In 1939, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia – mortal enemies – signed a
non-aggression pact with each other. Though their ideologies were
otherwise in conflict, they were united in their hatred of freedom and
their determination to crush it. Last year, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reported on a similarly deadly alliance forming in Asia. This time, communists are teaming up with Islamist radicals.
In 2004, al-Qaida terrorists were on the run from U.S. forces that
had dislodged them from their strongholds in Afghanistan. Over the next
two years, Pakistani forces loyal to strongman Pervez Musharraf
harassed them in their mountainous lairs in that country; but many
(perhaps more) Pakistanis are loyal to the Islamists. So, friendly
border guards got them safely out of Pakistan to terrorist-controlled
sections of Kashmir – the territory hotly disputed between Pakistan and
India. From there, they helped the terrorists through a sort of
no-man's-land and into Nepal where they set up terror bases. What makes
that interesting is the fact that Nepal is overwhelmingly Hindu and
hardly a likely candidate as the next Taliban state. But Nepalese King
Gyanendra had seized dictatorial powers in response to a decades-long
and very bloody communist revolt. That made for social chaos and
uncontrolled borders. Islamists in Pakistan's Nepalese Embassy
engineered an agreement with the communists to help set up the terror
bases.
The Islamists were not interested in Nepal, at least not for
the moment. But they were very interested in the world's third-largest
Muslim country, just down the road, Bangladesh. That country was ripe
for the picking. Funded by Saudi and Kuwaiti "charities," Islamists had
infiltrated virtually all of the country's social institutions and had
been part of the government since 2001. Virtually all observers agreed
that Islamists stood to make further gains in the upcoming January 2007
elections, perhaps enough to demand the Law Ministry and impose Shariah
Law on the nation of almost 150 million. They almost pulled it off, but
a military coup has stopped them for now. Their coalition partners, the
Bangladesh National Party, or BNP, had so transparently rigged the
pending elections that in one of the oddest turn of events in recent
memory, every single western democracy publicly urged that elections not be held. The West also welcomed the military regime as the savior of Bangladeshi democracy.
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The notoriously corrupt BNP fixed the elections to maintain the
gravy train, but its Islamist partners had other ideas. They were using
the BNP's phony voter lists to pad the electorate with their own
supporters who were infiltrating Bangladesh from Nepal across its
porous northwestern border. Former Bangladeshi Home Minister
Lutfuzzaman Babar told me the BNP controlled its relationship with
Islamists, using it to subdue Islamist activity. Later, Babar was
furious when his erstwhile partners ignored his party's machinations,
especially with regard to pro-U.S., pro-Israeli Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.
At one point, according to Bangladesh sources, the Islamists teamed up
with the BNP's political rivals and leftist trade unions to engineer
riots against garment manufacturers. At another, according to
Choudhury, they gave Osama bin Laden temporary haven in Bangladesh.
Islamists have been quiet since the coup, but they remain ready
to strike. Although the military government announced its intention to
combat both them and the country's endemic corruption, it has moved
only on the latter. In the meantime, Nepalese Maoists, on the outside
looking in for decades have been rewarded with a place in Nepal's
government. The alliance worked and has been replicated throughout the
area.
In India's West Bengal state, more victims are falling from
this deadly alliance. Almost since Bangladesh's 1971 birth, Islamists
have been using the country's Vested Property Act, or VPA, to rid the
country of non-Muslims. The law allows the government to seize property
belonging to non-Muslims and hand it over to Muslims of their choice,
forcing the former (mostly Hindu) to flee the country. It is ethnic
cleansing and nothing less. It is religious bigotry and oppression.
Victims number into the tens of millions. Dr. Sachi Dastadar, who has
studied this phenomenon for decades, used the government's own figures
and counted 1.3 to 3.3 million acres of Hindu land seized in the 1990s
alone. The victims have been subjected to murder, mutilation and
ritualized gang rape, as well as the legalized thievery. At first,
private gangs committed the atrocities, but later victims reported
government officials and uniformed men led the attacks.
With most VPA beneficiaries party members or other apparatchik,
the very people who might overturn the law have the greatest stake in
maintaining it. Thus, it was not surprising that the Bangladeshi
ambassador to Washington, M. Humayun Kabir, said that the current
government "had no plans to address the Vested Property Act during its
tenure." And at present, the length of that tenure is indeterminate.
Brutalized and penniless, the refugees fled to the world's
largest Hindu country right next door. But the area bordering
Bangladesh, West Bengal, has had a communist government since 1977 and
offered no succor. Rigid atheists, the communists reject any bonds of
faith in favor of their internationalist goals and have thrown their
lot in with the Islamists. VPA victims have been put in camps then sent
on forced marches when the government decided to seize the land. The
West Bengal Stalinists refuse to recognize them as refugees or give
them any legal standing, though many of them have been living there for
decades. It also has turned a blind eye to cross-border attacks and
further Muslim atrocities.
Dr. Dastidar says the problem is as much political as moral.
The victims are strongly anti-communist. Should they be granted
citizenship, the Communists fear being voted out of power. On the other
hand, he said, "Many [West Bengal] state officials are Bangladeshis
[but only] Islamist-approved Bangladeshis are given safe have in West
Bengal."
None of the parties responsible for taking action are doing so.
The national Indian government has adopted a rigorous hands-off policy
toward West Bengal. The U.N. is equally rigorous in its silence and
refuses to grant the victims refugee status, which would entitle them
to both material and legal benefits. Misnomered "human rights" groups
like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are silent as well,
preferring to criticize democracies like the United States and Israel.
So, earlier this year, one brave victim representing at least 1,000
families asked me to help, and I will be traveling to the region to
gather additional evidence.
The 1939 Germany-Russia non-aggression pact, though ultimately
broken by the parties, gave both the time they needed to prepare for
the coming war in which tens of millions died. With almost a fourth of
the world's population living in South Asia, we could be seeing its
reprise on an even greater scale.
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Dr. Richard L. Benkin
is the special adviser to the Intelligence Summit on Bangladeshi
Affairs and a correspondent for Weekly Blitz and Amader Shomoy, both of
Dhaka. Benkin also led the successful fight to free Salah Uddin Shoaib
Choudhury from prison. His website is InterfaithStrength.com.
