Members of Bangladeshâs secular judicial system in Gazipur and Chittagong were battered this week after three suicide bomb attacks left 11 dead, including two militants, and wounded more than 100 others in the worldâs third largest Muslim-majority nation.
On Tuesday, two suicide bombers that police allege were members of Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), or the Party of the Mujahideen, killed ten people, including lawyers and police, at the bar association building in Gazipur and a police checkpoint at the entrance to a courthouse in Chittagong.
âThe threat of suicide terrorism has reached Bangladesh for a reason. You have to wonder why they have resorted to suicide bombing at this stage. Suicide bombing attracts a lot of attention in the media and it has a major impact and itâs very accurate,â Colonel Christopher Langton, a terrorism expert and the head of the Defense Analysis Department at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told ISN Security Watch.
A third suicide bomber survived the attack he launched on Thursday, but the device he detonated killed one person and injured more than 30 others just outside the chief government administrator's office and the courthouse in Gazipur during a national strike protesting the recent violence.
The strike, which was called by the Supreme Court Bar Association in response to Tuesdayâs bomb attacks, resulted in the closure of courts, shops, schools, and private businesses.
The country has been hit by a series of bomb attacks this year, including two attacks on the judiciary in October and early November that left four people dead, including two judges, and multiple attacks in August during which over 400 small bombs were detonated across Bangladesh, killing two people.
Bangladesh, which came into existence in 1971 when Bengali East Pakistan seceded from its union with West Pakistan, is not unused to violence, but the latest suicide attacks mark a sinister turn in events.
âThe suicide bomb attacks this week in Bangladesh are definitely an escalation and a change in tactics by JMB. Itâs the first-ever suicide bomb attack in Bangladesh and it makes the situation much more difficult. Itâs a different genre,â Ahmad Tariq Karim, Bangladeshâs former ambassador to the US and a diplomat with 30 years of experience, told ISN Security Watch on Friday.
âThe timing and the targets are interesting with the focus on the judiciary,â said Karim, who is also a senior advisor for governance institutions at the Center for Institutional Reform in the information sector at the University of Maryland.
âItâs possible that the attacks may be designed to paralyze the court system, with some 100-plus of their group [JMB] facing trials in the courts,â noted Karim.
According to local media, Bangladeshi State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfuzzaman Babar said the cases against the JMB militants allegedly involved in the attacks in August would start after the vacation of the courts in January.
So far, 154 cases against 116 individuals have been filed in connection with the detonation of 434 bombs in 63 districts on 17 August.
âItâs eerily similar to whatâs been going on with the trial of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, with the attacks on his lawyers,â Karim added.
The JMB was formed in 1998 in Bangladeshâs Jamalpur district, according to one regional security analyst who spoke to ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.
The groupâs exact origins are vague, but it came to prominence in May 2002 when eight Islamic militants were arrested in Parbatipur, in the northern Dinajpur district. The militants were caught with 25 petrol bombs and documents detailing the outfitâs activities.
Then in February 2003, the JMB allegedly carried out seven bomb attacks in the Chhoto Gurgola area of Dinajpur, in which three people were wounded.
The government banned the JMB in February this year, after the group was linked to a series of bomb attacks on non-governmental organization offices, shrines, and entertainment events in the country. Leaflets bearing the groupâs name and calling for the introduction of Islamic law were found at all the bombsites.
The leaflets in Bangladeshi and Arabic, which the group used to claim responsibility for attacks, also revealed the groupâs intentions.
âWeâre the soldiers of Allah. Weâve taken up arms for the implementation of Allahâs law, the way the Prophet, Sahabis, and heroic Mujahideen have done for centuries. It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh. There is no future with man-made law,â the leaflets stated.
According to local media, the JMB is led by a triumvirate consisting of Maulana Abdur Rahman, a former activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party; Siddiqur Islam, who is also known as Bangla Bhai; and Dr. Muhammad Asadullah al-Ghalib, an Arabic language lecturer at the Rajshahi University.
While Maulana Rahman is regarded as the spiritual leader of the organization, Siddiqur Islam (Bangla Bhai) is reportedly its âoperational chiefâ. Dr. Muhammad Asadullah al-Ghalib was arrested in February 2005 and charged with sedition. The other two leaders remain free.
