I am again forced to join issue with Irfan Ahmed and respond to his Response "The inescapable circularity of spytalk" (August 2001, p. 46). Mr Ahmed's love for "metaphor, irony and stylistic devices of language" ensures he says in three pages what he could have said in four paragraphs.
I would reiterate that Bangladeshi journalists fight shy of reporting on military matters and issues they believe are sensitive with the security establishment. That is one Pakistani legacy the media in Bangladesh has not been able to shrug off—and I will say this again and again until the situation changes. No reporter working on defence issues can afford to "be not on talking terms with the military establishment". If a general does not speak, your skill is to ensure that a colonel will spill the beans.
Four years ago, when the leader of the Assamese rebel group ULFA, Anup Chetia, was arrested in Dhaka, I scooped the story, not my BBC colleagues in Dhaka. The BBC's Dhaka office—and every Bangladesh paper for that matter— stayed away from reporting it because no military or police source was owning up. I knew it because I know the ULFA as closely as any security agency in my country, and they gave me the details, which was confirmed to me by a personal secretary of a senior minister. Only later, when Chetia was produced in court, did the press in Dhaka pick up the story. Meanwhile, I had a tough time convincing my BBC colleagues in London and Dhaka on the veracity of the story.
The Bangladesh government denies the presence of Northeast Indian militants on its soil despite the substantial degree of patronage they receive from the DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence). It is obvious why the military-security establishment is reluctant to confirm events like the arrest of Anup Chetia, or for that matter, three attempts on the life of ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, two of them in the busy Gulshan locality of Dhaka. In exposing the role of the Assam police and Indian intelligence in launching these attacks, I even named the angladeshi mafia syndicate used to perform the planned hits. Sections of Indian intelligence is very upset with me because the DGFI has cracked down on the crime syndicate. If Mr Ahmed wants to see how these criminals are being sheltered in Indian safe houses, he will have to visit Calcutta and I will show him. (If of course he can recognise some of the leading crime bosses of his country.)