Tense Sylhet border
IT has been reported in some dailies (August 8) that Indian BSF illegally intruded into Bangladesh territory at 3 points in Jaintapur and Goainghat upazilla of Sylhet district. In Tamabil area about 150 members of BSF in full battle readiness entered nearly 400 meters inside Bangladesh territory and encircled a local BDR camp. The BSF members left the place after about 30 minutes when the local people came forward to rescue the encircled BDR members. The local people praised the patience of BDR personnel in not allowing the situation to deteriorate.
As per BDR statement, some BSF personnel along with some Khashia entered into Sreepur Minatila of Sreepur upazila and the Khashia started cultivating paddy in Bangladeshi-owned land. In Tamabil border area, around 150 BSF illegally entered and assisted the Khashias to cultivate land. Similarly, in Pratappur area, 20/25 BSF personnel entered illegally. Though BDR tried to arrange a flag meeting immediately no satisfactory response was received from its counterpart. Instead, BSF is reportedly increasing its strength along the borders.
Illegal entries and provocative activities by BSF on the Bangladesh-India border are nothing new. Despite high-level conferences at experts and political levels we have not been able to obtain any satisfactory solution so far. These meetings always ended with some hope, and the expectation of the common people that with improvement of India-Bangladesh relation such incidents may decrease. Regrettably, such days have not come as yet.
There is no scope for developing good neighbourly relation through one-sided effort. Bangladesh alone can never establish good understanding with India, which is reported to have become more aggressive with its small neighbours due to change in "geo-political balance" through entry of India and EU into Afghanistan, which US considers part of South Asia.
The incidents in Sylhet appear to be specially significant in view of the Tipaimukh dam issue. BSF is increasing its strength at Sylhet borders. At present, BDR is not fully reorganised. Nor has it regained its past glory and strength. Despite Indian assurance it is not difficult to understand that as long as we are not able to strengthen and modernise BDR BSF will increasingly become audacious and aggressive, resulting in loss of human lives and property and loss of morale of our people at the borders.
Needless to say, the common people of Bangladesh are uncertain about the impact of Tipaimukh dam. Incidents such as BSF's illegal intrusion into Bangladesh will certainly affect India-Bangladesh relation. Mere assurances from India cannot satisfy our people.
Unless India engages itself peacefully with all nations, honouring the sovereignty of these nations and building a paradigm of peaceful existence, no real improvement of our relationship appears to be possible.
The immediate need for Bangladesh is to reorganise BDR, modernising it with arms and equipments to match its Indian counterpart. If necessary, all the young people along the India-Bangladesh borders may be trained to support our border forces. Road networks at the borders should be improved to increase the mobility of the border forces.
The incidents near the Sylhet border indicate that there has not been any improvement of India-Bangladesh relation despite recent discussions at high level. To develop really good relations we need to appreciate each other's problems. We may have divergent views, but we also share similar attitudes. Our mutual respect must increase if we want a better future for our people.
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