Transit Route Or Destination?

The Bangladesh police and coastguard stumbled across what could be the largest-ever consignment of sophisticated illegal arms and ammunition, when they raided the government-controlled Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL) jetty on April 2, 2004. The weapons and explosives were being unloaded from two fishing trawlers, MV Khawja and FT Amanat, on the east bank side of the river Karnafully by about 150 labourers when the police arrived. 

The seizure list of the Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) states that the arms and ammunition recovered include 690 7.62 mm T-56-I Sub-Machine Guns (SMGs); 600 7.62 mm T-56-2 SMGs; 150 40mm T-69 Rocket launchers; 840 40mm rockets; 400 9mm semi-automatic spot rifles; 100 'Tommy Guns'; 150 rocket launchers; 2000 launching grenades; 25,020 hand grenades; 6,392 magazines of SMG and other arms; 700,000 rounds of SMG bullets; and 739,680 rounds of 7.62 mm calibre; and 400,000 bullets of other weapons. Most of the arms and ammunition were reportedly of Korean, Italian, Chinese and American make.

While this is the largest, it is by no means the only significant arms seizure in the country, and the last year alone has seen several. Substantial caches of arms have been recovered from Chittagong and its three hill districts; Bogra in northwestern Bangladesh (this was the largest earlier seizure); and even from the capital, Dhaka. But the latest seizure in Chittagong is the biggest in the history of Bangladesh and marks the emergence of the country as a major transit point for arms smuggling in South Asia.

Crucially, reports indicate that, in this latest seizure, the smugglers were unloading the weapons with help from local police. An eyewitness, Kazi Abu Tayeeb, Ansar (paramilitary force) Commander at the Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Limited jetty where the arms were seized, has alleged that weapons were being offloaded in front of local police officials and the managing director, Mohsinuddin Talukder, of the state-owned urea factory. The cargo handling reportedly stopped only when a huge contingent of police, led by a senior local police officer, reached the spot. But the two arms traffickers along with the workers melted away in front of police reinforcements.

The origin of this consignment of arms and its end-users still remain a mystery, though unconfirmed and conflicting reports are trickling in. However, if the previous record of the government is anything to go by, the truth may again never be known. The government has already started taking steps to weaken the probe. The police officer who was reported to have been overseeing the unloading of the consignment at the CUFL jetty, hence one of the main accused in the case, has been tasked by the government to 'probe' the incident. 

Local police units are also reported to have threatened the Ansars (paramilitary force personnel) who revealed police involvement in the gunrunning operation. Opposition parties have alleged that the arms traffickers were patronized by the ruling alliance, and that the involvement of government officials and elements in the local police gives substance to this. Suspecting links of ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party to the smuggling of sophisticated arms into Bangladesh, the opposition leader Sheikh Hasina has also demanded an 'international inquiry' into the incident. 

The government, on its part, appears to think that it has done enough, in turn, by blaming the Opposition. The State Minister for Home, Lutfozzaman Babar, has claimed that the weapons were smuggled in as part of a 'conspiracy of subversion' and did not rule out links to the April 30 deadline set by the main opposition party, the Awami League, for the fall of the government.

The kind of arms and ammunition recovered, however, suggest strong linkages with the growing force of radical Islamists in the country. Ordinary criminals in Bangladesh do not have a significant history of the use of such weapons, and partisan political violence in the past has not graduated to the level of sophistication reflected in the present arms cache. Over the past decade, however, a number of extremist Islamist groups have become active in Bangladesh, with at least some of these linked to the international terrorist network. 

The Al Qaeda-allied group, the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), has a strong base in Chittagong. With a committed cadre estimated at about 15,000 men, most of their training camps are located in the Chittagong area. The Harkat maintains six such camps in the hilly areas of Chittagong, and another six training camps near Cox's Bazar. They are also reported to be using camps vacated by the Rohingya refugees, and a number of Rohingyas are known to be involved in the smuggling of arms and ammunition in Bangladesh. Some other prominent Islamist groups that have been active recently include the Jama'atul Mujahidin, Shahadat-e-Al-Hikma, Hizbut Touheed and Islami Shashontantra Andolan. Of these, the Jama'atul Mujahidin has created training camps in 57 districts.

Opposition parties in Bangladesh believe that arms are being smuggled into the country by the radical Islamists to subvert democracy. Awami League General Secretary, Abdul Jalil, is quoted by the local media as having stated that, "The cache suggests a conspiracy to undermine the country's democratic process." He also alleged that, "Arms were smuggled into the country many times earlier in the same way, with visible patronisation (sic) of the government." 

Suspecting the involvement of the Islamists, the Communist Party of Bangladesh General Secretary, Mujahidul Islam Selim, demanded, "Those who want to establish a Taliban-like rule in Bangladesh and return to a Pakistani state should be investigated immediately. The origins of such conspiracies against sovereignty should be tracked down and crushed immediately." Worker's Party President Rashed Khan Menon similarly stated that, "Parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, which is using force to establish a certain type of government… should be investigated and we have to make sure that probe findings are not suppressed again."

