Bangladesh military signs off from multinational mock Qatar drills

Bangladesh Army’s medical and engineering teams have joined the search and rescue operations in a simulated building collapse in Qatar on the last day of the multinational military exercise’s field training.

Wednesday’s drills capped the field exercise for Bangladesh military.
 
But Qatar armed forces will show their joint manoeuvring on Thursday to a select group of military officers of the 27 participating countries including Bangladesh.
 
For Bangladesh, the exercise offered an opportunity to display its disaster-management capabilities to the world.
 
But it also bolstered its claim for a bigger role in global peace-keeping.
 
The fourth-of-its-kind exercise, styled ‘Ferocious Falcon’, has been a show of Qatar’s capabilities to gather such a large military groups mostly from the region.
 

Lieutenant Colonel AKM Mashiul Munir led the medical team on Wednesday, while Major Delwar Hossain Talukder who was involved with the Rana Plaza rescue in Bangladesh led engineering team in the exercise held at a safety and security training centre at Al Khor.

Tunisia and Kuwait were also joined this exercise.

Qatar has involved all of its civil agencies to evaluate their capabilities to work with its military in any crisis situation like terrorist attacks ahead of 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Bangladesh joined with a large military delegation including its special force to participate in almost all drills related to natural disaster and terrorists attack.

Doha seeks to activate their command and control system as well as operations in crisis and disaster management.

In the exercise, the presumed ‘Red State’ with strong arsenal of munitions and ambitious nuclear weapons programmes attacked their key installations.

Qatar is the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and its small citizenry enjoys the world’s highest per capita income.

Its foreign policy has taken advantage of economic edge and put the country on the global stage, against the backdrop of rising political tension in the region.

The small peninsular state in the Persian Gulf has positioned itself as mediator and interlocutor in a number of regional conflicts in recent years.

It has also signalled a new assertiveness with the deployment of military aircraft to support NATO-led operations in Libya, and the US-led operations against the Islamic State in Syria.

Natural disaster, acts of terrorism at sports facilities, civilian airplane crash in the sea, chemical or biological leak, hijacking of civilian aircraft, hijacking of oil and gas tankers and collapse of a residential tower were some of the highlights of the drills.

Those were held at key places like Hamad International Airport, and gas and oil fields.

A strategic seminar with the defence ministers and military chiefs of the countries that joined the exercise will be held on May 26.