{"id":566,"date":"2018-02-02T15:34:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T15:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobanmagazine.com\/en\/?p=566"},"modified":"2018-02-12T07:41:27","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T07:41:27","slug":"political-islam-and-islamist-terrorism-in-bangladesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobanmagazine.com\/en\/2018\/02\/02\/political-islam-and-islamist-terrorism-in-bangladesh\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Islam and Islamist Terrorism in Bangladesh"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On 12 December, a 27-year old named Akayed Ullah attempted\u2014but failed\u2014to set off a pipe bomb in the New York City subway. He hailed from Bangladesh, a country that few Americans had ever heard of. While Ullah may be the one of the first Bangladeshi terrorists to make the front page of American newspapers, he may not be the last. Bangladesh may be an important source of future jihadi manpower.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Bangladeshi \u201cSuccess Story\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scholars,\u00a0commentators, and\u00a0policymakers\u00a0alike have generally held that Bangladesh is a success story of a moderate, secular, Muslim democracy; however, this view never rested on strong empirical ground. Indeed, since Bangladesh\u2019s independence from Pakistan in 1971, the durability of both secularism and democracy have been undermined by numerous military coups\u2014many of which involved multiple counter-coups before a clear \u201cvictor\u201d emerged\u2014in 1974-75, 1977-1980, 1981-82, 1996, and 2007. In January 2012, the military claimed it had thwarted another coup.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh\u2019s two mainstream political parties are known more for their rivalry, corruption, and incompetence than for governance. Since independence, Bangladesh has experienced creeping\u00a0Islamism that continues to enjoy popular support. More worrisome yet, Bangladesh is increasingly the site of Islamist violence. Between January 2005 and December 2017, some\u00a0746 people\u00a0have died in Islamist terrorist attacks, including\u00a0339\u00a0alleged terrorists; of those attacks,\u00a091 percent\u00a0have taken place since 2013. That the\u00a0Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claim many of these recent attacks\u00a0casts a pall over Bangladesh\u2019s ostensible success.<\/p>\n

Despite these troubling signs, security professionals and analysts have neglected Bangladesh. This is puzzling: Bangladesh has one of the world\u2019s largest Muslim populations with more than\u00a0141 million Muslims, in addition to another 17 million non-Muslims. Bangladesh\u2019s Muslim population is comparable to the combined populaces of\u00a0Iran (82 million),\u00a0Afghanistan (34 million), and\u00a0Saudi Arabia (29 million). But it is also one of the world\u2019s least developed countries: Bangladesh ranks\u00a0139th out of 190 countries according to the United Nations Human Development Index. Its citizens view their country as plagued by corruption, ranking\u00a0145th out of 167 countries in Transparency International\u2019s 2016 Corruption Perception Index. Bangladesh is an important provider of global security and is consistently one of the\u00a0largest contributors to United Nations Peacekeeping Missions. While not a top-tier military, its military forces are ranked\u00a057th out of 133,\u00a0using an index that considers the forces\u2019 end-strength, diversity, and number of weapons systems as measures of national power. Despite these fairly impressive figures, Bangladesh has remained ignored in scholarly and policy analytic circles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bangladesh: Between Secularism and Islamism Since 1947<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1947, the British divided the erstwhile Raj into India and Pakistan after Muslim League activists demanded a separate Muslim state by mobilizing the \u201cTwo Nation Theory,\u201d which held that Muslims could not live with security and dignity in a Hindu-dominated, democratic India. The Pakistan that emerged had two wings, East and West, separated by the expanse of India. East Pakistan was ethnically homogenous, dominated by a Bengali ethnic majority, and nearly a quarter of the population were Hindu. In contrast, West Pakistan was ethnically diverse but had less religious diversity. West Pakistan deployed political Islam to suppress ethnic aspirations in both wings of the nascent state. After enduring decades of economically extractive and discriminatory policies, Bengalis in the east launched a civil war to wrest an independent state. West Pakistan used Islamist militias under the control of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) as well as the armed forces to brutally suppress Bengali agitators. Approximately three million people died in the conflict, and millions more were displaced. Many of the perpetrators of extreme violence were associated with the JeI, which aided the Pakistani army to commit atrocities against civilians in East Pakistan. Finally, in December 1971, with Indian assistance, the Bengali freedom fighters (mukti bahini<\/em>) secured an independent Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh\u2019s government, under the political leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (\u201cMujib\u201d) and his party, the Awami League (AL), established secularism as a state principle. Mujib\u2019s government outlawed the JeI (now known as Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or BJeI) for its wartime crimes against Bengalis. The current AL Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is fulfilling a long-standing promise to prosecute BJeI activists, among others, in a\u00a0controversial war crimes tribunal<\/a>. Her government has carried out several death sentences accordingly.<\/p>\n

