Author: Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Publication: WorldNetDaily.com
Date: October 3, 2007
URL: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57946
In 1939, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia
- mortal enemies - signed a non-aggression pact with each other. Though their
ideologies were otherwise in conflict, they were united in their hatred of
freedom and their determination to crush it. Last year, Joseph Farah's G2
Bulletin reported on a similarly deadly alliance forming in Asia. This time,
communists are teaming up with Islamist radicals.
In 2004, al-Qaida terrorists were on the run
from U.S. forces that had dislodged them from their strongholds in Afghanistan.
Over the next two years, Pakistani forces loyal to strongman Pervez Musharraf
harassed them in their mountainous lairs in that country; but many (perhaps
more) Pakistanis are loyal to the Islamists. So, friendly border guards got
them safely out of Pakistan to terrorist-controlled sections of Kashmir -
the territory hotly disputed between Pakistan and India. From there, they
helped the terrorists through a sort of no-man's-land and into Nepal where
they set up terror bases. What makes that interesting is the fact that Nepal
is overwhelmingly Hindu and hardly a likely candidate as the next Taliban
state. But Nepalese King Gyanendra had seized dictatorial powers in response
to a decades-long and very bloody communist revolt. That made for social chaos
and uncontrolled borders. Islamists in Pakistan's Nepalese Embassy engineered
an agreement with the communists to help set up the terror bases.
The Islamists were not interested in Nepal,
at least not for the moment. But they were very interested in the world's
third-largest Muslim country, just down the road, Bangladesh. That country
was ripe for the picking. Funded by Saudi and Kuwaiti "charities,"
Islamists had infiltrated virtually all of the country's social institutions
and had been part of the government since 2001. Virtually all observers agreed
that Islamists stood to make further gains in the upcoming January 2007 elections,
perhaps enough to demand the Law Ministry and impose Shariah Law on the nation
of almost 150 million. They almost pulled it off, but a military coup has
stopped them for now. Their coalition partners, the Bangladesh National Party,
or BNP, had so transparently rigged the pending elections that in one of the
oddest turn of events in recent memory, every single western democracy publicly
urged that elections not be held. The West also welcomed the military regime
as the savior of Bangladeshi democracy.
The notoriously corrupt BNP fixed the elections
to maintain the gravy train, but its Islamist partners had other ideas. They
were using the BNP's phony voter lists to pad the electorate with their own
supporters who were infiltrating Bangladesh from Nepal across its porous northwestern
border. Former Bangladeshi Home Minister Lutfuzzaman Babar told me the BNP
controlled its relationship with Islamists, using it to subdue Islamist activity.
Later, Babar was furious when his erstwhile partners ignored his party's machinations,
especially with regard to pro-U.S., pro-Israeli Muslim journalist Salah Uddin
Shoaib Choudhury. At one point, according to Bangladesh sources, the Islamists
teamed up with the BNP's political rivals and leftist trade unions to engineer
riots against garment manufacturers. At another, according to Choudhury, they
gave Osama bin Laden temporary haven in Bangladesh.
Islamists have been quiet since the coup,
but they remain ready to strike. Although the military government announced
its intention to combat both them and the country's endemic corruption, it
has moved only on the latter. In the meantime, Nepalese Maoists, on the outside
looking in for decades have been rewarded with a place in Nepal's government.
The alliance worked and has been replicated throughout the area.
In India's West Bengal state, more victims
are falling from this deadly alliance. Almost since Bangladesh's 1971 birth,
Islamists have been using the country's Vested Property Act, or VPA, to rid
the country of non-Muslims. The law allows the government to seize property
belonging to non-Muslims and hand it over to Muslims of their choice, forcing
the former (mostly Hindu) to flee the country. It is ethnic cleansing and
nothing less. It is religious bigotry and oppression. Victims number into
the tens of millions. Dr. Sachi Dastadar, who has studied this phenomenon
for decades, used the government's own figures and counted 1.3 to 3.3 million
acres of Hindu land seized in the 1990s alone. The victims have been subjected
to murder, mutilation and ritualized gang rape, as well as the legalized thievery.
At first, private gangs committed the atrocities, but later victims reported
government officials and uniformed men led the attacks.
With most VPA beneficiaries party members
or other apparatchik, the very people who might overturn the law have the
greatest stake in maintaining it. Thus, it was not surprising that the Bangladeshi
ambassador to Washington, M. Humayun Kabir, said that the current government
"had no plans to address the Vested Property Act during its tenure."
And at present, the length of that tenure is indeterminate.
Brutalized and penniless, the refugees fled
to the world's largest Hindu country right next door. But the area bordering
Bangladesh, West Bengal, has had a communist government since 1977 and offered
no succor. Rigid atheists, the communists reject any bonds of faith in favor
of their internationalist goals and have thrown their lot in with the Islamists.
VPA victims have been put in camps then sent on forced marches when the government
decided to seize the land. The West Bengal Stalinists refuse to recognize
them as refugees or give them any legal standing, though many of them have
been living there for decades. It also has turned a blind eye to cross-border
attacks and further Muslim atrocities.
Dr. Dastidar says the problem is as much political
as moral. The victims are strongly anti-communist. Should they be granted
citizenship, the Communists fear being voted out of power. On the other hand,
he said, "Many [West Bengal] state officials are Bangladeshis [but only]
Islamist-approved Bangladeshis are given safe have in West Bengal."
None of the parties responsible for taking
action are doing so. The national Indian government has adopted a rigorous
hands-off policy toward West Bengal. The U.N. is equally rigorous in its silence
and refuses to grant the victims refugee status, which would entitle them
to both material and legal benefits. Misnomered "human rights" groups
like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are silent as well, preferring
to criticize democracies like the United States and Israel. So, earlier this
year, one brave victim representing at least 1,000 families asked me to help,
and I will be traveling to the region to gather additional evidence.
The 1939 Germany-Russia non-aggression pact,
though ultimately broken by the parties, gave both the time they needed to
prepare for the coming war in which tens of millions died. With almost a fourth
of the world's population living in South Asia, we could be seeing its reprise
on an even greater scale.