When Bangladeshi authorities in July released the names of 261 men who have gone missing from their families, in an attempt to find militants hidden in this country of 160 million people, at the very
When Bangladeshi authorities in July released the names of 261 men who have gone missing from their families, in an attempt to find militants hidden in this country of 160 million people, at the very end of the list was “Jilani alias Abu Zidal”.
He was not in Bangladesh. The young man, an engineering school dropout, travelled to Syria last year to fight for the Islamic State. In April, IS announced he was blown to bits during a battle by a 23-millimetre gun, the sort used to shoot down aircrafts.
Asked why Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, a domestic anti-terrorism agency, listed Jilani among the 261 names, its spokesman Mufti Mohammad Khan said neither the man’s family nor the police had notified the battalion of the death. A Google search for Jilani, whose real name was Ashequr Rahman, would have brought up an Islamic State notification of his death. Distributing the alias of a dead jihadi in an all-points bulletin is just one illustration of how Bangladesh authorities have failed to confront the international links of radical Islamist groups in the country. Police and government officials here continue to insist they are facing a home-grown threat — a “grave error,” according to regional experts on militant groups. Banking officials admit being lost when it comes to interdicting foreign funding for attacks. Law enforcement officers have been slow to complete basic steps of intelligence-gathering, weeks after a July 1 assault in which five young men killed 20 people they’d taken hostage at a cafe in the capital. The government says the July 1 attack was the work of domestic militants and it has dismissed claims of responsibility from the Islamic State.
That fits with a pattern of the nation’s rulers reflexively blaming their rivals in Islamist opposition political parties for fomenting unrest. Dhaka has recently doubled down on its position that IS does not exist in Bangladesh. Authorities on Tuesday named a prime suspect in the café attack, Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury. Analysts say he is the same person IOfficials in Dhaka have ordered crackdowns on long-standing Bangladeshi domes
It’s a daunting task. Millions of overseas workers sent home about $15 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June 2016, the second-largest source of foreign exchange after garment exports.
Among that diaspora were eight Bangladeshi men, detained between March and April in Singapore, who had formed a group they called the Islamic State in Bangladesh.
Mostly construction workers, they’d failed to reach Syria and were saving cash to return home and launch attacks, according to Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs. The group’s leader, a 31-year-old draftsman at a construction firm, was inspired by Islamic State propaganda he found online.
He had a list of 13 categories of people under a title of “need to kill”, including security forces, politicians, media and “disbelievers”, such as Hindus and Christians.
Another clutch of men, 26 in all, were arrested in Singapore between last November and December after forming a “study group” that supported the ideology of Al Qaeda and Islamic State, according to Singapore’s home affairs ministry.
Members “were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government”, the ministry said.
