Who are the Islamist militants in Bangladesh? The question has often puzzled the government, law enforcers, experts and international crime researchers over the years. With no definite answer available yet, they find the militancy has travelled down several generations in Bangladesh though taking a generic shape in the past couple of years only.
This Daily Observer correspondent profiles the militantcy in this overwhelmingly Muslim country with secular state policy, based on findings of various studies at home and abroad and outlines their activities as per his own findings and media reports.
The profiles of arrested Islamist militants in the past years indicate that they are largely from middle class backgrounds and more urban-based than any other Islamist groups.
Some of the Islamist militants who attacked a Dhaka café on July 1 last year, killing 20 people, are believed to have studied at the Malaysian campus of Melbourne's Monash University. This is significant that educated people also involved with Islamist militant groups active in the country. Eelier, only largely from middle class backgrounds and more urban-based were involved with Islamist groups.
According to research the first generation of militants was the product of the Afghan War (1979-1992). Although geographically Bangladesh is located thousands of miles away from that battlefield, the connection was established in 1984 when a group of volunteers travelled to Afghanistan.
An estimated 3,000 volunteers joined the war in several batches in the following four years, of which 24 died on the battlefield. Also a group of 'ulama' visited the country and reportedly met Usama bin Laden.[31] Between 1988 and 1992, Shafiqur Rahman, a returnee of the Afghan war, established contacts with a Pakistani Islamist organization called Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and the Bangladesh chapter began its clandestine operations. On 30 April 1992, a week after the mujahideen emerged victorious in Afghanistan, the Bangladeshi participants of the war expressed their delight at a press conference in Dhaka where some of the speakers identified themselves as members of HuJI-Bangladesh (HuJI-B)] It is worth noting that the period was the expansionary phase of the HuJI-B. In the first four years HuJI-B's activities were largely restricted to the southeastern hills close to the border with Burma, suggesting that their initial objective was to use Bangladesh as a launching pad to influence the Rohiyanga movement inside Myanmar. The membership of the group was largely limited to those with connections to the Afghan War or links to organizations who had provided volunteers to the war. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the members of the leadership were older, mostly madrassah (particularly Deobandi) educated, and hailed from rural areas.
After 1996, the group moved its bases to the northern and northwestern parts of the country, and adopted the name "Qital fi Sabilililah" (Fighting in the way of Allah). The expansion of the organization came after contacts had been made with Shaikh Abdur Rahman, son of a deceased Ahle Hadith leader, and Asadullah Ghalib, leader of the Ahle Hadith Andolon Bangladesh (AHAB, Ahle Hadith Movement Bangladesh). They joined forces in 1998 and established the Jaamatul Mujaheddin Bangladesh (JMB). Thus the second generation of militants was born. The new group's focus shifted inward, as opposed to supporting militants outside. It defined its objective as transforming Bangladesh into an 'Islamic state.' The group and its affiliate Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), under the leadership of Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqur Rahman, alias Bangla Bhai, established a reign of terror in the northwestern part of Bangladesh. The organization also simultaneously blasted 450 homemade bombs throughout the country and conducted a number of suicide attacks. The information on JMB activists arrested since late 2006 reveal that youth educated in technical and vocational training colleges, and born and raised in urban areas, were being attracted to the organization and elevated to leadership.
As the JMB and HuJIB were gradually transforming, a new organization with international connections and a global agenda appeared on the scene: the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT). The Bangladesh chapter of the HT was founded in 2001 by a university professor who had studied in the United Kingdom as a Commonwealth Scholar. This can be categorized as the third generation of militants. The new generation is characterized by its technical skills, being students of universities, and well versed in global political events.
The arrests and execution of the JMB leaders in 2006-2007, followed by strong CT efforts, and the political stability in the early years of the AL government weakened the militant groups. At times, it appeared that the country has successfully tamed the menace of militancy. However, these groups, particularly the HuJI and the JMB, continued to reorganize. A new group named the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which can be described as the fourth generation of militant groups, emerged around that time. According to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC), the ABT surfaced in 2007 under the name of Jamaat-ul Muslemin.
