The elephant in the room

It started almost a year ago. Last September, three men in a motorcycle shot an Italian aid-worker, Cesare Tavella, from a very close distance in the high-security diplomatic zone of the country, and fled the scene subsequently without facing any challenge from any of the security agencies. For the first time in country’s history, Islamic State claimed an attack in Bangladesh. The government agencies that paraded dozens of men in front of the media as the local coordinators of IS prior to the attack, opted for a continuous denial on the presence of IS militants in Bangladesh just after the attack. Government officials, rank and file, put the blame on some opposition party men, and eventually the law enforcers put ahead “the Big Brother theory” according to which, a BNP leader ordered some individuals to carry out an attack on any foreign national, with a view to destabilise the government. However, these theories failed to satisfy the US Director of National Intelligence, James R Clapper. The intelligence chief of the US questioned Bangladesh’s public insistence that the killings of foreigners was the work of the BNP and Jamaat, and were intended to discredit the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. On the other hand, the massacre continued. The immediate next victim was a Japanese farmer in Rangpur, Kunio Hoshi, who was killed similarly. IS was prompt to claim the attack despite the government’s denial that the militant outfit doesn’t exist in Bangladesh. After the death of Kunio Hoshi, IS has claimed about two dozen attacks in Bangladesh, including the horrible Gulshan attack. The Gulshan attack opened many eyes not only because the brutality was beyond imagination, but also for the selection of place for the attack, which was inside the high-security diplomatic zone of the country. Two times in less than a year, miscreants acknowledged by IS as their fighters managed to intercept the security system of the diplomatic zone of the country, and claimed more than 20 lives, including one and half dozen foreign nationals. From the very beginning, the government decided to deny, and tried to put the blame either on BNP-Jamaat, or on banned militant outfits like JMB. Even before the submission of any charge sheet, cabinet ministers were found terming these attacks as a part of a conspiracy to discredit the country’s government. They even blamed Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group, who was circulating the news of IS involvement in Bangladesh attacks for spreading fake news without proper verification. In rebuttal, Rita Katz denied any doubt on the authenticity of the reports in an official statement, asked the government of Bangladesh to rather face the truth, and focus its aggression on its real enemy, IS, not on those who warn them about it. Among the visible measures taken by the government, the rounding up of thousands of people from across the country in an anti-terror campaign this June, created a buzz in the nation that ended up as a campaign of mass arbitrary detention of mostly opposition activists and petty criminals. The Gulshan attack that followed that anti-militant campaign proved how effective it was in reality. So far, even after the ghastly attack in the capital, the actions from government high-ups could not be considered as enough. Though the militants inside the restaurant slaughtered 20 people during the siege, and had it circulated in a news agency known to have affiliation with IS, and IS released photographs of the five militants who took part in the attack, Bangladesh’s home minister blatantly denied any connection of IS with the incident. The inspector general of police had promptly claimed that the militants who died in the attack were Akash, Bikash, Don, Badhon, and Ripon, and police was searching for them. None of the names matched with the real names of the militants. Moreover, after the attack, police sent five photographs of militants with the name of the deceased to the media outlets where a chef of the restaurant was identified as Akash, a suspected militant according to police. Even if the claim were true, how did militants on the run get access into the diplomatic zone of the country? Moreover, why -- despite all the warnings -- was the government unable to anticipate something of this sort? What made the government disbelieve the warnings? Should the government revise its plans to contain militancy in Bangladesh? The Gulshan attack has left us with many such questions that need answers immediately.