Red Bogey

Red Bogey
Bibhu Prasad Routray
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
[From: South Asia Intelligence Review
Volume 6, No. 50, June 23, 2008]
http://www.satp. org/satporgtp/ sair/index. htm#assessment2

In the early hours of June 19, 2008, para-military Rapid Action
Battalion (RAB) personnel cordoned off a house in the Baradi village
of the western Kushtia District. The knocking on the door led a
woman to open it – and to shut it instantly, panicked by the sight
of scores of uniformed personnel surrounding the house. Claiming
that they anticipated gun shots from inside, RAB personnel
immediately opened fire on the house. After an hour and a half of
firing, the doors were forced open; inside, 45-year old Abdur Rashid
Malitha alias Tapan alias Dada Tapan, the founder of the Janajuddha
faction of the Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) and his 32-year
female companion, identified as Rikta, lay dead, riddled with
bullets. No weapon was found on the extremist leader and his
companion, whom the RAB described as the `commander' of the women's
wing of the outfit. Before the raid, RAB personnel had arrested
Tapan's brother Akash from the neighbouring Udibari village. The
raid on Tapan's ancestral house at Mushuriapara village in the Pabna
District, a day later, yielded nothing but a few booklets and
pamphlets of the PBCB. The killing of the extremist leader was
hailed as a major achievement in neutralising the menace of left-
wing extremism (LWE) in Bangladesh.

Subsequent intelligence leaks published prominently in the national
media detailed the profiles of 40 absconding leaders of a dozen LWE
outfits, operating mostly in the ten south-western Districts of the
country [Kushtia, Meherpur, Chuadanga, Jhenidah, Magura, Jessore,
Narail, Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira]. The leaders included Azibor
Rahman of the Gono Mukti Fouz (GMF) and his second-in-command
Mandar, GMF commander Sahin and three 'regional commanders' - Mukul,
Tikka and Bakhtiar, Lalchand Bahini chief Lalchand, Mukti Bahini
chief Mukti, and Hamidul and Rashidul, two brothers who lead the
Hara Bahini. Three regional leaders of PBCP-Janajuddha Badiur Rahman
alias Badi, Anarul Islam and Atiar were reported to be hiding in the
Meherpur District. The total strength of the LWE cadres was
estimated to be 5000, all of whom were described as armed. The
reports projected an alleged regime of killing, abduction and
extortion let loose by the LWE cadres and maintained that their
neutralisation was vital if order was to be established in vast
parts of the country `affected' by this `raging insurgency'.

To any Bangladesh watcher, however, such reports, offer an
imaginative narrative and interesting reading, but are nothing more
than a compilation of half truths and plain lies.

The reality is, the LWE movement in Bangladesh, often described by
the generic term `Sarbaharas' , in its history of over three decades,
is a highly dispersed, low-scale and criminalised movement,
consisting of a multiplicity of minor groups, no combination of
which constitutes any significant threat to the country's security.
Even though media reports, quoting unnamed intelligence officials,
continue to indicate some level of mobilisation by LWE groups,
especially in the south-western Districts, their activities in
recent years have not proceeded beyond random acts of thuggery and
extortion. Targeted action by the security forces has left the
movement, already weakened by continuous infighting, in complete
disarray. None of the LWE outfits have woman cadres and thus, the
branding of slain `Rikta' as a commander of the PBCP-Janajuddha' s
recently formed women's wing is figment of an outrageous
imagination. Dada Tapan had actually bought a piece of land,
constructed a house and was trying to rediscover an uneventful life,
when the RAB decided to cut his dream short.

Despite its marginalisation, indeed, utter irrelevance, the feeble
and degenerate LWE movement in Bangladesh remains the principal
focus of Security Forces (SF)' `counter-terrorist' responses,
especially of operations by the RAB, which, over the past years, has
attained a measure of notoriety by apprehending and then eliminating
a number of alleged LWE cadres in fake encounters. On January 26,
2008, for instance, the `second-in-command' of the PBCP-Janajuddha,
identified as Mohammad Ali, was killed during an alleged `encounter'
at Goaishbari village under Ataikula Police Station in the Pabna
District. Two days later, on January 27, 57-year old Akdil Hossain
alias Buro, `chief' and one of the founding members of the New
Biplobi Communist Party (NBCP) was picked up from a shop at
Rayerbazar in capital Dhaka and shown as dead in a January
31 `encounter' that supposedly took place in the Dakshin Mulgram
village in the Kushtia District. A range of similar SF `operations'
resulted in the killing of 139 LWE cadres in 2006, and a further 72
in 2007. In the first six months of 2008 (till June 20), 26 such
fatalities have already been reported.

The narrative on the LWE remains clearly exaggerated in Bangladesh.
For example, Dada Tapan's obituary attributed the loss of `over 500
lives' to the PBCP-Janajuddha, since the group's formation in June
2003. However, data compiled from open sources by the Institute for
Conflict Management (ICM), however, gives a total of just 48
civilian casualties between 2005 and 2008 (till June 20). It is
highly unlikely, either that a bulk of over 450 killings occurred in
the 18 months between June 2003 and December 2004, or that the
national media in Bangladesh simply missed out on reporting carnage
of such a magnitude.

Apart from their indulgence in petty crimes, LWE leaders did serve a
purpose for the District level leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP). Before the BNP discovered the wisdom of investing in
the radical Islamist Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and
Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), probably at the instance of
its alliance partner, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the LWE groups
served as an effective tool for the party's area domination
activities in the South-western Districts. The BNP consequently
allowed – and perhaps set up – the dramatic operation launched by
the PBCP-Marxist- Leninist cadres in the Khulna District judge's
court premises on January 26, 2002, to rescue the then arrested Dada
Tapan, who was functioning as the chief of the outfit's military-
wing.

In subsequent years, LWE groups fell out of the Government's favour
and the Islamists were let loose against them in several Districts.
The now executed JMJB leader Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai led a
gory campaign of terror against the `outlaws' by publicly executing
and maiming several of the cadres. The national media carried
photographs of dead `Sarbahara' cadres hung upside down from trees.

Contrary to the image of invincibility painted by Bangladeshi
intelligence agencies, LWE cadres have had very little access to
sophisticated arms and ammunition and are hardly a match for either
the elite RAB or the comparatively poorly equipped armed Police.
Between 2005 and 2008 (till June 20), only nine SF personnel have
been killed in LWE-related violence all over the country. Typical
LWE operations have involved the use of locally made shutter-guns
and poorly assembled low-grade explosives, which are more of
instruments for eliciting compliance to extortion demands, rather
than weapons of terror.

The LWE, with its existing capacity, constitutes no significant
threat to Bangladesh's security and cannot, consequently, exhaust
the primary focus of SF operations. The Government, on the contrary,
would do well to concentrate more on the latent activities of the
Islamist extremists, whose involvement in terrorist strikes in
various urban centres across India, over the past years, has grown
quite frequent.