Security experts believe that Bangladesh has now emerged as the second front of Islamic terror in South Asia over the last few years as many Islamic groups linked to Osama bin Laden led al-Qaeda have set up their training camps on Bangladesh soil.

Noted South Asia expert Selig S Harrison said in an article published in the Washington Post that Pakistan's intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was using the legacy of the 1971 independence war and with its network of agents within the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party was trying to harass India along its 4,000-km border with Bangladesh.

In addition to supporting tribal separatist groups in northeast India, ISI uses Bangladesh as a base for helping Islamic extremists inside India, wrote Harrison, now director of the Asia programme at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

What makes future prospects in Bangladesh especially alarming is that the Jamaat and its allies appear to be penetrating the higher ranks of the armed forces, he said, citing the recent appointment of Maj. Gen. Mohammed Aminul Karim as military secretary to President Iajuddin Ahmed and that of Brig. Gen. A.T.M. Amin as director of the Armed Forces Intelligence Anti-Terrorism Bureau.

India has presented concrete evidence about at least 200 terrorist camps being run in Bangladesh, and the presence of at least 300 `Wanted people`, including top ULFA leaders Paresh Baruah and Arvind Rajkhowa, in the country.