Author: A.B.Mahapatra
Publication: Newsinsight.net
Date: September 12, 2005
URL: http://www.newsinsight.net/archivefeatures/nat2.asp?recno=72
Salafi terrorism has come to Bangladesh, but
it is going unchallenged.
Despite the ascent of the most dreaded Salafi
Islami in Bangladesh which resulted in four hundred explosions in all but
one district of that country last month, Western powers lead by the US have
turned a blind eye to it. In the short term, experts say this could encourage
the Khaleeda Zia government to further her ties with Islamic terrorist groups
as a way of buying peace, and encourage their attacks on India and Indian
interests. But in the long term, at least the Salafists will overcome the
government, and realise Bangladesh in their vision of a " pure"
Islamic state. In this scenario, Bangladesh is expected to become another
Afghanistan or Rwanda within ten years, and this would make the country a
fill-blown terrorist haven. Since Osama's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited
Bangladesh in year 2000, feted by the Jamaat-e-Islami, exalted as an inspiration
for Bangladeshi youth and even serenaded in a special Friday sermon, Bin Laden's
International Islamic Front has grown deep roots in that country. Besides
the Al-Qaeda, terrorists from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya and South Asia
have made Bangladesh their hub, became of its ideal location. It shares porous
borders with India and Myanmar, has a barely monitored sea access to the Bay
of Bengal, and is at the centre of illegal arms shipments from as far away
as Cambodia. Over three hundred terrorist camps, including those of various
North East groups, are fully active in various parts of Bangladesh, with the
knowledge and connivance of central and provincial authorities. The coastal
area stretching from the port city of Chittagong through Cox's Bazar to the
Burmese border, while being a nerve centre for privacy, smuggling, arms dealing,
and gun-running, is also the stronghold of the rabid Jamaat-e-Islami, its
youth wing, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, and terrorist groups like the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen
and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islamic (HUJI). HUJI was set up from funds given
by Bin Laden, and its leader, Sheikh Farid, belongs to Chittagong. In addition
to the fundamentalist and terrorist groups, the area bordering Burma also
holds more than a lakh Muslim refugees from Myanmar's Arakan state. Known
as Rohingyas, they are blamed for some of the proliferation of arms and crime
in that area, and are also accused of links with Islamic terrorist groups
within and outside Bangladesh. In a word, Bangladesh is where Pakistan was
in the Eighties when it launched into terrorism, before being slowly consumed
by it. "Bangladesh is fast drifting the Pakistan way, and India has ignored
it for too long," said a senior South Asian diplomat. "Now India's
leverage with the present government is miniscule. The government is more
dependent on huge unaccounted donations received from Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf states, and consequently, they have a crucial say in the running of Bangladesh."
At the centre of Bangladesh's rapid and rabid Islamisation is the Rabita Trust
managed by Wael Hamza Julaidan, who the US treasury department, in the immediate
aftermath of 9/ 11, charged with associations with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.
Rabita Trust was originally established in Pakistan in 1988 to repatriate
stranded Pakistani from Bangladesh , but its composition gave its true intentions
away. The Rabita Trust included Pakistan's finance and interior ministers,
but inexplicably, the Saudi prince, Talal ibn Abdul Aziz, as well, plus secretary-generals
of the Muslim World League and International Islamic Relief Organisation,
and the president of the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce. Instead of
rehabilitating stranded Pakistanis from Bangladesh, it launched into Islamising
Bangladesh by the simple process of aiding a very poor country, and its then
military ruler, General Hussein Mohammad Ershad, willingly blessed the operation.
Bangladesh got independence through a movement and a war fought by India based
on cultural nationalism, revolving around slogans like "Sonar Bangla"
coined by nationalist Bengalis of the Sixties and Seventies. But through the
Eighties, with the spread of Islamic fundamentalism encouraged by Ershad,
who ruled between 1982-90, and declared Islam as the state religion, cultural
nationalism slowly converted to religious nationalism, and this created the
idea of "Greater Bangladesh," a larger Bangladesh entity gained
by Islamising some of the North East Indian states, but principally Assam.
