Focused and Lethal

The BSF should train for conventional warfighting given the situation in Bangladesh 

R.C. Sharma

As chief of army staff, former chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat had propounded a two-and-a-half front war concept: one half was for conventional military threats from Pakistan along the western border, second half for China along the northern border and the remaining half front was for internal security threat. Bangladesh was missing from this assessment since it was ruled by a friendly regime. 

This was way back in 2017. The world has changed since then. Today, the friendly regime has been overthrown, and an interim government led by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus is in power until the general elections take place on 12 February 2026. Recent events have highlighted an anti-India mindset. Dhaka’s growing bonhomie with Pakistan, expanding Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) footprints in Bangladesh with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being dominant partners in the ISI gameplan, the two-and-a-half front war concept seems to have grown to three-and-a-half front war. Now, there are conventional threats from Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, which I believe, was always existing with west and east Pakistan as two fronts separated by India and China front since 1962. The half front internal security threat has assumed more dangerous proportion with strong anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. 

Pakistan is preparing to exploit this sentiment in cahoots with Bangladesh to raise another Kashmir like issue in the Northeast—Assam, Tripura or Meghalaya in order of priority.

Strategic and security experts may dismiss this three-and-a-half front threat as unreal, but it is a possibility; and India must be prepared for it. We already have some proof of it: Chinese incursions in June 2020 and Operation Sindoor, which can be easily called joint Pakistan-China effort in which only partial contact battle was fought by the Border Security Force (BSF).

Anti-India sentiments in Bangladesh have been endorsed by the Yunus government. State endorsement of anti-India stance coupled with ISI support to no