Young couples look for cover at any city park to sneak a couple of kisses. Panicked guardians cross the roads holding on to their school-going kids, as neither the city buses nor they themselves abide by the traffic rules. Office-goers wait in a huge traffic gridlock as a VVIP or a VIP motorcade passes through the intersection, adding insult to injury as they watch them drive by.
Some youths or students take to the streets to press home their demands, only to be chased by the police. Politicians continue their ugly debates on television screens. Women continue to quarrel for water in the slums. Their kids cry for food. Dhaka remains the same. Only the street dogs, whether they are living in a slum or a posh area, show any kind of change as they welcome their mating season.
Yes, Dhaka life remains as it was before the killing of a foreign national, followed by another one in northern Rangpur. But Dhaka life for foreigners has not been the same since. They were given extra security personnel at home and at work. Their movement became limited, almost only within their residences and workplaces.
They rarely go out. Most foreigners here have even stopped jogging as the Italian Cesare Tavella was gunned down while out for an evening walk following a swim. Their recreation has been limited to the foreigners’ own community clubs only. But even those are now heavily guarded. The clubs even remained closed for a few days at the end of September.
All of this started when Australia issued a travel alert for its citizens anticipating some militant attack targeting Australian interests on the day when Dhaka and Bangladesh were celebrating Eid-ul-Azha, the second largest festival for Muslims. The following day, Cricket Australia deferred the tour of its Test team, eventually postponing it to the next week. The horrific incident took place two days after the alert, when the Italian Cesare Tavella was gunned down while the chief of Cricket Australia was still in Dhaka. Then, in less than a week, Kunio Hoshi, a Japanese national was killed in a similar shootout in Rangpur.
In the meantime, the debate over IS started, which created questions regarding the presence of the world’s largest terrorist group in Bangladesh. As SITE Intelligence revealed that the IS claimed responsibility for both killings, the government, its policy-makers who always talked about a continued fight against the rise of militancy since they assumed power in 2009, and also police officials ruled out the presence of IS here.
Interestingly, this is the same police who in the last one year, on a number of occasions, had claimed success in nabbing IS personnel on Bangladesh soil.
Police chief Shahidul Haque in his latest statement denied the presence of any IS militant or network in Bangladesh. He seemed to have smelled a rat as he said SITE, which circulated the claim by IS, is run by a Jewish lady (Rita Katz). State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzman Khan also ruled out IS’s involvement in the killings and said the IS network does not exist in Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a survivor of a number of militant attacks and plots and a crusader against extremism, is also of the idea that IS links do not exists in this country.
AKM Mozammel Haque, Minister for Liberation War Affairs, however, thinks there could be individual IS militants or their sympathisers, but not any IS networks. One reason for this kind of school of thought is that there had never been any announcement from the IS hierarchy of any operation in Bangladesh, unlike the AQIS (al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent) announcement.
But the police, who are now vehemently opposed to the idea of IS’s existence here, were once proud to announce arresting one or two of so-called IS-men. The first such announcements were made when police arrested a Bangladesh-origin British citizen Samir Rahman Ibne Hamdan from Kamalapur, the country’s largest railway station, on September 28, 2014. Police at that time informed that he came to Bangladesh to recruit militants for IS and send them to Syria.
It was not clear whether the British citizen could recruit anyone and send them abroad, but in the middle of this year Mohammad Shahjahan, additional commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, had informed the press that 11 Bangladeshis left the country for Syria to join the IS. Two of them were killed in a gunfight in Pakistan.
Also, two Bangladesh-origin militants were killed by UK drone strikes although they were British citizens and none could confirm whether they had any link with Bangladesh. However, it is widely known that a Bangladesh-origin British family disappeared from Turkey on their way to London from Sylhet, and later the IS claimed that they are with them and are alright. Still, the family’s link with any of the militants or militant outfits in Bangladesh is yet to be unearthed.
On a number of occasions, the London-link of IS was discussed, although, finally, no conclusion could be drawn. But news of IS arrests did not stop. Police on June 22 this year arrested one person named Abdullah Al Galib, identified as son of a retired military officer, and DMP’s Additional Commissioner Mohammad Shahjahan claimed he was an IS-operative. Police also retrieved a video from Galib’s computer that shows 10 IS-men training. The additional commissioner had claimed that the training was videoed within the country.
In some other cases, police also claimed to nab IS personnel. The latest and biggest one was on May 25 this year when police arrested Aminul Islam, suspected by police to be the chief of IS’s Bangladesh unit.
The police, who once invited journalists to show their big catches of IS network, are now claiming that there is no IS existence in Bangladesh. However, neither the police nor the ruling party leaders are denying the presence of militant outfits for which the ministers, including the prime minister herself, point their fingers at the BNP-Jamaat alliance who had ruled the country in 2001-2006.
It is true that the militant outfits like Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), Jagroto Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), and Harkatul Jihad Bangladesh (HUJI-B) were patronised by some of the then ministers. The groups had carried out a number of grenade attacks killing a former finance minister and injuring the British high commissioner at that time.
The August 21 grenade attack on the then opposition leader, Sheikh Hasina, was also carried out by the HUJI for which now London-residing Tarique Rahman, eldest son of the then Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, as well as some of her cabinet colleagues, and top military and intelligence officers are now facing trial along with the HUJI leaders.
Khaleda Zia’s government eventually had to arrest the top JMB leaders who were later hanged to death during a military-back caretaker government. Security analysts think the militant groups still might have some links with the BNP-Jamaat allianceas claimed by Hasina. Especially, they say, the extremists should have some links with Jamaat, of which top leaders are facing trial for their crimes against humanity during the country’s war of independence in 1971. Two of its leaders have already been hanged to death and several others got the death penalty at the International Crimes Tribunal.
Their top-most leader, Ghulam Azam, died while serving imprisonment until death. Its number two Matiur Rahman Nizami’s appeal against the death penalty is now pending with the apex court. The highest court has confirmed the death penalty for Jamaat’s number three, Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, along with Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury, a top leader of the BNP.
Some suspect that the killings of the foreign nationals were a bid to foil their execution. But they also think the murders could be a mission accomplished by the militant operatives against whom the present government took a zero tolerance policy. Both the militant outfits and those who want to stop the execution should have a common goal -- ousting the present regime -- and they could come to the same platform in the dark, the analysts think.
And if that is the case, they think the government should not waste its time and energy in establishing the theory of non-existence of IS in Bangladesh and criticising the West for issuing travel alerts that they do on a regular basis. Rather, it should find the real culprits who could be IS sympathisers, if not IS operatives directly, and might have a remote link -- if not today, there may very well be a direct link tomorrow.
If someone looks at the history of the rise of militancy in Bangladesh, he or she would see the militants frequently change the names of their groups, shift from one group to another; sometimes they fight against each other also, but their main objective remains the same, and they are linked with international militant groups through themselves or via any other group.
As militant activity began in Bangladesh following the return of Mujahideens who fought against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, they always maintain international networks through Pakistan-based regional terrorist groups. So, whoever is a militant of some group or the other today in Bangladesh, it is not unlikely he may be a part of IS tomorrow, or for the group itself to be the IS unit in Bangladesh. Who does not know that any militant is, at the end, a cousin of IS?
