The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Porous border, worrisome scenario

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Friday, Apr 22, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

Porous border, worrisome scenario

Vinay Kumar

The recent killing of a BSF officer by BDR personnel is another reminder of the situation along the India-Bangladesh border.

THE KILLING of the Border Security Force (BSF) Assistant Commandant, Jiwan Kumar, by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) personnel last week in Tripura's Lankamura sector has predictably evoked a strong protest from India. New Delhi has described it as a "pre-meditated and pre-planned" murder. A parallel is being drawn with the April 2001 skirmishes on the India-Bangladesh border in the Pyrdiwah sector in which 16 BSF men were killed.

What the Indian officials find disquieting is the fact that Jiwan Kumar was tortured and killed when the BSF Director-General, R.S. Mooshahary was in Dhaka, leading an Indian delegation of senior BSF, Home and External Affairs Ministry officials to discuss better, well-coordinated border management with his Bangladesh counterparts.

Common problems

The latest incident is yet another grim reminder of the problems so peculiar to the issues of border management between the two neighbours. Most common of them are smuggling, infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into India and corruption among the border forces. A senior police official who has had a long stint in Tripura, which shares 854-km long porous border with Bangladesh, says that both BDR and BSF men have failed to perform their duties diligently over the years.

If BDR men have been found to encourage infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into India who then mingle easily among the locals because of their physical features and linguistic affinities, BSF personnel have also failed to check smuggling along the border. Vested interests on both the sides have had their say. The border runs through jungles, hills, riverine areas, paddy and jute fields that are easy to cross by locals and difficult to patrol. Several Bangladeshis cross over daily to India looking for work. Also, there is the problem of hundreds of enclaves that have become conduits for smuggling goods from India to Bangladesh and for illegal migration into India.

The work on the border fencing, being taken up India, has evoked resistance from Bangladesh. In some instances, BDR men have been known to have cut the barbed wire fencing to encourage infiltration and smuggling. Bangladesh has always been wary of border fencing within 150 metres of the zero line but India has demanded that Dhaka allow this where the topography demands. Bangladesh authorities responded by saying the request should be routed through the Ministry of External Affairs.

ISI threat

The issue of the continuing infiltration across the border was raised by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, at the Chief Ministers' conference on Internal Security held in New Delhi on April 15. He quoted from recent intelligence inputs that showed heightened activities of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and fundamentalist organisations in the neighbouring country posing a serious security threat to the eastern region. He urged the Centre to secure Indo-Bangladesh border by adequate deployment of BSF, construction of border roads and fencing. "ISI agents and persons with ISI links — many of them sneaking into the State from the neighbouring country — have been found engaged in espionage and other subversive activities. From 1996 till date, as many as 137 such ISI operatives and agents have been arrested in West Bengal in 27 cases," he said.

Worrisome scenario

Intelligence sources say the threat of Islamic militancy in Assam and parts of West Bengal, and the activities of jehadi groups in Bangladesh present a worrisome scenario. The North-East Students Organisation has alleged that Bangladeshi infiltrators are changing Assam's demography, being in a position to influence the outcome in a number of Assembly constituencies. A leading Bangladesh daily recently pointed out that the country was fast becoming a destination for radical Islamic outfits and that the Chittagong Hill Tracts region was serving as a base for resurgence of the Islamic movement where youth were being trained and motivated to launch an Islamic revolution.

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