Flurry of ISI-backed meetings paved way of visa-free entry between Pakistan and Bangladesh

Bengaluru, July 26 (IANS) The decision by Pakistan and Bangladesh to allow visa-free entry for those holding diplomatic and official passports is a worrying sign for India. This decision by the two countries is a result of the immense push that the ISI made to see this deal through.

A visa-free entry for officials with diplomatic and official passports would mean free entry without any major scrutiny. There would be less oversight, and this perfectly works for the ISI since it can send in its officials to Bangladesh without any scrutiny.

Since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the ISI has made Bangladesh its playground. Pakistan has been sending in Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayiba cadres to train terror operatives in Bangladesh.

The ISI’s long-term plan is to bleed India on two fronts. While India faces terror from Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC), the ISI wants to create a similar issue along the Indo-Bangladesh border.

After Muhammad Yunus took over as the interim chief of the caretaker government, there has been a massive policy shift. The country has given a free pass to the ISI and Pakistan Army, while also leaning more towards China and Turkey.

Since Yunus took over, he has not only eased visa norms for the Pakistanis, but also opened up the sea route. This changed scenario is beneficial for Pakistan as it can move its operatives with very little or no scrutiny.

Intelligence agencies and officials say that these decisions were taken following the insistence of the ISI and the Pakistan Army. Both are known to have used their serving officers to train terrorists in various camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Take the example of Sajid Mir. When the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, Sajid Mir, then a serving ISI officer, was the handler. Pakistan had also used its officials in the navy and army to train the ten terrorists who struck at Mumbai.

While these activities took place in Pakistan, where these officials did not need documentation to travel, the case relating to Bangladesh is different.

The latest decision to allow visa-free travel for those holding diplomatic and official passports gives the ISI and army easy access to Bangladesh. For these officials, travel to Bangladesh would be similar to travelling within their own country.

The new decision was made during a meeting between Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Lieutenant General (retired) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, in Dhaka.

However, in the run-up to this decision, the ISI and DGFI had worked up a plan, which led to the signing of this deal.

Before this decision, the ISI had sent four top members to Dhaka. The ISI team that visited Dhaka was headed by Director General of Analysis Major General Shahid Amir Afsar. He, along with his officials, pushed the Bangladesh administration to ease visa norms, so that their officials could visit the country without much scrutiny.

Yunus, on the other hand, was not left with much choice, since all the decisions in Dhaka are made by the Jamaat-e-Islami, which is a puppet of Pakistan. Yunus is in power courtesy of students’ protests against Hasina, in which the Islamic Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat, took the lead. Hence, he has no option but to listen to the Jamaat, which is a banned terror organisation in India.

During their January visit, the ISI delegation travelled across Bangladesh and even held a meeting with the three service chiefs. The issue relating to easing of visa norms was also taken up in April at a meeting of the DGFI and an ISI official that was held in Spain.

Both the DGFI and ISI have been in cahoots since the 1971 war. It was after that war that the two agencies decided to undertake a massive illegal immigration infiltration drive to change the demographics in India and also create communal trouble.

However, this relationship had been muted for long owing to the various democratically elected leaders who ruled Bangladesh. Many leaders had decided to keep Pakistan at an arm’s length, and it was most successful under Sheikh Hasina.

However, with her ouster, all those dynamics have changed, and Pakistan wants to create a pre-1971 Bangladesh.

India is watching closely as these decisions directly affect security along the eastern and northeastern border, which have for long been targets of terror groups from Bangladesh.

--IANS

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