When the world's news turns to South Asia's security situation, the focus is almost inevitably on the Kashmir dispute, Nepal's communist rebellion, the al-Qaeda-Taleban threat or the chances for peace in Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh is rarely featured. Yet since the Bangladesh National Party took office in 2002, the poverty-stricken nation has dramatically expanded its role as a haven for Islamic radicals and organized criminal elements. Today, virtually every corner of Bangladesh is affected by some form of extremist violence - with implications far beyond its own borders.

The recent bomb attack that killed former finance minister Shah Kibria at an opposition Awami League political rally north of Dhaka starkly illustrates the deteriorating security environment. The attack came just six months after a strikingly similar attempt on the life of former AL prime minister Sheihk Hasina Wazed in which 22 were killed - Hasina survived several grenades, escaping in her armored Mercedes as automatic rifle fire raked the car.

There were more terrorist bombings in Bangladesh last year - an average of one per month - than in the previous five years combined. The attacks have disproportionately targeted the opposition Awami League, Bengali cultural events and Sufi shrines. Because all have been targets of Islamic radicals and because the BNP was elected in coalition with two Islamic fundamentalist parties - the Jamiaat e Islami (Bangladesh's third-largest political group) and the radical Islami Oikyo Jote - the government's indifference to the terror campaign had led to suggestions of a connection between the BNP and the radicals.

The outcry that followed Kibria's January assassination - and not a small amount of pressure from the EU donor community - finally pressured the BNP to arrest members of two radical Islamic groups based in northwest Bangladesh in late February. However, these groups are a relatively minor threat compared to some of the other underground organizations in the country.

The most worrisome group is the Harakat ul Jihad al Islami, an Islamic extremist organization whose membership overlaps to a substantial degree with the Islami Oikyo Jote.

The group's motto is ``We are all Taleban and Bangladesh will be Afghanistan.''

True to its motto, HuJI assisted 150 escaping al-Qaeda-Taleban combatants flee Afghanistan just before Christmas 2001, dispersing them after their ship docked at Bangladesh's main port of Chittagong.

HuJI's leadership - veteran jihadis with experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya - signed Osama bin Laden's declaration of holy war against the United States in 1998, thus making the group an official member of bin Laden's ``International Islamic Front.'' HuJI was implicated in the 2002 bombing of the US consulate in Calcutta and was linked to a previous assassination attempt against then prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2000.

Closer to home HuJI provides training and support to Islamic recruits from southern Thailand at more than a dozen camps located in the south Chittagong Hills near the Burmese border (known as the ``bin Laden trail'') - support that has no doubt contributed to the continuing violence in southern Thailand. The group recruits heavily among the 250,000 Burmese Muslim refugees who have settled in the area, dispatching them to jihad in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

HuJI also allegedly shelters key members of Jemaah Islamiyah, the radical group responsible for the Bali bombing in 2002.

On a purely commercial basis HuJI also acts as a major conduit for arms to insurgent groups in northeastern India. Bangladesh's northern hill tracts have long offered sanctuary to India's tribal rebels. The Chittagong Hills host almost 200 training camps including those of the United Liberation Front of Assam, one of the most violent groups.

The tribal guerrillas have been fighting a low intensity conflict against New Delhi for decades, using extortion and kidnap-for-ransom to fund their operations, but have traditionally eschewed indiscriminate large-scale attacks against civilians. That pattern changed in early October 2004 when more than 40 people were killed in a near simultaneous series of bombings across India's northeastern Assam state. The methods and materials used were sharply different from past attacks, thus suggesting outside assistance. The fact that a meeting of a half dozen tribal militant groups occurred in Dhaka before the blasts is equally damning.

There is also evidence that HuJI's arms conduit has fueled the Marxist insurgency which has brought Nepal to the brink of collapse. In April 2004 the largest arms seizure in Bangladesh history - 10 truckloads of weapons including heavy machine guns, assault rifles, and RPGs - was made at Chittagong port. The previous month strikingly similar weapons were used in a major communist rebel assault against the Nepalese town of Beni Bazaar which killed 200.

Despite HuJI's stated goal, Bangladesh is unlikely to become another Afghanistan, but unfortunately the country's socio-economic prognosis bodes ill for a quick end to such radical groups.

It has one of the highest population densities on earth. A majority of its 140 million people are under the age of 25 and rely on wet rice agriculture for a minimum subsistence.

Opportunities for education and skilled jobs are virtually non-existent, corruption and disease endemic.

With the December 2004 expiration of the textile quota system that gave developing countries like Bangladesh preferential access to Western markets, most of the nation's industrial jobs and foreign exchange earnings are under threat from more efficient producers like China and India. In the same month, New Delhi - fed up with Dhaka's decade-long refusal to allow any of its sizeable natural gas resources to flow west to its larger neighbor - reached agreement with Burma to import natural gas, ironically via pipeline laid across Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's downward spiral toward ``failed state'' status is correctable, but only if the country's political leadership takes the following steps: sever all ties to criminal and extremist organizations; deploy the Bangladesh army to destroy these groups and establish meaningful rule of law; end the violent political competition between the major political parties; integrate the economy more closely with India; and slash bureaucracy and corruption to encourage foreign investment.

If a dramatic change of course is not taken, Bangladesh will continue to be a magnet for violent radicals that destabilize not only one of the world's poorest democracies but the region as a whole.

Dane Chamorro is an honors graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and the US Army Military Intelligence School. He frequently visited Bangladesh between 1996 and 2000. He is currently a senior consultant with Control Risks Group.