Author:
Publication: Town Hall
Date:
URL: http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200112/FOR20011206c.shtml
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com)
- As speculation mounts about possible future targets in the U.S. campaign
against terrorism, one country that has not generally been placed in this
category is Bangladesh, although Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has
been active there.
Regional analysts say the links
run both ways - bin Laden has helped militants organize in Bangladesh,
and Bangladeshi militants have trained and fought in Afghanistan.
A recent change of government in
Dhaka expanded the influence of fundamentalists in parliament, raising
concerns newly-installed Prime Minister Khaleda Zia - who won the October
election by a landslide with the help of Islamic fundamentalist allies
- may fail to tackle militants effectively.
Dhaka has seen street protests in
support of the Taliban virtually every week since the U.S.-led bombardment
of Afghanistan began. Muslims have targeted minority Hindus for attack,
because they see the Hindus as associated with the West.
According to Indian strategic affairs
analyst Dr. Subhash Kapila, al-Qaeda has its "tentacles" in Bangladesh.
"These tentacles provided bases
for bin Laden's plans" to bomb the U.S. embassy in the Indian capital,
New Delhi last summer, Kapila said this week.
In June, Indian police arrested
two Indians and a Sudanese national whom they said admitted planning to
bomb American embassies in New Delhi and Dhaka, under instructions from
bin Laden.
Warning signs have been evident
for some time.
A Bangladeshi militant leader, Abdul
Salam Muhammad (Fazlur Rahman), was one of just five men to sign bin Laden's
February 1998 fatwa declaring war against America and Israel, and declaring
the formation of the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the
Jews and Crusaders.
(The others were bin Laden himself,
Zawahiri, Rifai Ahmed Taha of the Egyptian Islamic Group, and Mir Hamzah
of Pakistan's Jamiat-ul-Ulema.)
In March 2000, President Clinton
became the first American leader to visit Bangladesh since the country
won independence in 1971. A bomb exploded outside a hotel where a U.S.
advance team was staying shortly before the visit began.
During the brief visit, Clinton
canceled a planned trip to a village named Joypura, 60 miles from Dhaka,
for "security reasons." A White House statement issued in New Delhi cited
the risks of flying over dense, unguarded forests and rice paddies, but
reports quoting U.S. officials said a specific threat had come from bin
Laden or terrorists linked to him.
In August 2000, Bangladeshi authorities
uncovered a plot to assassinate then Prime aMinister Sheikh Hasina at a
public rally. Bangladeshi police maintained that terrorists trained in
Afghanistan had planted a bomb.
'Bangladeshi Taliban'
It's generally accepted that the
return to power of Prime Minister Zia has boosted Islamists in Bangladesh.
Two of her junior coalition partners, Jamaat-i-Islami and the Islam Unity
Council, are viewed as having pro-Taliban sympathies. Two Jamaat lawmakers
are in the new cabinet.
Under Zia's former tenure - which
ended in 1996 - Bangladesh "encouraged and allowed a large number of volunteers"
to fight in Islamic struggles in Afghanistan and Kashmir, according to
India's Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), which researches terrorism.
"A large number of these extremists
are now present in Bangladesh and are spreading the Islamic fundamentalist
movement in Bangladesh, which has extensive connections with ... al-Qaeda."
The ICM names Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam
as one group in Bangladesh allied to bin Laden, and says its members style
themselves as the "Bangladeshi Taliban."
It says the organization, which
boasts an estimated 15,000 activists, was established with the help of
bin Laden in 1992. It runs at least six camps in the hilly Chattagong area,
where cadres are trained in weapons use.
"Several hundred recruits have also
been trained in various training camps of Afghanistan."
Members in 1999 were accused of
attempting to kill a renowned poet, Shamsur Rahman, as part of a plot to
kill at least 28 prominent Bangladeshi intellectuals.
Perhaps surprisingly, Bangladesh
has not featured in the State Department's last six annual reports on global
terrorism for 2000.
But according to ICM director, Dr.
Ajai Sahni, countries like Bangladesh are areas of "potential" rather than
"imminent" terrorist threat.
Sahni said by phone from New Delhi
Thursday that al-Qaeda had since the mid-1990s gradually and systematically
developed "affiliates" in Bangladesh.
But up to now the focus had been
on recruitment and mobilization, rather than on terrorism itself, he added.
"The situation will require attention,
but not the sort of attention that's been directed at Afghanistan. In the
post-Afghanistan [conflict] era, attention will have to be directed at
organizations in Pakistan, in Kashmir and thereafter in these other areas
where [fundamentalism has taken root] over well over a decade and a half."
Sahni expressed some optimism that
the defeat of the Taliban - and especially the way in which it was happening,
with fighters fleeing rather than dying in glory - may have the effect
of demoralizing Muslim extremists throughout the region.
"It's a body blow to the Islamist
ideology at large," he said of events in Afghanistan.
Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority
country roughly the size of Illinois, but with a population roughly half
the size of that of the United States. Its short history has been marred
by coups, assassinations and political turmoil as well as natural disasters
of epic proportions.
