Taking the Bangla-Nepal transit a step further

THE Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, before the 1/11 change in its Transnational Threat Update, stated: "The current security climate in Bangladesh may allow terrorist groups to organise attacks using a radiological dispersal device. Concerns over this possibility are plausible given that radio substance have proven accessible to terror groups within the country." The recent arrests of militants from Pakistan and India, activists of banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, some of whom were educated in engineering in Bangladesh while recruiting prospective terrorists, confirm anew Eliza Griswold's report in the New York Times (January 2005), raising the possibility of Bangladesh giving birth to the next Islamist revolution. Travelling through Bangladesh, she concluded "The global war on terror is aimed at making the rise of regimes like that of the Taliban impossible, in Bangladesh the trend could be going the other way." In Griswold's footsteps, Bertil Linter's article in the Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2002) warned of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Time magazine and the Asian Wall Street Journal alleged of sanctuaries being given to transnational Islamist elements.