Bangladesh must stop being in denial on terrorist groups

Although some Bangladeshi politicians until quite recently – the home minister repeated his position on July 3, 2016 that the Holey Artisan Bakery massacre has no ISIS link – have been in a denial mode, the latest terror attack in Bangladesh has spelled out with no ambiguity that it was ISIS which was behind the killing of 22 people at the Holey Artisan cafe in Gulshan. 

For some strange reason, despite claims by ISIS, the US State Department attributed the attack to al-Qaeda. However, as the stand-off continued – within two hours of the attack – ISIS posted gruesome pictures of victims inside the cafe to “Amaq”, its media agency, and claimed it had killed 20 hostages. Interestingly, the number tallies with the official government figures.

Now is not the time to debate whether ISIS, al-Qaeda, or some purely home-grown terrorists were behind the latest attack. In view of the ongoing unresolved killings of bloggers, writers, intellectuals, non-Muslim priests, traders, and ordinary people since early 2013, one believes more than one group of terrorists and criminals – some may even have links with law enforcers – have been involved in these killings. Surprisingly, by now the police have arrested more than 10,000 “suspects” from across the country, in the name of countering terrorism. One knows the real motive of these arrests. Even the British weekly The Economist recently exposed the ill motives of the police. But the police do it with total impunity and the impunity of the protectors of law has its own impact on terrorism and anarchy.

 

Islamist terrorist groups

One cannot deny the existence of various Islamist terrorist killer groups in Bangladesh, such as the pro-ISIS Jamaat ul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), and the pro-al Qaeda Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). Again, terrorism is not a primeval cause or the “original sin”; it is a reactive force, an ideology-driven violent political alternative. 

Terrorism could be totally anarchic, and nihilistic by nature, unexplainable by any rational argument or discourse. As leading experts on terrorism have explained, suicide terrorism is a “rational behaviour”, which is often beyond the comprehension of normal people. We cannot win against terrorism unless we understand the phenomenon. 

Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims have had exposure to the Afghan Jihad, Taleban, al-Qaeda, and of late, to the ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of Bangladeshi men, and some women, may have already joined the ISIS in Syria. Marginalised and angry people from the higher echelons of society have been traditionally swelling the ranks of Islamist terrorists for the last 30-odd years. None of the 9/11 terrorists were poor, madrassa-educated people. Almost all the terrorist leaders, with a few exceptions, have been secular-educated engineers, doctors, and technocrats. 

It is no surprise that all the terrorists killed in the Gulshan attack were from secular-educated upper middle-class/rich families. This proves that terrorism isn’t a derivative of madrassa education. Instead of pretending to understand issues they don’t, politicians should learn more from their own or foreign experts. Terrorism is a complicated problem, and it is not like reading a short story by Anton Chekov or Rabindranath Tagore. It may share similarities with crime, but while criminals deny and hide their crimes terrorists brag about their acts of violence – mass killings and destruction – and often make false claims. 

So, terrorism is not a problem that can be resolved or tackled by police, or even a smart SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) Team of America, let alone the military. Terrorism isn’t a problem of law and order to be resolved by law enforcers. It is more than 90 per cent political, social, economic and psychological; only a small portion may be motivated by deviant religious ideology or practices.

Unfortunately, leaders belonging to the main political parties either deny the existence of any Islamist terror groups in the country – both the BNP and Awami League suffer from this syndrome – or, they invent some scapegoats from the opposition parties (sometimes total strangers) to implicate them in terror attacks. 

The staging of the “Joj Miah drama” by the BNP-Jamaat government in 2004 is still fresh in our memory. The police falsely implicated one Joj Miah in the infamous grenade attack on current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s rally in Dhaka on August 21, 2004, which killed 24 people and injured around 300. The innocent Joj Miah spent four years in prison. Mutual name-calling by Bangladeshi politicians is also counterproductive. 

This sort of irresponsible behaviour is divisive, and makes counter-terrorism ineffective, difficult, and farcical.

Although the PM in her latest address to the nation in the wake of the Gulshan attack did not mention the BNP-Jamaat as promoters of terrorism, yet one takes her following assertion with a grain of salt: “They’ve taken a path of terrorism after having failed to win the hearts of the people through the democratic process”. One is not sure about who are these people! Did these terrorists ever try the “democratic process” in the past? The not-so-hidden innuendo is unnecessary, and discomforting. Every subtle name-calling in this grave hour of national crisis and emergency is likely to backfire, to the detriment of effective counter-terrorism. 

 

Acknowledge the reality

At the end of the day, Bangladesh must admit that international Islamist terrorist outfits or their followers are actively engaged in killing people in the country. Most importantly, the government and people concerned must realise that poor Bangladesh cannot afford the high cost of counter-terrorism operations. It costs the United States billions of dollars, and the costs are going up all the time. 

Bangladesh must find a way to tackle terrorism at the roots, or before it even sprouts. There is a need for sustained anti-terrorism measures through a good education system, equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities, and transparent governance (if not real democracy). 

Bangladesh needs a foreign policy in conformity with the country’s geopolitical and domestic interests. Agreeing to send soldiers in support of Saudi Arabia was unnecessary. This policy could have angered various Islamist terror groups in the Middle East and beyond. Many experts at home and abroad believe Bangladesh has a foreign policy vis-a-vis India which has not served Bangladesh well. In many different ways Bangladesh’s mighty neighbour has not met the expectations of the people or reciprocated sufficiently for policies initiated by the Dhaka government.

While democracy, accountability and equality before the law have greatly dwindled in the country, the polity has already been thoroughly “Islamised” or “Arabised”. Last, but not least, terrorism isn’t all about poverty. It’s not a backlash of the poor, but a weapon of the weak. One does not doubt that they are misguided. 

Any society that promotes pre-modern values, glorifies death, not life, and provides no peaceful alternative for change and improvement becomes a safe haven for terrorism, anarchy, and nihilism. Bangladesh is far from being such a society. 

It has the potential to turn either way, towards democratic civility, or totalitarian proto-fascism. The latter promotes state-terrorism, and nurtures non-state terrorist actors under the aegis of terrorist outfits like al-Qaeda, and Islamic State.

In sum, Bangladeshi politicians, analysts, intellectuals, and media should do the following three things for the sake of durable peace and order in the country: stop denying the existence of terrorism, as there is hardly any country without terrorists or terrorist sympathisers in the post-9/11 world; fight terrorism not only with force but also through education and mass motivation; and, do not think of gaining political leverage by falsely implicating political rivals or personal adversaries as terrorist agents. Terrorists gain most in divided and fractured countries. 

 

The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University in the US. He is the author of several books, including his latest, “Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan” (Sage, 2014)