Author: Md. Asadullah Khan
Publication: The Daily Star
Date: December 7, 2005
URL: http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/12/07/d512071501100.htm
Slowly, but with the cold certainty of the
fog that has descended this winter, realisation has begun to dawn. Following
the Jhalakathi killing of two judges, the suicide bombing attacks in the Gazipur
Bar Association hall room and Chittagong Court premises, killing ten including
lawyers and a police constable, have magnified a terrifying truth: driven
by hate-filled ideology, they are out to set Bangladesh civil society on fire.
As the country comes to grips with the blasts,
questions are being asked about the ruling party's soft approach towards the
extremists. Sinister and highly motivated, the followers of JMJB chief Abdur
Rahman and JMB chief Bangla Bhai are raising militancy to a pan-Islamic level.
Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of this terror worldwide is now a grainy message
on a video-tape, a prophecy of fear. The erstwhile cult has become a phantom
in the wings. Al-Qaeda is no longer a static identifiable organisation; today
it's an idea with many synonyms: it seems to have mutated into malignant units
like JMJB, JMB, and Huji in our country. The mutants are on the prowl, they
are round the corner and their unifying resentment now finds expression in
a Muslim majority country like Bangladesh. The suicide attacks that we now
watch with horror in different parts of the country are perhaps an expression
of anger, a message rather than a mission which the terrorists are willing
to die for. These faceless terrorists strike wherever they choose, as we witnessed
recently in the country, with virtually no strategic advantage to be gained.
It's true, as the LGRD Minister and Finance
Minister said recently, that there is no way that we can stop a person when
he wants to die, but surely we can strike at the root of this menacing trend
if we have been able to identify the culprits masterminding such banal attacks.
At the moment, with the law enforcers, having identified some of these suicide
bombers, their patrons and masterminds, the first priority is to track down
the associates and zero in on them.
Terrorist activities and insurgencies throughout
the world generally follow a similar historical pattern. Often a minority
group becomes visible with a spectacular attack. The militants and their acts
are plugged into long-standing grievances and enjoy a significant degree of
popular support. The administration resorts to means that are often repressive
which eliminates individual terrorist leaders without healing the wounds that
lie beneath the surface. In absence of the leaders, terrorist activities begin
to fragment and separate groups set about their own agenda. What is worse
is that these are often indiscriminate and brutal and directed against targets
with no symbolic value, and thus have limited popular legitimacy. Bangladesh
is now passing through this phase of the threat. Disillusioned youths, completely
brain-washed while they studied in Qawmi madrassahs, and then either unemployed
or dropouts are easy recruits in the suicidal war against the established
law of the country.
As everyone now knows, the global strand of
radical Islam relies on ideology, not organisation. So when the war on terrorism
destroyed the extremist bases in Afghanistan and confined Bin Laden to a series
of hiding places, it didn't derail his ideology.
In December 2001, he was reported to have
said, "My life or death is unimportant; the awakening has started."
In Bangladesh today we can see what this awakening entails.
Evil has an uncanny habit of blending with
fantasy. Adolf Hitler was unquestionably the most evil spirit of the previous
century. In his bid to create a master race in Germany, he resorted to ruthlessness
that finds no analogy in living history till this date. Osama bin Laden aroused
the subliminal passions of his chosen folks with the dream of an Islamic Utopian
State and his instrument of salvation was a doctrine of murder as obnoxious
and cruel as the Nazi "final solution." The inheritors of such evil
spirit in this country have combined dogmatic certitude with total ruthlessness
without even a touch of remorse. With the blasts rocking the country and killing
innocent people, it appears, they have neatly hijacked a conflict-ridden and
economically devastated country to make it the nerve centre of terror.
While analysing historical records we can
see that suicide bombing craze was once confined to conflict-ridden parts
of the world -- Israel, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and now Jammu and Kashmir in India
and Iraq. Since 2001, the mentors of radical Islamic thought and ideology
in our country prepared the ground and now they have successfully injected
a disturbing dimension into our lives -- fear. Suddenly nothing seems safe.
A vigilant police force blessed with sniffer dogs could conceivably unearth
planted explosives, but no drill, no advance precaution could possibly deter
fanatical terrorists willing to become human bombs. For the civilised world,
this self-destructive monstrosity breeds an unreal climate of fear born of
utter helplessness. The techniques of terror they have mastered in the remote
forest and hilly areas are now being practiced in crowded city areas, courts,
meeting venues, shrines, and fairs, where anonymity is a fact of life. In
a macabre fashion, the protagonists of this quaint ethos and ideology did
more than arouse the fear of invisible terror.
They have compromised the element of trust
on which modern societies live and flourish. These rogue elements made us
distrust our colleagues, our friends, our neighbours, our fellow passengers.
In fact every stranger. They destroyed all that was left of our innocence.
In a world polarised along rival power blocks and superpowers, the definition
of terrorism is complex and puzzling. As we have seen one man's terrorist
is another man's freedom fighter. And the followers of non-violence being
in short supply, the end was always seen to be justifying the means What is
more unfortunate, unintelligible, and sometimes uncontrollable is the flow
of funds, logistics, cannon fodder, and explosives from external sources and
through undefined and uncharted routes. As for example, LTTE in Sri Lanka
picked up its cannon fodder from Jaffna but its support network extended to
Tamil expatriates in Europe and US.
