Border tense as Bangladesh guards stop India from building fence
Officials of Bengal’s Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) stopped Border Security Force (BSF) men from laying the foundations of a cattle fence along the India-Bangladesh border in Coochbehar in north Bengal on Thursday evening, adding to the strains between the two countries as Dhaka continues to reel from a seething political crisis.
There is no violence, people with direct knowledge said, but construction is now stalled and will be raised at a meeting of the director generals of the two forces in Delhi this October.
One anonymous official commented that the cattle fence was being constructed as a part of an agreement signed in 2012 by the two countries.
The problem was resolved more amicably, with a flag meeting of the GB and BSF battalion commandants at the border.
It will come up at a meeting of the director generals of the two forces slated to occur in Delhi in the first week of October. ‘Nothing is happening on either side [of the border]. But there is patrolling going on by both forces and patrolling has been increased.
The head of the border-guarding forces of the two neighbouring countries meet twice a year to discuss issues related to the 4,096.7km Indo-Bangladesh border. The last meeting of the two forces was held in Bangladesh on 5 March this year. As on date, BGB is yet to indicate the scheduled date of the next meeting.
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This is the second day in a week that the frontier has become tense. Since the resignation of Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina on 5 August amid massacre and mayhem, the once-calm Indian north-eastern border has been on edge — with the threat of violence growing. In the past, Longewala might have seemed an extreme frontier edge of India — the rocky outpost where Bobby Jasoos could have found themselves — but Dhaka has now surged forward, right into comfortably defined enclaves of India and become the new geopolitical fault line. Since Hassina fled Dhaka with her family as a tide of blood swirled around the centre of the city and the blood of those killed in protests against her government swamped the capital on 11 August, an interim government has filled the political vacuum. The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, whose work with microfinance helped eradicate poverty in north-east Bangladesh, has taken over the reins of power.
But some, including supporters or members of the Awami League of Hasina, have tried to enter India and the BSF has become extra vigilant about halting illegal immigrants in between.
But then, on Saturday, BGB refused return of five Indian nationals who had accidentally strayed into the Bangladeshi territorial waters. They were helping some BSF personnel rescue smuggled cattle/birds/birds from the Ganga on Saturday. Their speed boat was snagged in the water and the currents whirled the humans towards Mirsa, the Bangladesh side. Multiple flag meetings at various levels with the BGB, but they are not willing to return them. The five remain in prison in Bangladesh and have not been released.
In a series of comments to the press, BSF headquarters in New Delhi have suggested that BGB has largely cooperated in issues related to stopping illegal infiltration and minority defence on the east. But, according to the border people on the ground in the east, BGB’s posture changed drastically after the fall of the government.
In the public statements since Hasina’s ouster, the BSF has claimed that the be taking steps to protect members of minority communities in Bangladesh, as well Indian nationals living in that country. However, HT spoke to a number of mid-level BSF officials who are afraid that the regime change could also lead to the change in the BGB and reminded that the relationship of the two forces was hardly cordial in the years when Hasina was not in office during the early 2000s.