IEP report no cause for complacency
The Institute for Economics and Peace, based in the USA, has in fact validated by its report published on Tuesday, something that has been for long a fact in Bangladesh. In South Asia Bangladesh is the country least affected by terrorism. This has been acknowledged by knowledgeable circles of international practitioners and scholars too. There has been no terrorist attack in this country since 2006. However, the casualty figures mentioned in the report as regards Bangladesh, occurring between 2001 and now, are not quite accurate. The report perhaps has not taken the death toll in the August 21, 2004, grenade attack on the AL meeting in which 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured
The credit for the low prevalence of terrorism in this country over the last ten years, when in fact terrorism had quadrupled worldwide, must go to the government’s policy of zero tolerance of extremism and proactive work of the law enforcing agencies. Since the last five years in particular, the security agencies have been able to preempt several planned destructive acts of the terrorists and have been able to arrest nearly seven hundred of them. And for this we commend them.
However, we must not sit on our laurels nor must we be overtaken by complacency since terrorism as phenomenon is sustained by ideology that is often hard, if not impossible, to counter. We must not overlook the fact that some of these elements may have gone into a temporary mode of suspended animation waiting for an opportune moment to reappear. And we say this without wanting to sound alarmist.
The government’s counterterrorism strategy, which has been recently formulated, should be more vigorously implemented, particularly in so far as it relates to countering the extremists propaganda, by formulating appropriate counter-narratives. The government should also take note of reported radicalization in some private and public universities where the proscribed Hijbut-Tahrir has been said to be active.
Source: The Daily Star
