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Goons or terrorists? Bangladesh
decides
By B Raman
Terrorists in Bangladeshi territory? Yes,
of course. But al-Qaeda in Bangladesh? No,
definitely not.
That is the latest
position of the government of Khaleda Zia, the
Bangladeshi prime minister, in the face of growing
international pressure spearheaded by
member countries of the European Union to act
against terrorist groups operating from
Bangladeshi territory.
The government
banned, under international pressure, the Jagrata
Muslim Janata, Bangladesh (JMJB), which also
operates under the name of the Jama'atul
Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), on February 23, and
arrested some of its leaders and cadres, but not
the most important - Moulana Abdur Rahman, a
former activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI),
which is a member of Zia's ruling coalition, and
who is now the amir of the banned organization,
and Siddiqur Rahman, also known as Bangla Bhai
(Bangla brother), its operational chief.
Until February 23, the government denied
the very existence of these organizations and of
Bangla Bhai, who used to be described by it as a
figment of the media's imagination.
Faced
with the threat of aid curtailment from the EU,
the government has now been forced to admit that
these organizations and Bangla Bhai exist and were
creating a state of anarchy in Bangladesh.
However, its action has been half-hearted and does
not seem to be due to its conviction on the need
to put a stop to the use of its territory by all
terrorist organizations - domestic or
international - and to closely monitor the
functioning of the large number of Saudi and
Kuwaiti-funded madrassas and international
Islamic universities which have come up in its
territory to spread Wahhabism among the Muslims of
Bangladesh and Southeast Asia.
While the
government now admits that some of the activities
of the banned organizations, such as acts of
violence directed against non-Muslims and
secular-minded Muslims, amounted to terrorism, it
is trying to avoid blaming them for acts of
political terrorism directed against the leaders
and cadres of the opposition parties, such as
their repeated attempts to kill Sheikh Hassina,
former prime minister, and the recent
assassination of Shah M S Kibria, a former finance
minister, who was a close personal friend of
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It was
reportedly Kibria's assassination that set off
alarm bells in New Delhi and contributed to the
decision of Singh to postpone his visit to Dhaka
to attend a regional summit.
After having
initially described the arrested leaders and
cadres as terrorists, the government is now trying
to play down the gravity of their past acts of
terrorism. At the same time, it continues to deny,
as it was doing before February 23, that survivors
of al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front
(IIF) have been given sanctuary in Bangladeshi
territory; or that an organization called the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), which is a
member of Osama bin Laden's IIF, has been active
in Bangladesh and training recruits from the
Arakan area of Myanmar and other Southeast Asian
countries or that the local madrassas and
international Islamic universities have become the
breeding ground of jihadi terrorism.
The
Bangladesh branch of the HUJI of Pakistan has been
active since the 1990s, and one of its leaders
signed bin Laden's fatwa of
1998 calling for attacks against the US and Israel.
The annual reports titled "Patterns of Global
Terrorism" of the US State Department have
repeatedly referred to the activities of the HUJI
from Bangladeshi territory. Even its latest report, submitted
to US Congress last April 29, says as follows:
Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami,
Bangladesh (HUJI-B) (Movement of Islamic Holy
War). Description: The mission of HUJI-B, led by
Shauqat Osman, is to establish Islamic rule in
Bangladesh. HUJI-B has connections to the
Pakistani militant groups Harakat
ul-Jihadi-Islami (HUJI) and Harakat
ul-Mujahideen (HUM), who advocate similar
objectives in Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir.
Activities: HUJI-B was accused of stabbing a
senior Bangladeshi journalist in November 2000
for making a documentary on the plight of Hindus
in Bangladesh. HUJI-B was suspected in the
assassination attempt in July 2000 of
Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Strength: HUJI-B has an estimated cadre strength
of more than several thousand members.
Location/area of operation: Operates and trains
members in Bangladesh, where it maintains at
least six camps. External aid: Funding of the
HUJI-B comes primarily from madrassas in
Bangladesh. The group also has ties to militants
in Pakistan that may provide another funding
source. Since September 11, 2001, there
have been persistent reports from secret as well
as open (the United States' Time magazine and the Far
Eastern Economic Review, for example) sources that
at least 200, if not more, survivors of al-Qaeda
and other components of the IIF, many of them
originating from Southeast Asia, have shifted to
Bangladesh and have been given sanctuaries there
by the HUJI-B and other jihadi terrorist
organizations.
There have also been
reports that due to the increased monitoring of
the activities of Pakistani madrassas by US
intelligence, recruits from Southeast Asia are now
being taken to the madrassas in Bangladesh
for religious education and training.
On December 10, 2003, a Canadian media
organization disseminated edited extracts of a report on
the internal security situation in
Bangladesh, prepared by the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS), which it had obtained under
the Access to Information Act. The extracts
as disseminated by it said that the government
of Bangladesh was not doing enough to prevent
the country from becoming a haven for
Islamic terrorists in South Asia and expressed its
concern over the activities of extremists suspected to
be connected to al-Qaeda. It said the government
of Bangladesh was unwilling to crack down on
terrorism and referred to the likelihood of
dangers to Canadian aid agencies in Bangladesh.
In a statement issued on December 11,
2003, the Bangladesh Foreign Office strongly
denied the contents of the CSIS report. It said,
"The contents of the report are far from the
reality on the ground. The government remains
firmly committed to combating terrorism. Some
quarters are bent on tarnishing the peaceful image
of Bangladesh."
In a separate statement
issued in the Canadian capital the same day, Bangladesh's high
commissioner in Ottawa, Mohsin Ali Khan, denied
that his country had become a terrorist haven and
asserted that his government was very "conscious
of its responsibility to protect its citizens. We
condemn terrorism in any country, in any form, in
any place. Bangladesh is against any terrorist
attack and it will not allow its soil to be used
by any terrorist group."
This position was
reiterated by Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Morshed
Khan in a statement issued on February 26. He
said, "There may be some local goons, working in
the name of religion, who are being hunted down.
There is a difference between international
terrorists and local goons.There are no
international terrorists in the country."
An oft-reiterated contention of the
Bangladeshi authorities is that if there were
al-Qaeda or pro-al-Qaeda terrorists in Bangladesh
territory, by now they would have been involved in
some act of international terrorism somewhere or
the other. According to them, the fact that there
have been no instances of the involvement of
terrorists based in Bangladesh in any act of
international terrorism showed that there were no
international terrorists based in its territory.
It needs to be recalled that the Pakistani
authorities used to take up a similar position and
deny the presence of pro-al-Qaeda international
terrorists in their territory. The investigation
into the explosions near the US embassies in
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998 showed
that some of the perpetrators had gone from
Pakistan or Afghanistan. This weakened Pakistan's
denials. The international community ultimately
found after September 11, 2001, that the planning
for these strikes in the US had been made from
Karachi and other places in Pakistan by terrorist
elements such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, whose
presence and activities in Pakistani territory
Islamabad used to deny.
B Raman
is additional secretary (retired), cabinet
secretariat, government of India, and currently
director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai,
and distinguished fellow and convener, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. E-mail:
itschen36@gmail.com.
(Copyright B Raman, 2005) |
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