May 18, 2015
Dear Friends,
Subject: Fundamentalist Surge In Bangladesh—its Impact On India’s Security
Here with a copy (attached) of the lead editorial on the subject from “The Statesman” of May 17, 2015. We thought of sharing this with you because of the subject’s serious implications on our national security, especially when read with what has been happening to the West of India.
Some important points from this piece are:
This time around, the Al Qaida – and not the home-grown Jamaat – has claimed responsibility, raising suspicions that assailants may have come over from Afghanistan or Pakistan. Irrespective of the point of origin, there is little doubt that India and more accurately Bengal is the preferred corridor. There is an eerie similarity in the disturbingly familiar modus operandi. The bloggers have been exterminated with machetes in a faint echo of ISIS killings in Iraq and Syria. And the Al Qaida militants who hacked Das to death for having crafted a website to promote secularism, have blurred the distinction between themselves and ISIS. And the fundamentalist design has succinctly been summed up by Rafida Bonya Ahmed, the grievously injured wife of Avijit Roy, who was killed by the Jamaat in February – “This is a global act of terror,” she is reported to have told Reuters in an interview from the USA.
So, the wife of the first of the three bloggers hacked so far, says, “This is a global act of terror.”
The Bangladesh government now appears to be fearful of rocking the fundamentalist apple cart and its impact on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party given its express sympathies for the Islamists.
So, the editorial rightly concludes:
It is a political-religious cocktail that Hasina will have to countenance. The outlook is awesome as the Prime Minister is yet to initiate even a feeble attempt to confront the extremist challenge, let alone ban the Jamaat. Under a pussyfooting establishment, Bangladesh might soon be in the vortex of a religious war – clothed as a conflict between fundamentalists and secularists. The latter have been let down by the Awami League for all its trumpeted faith in secularism.
Friends, you must have meanwhile read about the recent act of massacre in Pakistan, ISIS gunning down 40 or more Shias in bus in Karachi on May 14, for which the ISIS has claimed the responsibility. That is ISIS’s first footprint in Pakistan and carries deeper meaning for those responsible for India’s security.
For laymen like us, it is now clear that we are caught in a pincer—Al Qaeda, almost unbridled, in the East (had earlier, in response to al Baghdadi’s unilateral declaration of ISIS Caliphate, declared their own Caliphate for West Bengal) and now in cahoot with the Jamaat, and the deadly brutal ISIS in the West. We could hardly sleep peacefully, knowing about the inability or lack of determination of the authorities in either of the two countries to face the challenges on their lands.
Thinking ahead, the possibility of the neighbour in the West, facilitating the march forward of the ISIS to India cannot also be ruled out. And, if they can be diverted to Kashmir, that will be the icing on the cake, to put it in lighter vein.
We are sure the authorities concerned in Delhi are thinking and strategising on the threat.
Vandemataram,
Your sevak,
D.C. Nath
MACHETE VS SECULARIST
Editorial| 17 May, 2015
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/machete-vs-secularist/63717.html
The label of the assassin is of lesser moment than the intent to kill with calculated malevolence. By that hideous token, there is little or no difference between ISIS, Al Qaida, and the Taliban. And so it has been with the killings since February of three bloggers in Bangladesh. Last Tuesday’s murder of Ananta Bijoy Das by machete-wielding Islamists in Sylhet – after two outrages in Dhaka – reinforces the fundamentalist surge. This time around, the Al Qaida – and not the home-grown Jamaat – has claimed responsibility, raising suspicions that assailants may have come over from Afghanistan or Pakistan. Irrespective of the point of origin, there is little doubt that India and more accurately Bengal is the preferred corridor. There is an eerie similarity in the disturbingly familiar modus operandi. The bloggers have been exterminated with machetes in a faint echo of ISIS killings in Iraq and Syria. And the Al Qaida militants who hacked Das to death for having crafted a website to promote secularism, have blurred the distinction between themselves and ISIS. And the fundamentalist design has succinctly been summed up by Rafida Bonya Ahmed, the grievously injured wife of Avijit Roy, who was killed by the Jamaat in February – “This is a global act of terror,” she is reported to have told Reuters in an interview from the USA.
Sad to reflect, the response of the purportedly secular Awami League dispensation of Begum Hasina doesn’t match the enormity of the recurrent tragedies. And the facts of the matter ought not to arouse communal passions – of the three victims butchered thus far, two belong to the minority Hindu community, a persecuted segment since the country’s creation. The police were mute witnesses to Avijit’s killing on a Dhaka street in February; the law-enforcement authorities were no less ineffective in Sylhet on Tuesday. Forty-eight hours after Das was done to death, the police are yet to track down the assailants. In the net, Hasina has conveyed the impression to the democratic world that she is attempting to soft-pedal the tragedies. Having stopped short of banning the Jamaat after taking over as Prime Minister, she now appears to be fearful of rocking the fundamentalist apple cart and its impact on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party given its express sympathies for the Islamists. The Jamaat, it bears recall, was once a part of the coalition that Begum Khaleda headed. Ergo, it is a political-religious cocktail that Hasina will have to countenance. The outlook is awesome as the Prime Minister is yet to initiate even a feeble attempt to confront the extremist challenge, let alone ban the Jamaat. Under a pussyfooting establishment, Bangladesh might soon be in the vortex of a religious war – clothed as a conflict between fundamentalists and secularists. The latter have been let down by the Awami League for all its trumpeted faith in secularism.
