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Bangladesh steps out of denial
cocoon
By Bibhu Prasad Routray
On February 24, Bangladesh Prime Minister
Khaleda Zia instructed the Home Ministry and
intelligence agencies to "root out" Islamist
militants, their hideouts and subversive
activities. She also decided in principle to set
up an additional bench at the High Court to ensure
the speedy trial of cases involving subversive
acts.
The orders came after the government
decided to ban the Jagrata Muslim Janata
Bangladesh (JMJB) and Jama'atul Mujahideen
Bangladesh (JMB), accusing them of a large number
of bomb attacks and killings in recent times. A
press note to that effect read: "The government
notices with concern that two organizations called
Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh and Jama'atul
Mujahideen have been carrying out a series of
murders, robberies, bomb attacks, threats and
various kinds of terrorist acts causing deaths to
peace-loving people and destruction of property.
Under the circumstances, the government announces
enforcement of ban on all activities of Jagrata
Muslim Janata Bangladesh and Jama'atul
Muhjahideen."
Bangladesh's
English-language The Daily Star on February 24
described the government decision to proscribe the
JMJB as a case of Dhaka "eating [its] own words".
Only a month earlier, State Minister for Home
Lutfozzaman Babar had emphatically denied the
existence of the JMJB and said on January 26, "We
don't know officially about the existence of the
JMJB. Only some so-called newspapers are
publishing reports on it. We don't have their
constitution in our record." Babar was reacting to
a spate of reports documenting the activities of
the JMJB and evidence of its linkages with at
least a section of the political establishment and
administration.
The past week has
witnessed several raids on the JMJB and JMB
establishments across the country and the arrests
of key leaders and activists. Police personnel
arrested a professor of Arabic at Rajshahi
University, Dr Muhammad Asadullah al-Ghalib, chief
of the Islamist organization, Ahle Hadith Andolon
Bangladesh (AHAB), and three of his close
associates on February 23. On the same day, three
JMB operatives in Gaibandha and two in Rangpur, as
well as two JMJB activists in Rajshahi were also
arrested in a police crackdown in the northern
parts of the country. Eleven JMB activists were
arrested from different places in the Dinajpur and
Thakurgaon districts on February 24. On February
25, two JMB cadres Qaree Nazrul, a teacher at the
Shibganj Hajardighi Islamia Madrassa (Islamic
school), and Nurul Islam, a teacher at Chandpur
Dakhil Madrassa, were arrested from Shibganj in
the Chapai Nawabganj district.
The current
flurry of governmental activism (the present
regime has largely been seen as a benefactor or at
least a mute spectator to the steady growth of
Islamist radicalism in the country) was preceded
by a well documented publication by the opposition
Awami League (AL), titled "Growing fanaticism and
extremism in Bangladesh: Shades of Taliban".
Released on February 13, the 74-page document,
apart from its inherent political import, was
significant on three grounds.
It marked a
widening of the divide in the polarized politics
of the two primary political parties in the
country. The AL has now taken its "war" with the
ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to an
international audience. The AL has enormously
increased pressure on the BNP-led regime to
respond to mounting Islamist extremist activities
in the country.
It is one of the first
detailed documents by an "internal" source in
Bangladesh, of systemic acts of State-tolerated
terror, which have been repeatedly highlighted by
a number of foreign news agencies and
organizations, including SAIR, over the past
years.
The AL report documents at least 34
bomb blasts between 1999 and February 2005, in
which 164 persons have been killed and 1,735
people have been injured. While the magnitude of
attacks and casualties recorded would count for
little in a country with Bangladesh's profile, a
pattern appears to be developing. The bomb attacks
have mixed in with a much wider campaign of
intimidation, violence and terror, even as the
number of bombings demonstrates rising trends. An
analysis of the bombing incidents in the AL report
show that, while there were just 13 bomb attacks
between 1999 and 2003, the year 2004 alone
witnessed 13 such attacks, and there have been
another eight within the first two months of 2005.
