Posted on 06/17/2023 1:00:44 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Though Bangladesh's incumbent Awami League Government is taking strong action, Sheikh Hasina has a very serious challenge on her hands
On the face of it, any talk of Islamist terrorism posing a threat to Bangladesh or the latter becoming a global staging ground for it appears absurd. Things have been improving since the savage terrorist strike at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka on July 1, 2016, which left 20 persons (guests at the eatery), all five of the terrorists, two police officers and two members of the bakery’s staff, dead. According to South Asia Terrorist Portal’s Datasheet Bangladesh, from 132 in 2016, the number of deaths -- why is this year was this girlincluding those of civilians, members of security forces and terrorists -- from terrorism-related incidents declined to one in 2021 before rising to 18 in 2022 and 53 until June 11, 2023.
Though representing a rising trend, the figures since 2022 are lower than that in 2016. This has resulted from strong action taken by Bangladesh’s present Awami League government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In its Bangladesh Mutual Evaluation Report, October 2016, the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) says, “Bangladesh has made significant progress since the last Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) in 2009, reflecting political commitment and leadership on AML (Anti-Money Laundering) /CFT (Countering Financing of Terrorism).” It states, “Inter-agency work to assess TF (Terror Funding) risks shows strengths, but more work is needed to assess foreign TF threats, to further assess ML”. It also says that at operational levels “coordination and cooperation occur to a varying degree although recent reforms have sought to address identified issues, particularly between law enforcement agencies (LEAs).”
The Bangladesh government’s efforts to cleanse the educational institutions of those aligned with Islamist terrorist groups have been successful in some measure. It needs to be continued and extended to other areas. In Dr Abdul Gafur, Memorial Lecture titled Bangladesh Moulabader Arthaniti (The Economics of Fundamentalism in Bangladesh), delivered on May 21, 2005, Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University stated that fundamentalists used their political and economic power to place militant and communally-oriented members in strategic locations in government and NGOs. The ill-disguised military dictatorships of Zia-ur Rahman and HM Ershad that promoted Islamist fundamentalism during their and their proxies’ rule from 1975 to 1991, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s government with Begum Khaleda Zia as prime minister, which came to power in 1991 with the support of the fundamentalist Jama’at-e-Islami Bangladesh (now reincarnated as Bangladesh Jamaat-Islami), filled the administration with their supporters as well those of the fundamentalist Islamists they courted. It was the same with the BNP-Jama’at coalition government that ruled Bangladesh from 2001 to 2006. These elements have to be wrinkled out.
Since the 2016 attack, efforts by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit, as well as Rapid Action Battalion’s (RAB) campaign in the countryside, has led to the liquidation of several terrorists and terrorist hideouts. The former, particularly, has been building up special counter-terrorism expertise. Intelligence gathering has improved. There, however, is still considerable scope for improvement.
In Bangladesh, its criticality has been enhanced by three factors. First, terrorist outfits remain. The latest to emerge is the Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya (JAFHS), formed by former members of three banned militant organizations: Ansar Al Islam, Neo-Jama’at-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh, and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh. The group, active since 2017, adopted its current name in 2019. It has been forging links with other terrorist organisations since then. In February 2023, RAB arrested 17 personnel of the JAFHS and three members of the Kuki-Chin National Front and recovered rifles, bomb-making equipment and other weapons.
Second, Islamist terrorists have been using the Internet and social media to win recruits and spread their fundamentalist doctrines. Bangladesh had 35 lakh Internet users in 2008. According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, the number was 12.61 crore in March 2023. A report in Prothom Alo cites a report released by Facebook’s parent company Meta stating that at least two billion people in Bangladesh logged into Facebook at least once a day during December 2022.
Third, a keen watch has to be kept on the camps of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, particularly those close to Teknaf, the river that constitutes the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. As Eric Hoffer’s insightful work, The True Believer, shows, criminals often tend to join fundamentalist mass movements in search of redemption and honourable images. According to reports, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation has cooperated with the JMB on weapons and explosives training.
