Editorial
Latest arms hauls
Indicative of both effective counter offensive and a lurking threat
Within eight days of each other, at the same site in Sherpur, namely, Bakakura village in Jhenaigati upazila bordering India, two dens of clandestine elements have been successfully cleared. Their abandoned arms caches of substantive quantities were hauled up by our border security forces and the police. We commend them for their successful operations which, to our mind, bear a significance beyond just the busting of dens.
First of all, police alert, and especially, human intelligence has contributed a large part to the success, something that needs to be built up on and advanced. For, without the vigil of the local people and their cooperation, no surveillance or policing can prove to be ultimately effective. Secondly, it may be assumed that because of the pro-active role of the security and law enforcement agencies the recalcitrant may have been on the run.
Yet, the concern for internal security and consequently the need for greater surveillance grows in the apprehension that from hideouts of small arms these may spill into the interior of the country.
It is a sensitive border area and given the seizure of huge quantities of hand written documents in different languages, finger of suspicion gets pointed to an insurgent group like ULFA, according to a preliminary assessment.
One caveat to the success story however, according to some experts, is the question mark as to how the arms and ammunition could sneak through the border fences? This calls for greater cooperation between the security forces of the two countries.
While arms hauls are taking place in border areas, these are also happening somewhat away from the border raising a security threat of an ideological militant variety. Police busted a den of outlawed Jamait-e-Mujahedeen, Bangladesh (JMB) at Hathazari in Chittagong arresting a militant and lifting a big quantity of explosives along with some Jihadi literature. A local commander of JMB with ten followers were living in a rented house, only half a kilometre off a police station.
The vestigial presence of outlawed JMB in various forms and disguises and their continuing dissemination of extremist messages need to be vigorously addressed. Merely a law enforcement approach cannot contain the threat, it has to be fought off at the intellectual and community level with energetic emphasis laid on the true spirit of religion which is avowedly opposed to violence and intolerance of any kind whatsoever.
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