The group was reportedly funded by external sources and 'ceased to operate when funding ended.'[38] Inspired by Anwar al Awlaki and led by local Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani, the ABT began to attract new recruits in 2012 when its presence in cyberspace became prominent.[39] Originally the group used the 'Ansar al Mujahideen English Forum' (AAMEF), an Al Qaeda affiliated website, and later moved to another website, 'bab-ul-islam.net', launched in Pakistan. The group uses Bengali, Urdu, Arabic and English for the dissemination of its message.[40] "The group reflects a young generation of jihadist in Bangladesh, which uses cyberspace extensively in propagating jihadist ideology and training manuals to guide terror attacks".
One of the videos produced by the groups is entitled 'Eradicate Democracy.'[42] The ABT was thrust into the limelight in March 2013 after arrests of five university students in connection with the killing of blogger and activist Rajib Haider. Haider, a self-proclaimed atheist, was hacked to death in February. The students, according to police, confessed to the killing and creating this new organization. The group's leader Rahmani was arrested with 30 followers in August.[43] Members of the group are largely drawn from middle class educated youths.
With the announcement of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in September 2014 that the organization was establishing a branch in South Asia, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) came into being.[44] In February 2015, Zawahiri called upon the people of Bangladesh to 'launch a massive public uprising (intifada) in defense of Islam against the enemies of Islam. Yet there has been very little indication of an organized presence of AQIS in Bangladesh until mid-2015. In early July last year the law enforcing agencies arrested Maulana Mainul Islam, the alleged AQIS chief coordinator in Bangladesh, and his top advisor Maulana Zafar Amin, along with ten other AQIS activists. The AQIS, as mentioned earlier, claimed responsibility for the brutal killing of bloggers in 2015.
Since the beginning of 2015, a number of individuals reportedly connected to the IS have been arrested. These arrests include the alleged Bangladesh Coordinator of the IS, Mohammad Sakhawatul Kabir. He was arrested along with three other suspects in January 2015 in Dhaka. In May, the police claimed that it had nabbed the 'Bangladesh Coordinator' of the IS, Abdullah Al Galib. Galib is a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and a follower of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), according to press reports. Members and followers of the AQIS and the IS can be described as the fifth generation of militants in Bangladesh. The defining feature of the new generation is that they are inspired by, and connected to, the transnational terrorist groups, intend to pursue their objective of establishing an Islamic state in Bangladesh and participate in the global militant Islamist movements. This generation of militants is also founding their own local organizations. The most recent ones are the Shaheed Hamza Brigade (SHB) and the Bangladesh Jihad Group (BJG) that were identified by law enforcement agencies in 2015.
In some way, the militant groups have come full circle: they began as a result of a global agenda fighting an 'atheist' Communist system (the Soviet military in Afghanistan) to now being a part of establishing a global 'khilafat'(by joining the IS in Syria and Iraq). The circumscribed national Islamist agenda features only a part of the larger agenda.
Bangladesh has attracted international media attention for heightened militant activities in 2015, particularly after a series of killings of bloggers by a local militant group allegedly associated with Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and after murders of foreign nationals, responsibility of which was claimed by the Islamic State (IS). Islamist militant groups in Bangladesh which emerged in the 1990s have undergone several transformations. Originally grown out of the volunteers who joined the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, these groups have since then taken different shapes. Since the 1990s, five 'generations' of militant groups appeared on the scene. In some measures, the militant groups have come full circle: they began as a result of a global agenda fighting an 'atheist' Communist system (war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) to now being part of establishing a global 'khilafat' (by joining the IS in Syria and Iraq) via pursuing a circumscribed local agenda for a period in the early 2000s.
Despite such transformations, very little is known about the Bangladeshi militants.
