The rise of Islamism in Bangladesh was a result of the Cold war that played out in the barren hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan border from the late 70s.In April 1978 in Afghanistan President Daud Muhammad Khan was overthrown by Nur Muhammad Tanaki in a coupInternal squabbling followed the uneasy groups fed by their Communist ideology led to the collapse of Hafizuddin Amin, and Babrak Karmal led the next government as some thirty thousand troops from Soviet Union rolled on the streets of Kabul the day is on Christmas eve on 24th December 1979.
The insurgency that followed sucked in fighters from all across the Muslim world or Ummah. The Mujahideens or resistance fighters stoked an insurgency that embroiled the greater South Asia and spilled into South East Asia as well.The Independence of Bangladesh in 1971 had staged the most dramatic collapse of Pakistan military power, that fought a similar insurgency led by Bangladesh insurgents called Mukti Bahini.The Pakistan Army led brutal reprisal codenamed ‘Operation Srarchlight in late March 1971 had proved to stir the population into a popular revolt.
The collapse of the Pakistan Army when India had to intervene militarily in December 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh as a n independent country.
Road To Globl Jihad:
When the last Soviet soldier left the border crossing from Aghanisan to Soviet Union on 15th February 1989, much.of the country were parcelled out among the Mujahideen warlords, with little or no allegiance to the Central government in Kabul. Afghan resistance leaders that toppled the Soviet military power like Gulbuddein Hekmatyar and Badruddin Rabbani had no previous skill to run their country smoothly.
From 1992 the collapse of law and order became more acute in Souther Afghanistan, where various Pashtun tribes resideatretching across much of present day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and the Frontier Agencies.In 1994 a group of Talibs (students in Pashto language)had shaken off a war lord in Khandahar province of Southern Afghanistan. That was the beginning of a new movement led by Taliban that by mid 1996 captured power in Afghanistan.From1988 since the creation of Al Qaeda(AQ)by Osama Bin Laden and his associate Muhammed Atef, Afghanistan attracted these Islamist groups which began to take the form of political Islam.
The Taliban followed the Deobandi and Wahabi school of Islam, that stresses on the purity of the religion. The Wahabi and Salafi brand of Islam is also the tenets followed by Al Qaeda group. This attracted a group of Bangladeshi students who studied in Saudi Arabia. The group is led by Abdur Rahman.The global jihad used Afghanistan as the springboard to stage the most spectacular attack on USA on 9/11.
That event change the narrative of Islamist fighters and ushered in GWOT (Global War On Terror)in the immediate aftermath of the attack on US soil in 2001.Terror came to Bangladeshi soil by the group that Abdur Rahman led, which in
1998 formed JMB (Jamatul Mujahidin Bangladesh).On 17th August 2005 some 459 attacks across 63 districts of Bangladesh. This attack brought the group into limelight, that is aligned to Al Qaeda, following the ultra orthodox Sunni faith. The rise of JMB among the groups that had disavowed secularism that was followed by the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman the architect of Bangladesh Independence did not live long as PM as he was brutally gunned down with all the members of his family, barring daughter Sheikh Hasina who was abroad at that time.The gruesome incident happened on 15th August 1975, on a significant day when India was celebrating its Independence Day.The coup was led by Major Syed Faroque Rahman and other junior officers. This bloody coup buried the secular values that Sheikh tried building in a plural society of Bangladesh. Gen Ziaur Rahman who succeeded Sheikh Mujibur was a man who formed the BNP(Bangladesh Nationalist Party)and conceded grounds to the anti secular forces led by Jamaar-ul’Islami that profess the Deobandi form of Islam.
The compromise of secular ideals was inevitable given the rise of Pakistan as a Cold War ally of US, that along with Saudi Arabia was instrumental in dismantling the Communist takeover of Afghanistan.The rise of Janaat was also accompanied by rise of Centre left tendencies within the Bangladeshi Army that led to a second coup that claimed the life of General Ziaur Rahman also.The Army officer who captured power by that coup in 1982 was General H. M. Ershad who clung on to power till 1990.A fresh election under a judge of the Supreme Court saw the return of BNP in 1991 with the widow of General Zia ,Begum Khakeda Zia as the PM.
In the next elections of 1996 Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur became PM for the first time.From 2001 again
Khaleda Zia again told the reigns of power and Bangladesh had to wait until 2008 for the return of yet another government of Sheikh Hasina in 2008.Rise of Right wing religious parties like the Janaat-e’Islami in. Bangladeshi politics had began from the early 1990s.The inclusion of Islamic fundamentals to governance from 1975 had hurtled the country into the road to Islamism Deobandi madrasas began to mushroom and religious education that is free began to attract rural families.
Islamic State emerged in 2014 from a rump of AQ in Iraq by Bin Laden’s deputy Abu Musab al Zarqawi in the early days of Iraqi resistance to the USA invasion in 2004. By them the GWOT had entered Iraq from Afghanistan, and the US is aiming to dismantle the AQ terror infraction globally.From 2014 emergence as a quasistate or Caliphate profession the ulta-radical Salafi Islam it straddled much of Northern Syria and Iraq.The execution of Abdur Rahman for his act of terror in 2007 s the incarceration of his successor Saidur Rahman in 2010 did little to stop the activities of the JMB. It appointed a new Chief Salahuddin Ahmed aka Salehin in 2020.
The rise of Al Baghdadi as the Supreme leader of the Islamic State during the period of 2010 to 2019 was due to Al Baghdadi’s meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria.Until his death in 2019 which also saw the rapid loss of territories by the group, did not prevent the spread of this Salafism around the global and more particularly in Afghanistan and Bangladesh.The rise of neo JMB movement in Bangladesh is another pointer to the muddle of political Islam that Bangladesh has walked into. The HUJI-B(Harkat-ul-Jihad-Islami Bangladesh) movement was a cold war relic in Bangladesh that had to work alongside JMB since the late nineties.
The Shahbag protest of 2013 in Bangladesh erupted on the call by students to give a death sentence to 1971 War Criminal Abdul Quader Mullah.The 5th February 2013 protest also aimed
at curtailing the activities of the right wing conservative party Jamaat together with the demand for Mollah’s and his associates death sentence.On 15th February where all this protest was going on, Ahmed Rajib Haider a liberal blogger was brutally killed. The death is alleged to be done by Ansarallah Bangla Team many of which members are drawn from a student wing of the Jamaat.
In the sane year Hefazat-e-Islam a conglomerate of Quawmi madrassas, that had mushroomed in Bangladesh, teaching the extreme fundamentalist tenets of Ahl-e-Hadith faith took to the streets demanding introduction of blasphemous law, that would have disastrous consequences for the minorities in Bangladesh. This was how the Jamaat used the extreme religious right of Bangladesh to tide over the aftermath of the Shahnag protest to save the death sentence of many Jamaat leaders convicted in the genocidal Liberation war of Bangladesh.
On 1st July 2016 Holy Artisan Bakery an upmarket joint frequented by foreigners, was held hostage by five terrorists who took hostages killing 29 that included 20 hostages.Shakhawarul Kabir who joined as a sleeper cell of the Islamic State started recruitment for IS group. Police arrested him in Bangladesh and revealed that he joined JMB in 2006 when he went to Pakistan with Eyaz Khalid the son in law of JMB Chief Saidur Rahman. Kabir was joined in his new IS role by Nazrul Islam, Rabiul Islam and Anowar Hussain who had served jail sentence for their involvement in 2005 bomb attack by JMB.
This shows how entrenched the jehadi ecosystem had grown in Bangladesh and the recent coup by Army that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina points to the dangerous road that Bangladesh is looking at in 2024.