Lashkar-e-Tayyeba network in Bangladesh

The recent arrest of two Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) operatives from Bangladesh, Maulana Mohammad Monsur Ali alias Maulana Habibullah and Mufti Sheikh Obaidullah, revealed the emergence of a trans-national network of jihadi groups aligned with criminal syndicates working to expand al Qaida’s south Asia reach into the Bay of Bengal and beyond. Besides LeT, the network has Harkat-ul Jihadi al Islami (HuJI), a terrorist group linked to the Afghan jihad and al Qaida, a little known Indian criminal-terrorist group. Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF) and the D-Company, a trans-national criminal syndicate run by Dawood Ibrahim which has been facilitating funding, weapons purchase and logistic support for terrorist activities in India.

Investigations carried out by the Bangladesh security and intelligence agencies have so far revealed that LeT has been active in the country for over 14 years and has had support from some of the political leaders, including some ministers in the Bangladesh National Party (BNP)-Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) coalition government led by Khaleda Zia. Obaidullah and Ali had managed to establish LeT bases in Shibchar in Madaripur, Srinagar in Munshiganj and Nababganj in Dhaka. Ali is 16th in the list of 280 Afghan jihad veterans prepared by the US agencies.

LeT, a terrorist group set up by Osama bin Laden to carry forward al Qaida’s long-term strategic mission in Pakistan, has carried out spectacular attacks in India for more than a decade. Some of the most serious terror attacks in India, including the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, the July 2006 and November 2008 attacks in Mumbai had a clear LeT footprint. Besides, LeT has also been training cadres for fighting the NATO forces in Afghanistan for the past seven years. LeT has also been involved in several global terror attacks, for instance the London tube bombings of July 2005. The group’s linkages have been found in 21 countries so far.

In Bangladesh, LeT has been actively pursuing its anti-India terror campaign from the country for quite some time. One of the top LeT commanders, Abdul Karim alias Tunda, had been operating out of Bangladesh, collecting funds and weapons besides training men for terrorist attacks in India. Tunda, a resident of Hissar in Haryana, was one of the first LeT recruits in India to launch terrorist attacks in 1993 and had fled India after his teammate, Dr Jalees Ansari, was arrested. LeT Operational chief Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, an Afghan jihad veteran and an al Qaida activist (His brother-in-law Abu Abdur Rahman Sareehi is a close associate of Osama bin Laden), handled Tunda and his team- mates. Lakhvi is currently on trial for the Mumbai attacks. LeT has been piggyback riding on Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), another al Qaida clone with bases in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), a local ally in West Bengal which shifted its base across the border after its leader, Asif Raza Khan, was found to be a key fund raiser for the 9/11 attack. Both HuJI and ARCF had also carried the 2002 Kolkata American Centre attack.

During questioning, Obaidullah said he was in constant touch with Asif Reza in Pakistan with the help of mobile phones; he had six mobiles. Police officials said ARCF was a LeT proxy and operated in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan as a facilitating agency for terrorist groups. LeT, for instance, funded HuJI activities in Bangladesh with the help of ARCF. Obaidullah got a monthly salary of 7000 takas from LeT.

Both Habibullah and Obaidullah are key to the LeT network in Bangladesh. Both had come to Bangladesh in June 1995 and had trained in using weapons and explosives at HuJI training centres before leaving for Afghanistan. Habibullah, an Indian Railway employee, had gone to Pakistan in the early 80s after he was persuaded by some extremist leaders to take part in the Afghan jihad. He reportedly went back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan during the jihad days at least 25 times and was trained in guerrilla warfare and weapons by Army trainers at the Afghan camps. After the Soviet troops left Afghanistan, Habibullah left for India and began networking with likeminded people to launch jihad in India.

But soon, Habibullah came to the notice of the Indian security agencies and he escaped to Bangladesh in 1995. There he took up teaching at several madrasas and began setting up LeT network in Bangladesh. He was closely associated with HuJI leaders Mufti Abdul Hannan and Maulana Abdur Rauf. Mufti Hannan ran a terrorist training camp in Chittagong where many Indian terrorists trained, including Nalgonda resident Ghulam Yazdani and Mumbai resident Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala. Yazdani, prime accused in the assassination of Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Haren Panda, was involved in recruiting several LeT cadres from Andhra Pradesh and other states and had a hand in several terrorist attacks in India. Ghaswala was one of the main accused in the 2005 July Mumbai serial train bombings.

Interestingly, both Habibullah and Obaidullah were arrested following the interrogation of two Dawood Ibrahim--D Company--associates, Zahid Sheikh and Daud Merchant. Sheikh is wanted in the murder of Indian music baron, Gulshan Kumar, in 1997. The D-Company and LeT alliance had been substantiated on several occasions in the past decade or so. In 2003, the US Treasury had proscribed Dawood for his links with al Qaida and LeT. Dawood and his men have also been funding and facilitating the LeT networks in Mumbai and other cities in India. Dawood’s nexus with LeT in Bangladesh has been not so well known till now. Sheikh and Merchant said there were over 150 paid D-Company agents in Bangladesh and an equal number aligned to the group. The D Company, the duo said, enjoyed the patronage of at least two former ministers, three lawmakers and seven businessmen.

LeT, in the recent times, has been under pressure to keep its terrorist activities low key in Pakistan. With groups like HuJI and its allies entrenched in some areas of Bangladesh, LeT has been making moves to establish an operating base from the eastern border of India. The group has been expanding its influence along the India-Bangladesh border for quite sometime by setting up Ahl-e-Hadis mosques, particularly in Murshidabad and Maldah districts of West Bengal. The attempts to widen its base in Bangladesh came into focus in the recent times when one of its operatives based in Nepal, Mohammad Omar Madani, was arrested in Delhi. Madani was coordinating with several terrorist and extremist outfits in Bangladesh to expand the terrorist group’s base. with inputs ASIA TIMES