India, Nov. 25 -- A palpable tension grips India's eastern frontier. The carefully managed-if uneasy-calm that defined the India-Bangladesh border for over a decade has evaporated, replaced by a familiar and toxic churn that those of us who served through the 1990s recognise with a sense of dread.

The old ghosts we believed had long been consigned to history-Pakistan and its jihadist proxies-are not merely resurfacing but are being actively rehabilitated. The eastern front is being deliberately reawakened, and the warning signs are too glaring to ignore. Bangladesh is a nation convulsing, at war with its own political soul. The judicial death sentence against Sheikh Hasina acted like a detonation, violently shattering the political order...