Jessore, Bangladesh: With India looking to seal the Indo-Bangla border in Assam soon, a top Bangladeshi security commander has said his country has decided to erect a barbed wire fence along the border with India and Myanmar.
Director General of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), Bangladesh’s border guarding force, Major General Aziz Ahmad told a visiting group of Indian journalists here that his government has already approved a project to have a 282km road along the border it shares with India and Myanmar.
While India borders Bangladesh on three sides (4,096km), it shares a 271km border with Myamnar on its eastern flank.
“Our government, in principle, has agreed to have barbed wire fencing along the borders with India as well as Myanmar. In principle, it has also been decided to have link roads all along the border like India is having which facilitates, BSF [Border Security Force] activities and those of the Myanmarese border guarding forces,” the BGB chief said while speaking via video-link at the BGB’s south-west region headquarters in Peelkhana, Dhaka.
He said it was “unfortunate” that “two basic needs”, of having a barbed wire fence and roads, have not been developed on the Bangladeshi side until now. Ahmad said these projects are under “active consideration” of his government.
Ahmad made the remarks while replying to a question about Bangladesh’s response to India’s border sealing move. India recently said that Indo-Bangla border in Assam will be fully sealed by June 2017.
“You would understand that all these things require huge amounts of money.but the government has already approved a project for 282km where roads along with barbed wire fence will be erected and possibly that will start from the Myanmarese side,” Ahmad said.
He said as India has already raised a fence along 79 per cent of the Indo-Bangla border, it “indirectly helps” his country in checking cross-border crimes.
The DG stated that in a large number of cases where BSF approaches them for construction of fencing along the border, they give “prompt consent”, except in few instances where the construction is very close to the zero line and there are issues involved.
“After all, Indian fencing helps us, too,” he reiterated.
The top commander said two border guarding forces are also working to create a database of habitual offenders active along the Indo-Bangla frontier as he accepted that this was a “weak” point in ensuring effective border security and transborder movement of terrorists and criminals was a “serious concern” for them.
The BGB chief, who will lead a delegation to New Delhi for the bi-annual DG-level talks with their counterparts in BSF beginning October 30, also said he has given “clear instructions” to his men to crackdown on cross-border cattle smuggling incidents after the Indian establishment ordered a complete clampdown on this criminal activity sometime back.
“We don’t want Indian cattle [in] Bangladesh. I can say we have become [so] self sufficient over the years in food grains that we are exporting it now. A day will come when we will export cattle. Our main concern and priority is to stop killing of Bangladeshi nationals by BSF.
“More than 95 per cent of border killing is due to cattle smuggling. This issue will surely be discussed during the DG level talks that will take place soon,” he said.
