Title: India concerned over presence of al Qaeda men in Bangla
Author: Prasanta Paul
Publication: Deccan Herald
Date: May 27, 2002
URL: http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may27/n8.htm

DH News Service
KOLKATA , May 26

India is learnt to have obtained authenticated confirmation about the presence in neighbouring Bangladesh of a very large number of hardcore Al Qaeda activists who fled Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of the blistering attack mounted on them by the United States and its allies and took refuge in the coastal areas of Chittagong.
Top sources here quoting reliable reports from across the border said that sleuths first got the hint of something being afoot when Bangladesh police raided a madrassa, Al Jamia Al Islamia, on March 30 last,in a place called Patia in Chittagong district and recovered a large cache of arms and ammunitions. But while Bangladesh authorities demonstrably moved against the inmates of the madrassa, they are not quite overtly active about stemming the flow of Al Qaeda men.

These men, reports say, had come into the country through fairly legal routes, by catching regular flights of Pakistan International Airlines and Bangladesh Biman. Only a few of them might have come through land routes of Jammu & Kashmir or Gujarat and had reached Bangladesh via West Bengal.

While two main political parties of Bangladesh, the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the main Opposition, Awami League were quick to denounce the September 11 attack in the US,Jamaat-e-Islami, the BNP's ally in power, having 17 members of Parliament and two ministers in the Bangladesh national government are openly critical of the US and allied action against Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism.
According to analysts here,there is evidence of Bangladeshi nationals visiting Pakistan and Afghanistan for arms training and returning to their country to set up terrorist "cells." In fact,there is more than concrete evidence that the shooters, who shot and killed policemen guarding the United States Information Center office in Kolkata on January 22 this year, belonged to the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, an outfit founded in Bangladesh with direct links to Pakistan and also Al Qaeda.

The ruling BNP, sources maintain, is walking a tightrope with these organisations as it is trying to balance its instincts for siding with the global anti-terror coalition even though the more immediate political necessity is to maintain cordial relations with outfits like the Jamaat, who in turn have their sympathies lying with the militant groups.

The Bangladesh government is punctuating its inaction with occasional bursts of activism as was witnessed in end-April in Rajshahi district when the police cracked down on a group called Al Hiqmat and its leader, Kausar Siddiqui, for printing and putting up posters lauding Osama Bin Laden.

With prospects of a conflict with Pakistan,even though on a limited scale, looming large at the moment, authorities in India are cautious about these Al Qaeda men finding havens in the eastern neighbour. Because,in the event of a war with Pak ,sources apprehend, these utras would definitely endeavour to sneak into India through the porous border to engage themselves in subversive activiites.