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And this time, it has started imparting training to Rohingyas in Naikhongchhari sub-district of Bandarban district in the country’s Chittagong division and to Islamist terror groups in Brahmanbaria district bordering Tripura and inside the Khadimnagar National Park in Sylhet district bordering Meghalaya.
The ISI has flown in a few ex-soldiers of the Pakistan Army’s elite Special Services Group (SSG) to oversee the training of Rohingyas and Islamic terror groups.
A few former soldiers — men, as well as officers — of the Bangladesh Army’s Para Commando Brigade have also been roped in to impart training in guerrilla operations.
This is happening with the concurrence, and connivance, of the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus.
Naikhongchhari Camp in Bandarban
Rohingya men, all between 18 and 30 years of age, are being given training in arms, making and planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs), guerrilla warfare, surveying maps and terrain, and subterfuge.
At least 10 former Pakistani army officers and men and half a dozen ex-soldiers of the Bangladesh Army are training the Rohingyas at a large camp in the Shali Hills in the Gumdum Union (a ‘union’ is an administrative unit usually encompassing nine villages) of Naikhongchhari upazila (sub-district) of Chittagong division’s Bandarban district.
This camp is about 23 kilometres (km) east of the Kutupalong refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar in Chittagong, which has over 9.5 lakh Rohingya refugees.
Naikhongchhari was, until about two decades ago, home to the Marma people, who are ethnically affiliated to the people of Rakhine province. The Marmas are mostly Buddhists.
Muslims from other areas were encouraged by the government to settle in the upazila, and the Marmas were reduced to a hopeless minority within a span of just a decade.
Over the last five years or so, thousands of Rohingyas have settled down in Naikhongchhari and other areas of Chittagong division. The result: the Marmas have been reduced to just over 17 per cent of the population of Bandarban district.
Training Camp at Brahmanbaria
About 15 cadres of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which is closely linked to the Islamic Chhatra Shibir (the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami), are reported to have reached the training camp located on the banks of the Titas river at Masaura in late November.
The area is remote and inaccessible and can be reached only on foot. It is about 15 km southeast of Brahmanbaria town, the headquarters of the eponymous district.
But the journey to the camp site, it is learnt, takes over three hours on foot. That is why this remote location has been chosen for establishing a camp to impart arms and other training to ABT terrorists.
Also, Masaura is about 15 km west of the Indo-Bangladesh border in Tripura. Many portions of the international border in that sector are unfenced and provide easy access to Indian territory.
It is learnt that another 20-odd cadres of the ABT are expected to join the camp, which is being supervised by a former major of the Pakistan Army’s SSG, within the next two weeks.
The Training Camp in Sylhet
This camp, which started functioning in mid-November, is still a work in progress. Located inside the Khadimnagar National Park near Sylhet city, it is accessible through a small track leading off N2, the national highway that connects Dhaka with Tamabil on the Indo-Bangladesh border.
While 10 cadres of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir have been undergoing training at the camp from November-end onwards, another 30 to 40 cadres are expected to join over the next couple of months.
This camp is near the Jalalabad cantonment that houses the Para Commando Brigade. The Khadimnagar National Park’s forest adjoins the Jalalabad cantonment, which is also the headquarters of the Bangladesh Army’s 17th Infantry Division and its School of Infantry and Tactics.
As is the case with the training camp for Rohingyas in Naikhongchhari, this camp in Sylhet is also under strict surveillance, and even the local people of Khadimnagar, a small town next to the cantonment, have recently been asked to keep away from the forest.
A former captain of the Para Commando Brigade’s 1st battalion is in charge of the camp. He has a former senior warrant officer and two former sergeants of the same unit under him. One retired subedar-major and two naib subedars of the Pakistan Army’s SSG are also trainers at this camp.