In line with the "Greater Bangladesh" idea, North East states bordering
Bangladesh like Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram have shown a sudden
upturn in Bangladeshi Muslim population since the Eighties. While Bangladeshi
illegals initially come as economic refugees, they are subsequently used for
Bangladeshi state interests. They get state patronage to infiltrate into India,
but are punished if they attempt to return. Infiltrations into India are managed
from Bogra, Comilla, Maulvibazar and Rangpur mainly, and Bangladesh's Directorate
General of Force Intelligence (DGFI), the equivalent of the Pakistani ISI,
has operations along the Indo-Bangla border to monitor individuals and other
agencies involved in infiltration. Infiltration of mistreated tribals and
violated ethnic minorities also occur, ethnic cleansing over time but more
savagely now with the Zia government in power has reduced the minority population
from thirty-eight per cent in 1947 to merely six per cent now, but infiltration
of the Bangladeshi Muslim majority still tops. Even as infiltration is designed
to bring "Greater Bangladesh" closer to reality, ethnic cleansing,
spearheaded by Khaleeda Zia's ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, is meant to make
Bangladesh more purely Islamic. Since the first half of this year, more than
two hundred and forty violent incidents against minorities were reported,
and the local media and Bangladeshi intelligentsia have blamed it entirely
on the Jamaat-e-Islami. The key Jamaat-e-Islami leader involved in attacks
on minorities has been identified as the industry minister, Maulana Matiur
Rehman Nizami. The British government is on his track for masterminding the
murderous assault on UK's high commissioner to Bangladesh, Anwar A.Choudhury,
in May 2004. Nizami is also linked to the terrorist group, Jamait-ul-Mujahideen,
and India has intelligence about his connections with the Al-Qaeda. Salahuddin
Quader Choudhury is another fundamentalist leader on the international watchlist,
who is parliamentary affairs advisor to Khaleeda Zia. Quader Choudhury, who
participated in the Pakistani army genocide before the 1971 Liberation War,
has been directly linked to the huge Chittagong arms haul of April 2004, and
retains a close connection with Pakistani fundamentalist groups. He is the
main link between the Pakistan and Bangladesh Jamaat parties, and he was nominated
by Bangladesh for the post of OIC secretary general, but lost. Bangladesh's
Islamic fundamentalist elite crave for Arab/ Middle East recognition of their
Islamic identity, for whom Bangladesh is a manner of reservist state, to be
suborned in case Pakistan becomes impossible to operate in, and the growing
American presence there has begun to make things difficult. But Bangladesh
still is in the position of a client state for fundamentalist Arab sheikhdoms,
because it has not acquired the salience of Pakistan, which is grudgingly
admitted to hold in a manner the brain trust of the Muslim world. Bangladesh
is still seen in West Asia as a source of cheap labour, nearly forty-five
per cent of the population work in Arab lands, or its children are abused
for entertainment, for example, a majority of the eight-hundred South Asian
children exported for the jockey races last year came from that country. For
itinerant Arab, Pakistani and South East Asian terrorists, Bangladesh has
also become a fleshpot, and as a corollary to prostitution, there has been
an alarming increase in the number of safehouses in such areas as Sylhet,
Maulivibazar, Habibganj, Comilla, Fena and the four administrative regions.
By one count, there are three hundred safehouses in these places, and only
the Bangladeshi military intelligence exceeds the terrorist groups in ownership,
and a few belong to corrupt politicians. Into this mixture of hedonism and
terrorism, is being inserted vast doses of Salafi extremism, and in lieu of
receiving the highest Islamic grants after Pakistan in Asia, Bangladesh has
set up a huge fundamentalist infrastructure, fourteen thousand mosques in
today's date, eleven thousand madrasas have sprung up in the last seven years
alone, and just in the past three years, a staggering three thousand six hundred
madrasas have been established. Besides this infrastructure, Bangladesh has
a suspiciously large number of banks, fifty-four, for its failed economy,
and their mainstay is to launder terrorist funds received and further transmitted
through hawala networks. The banks also heavily subsidise madrasa education,
fund construction of mosques, and contribute to the Haj. Many Bangladeshi
intellectuals admit that terrorism and fundamentalism flourish in the country
because of the patronage of the state, which in turn sees it as an easy means
to keep afloat a failed nation. Not just Bangladeshi NGOs, but even the state
prefers Saudi and general Islamic funding to multilateral lending. Japan is
Bangladesh's largest donor followed by the US and EU, but diplomats said Bangladesh
is unkeen on their aid, because post-utilisation certificates have to be submitted.
Saudi funding, on the other hand, is direct to individuals, which permits
of huge leaks. Recently, the US alongwith European donors tried to pressure
the Bangladesh government against growing Islamic extremism by organising
a special conference in Washington before the Bangladesh Development Forum
(BDF) meeting. To pacify the donors, the Zia government banned two Islamist
organisations, but did not arrest the top leadership. After the donors' meeting,
she slammed them, defended the Islamists in Parliament, warned foreigners
to keep away from the country, and ensured that BDF meetings were held once
every two years thereafter. The result is few countries, apart from Saudi
Arabia and other Islamic donors, have any leverage on Bangladesh. India has
lost its levers, apart from the release of river waters, which it cannot use
as a weapon, and worse, Bangladeshi civil society has lost its voice. Indeed,
Bangladeshi society is rapidly transforming itself, the poorer sections have
been drawn to the terrorist economy, another section has been Islamised dealing
with West Asian sheikdoms or working there, and the power elite see terrorism
as a means to rule in perpetuity. Certain places in Bangladesh are becoming
Pakistan's Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Adam Khel, mastering the art of making
sophisticated weapons, and nearly one thousand two hundred illegal arms factories
using foreign components have sprung up in Jessore, Kushtia, Comilla, Maheshkali,
Chadpur, Cox's Bazar, Bogra, Feni and some parts of Dhaka such as Mirpur,
Pallabi and Gulshan. The emergence of Dhaka as a major terrorist hideout was
dramatically revealed when the BSF caught a UNLF accountant, Merienthang Jiten
Singh, during clashes with the terrorist group in the Tripura village of Bagaichara
in February this year. Merienthang alias Igno, who was the custodian of Rs
3 crore of the UNLF's funds, escaped with another militant with Rs 20 lakh,
of which Rs 15 lakh was recovered from him. The UNLF was on his track when
he was captured by the BSF. Igno said the UNLF had a massive six-room headquarter
in Dhaka, besides transit and training camps in Chotodhamai and Bhanugachi
in Sylhet. Taken together, the North East terrorist presence in Sylhet, the
West Asian fundamentalist and terrorist funding, the slide of Bangladeshi
society to extremism, and Western donors' and India's helplessness to control
this slide, something extraordinarily dangerous has erupted in the neighbourhood.
In many ways, Bangladesh is on a similar course to Pakistan in the Eighties,
and Pakistan's terrorist history appears to be repeating with Bangladesh.
