Dhaka asked to adopt counter militant ideology

Trackback URL

Download PDF

Bangladesh may end up facing Pakistan’s militancy situation in just five years if the government does not counter militant ideology by creating strategies within itself and the civil society, said renowned political analyst Rohan Gunaratna yesterday.

A global expert on al-Qaeda, Gunaratna said Bangladesh has the operational capability to prevent militancy but the government does not have mechanisms in place to sweeping arrests last year, Gunaratna said.

Referring to the countrywide bomb blasts carried out by the JMB on August 17, 2005, he said, “The JMB was known to the Bangladeshi authorities before that incident, [but] there wasn’t the initiative on part of the Bangladeshi authorities to act against this group until they could plan and conduct the operation.

“That in many ways speaks of a nation,” he said, adding that the JMB was able to work under religious cover through which they made linkages within the country and was able to survive and grow enough to conduct the August 17 operation.

“The threat of terrorism is sometimes hidden,” Gunaratna said, “Though JMB leaders have been executed, the ideology of this group has not been effectively countered and so, the threat persists.

“It is important to manage the threat through capture and arrests and also by building necessary structures within government and the civil society to counter the group’s belief system,” he said.

He also said it is important for the economy to grow if militancy is to be effectively mitigated with a particular focus on poverty as militants readily exploit poor communities for recruits.

Gunaratna said the al-Qaeda embraces the concept of leading or cooperating local struggles as demonstrated by their activity in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Somalia, Egypt and Libya, among others.

He added that disbelieving the al-Qaeda threat is dangerous as demonstrated by the case of Pakistan.

Leave a Reply