What went wrong in Bangladesh?
I returned from
my overseas trip a few days ago. It was a long vacation for me when I spent nearly
ten weeks in Bangladesh. On my way to Chittagong, my laptop computer became
dysfunctional after it had fallen from my hand in Dubai airport. With very
little to do without my computer, I spent most of my time reading newspapers,
books and watching TV news programs.
It was no fun though either reading or watching news reports around the world. It seemed that our world has gone crazy. Innocent people are getting butchered everywhere even in places that are not in the midst of any war, and no one seems safe or secure these days.
What shocked me most during my trip, however, was the cold-blooded murders on July 1 in Holey Artisan Bakery - a posh cafe in Gulshan in Dhaka - that used to be frequented by foreigners. Twenty people, most of them foreigners, were killed in that attack on the cafe by gunmen who had stormed the cafe late on Friday night. Two police officers got killed during a shootout at night with the attackers. Next day morning the government commandos moved in and killed five attackers and one was arrested. (A Bangladeshi worker was mistakenly killed by the commandos, and another injured staff of the café died later in a hospital.) Thirteen hostages were rescued.
The terrorist outfit Daesh later released pictures online of five men it said carried out the attack.
It was the worst terrorist attack in Bangladesh’s history. While political violence and unrest is not new to Bangladesh since its liberation from Pakistan in 1971, including killing of its founder (Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with most of his family members) in August 15, 1975 in a CIA-inspired military coup, never in the history of this country have its people seen so much cruelty against foreigners! Even Bangladeshi-born American citizens from Muslim background were not spared by the terrorists.
It was no fun though either reading or watching news reports around the world. It seemed that our world has gone crazy. Innocent people are getting butchered everywhere even in places that are not in the midst of any war, and no one seems safe or secure these days.
What shocked me most during my trip, however, was the cold-blooded murders on July 1 in Holey Artisan Bakery - a posh cafe in Gulshan in Dhaka - that used to be frequented by foreigners. Twenty people, most of them foreigners, were killed in that attack on the cafe by gunmen who had stormed the cafe late on Friday night. Two police officers got killed during a shootout at night with the attackers. Next day morning the government commandos moved in and killed five attackers and one was arrested. (A Bangladeshi worker was mistakenly killed by the commandos, and another injured staff of the café died later in a hospital.) Thirteen hostages were rescued.
The terrorist outfit Daesh later released pictures online of five men it said carried out the attack.
It was the worst terrorist attack in Bangladesh’s history. While political violence and unrest is not new to Bangladesh since its liberation from Pakistan in 1971, including killing of its founder (Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with most of his family members) in August 15, 1975 in a CIA-inspired military coup, never in the history of this country have its people seen so much cruelty against foreigners! Even Bangladeshi-born American citizens from Muslim background were not spared by the terrorists.
Far from the flawed and unsubstantiated perceptions that the religious
extremists come from the lower rung of the society with madrasa schooling, the
café attackers, all in their late teens or early 20s, were identified
as children of wealthy individuals from Bangladesh's elite; they had attended
top private schools and universities in Bangladesh and abroad. [It was revealed
that three of the attackers came from a privileged background, educated with
western curricula. One of them Nibras was known as a "fun-loving, in and
out of love, and keen on sport". His father was a businessman with two
houses in Dhaka, and one of his uncles was a Deputy Secretary to the Bangladesh
Government. Two other gunmen went to Scholastica School, which follows Cambridge
International Examinations curriculum and is very
expensive to attend. Local newspapers reported that both of them had gone
missing long before the attack.] Far from another widely held perception that
the extremists have had ties with religious political groups like the Jamaat,
one of the terrorists has been identified as the son of a politician in
Bangladesh's ruling party – the Awami League. All the attackers came from secular families.
On 26 July 2016, police
raided an apartment in Kallyanpur, Dhaka
killing nine and arresting two, all of whom reportedly belonging to the same
group that carried out the Holey Artisan Bakery attack. Apparently, they were
planning another terrorist attack.
When Muslim religious
scholars condemned terrorism vociferously all across Bangladesh, a subsequent
attempt on the life of the prayer imam
Fariduddin Mas’oud (who pioneered a fatwa
campaign denouncing their un-Islamic activities) and other musallis attending the Eid al-Fitr prayer service in Sholakia,
Kishoreganj was reportedly made by a terrorist group. [It is worth noting here
that Sholakia has been holding the largest Eid congregation prayer in the
country with nearly a quarter million people gathering for the prayer service.]
On Thursday morning of 7 July 2016, half an hour before the Eid prayer was to
begin, a bombing near the site killed two police officers and a civilian. A gun
battle with the local police ensued in which several people were injured, and
one attacker was captured alive. Although there was no immediate claim of
responsibility for the attack, the attackers are believed by the government agencies
to be part of the same group that carried out the café massacre.
American invasions in the nearby Afghanistan and Iraq have created a
gargantuan mess in much of the Muslim-majority countries around the globe. Many
Muslim youngsters have felt the urge to challenge that Yankee-led neo-crusade;
some even joined various rebel groups to fight and die for their cause of
resistance. As events in Europe have shown, many misguided youths are getting
brain-washed by the Internet propaganda of Daesh, and are creating their own
sleeper cells to strike at soft targets.
For too long, Bangladesh was an oasis of relative safety in South Asia,
being able to keep herself away from the toxic and deadly embrace of Daesh-type
of terrorism. Not any longer. In the aftermath of the Holey Artisan café
terrorist attack, there is no denying any more that many of her youths are
getting indoctrinated by the deadly ideology of Daesh who are willing to die
for their convoluted ideology and evil methodology.
