Satya Raj Hazarika, IPS
Deputy Inspector General of Police,
(Central Range), Assam, Diphu
With the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 across a landmass of 148,460 2km, Chittagong extends like a boot in the littoral South, sharing borders with Rakhine province of Myanmar. From the Cox Bazar district tha+-
*t currently hosts 1 million Rohingiyas, the Naf river separates the two countries. Pressure on land is very high in Bangladesh with a density of 1,115.62 persons per sq km. The density of people in camp area are 31,250 persons per sq km, with available space for a single person is 10.7 sq meters. An attack by extremist group ARSA (Arakan Rohingiya Salvation Army) on 30 border outposts in Rakhine province on 25th August 2017 killing over 50 security forces of Myanmar, fearing reprisal over 600,000 Rohingiya fled Rakhine province of Myanmar to Cox Bazar in Bangladesh.
The first Prime Minister and his family are brutally gunned down on the early hours of 15th August 1975, with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's PM, lying in a pool of blood and only his two daughters, both abroad at that time survived. The military coup brought in General Ziaur Rahman an one time associate of the Sheikh, who operated from Chittagong with his Mukti Bahini guerrillas against Pakistani army. The elections of Dec 1970, the first General Elections for Pakistan's National Assembly gave Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's party 160 seats out of 162 contested in East Pakistan, a mandate for which he can become Premier of Pakistan. This overwhelming majority proved too condescending for the President Gen Yahya Khan and JA Bhutto, the leader of PPP (Pakistan People's Party) and the demands of autonomy of Sheikh Mujibur was vilified to be secessionist and martial law and repression followed in East Pakistan.
Gen Ziaur Rahman reached out to the far right of Bangladesh, the Jamaat e Islami and formed his own party BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party). The rapprochement brought back all the Jamaat leaders who are complicit in the war crimes in 1971, and on the run abroad, as also Gen Ziaur removed secularism from the Bangladesh Constitution by an amendment in 1977. Hardline cleric Muhammad Jasimuddin Rahmani was given the charge of Madrassa education. Under Rahmani Qawmi madrassas mushroomed culminating in the formation of the radical Hefazat movement under the radical preacher Shah Ahmad Shafi, of the Hathabari Madrassa in Chittagong.
On 21st Aug 2004, Sheikh Hasina the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman survived a grenade attack on her rally, she was addressing as an opposition leader. The Jihadi group which attacked her belonged to HUJI-B a group whose leaders Abdus Salam and Mufti Izharul Islam Choudhary, Hefazati leader of Chittagong's Lalkhan Bazar Madrassa were opposing her return to politics.
The HUJI-B formation in 1992 and the JMB (Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh) formed in 1998 by radical Ahl he Hadith preacher Abdur Rahman brought a new dimension of Jihadi activities in Bangladesh.
While within the Hefazati Qawmi madrassas Deobandi School of Islamic law is taught the Salafist and ultra-orthodox Ahl e Hadith madrassas follows the Hanabali school. The most famous example of the Ahl e Hadith group in Pakistan is Laskar e Tayeba, the perpetrators of the gruesome 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.
Abdur Rahman grew up in the world of Ahl e Hadith madrassas and went to Saudi Arabia where he got acquainted with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose analogue organisation is Jamaat e Islami in South Asia, joining its local chapter Islamic Chhatra Shibir. JMBs growth during BNP-Jamaate Islami government (2001-2007) changed the tenor of Islamist movement in Bangladesh.
Braving the threats presented by jihadist Sheikh Hasina could return to power when the BNP left in early 2007 after a military coup, and by that time JMB detonated a series of small bombs across Bangladesh's sixty three of its sixty four districts on 17 August 2005.
By 2010-12 JMB had begun where HUJI-B had left and began to focus on the Rohingiya refugees, as from 2005 there were marked anti -India activities on the rise in Bangladesh by Laskar e Tayeba and its Bangladesh affiliate JMB. Like the Rohingiya militant groups RSO (Rohingiya Solidarity Organization) and ARNO (Arakan Rohingiya National Organization) another group surfaced under Maulana Abdul Quddus called Harkat ul Jihad ul Islami Arakan and JMB went on a recruitment overdrive in Cox Bazar's Rohingiya refugee camps. These Jihadi formation later in 2012-2013 coalesced into ARSA. Bangladesh's security agency CTTC (Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime) on 13th December 2018 arrested the regional chief of JMB’s Cox Bazar unit Abdul Hakim Noman at Dhaka with 30 commando knives, machete and explosives and Noman according to CTTC officials were active in camps of Rohingiyas.
The current threat posed by JMB and ISIS which launched a gruesome attack on 1 July 2016 at Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan locality of Dhaka, killing 20 people mostly foreigners are ever present in Bangladesh today. The AQIS operates through its local affiliate Ansar ul Islam (previously ABT) and ISIS through the Tamim Ahmed Choudhury module called neo-JMB. From 2013 Ansar ul Islam killed 11 progressive writers and bloggers including Rajib Haider and ISIS an equal 11 numbers of secular, atheist and intellectuals
On 13 March 2021 Al Qaeda (AQ) mouthpiece “As Sahab” released a video titled “The wound of the Rohingiya is the wound of the Ummah”, where AQ leader Ayman al Zawahiri said, “The entire world has witnessed the countless massacres that the Rohingiya Muslims have been subjected to.. “ in a warning to Myanmar over the Rohingiya issue.
With the Rohingiya crisis festering on and jihadi groups like JMB working with dreaded outfits like Laskar e Tayeba (changed to Jammat ul Dawa and after the UN ban on 2008 it changed again to Tehreek-e Tahafuz Qibla Awal) and AQIS and ISIS already on the prowl to wean away the Rohingiya refugee into their talons, the security threat is very high for whole of South and South East Asia.
