Terrorist Intent Against Bangladesh

 Strategic threat assessments are based on calculations of capability coupled with intent, which eventually results in threat. Herein, it is important to note that intent may not be known before an actual event but even a rudimentary object/equipment can be perceived as capability. In other words, violent religious extremism differs from previous ideological challenges in that violent religious ideology is decentralized and amorphous.[1] In this context, religious terrorism, using violence in the name of religious ideologies, has seen a sharp rise, which in all its manifestations has become one of the most serious security challenges currently confronting Bangladesh.[2] Compared to other South Asian states, terrorism in Bangladesh is argued to be comparatively recent and is a largely homegrown phenomenon. In recent times, a number of militant groups have established their presence through violent acts of terrorism in Bangladesh.

According to Bangladesh’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the intent of the terrorist is to destabilise Bangladesh. This destabilization effort includes at least 45 attacks since September 2015, with Islamic State (IS) claiming responsibility for at least 10 of them.[3] The atrocities include the murder of several foreign visitors, the murder of a police constable, the bombing of an Ahmadi Muslim mosque, a murderous attack on a Shiite mosque, the shooting of a Sufi Muslim shrine chief, and an attempt to slit the throat of a Christian pastor. The earlier machete slayings of atheist bloggers, and other attacks on members of minority Muslim groups, are seen by some as linked to the same deadly campaign. The recent deportation of 26 Bangladeshi diaspora  overseas also shows the effect of violent ideologies among the Bangladeshis.[4]The most recent case of terrorist violence in Bangladesh is the hacking to death of a Sufi spiritual leader in Rajashahi district on 8 May 2016.

All these violent incidents, deportations have highlighted terrorism in Bangladesh in the recent past. Conversely, Bangladesh hardly attracted much of Western attention when it came to terrorism in South Asia. As such, it has been argued that many important issues related to radicalism and terrorism emanating out of Bangladesh have been overlooked. For instance, when Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa on 23 February 1999 that called for a jihad against “the Jews and Crusaders”, the fatwa was endorsed by FazlulRahman, leader of the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), commonly identified as “the Amir of Jihadi movement in Banlgadesh”, a fact that was overlooked. Similarly, Bangladesh’s terrorist connection to South Southeast Asia, viz. Hambali of Jemaah Islamiya (JI), the organiser of the 2002 Bali night club bombings shifting JI elements to Bangladesh has been argued to be largely overlooked.[5] Such ignorance has not only resulted in an atmosphere, conducive for a process of violent radicalisation in Bangladesh overtime but is also perceived to be spawning trouble for the region.

In retrospect, though there had been no major terrorism related violence emanating out of Bangladesh, in the recent times,Bangladesh has witnessed the rise of violent extremism since the 2013 killing of a ‘secularlist’ blogger by Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a local proxy of al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent.[6] Since then, Bangladesh has regularly witnessed terrorism in the form of targeted assassinations. Outbidding amongst the Islamist terrorist groups and their splinter cells operating in Bangladesh to get recognition from global terrorist organisations such as Islamic State (IS) has been one of the main reasons attributed to the increasing terrorist attacks in Bangladesh.Additionally, it is only after Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader, in February 2015, called upon the people of Bangladesh to ‘launch a massive public uprising in defence of Islam against the enemies of Islam’ that terrorist activity began to spike.[7]

According to a study carried out by Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) in 2011 on ‘The State of Terrorism in Bangladesh’, some of the main intentions of terrorism in Bangladesh is to “threaten people in the short term…capture political power of the country in long term…disturb the people and government…and demolish democracy and establish Saudi system of governance.”[8]Wave of recent terrorist violence including a series of bomb attacks on mosques and temples, killing of foreign citizens, temple priest to name a few have been claimed to be carried out by IS with a caveat of intensifying its violence in Bangladesh. Though the Bangladesh government refutes IS having any significance in the country, such radical terrorist violence has been found to be destabilising the Bangladeshi society. In this context, it is important to note that the Shiite minority is fearful of violence given IS’s terror for high-casualty violence.

Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh also intends to establish sha’riahbased judiciary in the country since they do not believe in secular laws. In this context, it is important to state that although Bangladesh’s mainstream Islamic political parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) though not proven to have any associations, or even the most distant link, with the country’s banned militant groups, analysts have argued that Jamt-ulMujihid Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Harkatul Juhad (HuJI) have been the militant arm of JI;who overtly denounce the constitution of Bangladesh and seek to replace democracy and secularism with a governing construct based on Sharia Law.[9]

The recent instances of terrorist violence in Bangladesh have elicited heightened concern both in Bangladesh itself and abroad about the hitherto underestimated capacity of terrorism in Bangladesh. Such resurgence of terrorist violence has instilled fears of more widespread religious radicalisation in Bangladesh. It is immaterial whether such trend materializes into violent terrorist activity or not but there is a growing concern for potential of radical extremists supplanting traditional moderate cultural and religious practices based on liberal Sufi philosophy and Hanafi jurisprudence with more rigid ones derived from the Hanbali school of Islam, prevalent in West Asia.[10] The recent string of terrorist targeted assassinations have highlighted the fact that militant groups in Bangladesh have attempted to manipulate religious radicalisation to incite hatred and violence against minorities and impose social mores and norms that challenge traditional Bengali culture.

Analysts are of the view that transformation of traditional Bengali cultural practices and regionally informed religious customs with a more rigid interpretation of Islam has taken place in Bangladesh. The tragedy in Bangladesh, which has been highlighted with growing instances of terrorist attacks is that, instead of being influenced by the practice of Islam in Southeast Asia, which is derived from the same Sufistic tradition as Islam in Bengal, in the recent past, Bangladeshi Muslims are argued to be increasingly adopting the Wahabbi brand of Islam, which has resulted in religious practices, dress codes, and even languages being increasingly shaped by stricter Wahabbi codes. Though Bangladesh has adopted a “zero-tolerance” counter-terrorism approach, the process of Islamisation is found to be taking place at the grassroots levels, influenced by those returning from Afghanistan, and the Arab world and the unsupervised flow of resources towards religious and charitable institutions with local imams reasserting their authority through ‘fatwas’ often resulting in violent punishment for the accused have become all commonplace in contemporary Bangladesh. Such progression of the Bangladeshi society is the main intent of terrorist violence in Bangladesh.