ULFA, A DGFI-ISI PROXY
The latest ULFA carnage in Asom has been diagnosed by top like quack doctors and their prognostications are wide off the mark. Ministers with foot in mouth disease rushed to comment about ISI-ULFA involvement and ascribed other lollipop reasons to befuddle the people. The media has quoted Pradip Gogoi, ULFA vice-president, that the government of India had invited trouble by terminating the dialogue process.
The wise men of India have, as usual, fired erratically. The ISI alone had not adopted the ULFA. The collateral adopter is the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh (DGFI). It is necessary to understand the quantum dynamics of interrelationship between the ISI, DGFI and the Indian terrorist groups like ULFA.
Bangladesh intelligence machineries are pivoted around the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the Directorate General of National Security Intelligence (DGNSI), and Military Intelligence (MI).The DGFI was created after the ISI model by General Ziaur Rahman in 1977. The DGFI operates from its Head Quarter located BNS Haji Mohsin Naval Base, Jahangir Gate, a little south of Tashdique, residence of the Bangladesh Army Chief. It has zonal offices in every district of Bangladesh.
Major General Sadiq Hussain Rumi (removed on 15.01.2007) is the present chief of the DGFI and Brigadier Azam Mir serves as his chief deputy. The agency is staffed by military personnel. Its command and control are regulated by the Army Chief, though the last BNP government had won over large number of DGFI top guns through Brigadier Azam Mir. Azam is the son of Golam Azam the former Jamait-e-Islami chief, who had collaborated with Pakistan in carrying out 1971 genocide.
The agency is divided into twelve Bureaus, each one handling subject and territory desks. The India Division is headed by a colonel. In India’s neighbourhood, Bureau III handles Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, though there is a separate Bureau for the SAARC countries. These officers report to the chief of the South Asia Division of the agency. The India desk has four distinct sections, which handle North Eastern states, West Bengal, rest of India and Muslim affairs in India. In 2000 a new Bureau X was started for overseeing activities of the internal and international Jihadi Tanzeems. Bureau X also plans and executes subversive operations in India. A part of the Bureau known as Dawa Section handles Islamic NGOs and supervises internal and external money flow to these organisations. Like the ISI the DGFI has also an ISPR division, which works as the public face for Bangladesh Army.
Bangladesh military and civilian intelligence officers were initially trained by the Inter Services Intelligence. Some special units of the DGFI were trained along with ISI operatives at the Harvey Point Defence Testing Activity, a high-security compound in a quiet corner of marshland near Hertford, North Carolina. The facility officially owned by the Defence Department, serve as the CIA’s secret commando training base since 1961. Such specially trained corps of DGFI officers had initially trained some of the HUJI and Jamait-ul Mujahideen top rankers. Bangla Bhai was originally designed by the DGFI for combating the Communist Party of Bangladesh, Janajuddha and Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party (Naxal outfits).
The DGFI has achieved excellent penetration amongst Indian intelligentsia, academia, print and electronic media, political parties, business community and certain minority organisations and institutions. The allegation that the DGFI had achieved penetration in the National Security Advisory Board through a Kolkata based academic cannot be shrugged off.
The ISI and the DGFI often jointly operate inside India. Taking advantage of Pakistan’s ‘theopolitical’ hegemony on vast sections of Bangladeshi people, specially the Afghan jihad veterans and other tanzeems, the ISI continue to operate against Indian targets in the Northeast. Nepal and Sri Lanka based ISI outfits generally target the Indian heartland and the peninsular tracts.
The DGFI, besides handling joint ventures with the ISI conducts Loner Operations against India. The DGFI supports Achik National Volunteer Council and Hynniewtrep Achik Liberation Council of Meghalaya, NDFB, Kamtapuri Liberation Organisation (West Bengal), Dima Halam Daoga and United Peoples Democratic Solidarity of Assam.
Of the Manipur separatist groups the main tools of the DGFI are: United National Liberation Front, People’s Liberation Army, PREPAK, People’s United Liberation Front, United Islamic Revolutionary Army, North East Minority Front, and Indigenous People’s Revolutionary Alliance.
