While the senior leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami face death and life sentences for their war crimes over the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, hundreds of leaders are in jail on charges of violence during the last one year. The Jamaat is an alliance partner of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose leader Khaleda Zia has ruled out severing ties with the Islamist groups. The Jamaat activists provided the street muscle to the BNP protests, but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina handled the challenge by determined police action and sometimes by asking her party activists to take the fight to the streets.
However, the Islamist groups and the BNP appeared demoralised after the January 5 parliament elections. Pakistani Islamist groups complicated the issue by protesting against the hanging of Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah. When the Pakistan National Assembly adopted a resolution critical of the execution, this was seen as yet another challenge to Bangladesh’s liberation. The anti-Pakistan wave further pushed the Jamaat and other Islamist groups on the backfoot. As the government security forces unleashed coordinated operations in several Jamaat strongholds to sever the Islamist stranglehold, there was little that they could look up to. Even the West, critical as it was of the polls, called on the BNP chief to cut off ties with the Jamaat.
So the Al-Zawahiri video would be seen as a boost to the Islamist cause in Bangladesh. Al-Zawahiri’s tirade against the government follows the Jamaat narrative that the present government is an Indian puppet, it has destroyed the cause of Islam in Bangladesh, there is total opposition to establishing the laws of Sharia and more.
“Bangladesh is the victim of a conspiracy in which the agents of India, the corrupt leadership of Pakistan Army and treacherous power-hungry politicians of Bangladesh and Pakistan are all involved,” Al-Zawahiri says in his message. And then he calls on Bangladeshis to “gather around the true scholars of Islam, support them and protect them and launch a massive public uprising in defence of Islam against the enemies of Islam”.
But by lashing out at Western-style democracy championed in Bangladesh and pitching for Sharia rule, Al-Zawahiri may end up raising hackles in the West, specially the United States. Because so far the Jamaat and its fraternal groups have fought a street war to uphold the very democracy that Al-Zawahiri is so critical of. But for Hasina and her party, the threat of intensified terror, of petrol bombs being replaced by car bombs, is a frightening prospect. The power of terror did reflect in the low turnout during the polls. If the Islamists manage to stage a few daring car bombings that kill a few hundred like in Iraq, Bangladesh will be looking at a whole new challenge of global terror coming to the country through home-grown Islamists who may lack a popular support base but have enough real and virtual networks to bleed the country and those who run it.
Source: HindustanTimes
As in his all previous articles, this article of Bhaumik seems to promote only one message – more explicitly, that Bangladesh is in the throes of “Islamist Terrorism” and more, implicitly (and this is for the Western government) that Awami League is the saviour against “Islamist terrorism”, so give your support. Also implicit in this message is that shun AL’s opponents.
However, at least one truth that Bhaumik has noted in this article is that there is a stark ideological difference between Jamat E Islami, Bangladesh and Al-Qaeda. While Jamat believes in democracy and fights for free and fair election as a way to go to power, Al-Qaeda does the opposite. Therefore, it is quite clear that there will be hardly many enthusiastic takers to act on on Al-Zawahiri’s appeal (validity of the statement itself is doubted in many quarters) in Bangladesh. That does not mean that Bangladeshi’s can rest and relax.
Bhaumik’s last message in his article that “If the Islamists manage to stage a few daring car bombings that kill a few hundred like in Iraq, Bangladesh will be looking at a whole new challenge of global terror…” .must not be taken lightly.
Looks like Bhaumik is telling us of an eventuality that will happen, regardless. Who will carry out these terror acts? I do not know. I leave that to the imagination of the readers. Just ask yourselves who would gain most from such acts – AL, BNP, JI, India, US?
Certainly not the so-called “Islamists”.nor their partners..
To a lot many ‘antels’ in Bangladesh, democracy bears a completely different meaning. To them democracy is what they say, not what defined by A. Lincoln or Lasky or Rousseau. Just look, with not more than one or zero seat in the parliament the leftist trumpet blowers are vigorously present in the country. Failing to win with their own party logo, many of them have boarded on the ‘boat’ and are enjoying all the pleasures of life. But those parties which they love to call ‘fanatic’, ‘radical’ etc, even having more than one parliament seats with as much as 5%-7% popular votes have been facing a sea of troubles from the rulers. If democracy were the ruling parties’ real choice, why don’t they leave the issue to the general people to settle? But no. They pose to be champions of democracy. To protect people’s right of vote, they have made one third of the constitution unchangeable for ever and abolished the ‘Referendum Clause’ from the constitution. This is really a ‘democracy – Bangladesh Style’.
Bangladesh war crimes and the possibility of global terror
http://www.hindustantimes.com 18.02.14 –
AL-HILAL TO HINDUSTAN TIMES COLUMNIST SUBIR BHAUMIK:
We are not Jamaat supporters , “Madrassa educated ISLAMIC TERRORISTS” but against the politically motivated, pre-planned judicial mass killing of the entire upper echelon of the jamaat, country’s largest Islamic party by the pretext of “TRYING THE so called WAR CRIMINALS” . Islam has been the reason for the very existence of Muslim Bangladesh as an independent state and not a part of secular India. Islamic movement grew up in Muslim Bengal even before Al-Qaida was created by the Americans. It is a wishful thinking that without Al-Qaida’s help Islamic movement will disappear leaving the terrorist termite queen Hasina to rule over our country with the blessings and backing of her foreign mentors who are antagonistic to Islam. We would by ALLAH, never let Indian poodle, poorly educated Hasina to de-Islamize this country of ours & we have no link either with India or AlQaida.