In an unusual move before the January 7 elections, Bangladesh’s central bank today allocated 600 sq ft space on the terrace of its 30-storeyed main building complex in Dhaka for the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) to set up a new ‘listening’ and communications post.
While the move has set of considerable disquiet among Bangladeshi political and security analysts, informed sources said an additional space for the DGFI, and that too on the Bangladesh Bank’s terrace, was aimed at a “special operation” involving the use of communications devices.
According to the Bangladesh Bank’s December 21 order, signed by a Common Services Department-1 manager, the authorities had agreed to sanction 20 ft x 30 ft (600 sq ft) space in the “north-eastern” side of the terrace to the DGFI.
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The document reveals that allotment was being made in favour of the “main branch of the army intelligence, the DGFI’s Telecommunication, ICT Infrastructure, Human Resource Development and Technical Capacity Building-Project (TIHDTCB) and the army’s Dhaka headquarters”.
It is stated in the “remarks” column of the document that the space would be used for “establishing” the DGFI’s “walkie-talkie network expansion” and utilisation of “radio equipment”. Northeast News could not confirm whether the DGFI’s new unit atop the Bangladesh Bank building would be a permanent or temporary structure.
What has, however, alarmed Bangladesh security observers is the “timing” of the allotment and the communications nature of the DGFI’s special operations, especially when the country was on election mode howsoever controversy-ridden it might be.
Sources in the Bangladeshi security bureaucracy admitted to the “hush-hush” nature of the operation but did not rule out the DGFI’s aim to monitor and trace “suspicious” communications that might be related to causing disturbances in the days leading to the elections and beyond.
The DGFI has been upgrading and reskilling its operations’ level officers on electronic surveillance, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) since at least February last year.
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The Bangladeshi intelligence agency sent out five officers – two Brigadiers General, a Lieutenant Colonel and two Majors – to Canada and Turkey to “attend a seminar” on electronic surveillance, machine learning and AI under its TIHDTCB project. The seminar was held in the two countries between February 14 and 19, 2022.
The five DGFI officers who attended the programme were Brigadier General Mohammad Ashraf Uzzaman Siddiqui (Director, IAB), Brigadier General Kazi Mustafizur Rahman (Director, TIHDTCB Project), Lt Col Mohammad Nazrul Islam (Senior Signals Systems Analyst, ITHDTCB Project), Major Mohammad Shahriar Alam (GSO-2, IAB) and Major Al-Amin Hosen (GSO-2, Army CIB).
While the five officers were under strict instructions to submit a report within 15 days of their return to the DGFI’s headquarters, all their travel “expenses were borne” under the TIHDTCB Project.