Over time,\u00a0the resurgent importance of Bangladeshis\u2019 personal identity as Muslim made it difficult for the government to maintain its commitment to secularism. While secularism allowed citizens to separate their identities as Bangladeshis (distinct from Bengalis in India) on the one hand and as Muslims on the other,\u00a0it did not eliminate the importance of personal faith, and openly criticizing Islam was politically unpopular. The role of Islam deepened as Mujib sought to secure the support of other Muslim countries to rebuild the war-torn country and burnish his legitimacy; however, most Muslim states saw Bengali independence as a means to destroy Pakistan and divide the Muslim world. In 1973, Mujib mustered considerable efforts during a\u00a0meeting of the Non-Alignment Movement in Algiers to obtain formal recognition and eventual support of several Arab countries. Wary of losing newfound aid from the Islamic bloc, Mujib abjured criticizing Islam aggressively and became more permissive of Islamist movements. Despite the efforts of some Bangladeshi politicians to firmly embed secularism in Bangladeshi society and systems of education,\u00a0Bangladeshis increasingly equated secularism with dishonoring Islam and tantamount to dependence upon India.<\/p>\n

Religious schools, the media, and the ubiquity of Islam in family and social life subsequently contributed to a growing consensus in support of Islam and away from secularism. As skepticism towards secularism grew \u201cpolitical parties and leaders competed with one another to be in tune with the society and its rulers, thus strengthening Islam as a factor in the power struggle in Bangladesh.\u201d Mujib was assassinated during an August 1975 military coup. Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmen became president for less than three months before a counter-coup brought Major General Ziaur Rahman (usually called Ziaur) to power in late 1975. He remained in power until 1981.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Sheikh Hasina government has bumbled in its handling <\/strong>in this emerging threat. Rather than addressing the actual international terrorist organizations in Bangladesh, Hasina has remained steadfastly interested in clinging to power at all costs. She remains focused on BJeI and her BNP rivals, and has used \u201cterrorism\u201d as an excuse to crack down on her real and imaginary political rivals and to render the country an autocracy dominated by her and her Awami League, much as her father did. While Hasina harasses and disappears her critics with an eye to capturing the 2019 elections, an array of Islamist militant organizations are organizing in her midst and preparing to fight jihads both near and far.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bangladesh\u2019s external ties to Arab Gulf states intensified under Ziaur\u2019s tenure. To establish more productive ties with Muslim states and to woo Saudi Arabia, Ziaur made crucial constitutional changes. He inserted a clause into Article 25 of the 1972 constitution that formally stated Bangladesh\u2019s solidarity with other Muslim countries. He also reversed the country\u2019s secular orientation by changing the constitution in 1977 to remove the preamble\u2019s reference to secularism in favor of the words\u00a0\u201cabsolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah.\u201d\u00a0In 1978, he founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as an alternative to the AL and promoted Bangladeshi nationalism, which was \u201cexplicitly Islamic in character,\u201d instead of the AL\u2019s secular Bengali nationalism. Between 1976 and 1979, Ziaur also legalized religious political parties and allowed the Islamists who had worked with the Pakistani Army during the liberation war to participate in government again. BJeI was able to publicly rejoin Bangladeshi politics in 1979. By the time Ziaur was assassinated in 1981, reliance on Islam to build nationalism and bolster the government\u2019s legitimacy was commonplace.<\/p>\n

