Tackling terror

It once again shattered the national idyll of complacency. Out there someone has been waiting for the right moment and the right place to strike. Fear has staged a comeback. And terror, with a definitive religious address, is no longer a distant memory even if the coalition government claim that they would succeed in combating terrorism in the country. The apprehension proved chillingly correct. In the morning of November 14, Mamun, 38, a member of the JMB suicide bomb squad , as reports reveal from documents found in his possession, in a deathly game snuffed out two judges in Jhalakathi by throwing a powerful bomb in the microbus they were riding to the court. Even in a country inured to selective killings, this fresh carnage caused a severe shock in public mind. It was the first time that judges, the most innocent people in the country and in no way related to filthy politics had to pay with their lives while performing their duties and upholding the values for which they were inducted into this sanctimonious service.

The fundamentalist Islamic groups operating covertly in some particular areas for the last four years, presumably with or without the knowledge of the administration, law enforcement agencies and intelligence networks who always miscalculated or underestimated their striking capability, gained from strength to strength to strike at the edifice of power. If the text of the leaflets circulated in Bangla and Arabic are anything to go by, the outlawed Islamic militant group called JMB wants "to establish Islamic rule in the country", followed by a threat that they will go for "counteroffensives against the administration should the government fail to pay heed to our warnings." The leaflet further says, "We are the soldiers of Allah. We have taken up arms for implementing Allah's law and the principle Prophet Muhammad (SM), Sahabis and heroic Mujahideen have followed for centuries." The leaflet denounced democracy, calling it a system crafted by Kafirs. It also decried the country's constitution and instead called for setting up Sura (the highest Islamic Consultative Committee) comprising Alem, Ulema, Mashaek and Islamic scholars.

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Over the last four years the JMB chief Abdur Rahman and JMJB chief Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai through meticulous planning set up organisational bases and militant training camps inside madrassahs and out in the remotest areas of the country. It relates to foreign money that came into Bangladesh since the coalition assumed power in 2001, nearly a substantial amount of which went to jehadi fund. The money, as reports reveal, came mainly from Muslim countries in the Middle East. The revelation is worrying because when large amounts of foreign money have come in the name of charitable cause of Muslim organisations, it has nearly always promoted an ugly kind of fundamentalism and terrorism. One might recall the sporadic rise of suicide bombings in the Indian part of Kashmir that leads to hundreds of deaths with each passing day. It is hard not to notice that it is the proliferation of such foreign funded madrassahs run by the radical groups that led to Islamic fundamentalism spreading in the country which earlier had the most gentle Islam.

It was these schools many of which later became recruiting grounds or training centres of those who lead the fight for establishing a quaint pattern of administration divorced from reality.

The rise of fundamentalism in its present form based on hate campaign was inevitable when Jamaat-e-Islami, the reported mentor of JMB and JMJB behind the scene, got credibility and opportunity after its two members were appointed ministers. After so much of tumultuous events in the country during the last two years where zealots had played crucial roles to destabilise the administration, the alliance between the coalition partners is so firm that religion and politics often appear as two sides of the same coin. It is worrying as to how could the government despite repeated media warnings about the cannibalistic activities of Bangla Bhai just pass it off as media threat without investigation or without asking for reports from various intelligence networks? More so, how could the intelligence agencies shut their eyes to the flow of funds from Middle East running up to crores of taka in the name of funding madrassah education and recovery of Islamic heritage sites? Neither the government nor the general public have any knowledge about the amount that slipped into Jehadi fund.

The most damaging is the impression that BNP led coalition government has failed to rise to the occasion when it so demanded and is unable to cope with the pressures of coalition politics. Starting from deteriorating law and order situation in the country, endemic corruption in all sectors, unbridled price hike of food stuff, Monga situation in the greater Rangpur area and horrendous power sector that could not add a single watt in these four years, the country is almost bleeding and heading towards a catastrophic situation.

Psychological shock waves surging out from the blast scenes are bound to interact with the nation's fragile social and political ecosystems, testing the resilience of the weak government and dealing a body blow to a sputtering economy that has yet to recover from the whirlwind of globalisation and free market. The threatening discordant notes, the behind the scene activities of a group inspired by a hate ideology that clouds the mind and sensibilities, place the country at a crossroads. From here deterioration could accelerate plunging the country into bloody violence, divorcing from the international communities and turning it into a fertile ground for a menacing rise of terrorism. If that occurs, Bangladesh could sink to the status of countries such as Congo or Indonesia where economies are chronically dysfunctional and central leadership is incapable of governing.

From the day the grisly tales of torture and cruel killing of target people by Bangla Bhai and his men came in the open giving enough indications of an unstable situation developing in the country, the government chose not to know and not to believe and consequently turned a deaf year to the steady rise of Islamist fundamentalism. Even persistent media outcry about the sinister rise of militant organisations with ulterior objective to destabilise the government could not nudge the government to take action presumably for the reason that the BNP led coalition government did not like its alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami, BNP's vote bank, to be fragmented in any way.

With bomb making materials like RDX(Royal Demolition Explosive), the most powerful explosive, seized from a courier service parcel at Rajshahi and six live bombs along with a leaflet circulated by JMB and bomb making materials allegedly smuggled into the country by Rohingya insurgents at Bandarban , it is apparent that underground terrorists actively supported and financed by extremist masterminds are still harbouring young jihadi and planning fresh attacks at the opportune moment.

Complacency is the enemy of security. If these small terrorist groups are even a tiny minority and have even not a big cache of such hazardous materials like bombs and explosives at their disposal, they don't need large number of recruits to cause enormous damage. A big obstacle in the fight against terrorism in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh is that you will be branded anti-Islam if you take on it. Some of the insiders in the cabinet have backed radicals like Bangla Bhai, Abdur Rahman and Mufti Hannan covertly not out of shared beliefs but out of realisation that they need the support of Islamic groups if they are to make further gains in power.

One way or another, the Islamic card has long been played in this country. With government moves hardly making any dent in the accelerating escalation of tension and growing rise of militancy by the jehadi groups, radical Islamic groups can often surface and spread. Clearly they are in general no longer abused, but used by the politicians and other opportunists -- even though they espouse militant jihad and the establishment of theocracy that goes against the country's constitution. While these radicals, by and large ,make up only a tiny minority of the Muslim population, their views got a boost since Sept, 2001 because of the development of seemingly unbridgeable gap between Islam and the West. Bangla Bhai, Abdur Rahman or Mufti Hannan may be petty characters , but for some they are heroes battling western hegemony.

In such a critical situation , the head of the government should make the courageous decision to discard the Islamic card. The first step is simple: all that the government has to do is state unequivocally and straightforwardly that it fully supports, upholds and commits itself to the cause if moderate Islam and that extremists are a serious threat to the future of democracy and plurality in Bangladesh. The Prime Minister needs to understand the root cause of Islamic militancy and how the doctrine of jihad is exploited to justify attacks on innocent people and then devise a strategy to curb radicalism. What is required is a clear conviction and vision of the tolerant and progressive society that Bangladesh has the potential to be. Without this, conscious citizenry fear, any steps the government takes are merely in response to international pressure. Once the pressure fades, the government will return to business as usual and radicalism will continue to fester.

Md Asadullah Khan is former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.