07 October 2016
Sheikh Hasina and her Government have been battling jihadis within and outside the political system. The Prime Minister’s determination to stamp out extremism has been hailed by world leaders, including India
Ever since the massacre of 22 people, 17 of them non-Muslim foreigners, at the Gulshan café by home-grown Islamic terrorists of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh (JMB), Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Government have made significant headway in their fight against terror by eliminating the Canadian-born mastermind Tamim Chowdhury and six of his trusted lieutenants responsible for the most heinous crime committed in the name of jihad in Bangladesh’s history. In four successive raids, her security forces swooped on the secret hideouts of the jihadis, killing six of them and arresting seven, including three females. This was a serious blow to the JMB terror group’s plan to execute more Gulshan-like-mayhem.
The purpose of carrying out mass killings similar to that of Gulshan was to create an anarchic situation which would sap the Government’s morale and the people’s faith in Sheikh Hasina’s ability to govern, triggering popular unrest and lawlessness. In such a situation, it would be easier for the terror groups to make a determined bid for power.
Sheikh Hasina took the challenge of the JMB and other Islamic terror groups to dislodge her democratically elected Government from power and worked with single-minded devotion for their extermination. She strengthened her Government’s anti-terror apparatus, especially the intelligence wing, to ensure that anti-terror squads got timely and correct information on terror outfits and their leaders,their hideouts and their plans and programmes. This strategy paid immediate dividend with information pouring in on Tamim and his Islamic Canadian and other jihadi connection. The Gulshan killing had so outraged the Bangladeshi sentiment that people spontaneously provided tip-offs and information on the jihadis.
Hailing from a Jamaat family of Sylhet, Tamim’s grandfather was a razakar during the liberation war, and chairman of a local peace committee whose objective was to fight against the disintegration of Pakistan and the birth of a Bengali nation. His father, realising that the birth of Bangladesh was imminent, migrated to Canada just before liberation. Tamim’s family settled in Windsor, which still has a sizeable Pakistani population. Quite a few Canadian Pakistanis of Windsor in recent years have joined the Islamic State (IS) and gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for the cause of ‘Khilafat’. Tamim did his chemistry honours from Windsor University in 2011. Thereafter he got radicalised by visiting Pakistani mullahs.
Soon he came under the scanner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and left for Syria en route to Bangladesh.
He was assigned by the IS to go to Dhaka for revamping and reviving the JMB, especially to re-activate its inactive armed cadres. He was tasked by the IS to set upjihadi bases both in Bangladesh and in India, especially in West Bengal. The IS made him the ‘Emir of Bangladesh’ and re-christened him as Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif. He recruited youths from rich and educated families and also mid-level retired and cashiered military officers, to give arms training to new recruits. This is borne out by the fact that Tamim’s second-in- command was a Army Major sacked for an attempted coup.
What kind of goal the IS had set for Tamim before despatching him to Bangladesh gets reflected in a rare interview in which he says, “It is not the methodology of the Khilafat soldiers to send mere threats to enemies of Allah. Rather, we let our action do the talking. Our soldiers are sharpening their knives to slaughter the atheists and apostates of the region.” Then he calls upon the men of the country’s security forces “to quit their jobs” as they should not be the slaves of non-believers. Or else, his people “shall slaughter them one by one”.
Tamim castigated the Jamaat-e-Islam for its failure to establish the laws of Allah. To do that, he says, Bangladesh has to be converted into a full-fledgedjihadi base from where guerrilla attacks will be conducted deep inside India and Myanmar. It was with this end in view he crossed over to West Bengal’s Murshidabad and Malda districts several times in 2014 to create a safe haven for the JMB jihadis fleeing from the Bangladesh security forces dragnet.Tamim also visited some of West Bengal’s interior districts like Birbhum and Burdwan to create Indianjihadi cells. It was after his visit to Burdwan that the Khagragarh blasts took place.
Sheikh Hasina’s anti-jihad operation has been lauded by almost all countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE, but except by Pakistan and Turkey. Visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry praised the Prime Minister’s handling ofjihadi terror and promised American help to fight the menace.
It would be naïve to expect that, with the elimination of top JMB leaders and the hanging of senior Jamaat leaders, the days ofjihadi politics in Bangladesh is over. This will not happen until and unless the Jamaat’s sources of funds is totally blocked. The jihadis are recruited through the promise of huge sums, besides the lure of heaven with houris. That jihadis still attract a section of the population, is borne out by the fact that 800jihadis bailed out by courts have gone underground and eight Dhaka University students have been expelled for their links with a banned militant outfit.
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