Bangladesh unrest: New security challenge for India

New Delhi: The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in Dhaka may give Pakistan and its ‘iron brother’ China a strategic advantage on the eastern flank of India.

New Delhi has been confronted with the latest security challenge just three years after President Ashraf Ghani’s government fell in Kabul and the Taliban regained control over Afghanistan after about two decades, giving an advantage to Pakistan and causing unease for India.

What New Delhi is worried about is the possibility of a surge in extremism in Bangladesh, as the radical organisations may find it easier to expand with Hasina and her Awami League out of power. Some of the radical organisations in Bangladesh have links with the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and other terrorist outfits based in Pakistan as well as with the Pakistan Army’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which might like to expand its activities in the eastern neighbour of its arch-enemy India.

New Delhi is bracing for any move by the Pakistan Army to open a new front in its proxy war against India and to avenge its defeat in the 1971 war that carved out Bangladesh from Pakistan.

With the stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh not completely resolved yet and terrorist attacks again on the rise in Jammu and Kashmir, the change of regime in Bangladesh is likely to compound the security challenge for India.

India is cautiously and closely monitoring the move initiated by Bangladesh Army chief Waker-uz-Zaman to install an interim government to succeed the one that was led by Hasina since January 2009 but collapsed in the wake of a surge in violence across the country over protests against reservation in government recruitment and police crackdown on agitators. That the interim government is likely to include representatives of Bangladesh National Party and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami as well as other radical organisations is surely not music to the ears in New Delhi.

New Delhi’s relations with Dhaka had often been stressed when the BNP had been ruling Bangladesh with Khaleda Zia as the prime minister. The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and several other insurgent organisations operating in the northeastern states of India had been allowed to set up bases in Bangladesh. The rebel organisations had been using the bases in Bangladesh to prepare the newly recruited militants for carrying out attacks in India.

After Hasina had returned to power in January 2009, she had reversed the policy of Zia’s government and the tacit cooperation between the security agencies of Bangladesh and India had resulted in the arrest of many insurgent leaders, who had later entered into peace negotiations with New Delhi.

The last 15 years of the Awami League’s rule over Bangladesh saw a number of connectivity projects with India rolling, promising economic boon for both nations, particularly the landlocked northeastern states of India. An agreement to settle the dispute over land boundary between the two nations was inked in 2011 and ratified by Parliament after Narendra Modi took over as prime minister in 2014.

New Delhi also extended its support to Hasina’s government, pledging nearly $8 billion as loans to fund the development projects as she led her tiny nation of 16.3 million people towards graduating from a Least Developed Country to a Developing Country, registering an impressive economic growth of 8.4% just before the Covid-19 crisis.

She, however, has of late been taking advantage of Bangladesh’s growing geostrategic importance in the wake of escalating India-China strategic rivalry and opened up the door for China to invest in many projects in her country. But, given her family and her party’s historic ties with New Delhi, Bangladesh’s ties with China were never allowed to pose any major security threat to India.