Word: bsf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fence has made a difference: there were about 4,900 arrests for illegal crossings last year, compared to more than 10,000 in 2005. But P.K. Mishra, inspector general of the BSF's Assam and Meghalaya Frontier, seems to know that he has an almost impossible task. He has visited the U.S.-Mexico border fence and seen how difficult controlling illegal migration is. "Even [though] they have all the technical equipment, they can't stop it," he says...
...when a local jihadist group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, took credit for an audacious attack in which bombs were detonated in about one hour in all but one of Bangladesh's 64 districts. The incident forced Bangladesh's leaders to acknowledge the country's internal terrorist threat. Indian intelligence and BSF officials say that Dhaka is not doing enough to stop Bangladeshi jihadist groups in the border areas from crossing into India. But the victory in Bangladesh's Dec. 29 general election of the secular Awami League, whose leader (and new Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina has pledged to curb Islamic militancy...
...from the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad Islamia (HuJI), which is believed to be part of a loose terror network that includes Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba, the chief suspect in last November's Mumbai attacks. "That is our No. 1 concern," says M.L. Kumawat, director general of the BSF. "Indigenous insurgent groups in Bangladesh have to be dealt with strongly so as not to allow them to use their soil to commit acts of violence in India." (Fencing on the Pakistan border has already made that area easier to patrol, the BSF says.) Mutual suspicion inhibits the one antiterrorism...
...ground, the prospects for cooperation are even worse. "Bangladesh is definitely a sanctuary for extremist groups," says a Bangladeshi human-rights researcher who has worked on the border. But the curfews, surveillance and other techniques of "border domination," as the BSF calls it, have had the effect of increasing sympathy among the border population for terrorists. The researcher adds: "India has alienated a large section of people who think that India is our enemy." The Bangladesh human-rights group Odhikar estimates that 62 Bangladeshis were killed by Indian border guards in 2008 - about one every six days. "Bangladesh and India...
...BSF captured 70,000 cows last year - worth about $62 million in Bangladesh. "I'm sure that as many got across," says Ashish Mitra, a former director general of the BSF. "It's a losing battle. Cattle-smuggling is the biggest problem that we have." The absurdities of the ban on cattle exports are a constant source of frustration within the BSF. The cows that are seized are auctioned off at customs depots, and usually bought by the same smugglers, sometimes three or four times. Moving a cow from one end of India to the other is perfectly legal...