General Hossain Mohammad Ershad (Ershad), Bangladesh\u2019s second military dictator, who was in power from 1982 until 1990, continued consolidating Bangladesh\u2019s ties with Muslim countries and extended Ziaur\u2019s project of embedding Islam in Bangladesh\u2019s governance. He made Islam Bangladesh\u2019s state religion and he revivified BJeI as a legitimate political actor. Ershad even appointed two BJeI war criminals to cabinet positions.<\/p>\n

In 1990 democracy returned with a BNP electoral victory. The chasm between the religious Bangladeshi nationalism propounded by the BNP and the secular Bengali nationalism espoused by the AL widened in subsequent years. Both parties boycotted parliament at different times to undermine the elected government of the competition and, when out of power, have used\u00a0hartals<\/em>\u00a0(total strikes across the country which impose enormous economic costs and often turn violent) to destabilize the other in power. Since 1990, Bangladesh\u2019s civil societies and political actors have struggled to define the role of Islam within the polity and the state, with proponents of secularism pitted against those who want to see greater formalization of Islam in state and society. Critically, with the country nearly split in its support for two parties, neither party can win an election without coalitions. This has made BJeI an important kingmaker that can extort political gains in exchange for its coalition support. Electoral politics have thus empowered the BJeI as both parties tried to align with it to augment their own political power.<\/p>\n

Three complex international developments also enabled the growth of Islamist militancy in Bangladesh. First, during the 1980s, some Bangladeshis participated\u2014and more importantly, learned to fight\u2014in the \u201cjihad\u201d to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. Returning militants brought with them their new knowledge of insurgent warfare and jihadist ideology to Bangladesh. Second, in the early 1980s, Muslim ethnic Rohingyas formed the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) in the wake of a massive military operation waged by the Myanmar military that drove some 200,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. The RSO enjoyed explicit support from the BJeI. While the size of this organization remains debated,\u00a0analysts assess that \u201csmall numbers\u201d of Rohingya militants continued to train in remote bases in Bangladesh opposite Myanmar’s Maungdaw district until the 1990s. In very limited numbers,\u00a0Rohingyas became sources of recruitment for different Islamist\u00a0militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda, detailed below. Third, Bangladesh became one of the\u00a0regional hubs which Pakistan has used to train, hide, and dispatch Islamist terror groups into India for over a decade.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Islamist Militant Milieu in Bangladesh<\/strong><\/p>\n

BJeI, Bangladesh\u2019s largest Islamist party, aims to transform Bangladesh into an Islamic country. The BJeI has attracted episodic international scrutiny since 2001 due to its deep involvement in numerous terror attacks targeting Hindus, Ahmedis, and AL and liberal activists in Bangladesh. BJeI\u2019s student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) or Jamaat-Shibir, has also been involved in these attacks.\u00a0For example, in 2015, Shibir destroyed about 50 shops in a northern village, forcing Hindu residents to flee.<\/p>\n

Another important Islamist group is the\u00a0Jagrato Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), which is closely related to the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).\u00a0(The two groups have been virtually the same since they came under the leadership of Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqur Rahman, aka \u201cBangla Bhai.\u201d) The JMB perpetrated many attacks in the early 2000s, including a shocking August 2005 attack in which the group set off 459 bombs simultaneously in 63 of Bangladesh\u2019s 64 districts to push the country into adopting Sharia law. JMB has also been linked to recent violence,\u00a0including an incident in Dinajpur at the end of 2015 in which an Italian Catholic priest was attacked.<\/p>\n