Across the border, there are concerns in India that the arms and ammunition were intended for end-users among the terrorist groups operating in India's troubled Northeast. The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) - both of which have their top leadership in safe havens in Bangladesh, have used the Bangladesh route for arms acquisition in the past. 

Most significantly, in the June 27, 2003, arms haul at a nondescript village in the northwestern Bogra district, about 100 kilometers off the Indian border, the Bangladesh police recovered 100,000 bullets and about 200 kilograms of explosives from an abandoned truck. The truck owner - Jogesh Dev Barman, a top leader of the Tripura Cooperatives Association, a front organization of the ATTF - was arrested from a forest in the southeastern border district of Habiganj. 

The Investigation of the Bogra weapons haul was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on July 16, 2003. However, investigators have failed to 'trace the masterminds' or to identify the intended end users. There has been no progress in the investigation even after some of the operators were taken into custody. 

Bangladesh intelligence sources indicate that that the 'godfathers' behind the smuggling of ammunition and explosives were not named in the charge sheets under pressure from political high-ups. The local police, on the other hand, insist that the CID made no real efforts to arrest the smugglers. Charge sheets in the four cases filed on the Bogra seizure were hurriedly submitted to the Court, apparently to victimise political opponents rather than to arrest the actual perpetrators. 

All charge sheets stated that the ammunition and explosives were smuggled into Bangladesh by Awami League leaders and blamed them for conspiring to unseat the government by spreading disorder. An unnamed CID official has reportedly alleged that statements of only three of the arrested persons were recorded by the Court under section 164, but that no one mentioned the names of the smugglers in their confessionals.

There is, consequently, a strong possibility that the present consignment may also have been intended for use of terrorists active in India's Northeast, particularly the ULFA, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) or some of the groups operating in Tripura, including the ATTF. After the Bhutanese crackdown on terrorist groups earlier located in that country, these outfits have regrouped in Bangladesh and have been planning to strike in the run-up to the national elections in April-May. Sources indicate that a meeting of top ULFA leaders was held in Dhaka on March 4 at the house of a 'prominent personality' in the Gulshan-II area. The meeting was reportedly attended by ULFA 'Commander-in-Chief' Paresh Barua and the head of the military wing, Raju Barua, in a bid to reorganize forces after their expulsion from their camps in Bhutan.

Some former Bangladeshi Generals have suggested that the specifications and volume of the present consignment suggest that they were to be used against a regular military force. Intelligence officials believe that the consignment was possibly headed towards Assam in Northeast India, from the Golden Triangle or Southeast Asia, with Bangladesh as a transit point. In mid-2000, an Arakan rebel called Selim was arrested in Chittagong, and later confessed that he was involved in arms smuggling. He also disclosed that arms from the Thai and Myanmar insurgent networks were smuggled into Bangladesh through Chittagong Port and the Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT), and that these were then sold in the underground market. 

A pattern of arrests and seizures has gradually helped identify a number of established routes. Arms brought into Chittagong are transported up to Bhutan. The route from Kalikhola in Bhutan to Cox's Bazar, passes through north Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya and into Chittagong. The terrorists cross the hilly terrain of Bhutan through the forest of Buxa Tiger reserve, the banks of the Sankosh river, then move to Cooch Behar (Bengal), from where they enter Assam. From Assam, they move to Tura (Meghalaya), and then to Cox's Bazar. The return route is marginally different with the point of entry into India from Chittagong located at Mancachar in Assam.

At least 37 illegal arms smuggling syndicates are reported to be active in Chittagong, controlling the illegal arms market and the supply to terrorist groups. A number of Rohingya and Arakanese groups are also involved in the arms smuggling. Around 60 kilometres of the border area at Teknaf in the Cox's Bazar district, where there is little government security presence, is one of the main routes for arms smuggling. The gunrunners face little resistance here and maintain several offices in the port city of Chittagong, the hill districts of Khagrachhari and Bandarban, Cox's Bazar and Dhaka, where they maintain close contacts with various terrorist groups.

Though authoritative confirmation of the intended end-users of the latest seized consignment of weapons may never be available, it is clear that the movement of such volumes and types of arms and ammunition constitute a serious threat to security, both in Bangladesh and in India. Though Bangladesh recently allowed US arms inspectors to visit CHT to inspect seized arms and ammunition and to trace smuggling routes, nothing significant has changed, as demonstrated by this latest seizure. Such exercises at 'transparency' seem to be intended to placate donors ahead of the upcoming Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) meeting, and possibly to satisfy the US that Bangladesh was 'doing enough' to provide security to its nationals.

Anand Kumar is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal