banderband areas serve as the recruiting grounds of various jehadi outfits. Many terrorists uprooted from their old bases in Afghanistan have set up bases there.
The Government cleared the full cricket tour only after insistence on tighter security arrangements, as recommended by the Indian security team, which visited hotels and other areas where the Indian team would be expected to be present. The Indian security team held detailed meetings with Bangladeshi police and Army officials. It later met Bangladeshi Home Secretary Omar Farooq, who agreed to provide a “foolproof security cover to the team and make additional arrangements proposed by the Indian side”. The security team has suggested a number of measures, including an anti-sabotage check and access control at the stadium and the hotel where the team will be staying. Following the clearance the five-member Indian cricket team left for Dhaka on December 8 for the first test, the next day.
Both Bangladesh Finance Minister Saifur Rahman and Home Minister Lutfozman Babar did not give credence to the threat handed by the militant group. Saifur Rahman who was in New Delhi to attend the India Economic Summit claimed that there was no such organisation in Bangladesh as Harkat-ul Jihad. Babar also claimed that they have never heard of this organisation before. But other reports say, it is one of the offspring of Harkat-ul Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI) and the threat to the Indian team was not a hoax, as claimed by Dhaka. HUJI’s modules have made abortive attempts to kidnap Indian captain Sourav Ganguly and batting legend Sachin Tendulkar in the past too in order to secure the release of Nasarulla Langariyal, a top rung operative of HUJI, now lodged in the high security Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu. HUJI’s desperation to seek the release of Langariyal could be gauged from the fact that Taliban negotiators had sought Langariyal’s release alongwith Maulana Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh Sayyed and Muslitaq Zargar for the safe release of the passengers aboard the IC 814 plane.
HUJI’s terrorist credentials
HUJI was set up in 1992 with direct funding by the Al-Qaeda to spread jihad. It has about 15,000 cadres and maintains links with Pakistan’s ISI. Indian intelligence agencies say, HUJI, has several camps in Chittagong Hill Tracts. HUJI was behind a recent attack on former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Two of the four party ruling alliance in Bangladesh have close links with HUJI. Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ) are fundamentalists. The chairman of IOJ, Azim-ul Haque is a member of the advisory council of HUJI. HUJI is headed by Shoukat Uzman alias Sheikh Farid, based in Chittagong. It is believed to have contacts with Muslim organisations in West Bengal and Assam. In its annual report “Patterns of global terrorism 2003”, the US State Department listed HUJI under the heading “Forty Other Terrorist Groups “ in addition to the 37 designated terrorist outfits. Earlier in a statement issued on May 29, 2002, it had described it as a terrorist organisation with ties with militant bodies in Pakistan.
A widely circulated Bangladeshi daily Protham Alo carried a series of articles in August this year under the heading “Militant activities in Greater Chittagong” which claimed that HUJI was active in Bangladesh. It alleged that members of this militant organisation who returned to Bangladesh after the Afghan war are undergoing arms training in Cox’s Bazaar in the inaccessible hills of Naikkhangehhadi in Bandarban in the no-man’s land along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border and certain hilly areas of Chittagong. They have been supported by some madrasas in the Chittagong and Cox’s Bazaar districts, certain Islamist political parties and quite a few rebel Rohingya militant groups.
The paper claimed that at least 300 mujahideen from Bangladesh participated in the war in Afghanistan towards the end of the 1980s. In 1992, 17 of them returned to the country and formed HUJI under the leadership of Maulana Sheikh Farid of Khalishpur in Khulna. Bangladeshi authorities now believe the Al-Qaeda funded them. The group also operates in North-eastern India in tandem with several Islamic groupings. Osama bin Laden was said to have sent his private secretary to attend a meeting of HUJI in Bangladesh to draft a strategy to intensify their violent campaign in the region.
What however, establishes the Al-Qaeda link beyond the shadow of a doubt is the fact that one of the six signatories to a fatwa (decree) issue on February 20, 1998, by the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, which has come to be commonly known as the World Islamic Front, was according Yossef Bodansky. Sheikh Farid, who is also known as Shukat Osman, continues to head it with Imtiaz Quddus as secretary.
The HUJI’s mission is to establish Islamic rule in Bangladesh. The implications of this become clear on recalling that its supporters frequently raise the slogan “Amra sabai hobo Taliban/Bangla hobe Afghanistan”. It means in English “All of us will become Taliban/Bangladesh will become Afghanistan”. Its strength has been variously estimated. According to the survey, Bangladesh Assessment 2003 in the South Asia Terrorism Portal maintained by the Institute of Conflict Management, the HUJI reportedly had 15,000 members of whom 2,000 were “hardcore”. It further stated that “Bangladeshi Hindus and moderate Muslims hold them responsible for many attacks against religious minorities, secular intellectuals and journalists”. In January 1999, three armed activists of the HUJI burst into the apartment of Bangladesh’s legendary poet and outspoken secular icon, Shamsur Rahman, with pickaxes. The poet escaped unhurt though his wife was seriously injured. Interrogation of the three who were apprehended by Rahman’s neighbours, and subsequent investigations revealed that the attempt on his life was a part of a campaign to eliminate 28 Bangladeshi intellectuals known for their secular outlook and opposition to fundamentalist Islam. The HUJI has also been held responsible for the murder on July 16, 2000, of a young journalist, also named Shamsur Rahman, and an abortive attempt to assassinate Sheikh Hasina, then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, in August, 2000. It has also been considered responsible for the devastating explosion in Ramna, Dhaka, on April 14, 2001.
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