Tura, Aug 6: The writing had been on the wall for quite some time. But blinded by power, Sheikh Hasina looked the other way.

On Monday, the mass upsurge that forced her out of power threatens to open the floodgates of uncertainty in her country and its ripple effects will be felt in neighbouring North East- particularly Assam and Meghalaya, which share a long international border that has been the gateway for a multimillion dollar smuggling racket and, more worrisome, decades of insurgency.

Before Hasina came to power in Bangladesh 17 years ago, insurgency in the North East was at its peak with the ULFA and the Bodo outfit NDFB in Assam running amok, while back home in Meghalaya a new insurgent outfit was surfacing with a more sophisticated network and manpower.

The Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) had just been formed by a former police officer, Champion R Sangma, together with a militant leader, Sohan D Shira, from the erstwhile ANVC outfit.

The tie-up between the GNLA and the ULFA would come to be an explosive combination that would lead to one of the biggest insurgency situations Meghalaya had ever faced.

And they drew inspiration and support from Bangladesh where a friendly Bangladesh National Party (BNP) government under Begum Khaleda Zia looked the other way to their activities.

At one point of time, the ULFA was running several training camps in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in tandem with the Tripura tribal insurgents.

But accessing Assam from Tripura side was a challenge, so they looked westwards and found Garo Hills- and the Garo rebel group GNLA. The NDFB soon joined its ranks.

The Haluaghat to Ghazi stretch of the border in Mymensingh district became a safe haven for the insurgents. They shipped in weapons, ammo and more worrisome powerful explosives.

The recovery of rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft ammunition, numbering in the dozens, was unearthed from Bikkonggre village under Dadenggre region of West Garo Hills in early 2000 by Garo Hills police. The armament belonged to the ULFA and was brought across from Bangladesh.

The explosives that triggered the serial blasts that rocked Guwahati in October 2008, and which was orchestrated by the NFDB, came from the neighbouring country through the Garo Hills border. A cadre of the NDFB who was caught with a pen drive exposing the assembling of the explosives committed suicide inside the Tura police station, just months before the explosions were triggered. He had just returned from Bangladesh and was due to head into Assam when he was caught in Tura bazar.

Claymore mines and medium machine guns that could take out a chopper in the sky came into possession of the GNLA, courtesy the ULFA from its armory in Mymensingh district.

Those were worrying times for the North-East.

But the tables turned on the insurgency when Sheikh Hasina took over and gave the go-ahead for a large-scale operation against militant camps in her country. Troops from its elite Rapid Action Battalion or RAB overran insurgent camps, arresting dozens and even took out a number of armed cadres.

The ULFA’s general secretary A Rajkhowa was arrested and pushed back to India to face trial while its army chief Paresh Barua fled to Myanmar.

Soon the top leaders of the GNLA- outfit chairman Champion R Sangma and its foreign secretary Bryan Sim were arrested, spent time in Dhaka prison and handed over to Indian authorities.

All these happened under the watchful eyes of an India friendly Awami League government that has now been dismantled and its head having fled, making room for non-friendly parties like the BNP and J-E-I to take control.

With Hasina gone, the North East will be bracing for an upswing in anti-India activities in the days to come.

Also Read: Meghalaya’s Airikmenlang Shabong to represent India at World Arm Wrestling championship

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