With implicit patronage from the current
regime, or a benign disregard of their activities,
the Islamist forces in the country, have
systematically targeted opposition political
parties like the AL, as well as minorities such as
the Ahmadiyyas and Hindus, progressives and
intellectuals. The January 27 grenade attack at
Boidder Bazar in Habiganj district, in which
former finance minister and AL parliamentarian, S
Kibria was killed, appears to have breached the
limits of the AL's patience, provoking the new
report. The AL had witnessed a similar attack at a
rally addressed by its chief and former prime
minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, on August 21, 2004
in Dhaka. Eight of the 34 bomb attacks documented
by the AL report have targeted the AL; nine were
detonated during cultural functions such as jatras
and fairs; and five occurred at religious shrines,
including the one in the shrine of Hazrat
Shahjalal in Sylhet on May 21, 2004, in which the
British High Commissioner was injured. The AL
report notes, "The selective and deliberate
targeting of AL and the like-minded secular and
progressive forces, cultural organizations,
religious minority groups and entertainment places
such as movie halls or local fairs indicates a
clear pattern that clearly unmasks the identity of
perpetrators of such crimes and their ideology."
Does recent action by the government mean
that Bangladesh is now on a changed track? There
has been wide speculation that the government's
steps were precipitated by pressure from Western
donor agencies and diplomatic circles, provoking
State Minister for Home Babar to deny any foreign
pressure. Babar told the British Broadcasting
Corporation's Bangla service on February 23, "We
did not receive any international pressure to ban
them. The government has done it out of its sense
of responsibility." Nevertheless, this sudden
"sense of responsibility" does appear to have been
excited by mounting external pressures and
perceptions, including the hard stand taken by the
European Union on the regime's "apathy in tackling
the situation" and the belief that Bangladesh's
slide toward a fundamentalist regime continues
unabated. Although the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank appear to have taken a softer
stand, lauding Bangladesh for its "impressive
performance" in many social sectors, the overall
impression is that the situation in the country
has been deteriorating fast and the government has
failed to improve governance. Bangladesh's
development partners rounded off a meeting at the
Watergate Hotel in Washington on February 25,
2003, with an expression of concern regarding
deteriorating governance, and deciding to keep a
close watch on how the government tackles the rise
of fundamentalist militancy and improves the
overall scenario of governance. A joint statement
issued at the end of the meet stated, "The
participants, by consensus, expressed serious
concern at the deterioration of the governance
situation in Bangladesh, especially the situation
of law and order, political violence including
recent bombings, and the climate of impunity."
Despite the intensity of external
pressure, the early "positive" signs could be
deceptive. Amidst the prime minister and the
president's call for strong concerted action
against Islamist fundamentalism in the country,
there are already indications that the current
phase of activism might not last long. The Daily
Star on February 26 reported that, on February 24,
a day after the government ban on the JMJB, 50
cadres of the outfit gathered in a meeting at the
house of an Islamist fundamentalist leader in
Bhabaniganj Bazar. In Bagmara, JMJB leaders in
many areas continued to organize their fellow
workers. Among them were JMJB Bagmara unit
president, Lutfar Rahman, a professor at Atrai
Mollah Azad Memorial College; Sakoa college
teacher Shahidullah; Bhabaniganj college teachers
Abed Ali, Abdur Razzak and Kalimuddin; Ibrahim of
Jhikra and Akkas of Goalkandi. Similarly, even
three days after the arrest of the AHAB amir
(chief) Dr Muhammad Asadullah Al Galib and his
three top aides, police had not arrested any of
Galib's known associates. Galib is the suspected
kingpin of Islamist militants in the western
region, and a large number of documents in his
office and the various AHAB-run madrassas were
left untouched by the Government at the time of,
and after, his arrest. On another front, the
Independent reported on February 26 that all the
accused in the April 2, 2004 Chittagong arms
recovery case, billed as the biggest in the
country's history, had been released on bail.
The BNP is bound to find itself in an
unenviable position once its Islamist alliance
partners in the coalition government begin to act
to protect their "interests". On February 24,
Fazlul Haque Amini, chairman of a faction of the
Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), warned at a public
meeting in Mymensingh, "We'll sharply react if any
Islamic leader falls victim to the ongoing
operation." He also said that there was a
conspiracy to prevent an Islamic revolution in the
name of taming the Islamist militants, "But the
conspirators will not succeed." On the same day,
Maulana Abdur Rob Yousufi, secretary general of
another faction of the IOJ, opposed the ban on the
JMJB and JMB, declaring, "There's no Islamic
militant organization in the country". It is a
matter of time before such statements are
translated into political action. It remains to be
seen whether the BNP will choose to alienate its
alliance partners to secure greater appreciation
and support from the outside world.
Bibhu Prasad Routray, Research
Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management.
(Published with permission from the
South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia
Terrorism
Portal) |
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