The Talibisation of Bangladesh |
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Begum Khaleda Zia now finds
herself in a quandary. On the
one hand her right wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its
coalition
partner the Jamaat-e-Islami have pushed Bangladesh toward theocracy,
while on
the other hand United Stares and the European Union have forced her to
launch
a crackdown on the jihadists from which Bangladesh is finding it hard
to
extricate itself. For three years now, a wave of bombings,
assassinations and
religious violence has swept Bangladesh. This, in a country whose very
foundations are based on the idea that religion cannot form the basis
of
nationhood.
Another coalition partner,
the Islamic Oikya Jote is open
about its political inclinations and predilection and is well known
for its
support to the Taliban and the Al-Quaida. The party's membership
largely
duplicates that of Bangladesh's largest terrorist group the
2000-strong
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), which was founded in 1992 by Afghan
returned Bangladeshi mujahedin with orders from Osama bin Laden to
convert
the moderate Islamic state into "a nation of true believers." The
HUJI has been involved in several bombings, including two attempted
assassinations of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed in July
2000. Although the Jamaat now
projects a more tempered face, its
student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir has been behind a string of bomb
attacks
and killings. As per a TIME Magazine report ( Deadly Cargo, October
14,
2002), at gatherings during the last election campaign in 2001, Jamaat
leaders
spoke of breathing the "Islamic spirit of jihad" into the armed
forces while supporters rallied around posters of bin Laden and the
HUJI
slogan: amra sobai hobo taliban, bangla hobe afghanistan. ("We will
all
be Taliban and Bangladesh will be Afghanistan.") The Jamaat is also
the
principal force behind the stupendous growth of unlicensed madrasas,
known as
qaumi madrasas, in the last ten years. There are now an estimated
20,000 of
them in Bangladesh, of which those run by mujahedin veterans, are
known to
shelter militants and recruit fresh fighters. The Bengali speaking people
have always been united by a
common moderate culture that does not mirror South Asia's
socio-cultural
fault lines that traverse along caste, religion and race. For many
years Bangladesh
pursued an independent course in a peaceful, secular and democratic
fashion.
Traditionally, under Bengali Sufi mystical teachings, the majority
Muslim
population co-existed in harmony with the Hindus, Christians and
Buddhists.
Bangladesh had an impressive record on education and civil rights for
women. This explains why this
country was not on top of CIA's
agenda even after the September 11 terrorist attacks. But Bangladesh's
coastal hills in the south and borders with India in the north have
turned
into a heaven for Islamic militants armed by gunrunners en route from
Cambodia and southern Thailand to Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Central Asia and
the
Middle East. They find "natural allies"
in Muslim guerrillas
from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens
of
thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the
Burmese
military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Further, Bangladesh has
long been
exploited by Pakistan as a springboard for anti-Indian operations of
the ISI.
Pakistan's main target all along having been to keep India's North
East
states in a state of strategic destabilization to reduce pressures
along the
India-Pakistan border. Recent news reports (such as Bangladesh: New
base of
terror?, The Kashmir Telagraph, May 2004) indicate that hundreds of
madrassas
have begun springing up along the entire stretch of the porous
India-Bangladesh border (2,400-km). Reports also indicate that the
"maulvis" (religious teachers are mostly Pakistanis of the Wahabi
type) The original facilities date
back to 1975, making them
Asia's oldest jihadi training camps. The biggest has 26 interconnected
bunkers complete with kitchens, lecture halls, telephones and
televisions
concealed beneath a three-meter-high false forest floor that stretches
between two hills. Weapons available for training there include
AK-47s, heavy
machine guns, rifles, pistols, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
Mantraps and mines, which can be triggered by spotters hiding in tree
houses,
protect approaches to the camp. The terrorist camps have
hosted militant visitors from the
southern Philippines, Indonesia, southern Thailand, Kashmir, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Chechnya. Fighters trained and given new
identities in Bangladesh also regularly end up in Afghanistan and
Kashmir.
Even the hijackers of the ill fated Indian Airlines' plane IC814 from
Katmandu to Delhi, which was forced to land in Kandahar, reached Nepal
via
Bangladesh. In March 2002 there were
reports that bin Laden's number
two Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been hiding out in Bangladesh for
months
after arriving in Chittagong. al-Zawahiri, it was said, arrived in
Dhaka in
early March that year and stayed briefly in the compound of a local
fundamentalist leader.. He was believed to have left Bangladesh that
summer,
crossing over the eastern border into Burma with Rohingya rebels. In
September that year Bangladesh's domestic intelligence agency arrested
four
Yemenis, an Algerian, a Libyan and a Sudanese at three houses in the
district
of Uttara in Dhaka. Bangladeshi intelligence sources said they
received
information from foreign agencies that the men—Abu Nujaid of Libya,
Sadek Al
Nassami, Abu Sallam, Abu Umaiya and Abul Abbas of Yemen, Abul Ashem of
Algeria and Hassan Adam of Sudan—were involved in militant arms
training at a
madrasah in the capital run by a Saudi-backed charity, al-Haramain.