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B)\u00a0was founded in 1992 and facilitated the development of many other Islamist groups in the country. Analysts believe that HuJI-B perpetrated some of the earliest Islamist terrorist actions in Bangladesh. These include the 1993 death threats against the feminist author Taslima Nasreen, who had to leave Bangladesh after a $5,000 bounty was put on her head, and the attempts to assassinate both Shamshur Rahman, a famed secular poet, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Many of HuJI-B\u2019s members came from or were trained by foreign militants, especially fighters from the war in Afghanistan. In its early years,\u00a0Osama bin Laden funded the group.<\/p>\n

Many Rohingyas also closely collaborated with and even trained HuJI-B members in the 1990s.\u00a0HuJI-B recruited members from Rohingya communities in southeastern Bangladesh, assigning them to perform the\u00a0riskiest fighting jobs, doing tasks such as carrying equipment or removing mines. The relationship between the RSO and Bangladeshi Islamist groups like HuJI-B and the JMB ultimately proved beneficial to both sides: The JMB, for example, taught Rohingyas to build and detonate bombs, while Rohingya experts trained JMB members in the use of small arms.<\/p>\n

In addition to these Bangladeshi groups, the Pakistan-based\u00a0Lashkar-e-Taiba\u00a0(LeT) organized many terrorist attacks in both Bangladesh and India, though it is most renowned for its November 2008 assault on multiple targets in the Indian mega-city of Mumbai.\u00a0Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and the Islamic State (IS) have increased their activity in Bangladesh in recent years. IS has taken responsibility for attacks on foreigners, homosexuals, Shia, Ahmadis, Sufis, and other religious minorities, among other groups. Islamist militants have targeted secular writers and bloggers in particular, with an online \u201chit list.\u201d\u00a0Dozens of Bangladeshis, including persons of Bangladeshi extraction in the United Kingdom, have gone to fight with the Islamic State, and in April 2016, the organization\u2019s English-language magazine,\u00a0Dabiq<\/em>, offered a tribute to a Bangladeshi militant who died in Syria.<\/p>\n

In addition, AQIS has taken responsibility for several murders, including the killing of secular publishers and bloggers, at least one of whom was American. Some of these murders were committed by Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a banned Bangladeshi Islamist group that first gained attention in 2013, on behalf of AQIS.\u00a0ABT, which has also called itself Ansar al-Islam and Ansar Bangla 7, is affiliated with al-Qaeda. ,\u00a0AQIS has launched its own efforts to focus on Bangladesh and other parts of South Asia.<\/a><\/p>\n

The differences between the groups are important. Over the course of several trips to Bangladesh, I have learned that AQIS tends to recruit poorly educated young men from seminaries (madaris), whereas IS attracts better educated, affluent young men. One Bangladeshi IS recruit, who appeared in a 2016 video extolling the jihad in Bangladesh, was\u00a0Tahmid Rahman Shafi, a finalist on Bangladesh’s NTV music show in 1995. As one Bangladeshi intelligence official quipped: AQIS is your uncle\u2019s terrorist organization and lacks the flashy appeal of IS. Despite these claims by IS and AQIS,\u00a0Bangladesh\u2019s government has insisted that these groups do not have a presence in the country. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina denies the presence of AQIS and IS on Bangladeshi soil and instead alleges that the BNP and BJeI are conducting these attacks \u201cto destabilize the country.\u201d Despite Hasina\u2019s ostensibly secular reputation,\u00a0she has demurred from explicitly condemning the killing of secular activists and minorities and has even blamed the victims for provoking the terrorists with their controversial speech.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Does the Future Hold?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, to date, Bangladeshi terrorists have largely been incompetent. While there have been more than 114 terrorist attacks that can be attributed to Islamists in Bangladesh since 2000, their victim yields are low: They generally only kill one person per attack. In nearby Pakistan, terrorists routinely kill dozens of persons per attack. Moreover, until 2017,\u00a0suicide bombing was extremely uncommon in Bangladesh. This is likely why so few have bothered with Bangladesh. If Bangladeshi terrorists killed with the same lethality as their Pakistani counterparts, I suspect more Americans would be alarmed. But there is evidence that Bangladeshi terrorists are upping their game.<\/p>\n