We are at such a critical juncture. It won't
mean much if we only stand united against a common enemy by shedding all differences
on party lines, but it would mean a lot if the government prompted by a sincere
will could better take into account the allegations that the patronisers of
militants exist very much within the ruling alliance, as an intelligence official,
maintaining anonymity, told a section of media recently. That means a great
sacrifice of power, privilege, political affiliations, and adherence to some
quaint beliefs that only helped a group or party to capitalise on their power
base and dragged the country to further unstable and volatile situation.
People in many countries of the world have
turned away from militancy and violence when they saw what was being done
in the name of their faith and what it did to their communities. It happened
in Egypt where a militant campaign from 1988 to 1998 ruined its economy, in
Algeria a decade-long civil war killed almost 100,000 people. Speaking more
precisely, ill-served by corrupt politicians and entrenched bureaucracy, the
vast cohort of youth population numbering about 35 million in this country
are fuming with rage. With such an explosive mix of unemployed population,
Bangladesh at the present moment has become more a cauldron than a country.
Our biggest failing has been on the education
front. Mostly struck by abysmal poverty situation and to some extent out of
keen attachment to religious values, the parents chose to send their wards
to madrassahs where these boys along with religious education would be provided
with food and shelter. But, appallingly, most of those educated in these institutions
will find themselves almost unemployable at the end of their education. That
brings to the fore the question of balanced academic curriculum that includes
math, science subjects, English, and Bangla. The government can no longer
afford to neglect or by-pass this crucial matter of bringing about academic
reform in the madrassah curriculum in the interest of peace and national prosperity.
Unless the whole education system -- both school and madrassah -- is geared
to function in a way that ensures quality as well as equality of opportunity,
it will be difficult for the nation to avert an even bigger disaster than
what we are witnessing now.
The PM in her speech in meetings at Patuakhali
and Kushtia as well as in her address to the Imams of the mosques at Osmany
Memorial Hall decried the rise of militancy and exhorted the Imams to inspire
the Muslims in the country with the peaceful images of Islam. But at the crux
of the PM's vision of a Bangladesh free of religious extremism should be the
sweeping reforms of madrassah education. It is now widely acknowledged that
unchecked mushrooming of these institutions, often affiliated to hard-line
organisations and jehadi groups, has been the major factor in the spread of
the culture of militancy. Some of the madrassahs which cater primarily to
students from underprivileged economic backgrounds have been accused of propagating
stilted versions of Islam and are prime recruiting grounds for extremist groups
such as JMB or Huji, an altered version of Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
The numbers are staggering. At the time of
liberation, Bangladesh inherited about 200 madrassahs. Today it is reported
that the number of Qawmi madrassahs running under private Madrassah Education
Board has swelled to 15,000, in addition to about 9,000 state registered ones.
As statistics reveal, the enrolment in general education between 2001-2005
rose by about 9 percent as against 10 percent in madrassah education. If smaller
mosque schools dotted all over the country where religious education is imparted
is included, the number swells to 30,000. According to some modest estimate,
some 9 lakh students are enrolled in just the larger madrassahs. Presumably,
with or without the knowledge of the government, since long some radical groups
have used the impressionable madrassah students for military interest in Afghanistan
and other conflict-ridden Muslim majority states in the absence, to a certain
extent, of employment opportunity in the country.
Most madrassahs sustain themselves on foreign
funding largely from the Middle East. Some madrassahs do not ask for government
funding only to assert their independence from official control. Making a
modest beginning during Zia's rule, the politicisation of madrassahs began
in earnest during Ershad's rule to counter the political forces opposed to
his dictatorial rule. During this time madrassahs recorded a phenomenal rise
in number. Recalling its early growth, one cannot fail to notice that Pakistan
was a centre of such growth, mostly supported by CIA to utilise them for jehad
in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
As much as in Pakistan, so also in Bangladesh
their influence on the country's body politic marked a spectacular rise because
successive governments were not strong enough to take on their street power.
And now some madrassah educated people have begun to play increasing roles
in mainstream politics with motive to destabilise the established law and
the constitution of the country. And, unfortunately, some madrassah students
turned extremists are involved in murderous activities like suicide bombing.
The measures needed to be taken up are to
reform and revise the curricula to include subjects other than religious studies,
official registration of madrassahs and their monitoring that includes regular
inspection by the high-ups, banning foreign funding, banning arms training,
if any, and to integrate the madrassahs in the general education system. The
government must understand that the spate of unrest, terrorism, violence,
killing and lastly suicide bombing in the country has some deeper roots like
inequality of opportunity, uneven distribution of wealth, lack of social consensus
on the development strategy and transparency of state business. The bombs
may have ended the lives of some people in Jhalakathi, Gazipur and Chittagong
by one or two madrassah students, but the everyday agents of violence and
killings are the country's dispossessed and disenchanted millions who are
still waiting for the equitable economic development that our national leaders
promised at the country's dawn.
Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of
physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.