Indonesia's al-Qaeda boss Omar al-Faruq is reported to have told the
CIA that
al-Haramain was the foundation used to channel bin Laden's money to
him from
the Middle East. In fact TIME Magazine reported that two al-Haramain
foreign
offices were blacklisted by Washington in March that year—although
probably
without the knowledge of al-Haramain's headquarters in Riyadh. The government of Bangladesh
was in a denial mode till
recently. In fact, in early 2002 Zia flatly denied that there were any
"Taliban" in her government, or even in Bangladesh. In February
this year, however, the government did a volte-face. The police
announced the
arrest of scores of suspected militants in two days; they allegedly
included
several in possession of explosives and bomb-making equipment, as well
as a
professor of Arabic named Mohammed Asadullah Al Galib is believed to
have
ties with militants in the Middle East. Jama'atul Mujahideen
Bangladesh (
J.M.B.) and the (hereto unacknowledged) J.M.J.B., were accused of "a
series of murders, robberies, bomb attacks, threats and various kinds
of
terrorist acts." On February 24, 2005, the Daily Star quoted an
unnamed
government official as saying: "There are already some cases of
murder,
bomb attack and robbery filed against them with different police
stations and
they will now be tried on those charges." Police are still looking for
Azizur Rahman (also known as "Bangla Bhai" or "Bangla
brother"), the man they claim is the J.M.J.B.'s leader and who some
believe has covert government support. The security services announced
a
border alert for 20 fugitives, including Rahman. There are several reasons
for the change policy on the
part of the government. The law and order situation in Bangladesh has
deteriorated to frightening levels. Then in January this year, India
forced
the cancellation of the annual South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) summit, citing poor security in Dhaka. The main catalyst for the
crackdown however appears to
have been a donor meeting in Washington in February this year ( A
Selective
Crack-Down, Outlook Magazine, March 2, 2005). This meeting was
attended by
representatives from the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union
and the
World Bank, at which the rising tide of violence and Islamic militancy
in
Bangladesh—and ways to end it. Top of the agenda was suspension of
funds to
Bangladesh, heavily dependent on foreign aid. If foreign aid were
indeed
suspended, Bangladesh would be crippled. As one of the least developed
countries (LDCs), it virtually subsists on international funding.
Skeptics
therefore believe that the crackdown is merely an eyewash, a possible
ploy to
keep the donor countries happy. Further, the critics of the
government aren't convinced
that it's truly committed to containing militancy and prosecuting
radicals
who have been arrested. Saber Hossain Chowdhury, the spokesman for
opposition
leader Wajed, was dismissive of the government's actions as "too
little,
too late," and voices concerns that Zia's alliance with Islamic
fundamentalist groups might make it too difficult for her to control
the
forces of extremism. "The root of the problem ... lies with the ruling
alliance itself," he says. A Bangladesh defence analyst, Brigadier
General Jahangir Kabir (Retd), in an editorial opinion in the "The
Daily
Star" entitled "Policies of April 30 and Beyond" (May 03,
2004) had commented that the "Jammat-e-Islami is the real winner in
the
current situation. Instead of being in a squeeze from our pro-West
major
political parties, it is moving from strength to strength on the back
of BNP
as a free rider". Another issue, inextricably
linked to the rise of the
fundamentalist forces in Bangladesh, is that of violence towards
minorities,
which international human rights groups have extensively documented.
As early
as December 2001, an Amnesty report pointed to the large- scale
involvement
of cadres, both from the Jamaat the BNP, in the perpetration of these
hate
crimes. Among the targeted minorities are not just Hindus but also
Christians
and Buddhists. The delay, on the part of
the state, in acting against the
fundamentalists has also raised concern that violence and radical
Islam may
already have become entrenched in Bangladesh. In February this year,
as per a
TIME Magazine report ( Reining in the Radicals, Feb 28, 2005) in the
northern
town of Rangpur, police told local reporters that two arrested
militants
claimed to be part of a 15,000-strong militia aiming to "bring about
an
Islamic revolution." And al Galib—who has all along denied links with
radical forces—warned that any campaign to curb fundamentalism would
fail. He
declared, "Whether we are hanged or jailed, our
movement will continue". |
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