For example, between 2005 and 2015, Bangladesh experienced only\u00a04 suicide attacks, but\u00a02017 saw as many suicide attacks\u00a0in a single year. Whereas Islamist groups in South Asia have avoided using women,\u00a0Bangladesh has suffered a spate of female suicide bombers.<\/p>\n

Then there is the burgeoning Rohingya crisis. While this is not the first time Rohingyas have flocked to Bangladesh, the scale of the human suffering and the brutality of forces in Myanmar is unprecedented. In 2005, tens of thousands of Rohingyas made their way to Bangladesh to escape the junta\u2019s violence. Even though that period was a heyday for Bangladeshi groups like the JMB and many worried that Rohingyas would join in droves, they did not. But many things have changed since 2005. For one thing, Bangladesh is clearly in the crosshairs of IS and AQIS, both of which have local collaborators in the country. Both AQIS and IS have specifically identified the Rohingyas in their media as important loci of actions. Other regional terrorist actors such as the LeT (through its various purportedly humanitarian front organizations) are also deeply involved with the Rohingya. Equally important, the Islamist militancy inside Myanmar itself that manifested itself in December 2016 was also unprecedented and enjoyed support from the Rohingya diaspora in the Gulf and elsewhere.\u00a0While the vast majority of Rohingya refugees will surely remain preoccupied with basic survival, others may find Islamist militancy to be gainful, particularly if outside actors are truly seeking to militarize the Rohingyas, as some reports suggest. For now,\u00a0the idea of the militarized Rohingyas seems to be a creation of the Myanmar government, which wants to justify the genocide it is waging against the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Sheikh Hasina government has bumbled in its handling in this emerging threat. Rather than addressing the actual international terrorist organizations in Bangladesh, Hasina has remained steadfastly interested in clinging to power at all costs. She remains focused on BJeI and her BNP rivals, and has used \u201cterrorism\u201d as an excuse to crack down on her real and imaginary political rivals and to render the country an autocracy dominated by her and her Awami League, much as her father did. While Hasina harasses and disappears her critics with an eye to capturing the 2019 elections, an array of Islamist militant organizations are organizing in her midst and preparing to fight jihads both near and far.<\/p>\n

The options for the United States are not terrific. Bangladesh would most certainly partner with the Americans to eliminate a potential terrorist.\u00a0In fact, Bangladeshi security forces have been too eager to engage in the use of force and are accused of numerous human rights violations. The Americans who interact with Bangladesh on policing and military matters, in fact, find that Bangladesh is an eager collaborator on issues pertaining to Islamist terrorism because Hasina has used this phenomenon as an excuse to eliminate her rivals as well as her critics. Where the United States is unable to get traction is on governance, democratization, and electoral transparency, as these are at odds with Hasina\u2019s own political aspirations of ruling the country unchallenged. Yet it is in these interstices where the allure of terrorism likely lies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Additional Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Who Supports Suicide Terrorism in Bangladesh? What the Data Say<\/a>,”\u00a0C. Christine Fair, Ali Hamza, Rebecca Heller, Politics and Religion, published online June 21, 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cIslamist Militancy in Bangladesh Public Awareness and Attitudes<\/a>,”\u00a0C. Christine Fair and Wahid Abdallah, RESOLVE Network Research Brief No. 4, Bangladesh Research Series September 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The article was first Published on LAWFARE<\/a>,\u00a028 January 2018<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 12 December, a 27-year old named Akayed Ullah attempted\u2014but failed\u2014to set off a pipe bomb in the New York […]<\/p>\n

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