Get real on IS, terrorism expert tells police

Prof Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, who is now in Dhaka to attend a conference of chiefs of police of South Asia and neighbouring countries, presented the keynote paper on Sunday. The expert rejected the government’s position that the recent terror attacks, including the Gulshan Holey Artisan Bakery attack on July 1 last year, were carried out by banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). “The Holey Artisan attack was mounted by Islamic State (IS), influenced by the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria,” the professor said. “But unfortunately Bangladeshi police leadership did not came out with the truth. “If you do not address it, the situation may cause problems in the country in the coming days,” he said, adding that identifying the problem was half of the solution. About four hours into the Gulshan attack, ISIS mouthpiece Amaq claimed its supporters had attacked the restaurant. From Sept 2015 to August 2016, the group took credit for 26 attacks across Bangladesh in which 45 people were killed. “These groups committing terrorism in Bangladesh were JMB in the past, but now they are influenced by ISIS,” Gunaratna said. “The terrorists of today are different from the terrorists of the past. In the past, they wanted to kidnap people, take hostages and negotiate with the government,”  Gunaratna said. “But the terrorists at Holey Artisan did not want to kidnap or negotiate. Then why did you wait 12 hours to respond? Response should have been immediate,” he said. The expert suggested creating a force with special operation capabilities to respond in the shortest period of time in such incidents. According to him, there were three phases in the Holey Artisan attack. First phase was “hurting and slaughtering” where people were killed in the first 15 minutes. The second phase was “human shield phase” where they sent out photographs and the third phase was “showdown phase” when terrorists showed they wanted to die.