âThe JMB is an associated group of al-Qaida. Prior to October 2001, the JMB received significant al-Qaida assistance in training and finance,â Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based terrorism expert, claimed in an interview with ISN Security Watch on Friday.
Gunaratna is the author of the book, âInside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terrorâ. He is also head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, at Singaporeâs Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University.
Some analysts have suggested that the JMB has within its ranks many men who left Bangladesh to join the battle against the former-Soviet Unionâs invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
âIt was always known by officials [in Bangladesh] that there was a large number of JMB, and many had participated in the conflict against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Over 1,000 of these fighters returned to Bangladesh,â Karim claimed.
In April 2002, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that after the fall of Kandahar in Afghanistan in late 2001, hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters arrived by ship from Karachi, Pakistan, to the Bangladesh port city of Chittagong.
âThe JMB has a huge infrastructure of several thousand members throughout Bangladesh. Due to political considerations, the government is reluctant to target the group,â Gunaratna said.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia won landslide election victory in October 2001 with a four-party alliance led by her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The alliance includes the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Oikya Jote parties, both known for their support of Islamic fundamentalism, the Taliban, and al-Qaida.
Observers largely agree that Jamaat-e-Islami collaborated with the military regime in Pakistan during the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh from Pakistan and continues to be close to Islamabad.
Zia suffered a major embarrassment when Abu Hena, a member of parliament for the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, accused the four-party coalition government of sheltering and patronizing Islamic militants in an interview with the BBC last month.
A number of killings blamed on the JMB have taken place in Henaâs parliamentary constituency in the western district of Rajshahi since last year.
âIslamic militancy started to spread in Bangladesh soon after Jamaat-e-Islami came to power, riding on the BNP. The militants in fact did not exist four years ago,â local media quoted Hena as saying.
The BNP moved quickly after Henaâs comments and announced that Zia, who is also the chief of the BNP, had cancelled Henaâs party membership âas a disciplinary action for his misconduct and for tarnishing the image of the partyâ.
An anonymous source close to the government told ISN Security Watch on Friday that even if Jamaat-e-Islami had not been directly responsible for acts of terrorism, its very inclusion in government had encouraged radical Islamist groups to feel protected by the government to some degree.
âThe current campaign could be designed to see if society and the government can be intimidated,â Karim said.
âThe next stage would be to change the constitution [and bring in Sharia law] if their campaign [to intimidate society and the government] was successful,â Ambassador Karim added.
Many Bangladesh observers say the current violent campaign will continue until Dhaka makes a more serious commitment to clamp down on the JMB and introduce reforms, although the escalation in the JMBâs tactics this week may prompt a serious rethink of official strategy.
âThe JMB will continue to employ suicide as a tactic. The terrorist threat will escalate in the coming years in Bangladesh,â Gunaratna warned. |
Police arrested a "top leader" of the banned militant group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh from Jhaldhaka Upazila in Nilfamari on Sunday, reports bdnews24.com. The arrestee was identified as 25 year-old Moshiur Rahman. The police seized a mass of literature on jihad and militant activities during the arrest. 
Bangladesh security forces arrested four suspected members of a banned Islamic militant group from a house in the capital on Thursday, and seized a 10-kg (22 lb) bomb and four grenades, an official said. 
DHAKA - A Bangladesh court on Monday sentenced seven top Islamist militants to death for killing two judges in a bomb attack in southern Jhalakati town in November last year. They will be hanged until death, Judge Reza Tarik Ahmed said in his verdict.
A suspected Islamic militant and three others have been killed in a bomb blast in eastern Bangladesh after security forces besieged a house, officials say. Officials of the elite Rapid Action Battalion say a senior member of the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen group died in the blast in the town of Comilla. The deaths follow the recent arrests of the group's chief, 
Security forces backed by army helicopters launched a massive hunt in areas along Bangladeshâs western border on Thursday after an intelligence tip off that top fugitive Islamist militants were hiding there, officials said. Some 1,000 police, troops and members of the elite Rapid Action battalion searched several villages near the town of Kushtia, some 300 kilometres from the capital Dhaka, while four helicopters patrolled the sky, police and witnesses said. âForces have been conducting block raids in a wide region of Kushtia but have yet to catch the militants,â one police officer said.