Finally, the fight against Islamist terrorism is fundamentally ideological. Hence, besides cleansing educational bodies, it is important to establish firm governmental control over the quality of madrasas which teach around 1.4 million students in Bangladesh. Many of these have been set up by the Jama’at and its front organisations and are the breeding grounds of terrorists.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
Islam is the religion of peace! /s
is it making a comeback ? ....like bell bottom pants ?
A student assistant at the library was from India. She disdainfully viewed the Muslims and said they once promised to stop killing and terrorizing people in India if they could just get East and West Pakistan and live there as Muslims and never bother anyone again.
Then came “just give us Bangladesh and have pity on our refugees and we’ll never bother you again.” And George Harrison’s concert raised money, which she said we naively wrong to do.
One funny thing she told me. There was a US terrorist incident and I said people were angry.
She said “You don’t know what anger is. In India we handle it much better.
We had a bus recently with Muslims burning all the people inside alive. The next day people pulled Muslims out of cars and trains and beat them to death. That is anger. Americans are peaceful compared to us.”
Do you mean boot cut... or elephant bells?
.. hip huggers? not enough info in your question..
but I'll try to do the best I can...
Covid is like elephant bells popular among the stoners and dweebs..
where as terrorism is coming back more like straight cut ...
for folks who like the comfortable stiff feeling of conformity. Like straight cut jeans , terrorism offers the plain, inconspicuous cover for a plethora of situations and comes in many sizes.
Need to panic a population ... or just cause a little anxiety among a few. Terrorism can be adjusted on the fly to suit your needs.The
fall back of convenience until a better crises can be had.
Personally I prefer boot cut...
made for work, made with movement and effort in mind.
Made to preform in many environments.
Not sure if this answers your question or not ...
but can you believe ...
two billion people in Bangladesh logged into Facebook at least once a day
I think I see part of their problem
Will have to read a bit of history to learn how exactly Pakistan got armed with nuclear weapons.
EAST Pakistan. A s hole is a s hole is a s hole because s hole people like living i s holes
Soooo, the shithole is more of a shithole?
Pity poor India. They thought they were getting shut of a querulous and muleish minority when they carved up their own country and gave the Muhammadans their own homelands for self-rule. Not only did all the Muhammadans not quit the country, the ones who did have shown previous little gratitude to the Indians for the sacrifice.
6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,[a]
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward[b] all his brothers.”
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen[c] the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi[d]; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
...and sales of the Bush Dynasty's favorite jeans Carhart are turning a great profit thanks to the the textile fabricators in Vietnam, I even have Carhart seat covers on my truck, but sales of Boeing 737/767's is down worldwide when they found out the US military can tap in and fly it like a drone (true story)
which closed the book on "US terrorism"( for now)
“they found out the US military can tap in and fly it like a drone”
Is that for real?
I never thought of that.... cars ...electricity ... why not military plans we sell the world ?
Won’t it be great when we own noting and can be happy ..?
YES 100% true
some people think flight 93 managed to shut off the sleeping gas to the cockpit and got control of the plane back by disabling the flight control computer and went to manual and was shot down by the fighter jet following it (as some witnesses claim they saw it get shot down)
I think I'll do a time warp and look at that a little ...
I didn't pay much attention when it happened.
We are talking about the “Let's Roll” flight 93 ? right?
I would guess everything has been pretty well scrubbed by google by now, but some of it is still out there all "fact checked" for you , so you don't have to worry about being accused of being insane for even thinking it could be possible.
I am not eager to jump to the entire conspiracy theory, but I was shocked when I found out and it really got me thinking how it could have been pulled off by a very small group on the ground ( the people on board would be thinking they were being hijacked by terrorists) . I even saw the thing about remote flight control "capabilities" on Wikipedia as well as other places and about why other nations got rid of the planes
often I do esoteric searches on a subject as it is happening or soon after an event and then watch the info disappear or change over time by what comes up in a search (Benghazi was a good example of this)
“then watch the info disappear or change over time “
I feel you on that
Watched the 2020 election all night .... after a couple of days it seemed like we must have been watching some other election from some other country .... things we saw in real time became ... conspiracies
and building 7
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