Jane's Review report

FOREIGN REPORT - JANUARY 26, 2005
Terrorism in Bangladesh

BANGLADESH is one of the poorest countries on earth, on the brink of being a failed state. And that makes it a perfect target for Al-Qaeda and its ever-expanding network of Islamic extremist organisations. The overwhelming majority of Bangladesh's 130 million are Muslim, which certainly helps.Virtually unnoticed by the world at large, Bangladesh is being dragged into the global war on terrorists by becoming a sanctuary for them.

US officials say they are "looking closely" at Bangladesh as Islamic organisations proliferate amid political violence that has flared since bitterly contested parliamentary elections in October 2001. These were won by a four-party coalition headed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). It includes three religious extremist parties, which are staunch supporters of Islamic fundamentalism.

Neighbouring India, which has had turbulent relations with Bangladesh since it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, alleges that there are 195 camps in Bangladesh where guerrillas seeking autonomy or independent statehood in north-eastern India are being trained. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's government in Bangladesh has repeatedly denied it supports anti-Indian militants or allows Islamic organisations, some of them linked to Al-Qaeda, to flourish. Given the BNP's reliance on its Islamic partners, that position is to be expected. The US and its Western allies are gradually waking up to the potentially explosive situation developing in Bangladesh, which former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League, the main opposition party, calls the "Talibanisation" of Bangladeshi society.

Hasina narrowly escaped an attempt to assassinate her in the centre of Dhaka in August 2004. Twenty people were killed when unidentified assailants attacked her motorcade with automatic weapons and grenades. Britain's
diplomatic envoy, Bangladesh-born Anwar Choudhury, was wounded in the legs in a bomb explosion in Sulhet last May. Two men were killed and some 60 people wounded. The shrine had been bombed in January, wounding about 50 people.

New haven
In December 2003, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) reported that Bangladesh appeared to be emerging as a haven for Islamic extremists in South Asia, pointing to collusion with Al-Qaeda and indicating that the Dhaka government was unwilling to crack down on terrorism. The CSIS report said: "There have been a number of serious terrorist attacks on cultural groups and recreational facilities in Bangladesh. And the > political party in power has routinely blamed the opposition party for such criminal activities, rather than finding out the real perpetrators of the violence." It linked the violence to Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and Shahdat ul-Hiqma, two radical Islamic organisations.

The report had been prepared in July 2003, and only came to light after the Canadian Press news agency obtained a copy of the document. Bangladeshi Islamists have had undisputed links to Osama bin Laden since the late 1990s, when the Saudi renegade returned to Afghanistan from Sudan and established Al-Qaeda. Fazlur Rahman, representing the "jihad movement of Bangladesh", was one of the five s ignatories of Bin Laden's 23 February 1998 call for "jihad against the Jews and Crusaders".

One of the groups that comprise the Bangladeshi movement is Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (Movement of Islamic Holy War, or HuJI), one of the fastest growing fundamentalist organisations in the country and designated a terrorist organisation by the US.

According to Arab intelligence sources, Islamic zealots from across Asia, including India, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Afghanistan and the Philippines, undergo military training in Bangladesh or seek refuge there from their home governments, many under the protection of HuJI. Its slogan is "We will all be Taliban and Bangladesh will be Afghanistan" and it has a history of attacking secular and liberal intellectuals, writers and journalists it considers to be anti-Islam. In late 2001, as US-led forces attacked Afghanistan, fleeing Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters found refuge with HuJI in Bangladesh. In December 2001, some 150 of these men arrived in the port of Chittagong in southern Bangladesh aboard a freighter named the Mecca.

So far, the Islamic militants gathering in Bangladesh remain a threat rather than a clear and present danger. But they pose a more immediate threat elsewhere in Asia, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Weapons and explosives are shipped in through Chittagong and nearby Cox's Bazaar, according to intelligence sources.

India, in particular, feels threatened. It has a porous 4,100 km border with Bangladesh and hence alleges that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) oversees the training of large numbers of fighters for the separatist insurgencies that have raged in the north-east for decades, notably in the Indian states of Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

HuJI is now reported to have bases in north-eastern India, in what seems to be an intensification of the extremists' penetration of India. Continuing pressure on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly in the northern tribal badlands of Waziristan, makes Bangladesh a convenient
bolt-hole for jihadists.

Our prediction: Expect more trouble from Bangladesh.
 

Source: www.janes.com