In Assam, besides the ULFA, main clients of the DGFI are: Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, United Liberation Front of Barak Valley, Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA), United Liberation Militia of Assam, Islamic Sevak Sangh, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam and Revolutionary Muslim Commandos etc
Besides running ‘classical intelligence operations’ the DGFI had sponsored Bangladeshi jihadi tanzeems to establish cells and modules in Asom, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Dimapur and Tezpur foothills areas of Nagaland, West Bengal, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These cells and modules are set up in areas inhabited by Bangladeshi population.
The canvas of ISI DGFI collaborative and Loner Operations are well collaged and contoured. The intelligence agencies and other ground-rats are aware that the DGFI had played significant roles in the US Consulate attack in Calcutta, New Delhi bomb blasts on deepavali eve, Varanasi bomb blasts and Mumbai train blasts. These were ISI and DGFI joint operations.
There are indicators to believe that a serving Major of the Special Operations Cell of the DGFI had crossed over to India with valid documents about ten days before the pre-deepavali incident and spent three in days in Kolkata. About six days before the incidents, he was noticed confabulating at a suspect guesthouse in Delhi with an undercover First Secretary of the Pakistan High Commission. Soon after he returned to Kolkata and exited for Dhaka, the Kolkata station chief of the DGFI reached Delhi and met another Pakistani diplomat. He was present in Delhi on the day the serial blasts took place.
In the Varanasi serial blast incident both the LeT and HUJI members took leading roles after they were housed and trained at Char Gopalnagar (Khulna) and traveled to Varanasi through cell-points at Berhampur (WB), Bhagalpur and Bare (Bihar). They were housed at the Ahl-e-Hadith madrassa-mosque near Varanasi cantonment station and at Madanpura behind Gudulia market. There are supporting information that an under cover officer of the ISI at Dhaka and a Captain of the DGFI Special Operations Cell had visited Isurdi (BD) to contact the HUJI area commander Barkatul Rahman Bablu. He was supposed to be the liaison man between the spy agencies and the tanzeem members that perpetrated the Varanasi incident.
The details of ISI and DGFI collaboration are of epic proportions. However, in the context of latest carnage in Tinsukia, Dhemaji and Dibrugarh there are reliable information that this was a joint operation by the ULFA and the DGFI. Around December 28, 2006 top ULFA leaders and the DGFI officials headed by Brigadier Azam Mir along with Tareq Zia, son of Begum Zia, had met in a safe house at Gulshan and an operational task was charted out to create serious disruptions in Asom and in areas of Siliguri ‘chicken neck’ for diverting Indian attention from election impasse in Bangladesh. About ten trained special task force members of the DGFI were infiltrated in Asom and were teamed up with ULFA cadres for carrying out the mass killings. Infiltration of DGFI special commando personnel to Asom is not a new development. To bolster up sagging moral of the local ULFA cadres and to bamboozle the Asom people such special DGFI operators help the ULFA cadres to carry out spectacular actions. Some DGFI commandos are ‘housed’ by Asom based Muslim jihadi groups.
The ISI input cannot be discounted as Paresh Barua and Arabinda Rajkhowa returned to Dhaka from a trip to Pakistan around December 20, 2006 along with their financial front man Qasem, vice-president of Jatiyo Party. Qasem’s MAC Enterprises is one of the fronts that rolls over some of ULFA’s fortune plundered from the people of Asom. Arabinda Rajkhowa, who is trying to acquire an apartment in London with assistance of Dhaka based ISI operatives, was pressurized to carry out the Asom task. Paresh Barua has reportedly purchased apartments in Bangkok and London.
The story of DGFI and ISI motivation in jointly and independently operating against Indian targets from Bangladesh is a part of the ‘unfinished agenda of partition of India.’ Larger space would be required to narrate that story. However, it is necessary for the Union and State governments to understand that after establishing ‘theopolitical’ hegemony in Bangladesh Pakistan is now trying to gain joint ‘geopolitical advantages’ leading to creation of lager ‘Bangistan’ or ‘Northeast Pakistan’ as envisioned by Chaudhry Rahamat Ali in 1937 in his famous treatise ‘Now or Never.’
Is there any one in India to pay adequate attention to the DGFI and Pakistan’s ‘theopolitical’ allies in Bangladesh?
