Integrity Score 240
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ULFA’s adoption of suicide bombing, Stratfor says, looks to be the result of the group’s increased Islamization caused by collusion with Islamist outfits in the region.
The bomber in the 9 April suicide attack was Ainul Ali. Citing Indian security sources, the report says ULFA did not have many Muslim cadres in its fold in the past, but the increasing flow of Bangladeshi refugees across the border has given the group more—and more capable—members willing to sacrifice their lives for the group’s cause with nudging from the ISI, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency.
Political conditions in Bangladesh, observes the report, appear to be indirectly contributing to the empowerment of Islamists there.
Using the Pakistani military regime as an example, Bangladeshi Army chief Lt Gen Moeen U Ahmed is reasserting the army’s role in Bangladeshi politics—which have long suffered from a bitter political feud between Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Begum Khaleda Zia, it said.
With both party leaders driven into exile, a political vacuum has started to take root in the country, and Bangladesh’s Islamist parties are anxiously waiting to fill it, the report adds.
As a result, it forecasts, New Delhi is facing a “bleak situation” in which the ISI’s manoeuvres and Bangladesh’s political troubles are sure to further constrain India’s ability to dig itself out of the militant trap Pakistan has set for India with the help of Bangladesh.
It quoted one informed Bangladesh observer as saying there does exist meaningful cooperation between ISI and Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies in their combined fight against terrorism, at the nudging of the West, but their joint efforts to trap India may just be a collateral strategic gain.
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