New Delhi, Jan. 11: India’s tough public posture notwithstanding, South Block has little hope that Bangladesh will take a similar action against insurgents from the Northeast as Bhutan did last month.

Bhutan launched Operation All Clear last month to flush out United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) militants camping on its soil for more than a decade.

It spurred Delhi to demand that other neighbours, particularly Bangladesh, take similar action against armed Indian rebels on their territory. However, in private, few officials in South Block believe that Dhaka could — and would — do something like Thimphu.

If the latest indications are anything to go by, there is little hope that Dhaka would take Indian concerns seriously. The three-day talks between the Border Security Force and the Bangladesh Rifles that ended in Delhi on Friday showed that the neighbour was in no mood to follow Bhutan’s example. When India raised the issue of Northeast insurgents’ camps in Bangladesh, Dhaka countered that there are at least 39 camps on Indian soil from which anti-Bangladeshi activities are being carried out.

India does not have the same leverage over Bangladesh as it has over Bhutan. Some of the things it could do to cut off Dhaka’s access to Indian markets and the stern measures it could take to push back illegal immigrants would seriously jeopardise Indo-Bangla relations. At the moment, there is no indication that Delhi is contemplating such a tough line.

Bhutan is one of India’s closest allies and is totally dependent on it, not only economically but also for the training of its bureaucrats, teachers, officials and the army. There is hardly any important decision taken in Thimphu that does not have the approval of Delhi. But, despite this closeness, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk took nearly 12 years to act against the insurgents entrenched in the Bhutanese jungles.

Bangladesh, on the other hand, has had more lows than highs in its relations with India. Even when the “friendly” Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina was in power, India had raised the issue of insurgents’ camps with Dhaka. But it had not been able to do much.

South Block officials familiar with the problem said one of the main reasons why the issue has lingered for so long is because none of these are camps in the sense that they can be identified during an arial survey. “They are more like huts which look no different from the others in the region,” a foreign ministry official said.

Even if the huts where insurgents have taken shelter can be identified, Dhaka has not shown much interest in the past to flush them out. Bangladesh’s reluctance to act stems from the fact that for years it has denied the existence of these camps on its soil. If it acts now, it could be accused of having supported the rebels for than a decade or so.

At the same time, any action by Dhaka against the insurgents would mean that in future it has to take a similar action against them. Moreover, the remote terrain — since most of these huts are in the hill tracts — makes it difficult for Bangladesh to go after the insurgents.

But the thought uppermost on Dhaka’s mind would be why should it act against the rebels. The country’s leadership has more often that not seen India as a big bully. It has been extremely unhappy with Delhi’s failure to be more generous to Bangladeshi goods and allow freer access to the Indian market. More recently, it has voiced serious concerns about the Indian proposal to inter-link the Ganga and Brahmaputra.

In this backdrop, it seems unlikely that Bangladesh will take any serious action against the rebels who have been using its soil for anti-Indian activities.