The fundamentalist Islamist threat is not really dead in Bangladesh. It is deeply entrenched in various forums and institutions and needs to be fully rooted out
Sheikh Hasina, who is scheduled to visit Delhi soon, has been waging, with remarkable courage, a relentless war against Islamist fundamentalist terrorism. Incidents of terrorist violence have been declining ever since the savage mass murders at the Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1. Yet complacence should be shunned. The fundamental Islamist threat is not dead. It is lying dormant and would revive should the environment become congenial. Its roots extend deep into three different segments of Bangladesh's society and polity.
The first is the administration. Elements loyal to Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, the umbrella organisation of Islamist terrorist outfits in that country, and harbouring pro-Pakistan sentiments, are deeply entrenched in it. Not thoroughly cleansing it of all such elements after coming to power following the country's liberation, was a grievously mistaken exercise in generosity and forgiving that Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made, and he and members of his family paid a most tragic price for it.
Even before that terrible final act, anti-liberation war and fundamentalist Islamist elements, entrenched in the administration, had sabotaged the implementation of measures to incorporate the spirit and consciousness of the liberation war in Bangladesh's society, administration and polity. An example, cited by Shahriar Kabir in Radicalization of Politics and Society in Bangladesh: De-radicalization Strategy, is the fate of the education policy, formulated by an Education Commission, appointed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and headed by the eminent scientist, Kudrat-e-Khuda, Its report, which recommended that a course on the history and spirit of the liberation War should be taught from the first grade to the post-graduate level, was not implemented because of opposition by pro-Pakistan bureaucrats.
There is also opposition by Islamist fundamentalist. One finds a remarkable parallel in the fate of the recommendations of the Education Commission, appointed by Sheikh Hasina in 2009 and headed by Professor Kabir Chowdhury, to formulate a policy to promote the spirit of the liberation War-secular democracy and humanism-in the education system. As Shahriar Kabir points out, the policy, which proposes the introduction of the history of the liberation War in all educational institutions from the primary to the post graduate level, and the institution of a common curriculum in madrassas up to the eighth grade, remains in limbo because of intimidation by Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefajat-e-Islam.
Another area where pro-Pakistan fundamentalists have been extensively planted is defence and intelligence gathering. Bangladesh's premier and all-powerful military intelligence organisation, the Directorate-General of Forces Intelligence, was formed in 1976, through a transformation and re-christening of the Directorate of Defence Forces Intelligence established in 1972. According to Moloy Krishna Dhar in The Fulcrum of Evil: ISI-CIA-Al Qaeda Nexus, the DGFI has been modelled after Pakistan's Directorate-General of Inter-Services Intelligence. The officers' corps of the DGFI and National Security Intelligence, which was created as Bangladesh's sole intelligence agency but was subsequently overshadowed by the DGFI, have been extensively trained in Pakistan with the CIA and the MI6 contributing occasionally.
Dhar further points out that the ISI and the DGFI had collaborated since 1976 in training and arming the militant groups active in North-East India. According to him, the number of camps housing these in Bangladesh had increased to between 180 and 200, four months before the book was published (2006). Sheikh Hasina has done much to sanitize the DGFI and other intelligence agencies. She had disbanded camps of the militants from North-East India and handed over some of the key insurgent leaders to India. She disbanded the Bangladesh Rifles after its murderous mutiny in February 2009 and created the Border Guards Bangladesh in its place.
The area where progress needs to be made is countering fundamentalist Islamist ideology, which influences a significant section of Bangladesh's youth. To a great extent, this is the result of brainwashing in the large number of educational institutions, from madrassas to universities, established by the Jamaat, its front organisations and supporters. These need to be defanged, and the massive financial resources of the Jamaat and its allies, through which they fund the scholarships and facilities they provide to win students over, stanched.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and author)