Eyebrow raised over joint task force

Bangladesh initiatives to form a regional task force and hold joint military exercise in India’s troubled state of Assam raised alarm among the political circle and defence analysts.
Indian high commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty on Wednesday said Bangladesh and India might form a new platform to fight terrorism and insurgency across the two countries. “A new body could be formed that will deal exclusively with the issue of terrorism, insurgency, cross-border crime and so on,” Chakravarty told reporters after his first call on new foreign minister Dipu Moni on Wednesday. They also talked about the possibility of the new regional panel or taskforce as was outlined by Awami League in its election manifesto.
Khandakar Delwar Hossain, secretary general of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party said the presence of foreign troops in Bangladesh territory on the plea of a South Asian regional task-force to combat terrorism raises questions over its sovereignty, and the people would not tolerate any threat to the country’s independence and sovereignty.
Earlier, a Bangladesh army spokesman told the news agency AFP on January 15 that it was planning to hold its first joint military exercise with Indian troops, in the troubled Northeast Indian state of Assam next month. An armed forces spokesman said that the small-scale exercise involving 20 para-commandos from each country would be held at Jorhat in insurgency-hit Assam from February 22-March 7.
Bangladesh Army spoke about the joint move only after the BBC aired the news on January 14 quoting Indian defence ministry spokesman Group Captain Ramesh Kumar Das.
“With India keen on securing Bangladesh’s firm co-operation in rooting out anti-Indian terror and insurgent outfits operating from its soil, the armies from the two countries will come together to hold their first-ever counter-terrorism exercise,” Das said.
“This exercise was planned and conceived as a confidence-building measure between the two countries as both are threatened by terrorism.” Das told the BBC
The move for a joint military exercise comes just weeks after Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party won a landslide victory in Bangladesh’s general elections.
However, the plans for the joint exercise were discussed during the visit of a Bangladesh military delegation to Calcutta’s Fort William, headquarters of India’s Eastern Army, in the last week of December 2007. Bangladesh’s army chief Gen Moeen U Ahmed took the initiative to develop military-to-military ties with India when he visited Delhi and Calcutta early in 2007.
Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, the then chief Advisor of the caretaker government, first mooted the idea in the last SAARC summit held in Colombo last year. He sought military cooperation among the SAARC states despite the fact that Bangladesh is already involved in bilateral military cooperation like academic training, exchange of institutional information and disaster response with SAARC member countries. Apart from UN peacekeeping, Bangladesh is also engaged in many military programme in the international level where either India or Pakistan is included.
Defense analysts believe that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, being fully aware of the relations with apparently tried to make her position clear by promising for a regional task force that should include not only India but also Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other SAARC member countries. She ventilated her views in a recent interview with the editor of Kolkata daily The Statesman in Dhaka. However, Indian authorities want it to be a bilateral cooperation between the two armies of Bangladesh and India.
In recent years the ties have often been strained by border skirmishes and New Delhi’s accusations that Bangladesh-based Islamic groups were behind a number of blasts across India. There have been repeated border clashes between the countries in recent years.
There is nothing wrong with a military exercise if it is held under any international or regional umbrella and with a transparent objective, said the defence analysts
Public has the right to know about the purpose and objective of the joint military exercise in a troubled state of India, said Major General (rtd) Moinul Hossain Chowdhury adding that there should not be any hide and seek in matters of national interest. He said there was no problem with a south Asian task force if it was organised under SAARC umbrella.
Lt Gen (RTD) Mahbubur Rahman, a former Army Chief and presently a member of BNP’s policy making standing committee told the Holiday that he had no knowledge about the objective of Bangladesh army to join the exercise with Indian troops in an insurgency-prone area of Assam.
However, he feared that Bangladesh by getting involved in Indian counter insurgency programme may invite trouble for herself which is not desirable. He also pointed out that Bangladesh should also move carefully by taking into consideration the concerns of her trusted friend China which borders with troubled states in the north-eastern India. China should not get any wrong signal that a military alliance is taking shape close to her soil and along the border of Mayanmar.
Major General (rtd) Fazlur Rahman, former Chief of Bangladesh paramilitary force, BDR, warned against any ill desire by a big neighbour having the ambition of expansionism. In a regional task force, Bangladesh may find itself dominated by the big brother of the region, he apprehended. Moreover, Bangladesh may become a target of attack by the insurgent groups of Northeast India, General Fazlur Rahman said adding that India may also want a reciprocal operation inside Bangladesh which might undermine our national sovereignty.
The move to form a regional task force may also give rise to terrorist activities inside Bangladesh as what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former BDR chief said. He suggested to calculate the sovereignty issue while entering into such a strategic move. Defence experts say it is too early to move with such a military cooperation, specially in view of the sensitivity of the very issue.

Source: Holiday