Islamicist factions in Bangladesh fund insurgencies via poaching in northeast India

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:

 

 

Islamicist factions in Bangladesh fund insurgencies via poaching in

northeast India

 

GUWAHATI, India--The May 27, 2007 arrest of alleged Naga

poaching kingpin Lalkhang Go " revealed a nexus between the poachers

and the militants across the region, " reported Hindustan Times

correspondent Rahul Karmakar.

Forestry department wildlife officer Surajit Dutta told

Karmakar that a 12-member team tracked Go and two associates for

three days in the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, 60 kilometers from

Guwahati.

" With the help of local people, " Karmakar wrote, " forest

guards caught Go while he was trying to shoot a rhino in the

sanctuary. His accomplices, however, managed to escape. "

Said Dutta, " Go confessed to killing rhinos and other

animals. He said he had received arms training from the National

Socialist Council of Nagaland, " a rebel force that has fougt the

Indian government for 27 years, at cost of about 10,000 human lives.

Go's confession appeared to confirm the findings of Guardian

reporters Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in a comprehensive

investigation of wildlife trafficking in Assam published on May 5,

2007.

" According to India's security services, police,

intelligence analysts, local traders and forestry officials, Islamic

militants affiliated with al-Qaida are sponsoring poaching " in India,

Nepal, Burma, and Thailand, " Levy and Scott-Clark wrote.

" These groups have established bases in the formerly moderate

enclave of Bangladesh, and have agents operating all along

Bangladesh's porous 2,500-mile border with India, " Levy and

Scott-Clark asserted. " They have gone into business with local

animal trappers and organized crime syndicates in a quest for horns,

ivory, pelts and other animal products with which to raise funds

that they can move around the world invisibly. "

Wildlife trafficking to support ideological militance is

nothing new. Poaching sustained the legendary Robin Hood and his

Merry Men, for example, in their early 13th century rebellion

against high taxes imposed by King John to pay the debts incurred by

his Crusader brother, Richard the Lionhearted.

The former apartheid regime in South Africa funded

clandestine military operations in neighboring nations during the

1980s through covert trafficking in elephant ivory and rhino horn.

After the South African operations were exposed and curtailed, the

Lebanese-based Palestinian militia Hamas reputedly grabbed market

share by outfitting poachers in several northern African nations.

Later, al-Qaida armed Somalia militias who have aggressively

poached in neighboring Kenya.

Now, reported Levy and Scott-Clark, " Radical Islamists from

Bangladesh have done what conservationists had long predicted and

moved in on the endangered species

racket " in the wildlife-rich tongue of India that lies north of

Bangladesh, west of Myanmar, and south of China.

" Religious men hold the purse strings now, " one trafficker

said. Remarked another, " This was a Chinese business, but now it's

Bangladesh's business. It's become God's work. And, as you know,

the Prophet, peace be upon his head, is irresistible. "

Levy and Scott-Clark learned from the traffickers that

representatives of two Bangladeshi militias assembled a meeting in a

Siliguri madrassah in 2005 to organize the poaching industry as it is

now structured.

Three sources told Levy and Scott-Clark that the instigator

was Al Mujahideen, " an obscure jihadist umbrella organisation

governing a panoply of militant groups that have sprung up in

Bangladesh in recent years. Two in particular, both banned by the

Bangladeshi government, were in need of money and eager to get into

the racket, " Levy and Clark-Scott wrote.

One was Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, " allegedly linked to

al-Qaida; the second was Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, whose

leader, Shaikh Abdur Rahman, had joined Bin Laden's World Islamic

Front for the Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders in 1998. He

was captured in Bangladesh and in March 2007 was hanged for the

killing of two Bangladeshi judges and for nationwide bombings in

2005. "

Concluded Levy and Scott-Clark, " A senior Indian security

source, based in the northeast, who has tracked the incursion into

the trade by Bangladeshi militants, warns that the poaching has

global consequences. "

Said the source, " There is an environmental disaster in the

offing here, but as pressing are the security ramifications, " he

says. " Only a minuscule percentage of the vast profits need to

trickle back into a nascent Islamic insurgency in a country like

Bangladesh to bring it to the boil. And then it can reach out around

the world. "

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

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[Guest guest]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Kishalay Bhattacharjee Jun 6, 2007 4:28 PM

RE: Islamicist factions in Bangladesh fund insurgencies via

poaching in northeast India

 

 

 

This report on poaching drawing references from The Hindustan Times and The

Guardian seems to be anomalous.

The poacher who was arrested recently confessed to have had arms training

from an " underground outfit " of Nagaland. He didnt name any outfit. However,

the outfits in Nagaland are Christian terrorists and have no reported links

with Islamic terrorist organisations.

Further The Guardian reporters who visited Kaziranga and reported on

poaching nexus should have done a little more research before coming to

their conclusion.

As far as circumstantial evidences go, the Nagas a tribe in Eastern India

are used for the kill as they are traditionally trained as sharp shooters.

Infact in recent months a tranquiliser gun was seized from poachers at

Kaziranga which when investigated was found to be a licensed gun of the

wildlife chief of Nagaland. Civil Service officers from Nagaland were also

arrested in the Park killing wildlife.The alleged illegal migrants

encroaching the reserve forests are used as guides inside the forest. The

chain of transporters and poachers vary from place to place and it assumed

that the route from Assam follows till Kathmandu where the trade becomes

international.

I have been reporting on poaching in the NE for several years now and my

observations are based on hard evidence and not assumptions. Infact we have

been carrying a campaign against poaching over the last one month the

details of which are available on www.ndtv.com

I have no reason to believe that Islamic terrorist organisations are active

in this region either collecting funds through poaching activities or

otherwise.

 

Regards

Kishalay Bhattacharjee

Bureau Chief

NDTV( New Delhi Television )