An Ordinary Citizen

World witnessed the Mumbai carnage with horror few days back which left about 200 dead and 300 wounded. It also shattered a nation, battered the relation of two countries and make the world leaders a little nervous with dimension of terrorism in the coming future.

It is blamed that Pakistan terrorist groups are directly linked with the terrorist act. India is blaming Pakistan for patronizing the terrorist, though Pakistan denies the accusation.
Though Bangladesh is not officially blamed for any link with the act, Bangladesh is also feeling the heat of the carnage. With the spilling of terrorist act to Pakistan and then to India, Bangladesh is not far away the site of carnage.

Bangladesh is not immune from the terrorist activities. In the near past, an Islamic militant group Jamiatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) made an all out effort to demonstrate their presence by blasting bombs in all over the country at a time. In the following months people of Bangladesh witnessed the bombings in the courts, killing of judges and innocent people. After months of panicky situation,many of the JMB leaders were arrested, tried in the court and given death penalty. The penalty was materialized during the tenure of the caretaker government and people felt temporary relief.

But the proponents of JMB are still there, many young people because of lack of understanding of true Islam,confused militancy as a means of achieving their ideological goal. It is found that JMB started their activities long before and was associated with major political killings in Bangladesh.

It is learnt that some of militants have participated in the Afgan war against Russia where they develop the instinct for militancy and later they grouped together to exercise the tactics in Bangladesh. It is said that JMB is more a home grown group and virtually had no contact with Al-Queda.

But it is not certain that they have been abolished and they will remain not so virulent in their attack in future. Sporadic news of their activities and arrests are still continuing.

Interestingly, a group of JMB minded Afgan mujahedin wanted to float a political party in Bangladesh in the backdrop of general election when the Election Commission invite applications for registration of the political parties. The appeal was protested from different corners and EC ultimately refused to recognize the party. But I am not sure whether it is better to allow a militant group to keep it activities open and work as political party.

A disturbing development is the breaking down of the sculpture in front of Bangladesh Airlines office in Dilkhusha, Dhaka immediately after the Mumbai massacre by some fanatics who rather advocating in favour of their wrongdoing even after arrest. With general election very close at the end of December 2008, government is also speculating nasty misdeeds by religious fanatics.

The best safeguard against the militancy is the people. The reason that the militancy so far didn’t get the root in the soil of Bangladesh is because people didn’t support and nourish it.

People will need to be kept aware and their participation will be needed to be ensured in the future also against the terrorism.

Understanding the rise of Islamic militancy in Bangladesh needs a thorough study and one can’t depend on sporadic reports of the print and electronic media to understand the philosophy and strategy of the groups. To fulfill the need on long term basis Bangladesh should have an Institute for security and strategic policy under the Ministry of Defense.

More attention should be given to make the Madrasha education modernized, practical, employment worthy,transparent and in communication with mainstream education.

And people and government must be vigilant against any suspicious activities regarding Islamic terrorism.

An ordinary citizen