What is also so unnerving is that the terrorist attack in the café happened
during the holy month of Ramadhan and came almost half a month after top
ranking ulamah (scholars of Islam)
and muftis (those with authority to
issue religious edicts) in Bangladesh condemned terrorism and suicide attacks
calling such haram or forbidden. The fatwa, or religious decree, was signed by more than 400,000
Islamic scholars, legal experts and clerics, and presented by Maulana
Fariduddin Mas’oud, chairman of Bangladesh Jamiatul Ulama (BJU), a national
body of Islamic scholars. [As hinted above, he was apparently the target during
the Eid prayer service.]
In presenting
the 62-page fatwa along with 30 volumes of books, each carrying over 3,300
signatures, Mas’oud said he began his campaign because terrorists were
launching attacks in the name of Islam. This, he said, was leading to
misunderstanding of the religion's tenets.
“As they are
indulging in the violent activities, they are terming them jihad and they say
that they happily want to become martyrs through jihad. But, Islam stands
against such violent terrorist activities. While Islam is based on peace, love
and compassion, they are presenting it as a religion of the uncivilized and
terrorist people,” Mas’oud told VOA.
The message was distributed in a pamphlet, through preaching in mosques as
well as online and through social media like the Facebook, Twitter and
WhatsApp because of the realization
that the young generation gets so much misleading information on online
platforms.
Confirmation of the fatwa coincided with the fourth day of a nationwide
anti-militant drive during which police said they arrested 3,115 people,
bringing the total arrested over the short period to more than 11,300. However,
opposition group, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) claimed that 2,100 of
its activists were arrested in the crackdown and accused the government of
using the crackdown as an opportunity to suppress political dissent. Many
political observers also saw the government crackdown as its attempt to kill
two birds with a single stone!
Whatever may be the true government motivation for the crackdown preceding
the Gulshan attack something has gone terribly wrong as to how terrorism is
either becoming or has become more attractive for its new recruits who are
willing to die for it.
As their acts showed, they came from all walks of life, mostly from rich, secular,
affluent families, even with ties with the current government. They had a
secure and comfortable life with the access to all the modern amenities of our
time, let alone computers and iPhones. They attended private schools. Seemingly,
they had all the positive things going for them. And yet, they preferred violence
over peace, and death over life. Why?
It is difficult to believe that the attackers came from broken families or
that they suffered from acute depression or hopelessness, seeing no future for
them once they graduated from their colleges/schools. It is fair to suspect that they were
dissatisfied with the current system, and felt rebelling against it. The
Internet had a major role to gravitate them to extremist websites and poison
their minds, and provide the necessary links to interact/conspire with fellow
dissidents. Then they became ‘missing’ from their family members – some for
months, and some for years – before they reappeared to do their evil acts of
terrorism. Of course, in between, they were brainwashed for their task and
learnt the use of deadly weapons.
Their parents feel betrayed, and have, thus, refused to claim their dead bodies from the morgue for burial, where their corpse
continue to remain. That is the level of shame and embarrassment that they
parents feel about those terrorists. They have also apologized sincerely for
the crimes of their boys.
People in Bangladesh are
talking and are serious about avoiding a repeat of that sad event. That is a
good sign. They know that defeating terrorism won’t be an easy matter, since it
is a global phenomenon today. Thanks to the Internet, we are all connected in a
web; what happens tens of thousands of miles away can have a devastating effect
inside Bangladesh! People’s capacity to filter or process information vary
widely though, and some psychologically vulnerable individuals may fall into
the trap of extremist messages, considering that it is their duty to right the
wrong or take revenge on a tit-for-tat basis for events that happened in the
past or in a place that is far removed from the venue of the killing.
That is the difficult challenge
that the people in Bangladesh (or for that matter the entire world) have facing
terrorism today. Thus, it would be foolish to ignore, dislodge or disconnect
the link between the crimes of the NATO forces in war-torn places like Iraq and
Afghanistan and the drone attacks inside Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia with those
of the Daesh or their brain-washed sleeper cells around the globe, or the
murder of a Bangladeshi Imam and his assistant in Ozone Park, New York with a
comparable event in a Muslim country. Trying to solve such problems in
isolation would be equivalent to going after symptoms and not the root cause.
As a global phenomenon,
terrorism needs a global solution to defeat it, which would require 100%
sincerity and not hypocrisy, from all parties involved - something that is
short in supply in our time, esp. amongst the powerful nations. The latter have
a holier-than-thou worldview of arrogance, which provides the very fuel that
the non-state terrorists are looking for to keep the flame of hatred burning. Before
we all get engulfed in this inferno, it is wise to rethink and adopt prudent
measures that are fair, just and long lasting. Otherwise, we have to live with
what we sow.
From all the debates inside
Bangladesh, two particular messages have come loud and clear, which are that
the parents need to get more engaged and know what their children are doing behind
the close doors in front of their computers. While such may not guarantee
complete success, these could surely discourage their children from getting
into bad company. One life saved from the insinuation of the mischief makers
who poison the mind is surely a good starting point to reduce the curse of
terrorism.
An African proverb says, it
takes a village to raise a child. In our time, living in a global village, a
better proverb probably is – it takes a world to raise a child! Not forgotten
there is the fact that the starting place to rear the child must be its home,
starting with the parents. In Bangladesh’s resolve to defeat terrorism,
apparently they are going back to the basics.
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