More than
three million Muslim devotees from 52 countries gathered
along the bank of the Turag river, 30 kilometres north of
Dhaka, at Tongi, Gazipur, for the three-day annual Biswa
Ijtema (World Congregation) between December 14 and
16, 2002. The significance of the event was underlined
by the profile of political leaders who attended: present
at the concluding prayers were Bangladesh President, Prof
Iajuddin Ahmed; the Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia;
Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Sheikh Hasina and
other political, civil and military leaders. The Ijtema
is organised annually by the Tablighi Jamaat.
The Biswa Ijtema, the second largest congregation
of Muslims in the world after the Hajj, ended peacefully
despite rumours that some international terrorist groups
may have planned to disrupt the event. But, the fact that
millions of Muslim devotees from across the world
gathered in Bangladesh emphasises the role the country
has come to play in the context of international Islamic
brotherhood.
Although
the government in Dhaka has reacted fiercely to any
suggestion that the country is becoming a haven for
Islamic extremists, reports from Asian and Western
intelligence services suggest otherwise.
Shortly after the fall of Kandahar in late 2001, several
hundred Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters escaped by ship
from Karachi to Chittagong. They were then trucked down
to hidden camps in the Ukhia area, south of Cox's Bazaar.
Local people report seeing heavily armed men, with a few
Bangladeshis among them, in those camps. They were told
that they would be killed if anyone told 'outsiders'
about this regrouping of ex-Afghanistan fighters in this
remote corner of southeastern Bangladesh.
According to other reports from Asian security services,
militants from the Jemaah Islamiah - which is connected
to the Al Qaeda and wants to set up a gigantic Islamic
state encompassing Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and
southern Philippines - are also hiding out in these
camps, which were set up in the early 1990s to train
rebels from the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar's
Rakhine State. In more recent years, these camps are in
effect, run by Bangladesh's most extreme Islamic outfit,
the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI), which was set up in
1992, reportedly with financial support from Osama bin
Laden.
The Jemaah Islamiah is suspected of being behind a number
of planned - but foiled - attacks against Western targets
in Singapore, as well as the devastating bomb blast on
the Indonesian island of Bali on October 12, 2002, in
which nearly 200 people were killed, most of them Western
tourists.
The Jemaah Islamiah militants in hiding in southeastern
Bangladesh are believed to be mostly Malaysian and
Singaporean citizens. It is, however, uncertain to what
extent the Bangladeshi security services have been
involved in their relocation. But, well-placed local
sources say that it would have been impossible without at
least some tacit agreement with the Directorate General
of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh's chief
intelligence agency, which is closely connected with
Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Security concerns heightened over the holding of the Biswa
Ijtema in Tongi only a week after at least 18 persons
were killed and 300 injured in bomb blasts in four cinema
halls in the central Bangladeshi town of Mymensingh on
December 7.Without being specific, Prime Minister Khaleda
Zia described these as a "planned terrorist
attack", while Opposition leader Sheikh Hasina of
the Awami League, claimed that an "identified
fanatic terrorist group within [the ruling] alliance is
behind these heinous bomb blasts." The international
news agency, Reuters first reported that Home
Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury had said that bin
Laden's Al Qaeda network was behind the blast, but later
had to retract the report after denials from the
Minister.
Subsequently, the police raided the local office of Reuters
in Dhaka. Dozens of opposition activists were also
arrested, but no link to them could be established. The
raid on Reuters and the arrest of opposition
politicians came only days after a British TV team and
their local helpers had been arrested for trying to
document the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh
and its possible consequences on the country's non-Muslim
minorities.
Many foreign observers may contend that the Bangladeshi
authorities are simply overreacting to international
press coverage, but it could also be that the DGFI has too much
to hide, and therefore wants to silence any reports
suggesting that their country has become a hot-bed of
Islamic fundamentalism.
The four-party alliance that won the Bangladeshi
elections in October 2001 includes the fundamentalist
Jamaat-e-Islami, which has two Ministers in the present
government. Its youth organisation, the Islami Chhatra
Shibir (ICS), was behind Bangladesh's most devastating
bomb blast before the cinemas in Mymensingh were hit - an
explosion on June 15, 2001, at the Awami League office in
Narayanganj, in which 21 persons were killed and over a
100 others injured. The same government-connected outfit
is also suspected of being behind several other bomb
blasts as well as attacks on secular Bangladeshi
politicians, journalists and writers.
The ICS is closely connected with the most militant of
the Rohingya organisations along the Myanmar-Bangladesh
border, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO),
which also has links to the Al Qaeda. Video footage
released by the American cable television network CNN in
August this year and obtained from Al Qaeda, shows
Rohingyas as well as Bangladeshis training in camps near
the country's southeastern border, but well inside
Bangladesh.
Al
Qaeda's involvement in Bangladesh was confirmed in
September this year, when the police in Dhaka arrested
seven 'aid workers' working for the Saudi-based Al
Haramain Islamic Institute. The men, who came from Libya,
Algeria, Sudan and Yemen belonged to an organisation that had
first come to Bangladesh to help Rohingya refugees, but
later became involved in running Islamic centres all over
the country. The so-called Institute has been named by
several sources as a front for the Al Qaeda. Perhaps not
surprisingly, nothing came out of the arrests and the
whole affair was quickly hushed up by the Bangladeshi
authorities, suggesting that the 'arrests' were a mistake
by some local police officer.
The United States has so far accepted the Bangladeshi
government's assurances that the country is not playing
host to international terrorist movements, and that it is
a reliable partner in the global war on terror. But this
ostrich-like mentality may change as more evidence to the
contrary comes to light.
The
arrests of foreign journalists and the raid on Reuters
in Dhaka are worrying signs of increasing intolerance in
Bangladesh. And the hosting of the Biswa Ijtema is
bound to attract the attention of 'friendly' Islamic
organisations, which see the country as a perfect place
to hide out when international attention is focused on
events in more high-profile countries such as Pakistan
and Indonesia.
(The
author is Senior Writer, Far Eastern Economic Review
(FEER), courtesy: South Asia Intelligence Review
of the South Asia Terrorism Portal)
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