Dhaka, Dec 29 (IANS) The collaboration between the Pakistani and Bangladeshi security establishments involves military training and, more alarmingly, infiltration within Bangladesh's elite security agencies, including the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and the National Security Intelligence (NSI), a report said on Monday, citing sources.
It highlighted that the plan for a National Armed Reserve, estimated to comprise around 8,800 radicalised Muslim youth, follows a series of prolonged meetings between Pakistani officials and Bangladesh's radical Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami and its students wing, the Islami Chhatra Shibir.
"Golam Azam, the notorious Jamaat-e-Islami amir who fled to Pakistan and took citizenship in that country following the 1971 liberation war that led to the establishment of Bangladesh, is back in currency in his country of origin. This time in the form of his son, Brigadier (Retd.) Abdullahil Aman Azmi. On December 23, Brig Azmi met Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner Mohammad Wasif at his Banani Officers' Housing Scheme apartment at 2 pm, setting off speculations that he could be backed by Islamabad to make a bid for the Home Ministry Advisor's post which was to be vacated by Lieutenant General (Retd.) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury," a report in the Northeast News detailed.
Citing sources in Bangladesh's security and military establishments, it revealed that Azmi runs a "parallel leadership" within the Bangladeshi Army, with Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman showing no hesitation in being “deferential” towards him.
Azmi is described as the :nucleus" of a right-wing extremist ideology that has taken firm root within the Army, which the report said has an influential grouping inclined towards the Jamaat-e-Islami’s political ideology.
“What is more alarming, classified documents reveal, is that a number of radicalised retired Bangladeshi military officers” residing in Banani Defence Officers Housing Scheme (DOHS) in Dhaka, the report said, "have been holding clandestine meetings with Pakistani intelligence operatives to establish an Islamist militia under the cover of ‘National Armed Reserve'".
"At least four apartments in two specific roads in the Banani DOHS are routinely used by Brig Azmi, a retired Major General and a former Major to meet their Pakistani handlers, Bangladeshi security service reports," the Northeast News revealed, citing access to the reports.
"But there are other senior serving Bangladesh Army officers that Brig Azmi continues to be in touch with, including a senior officer in the Armed Forces Division, Military Secretary’s branch, the Navy and the DGFI and NSI," it noted.
--IANS
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