Terrorism and how we tackle it
Shahedul Anam Khan looks for a solution in a new work
Trends in Militancy in Bangladesh, Possible Responses, Edit Farooq Sobhan, The University Press Limited
It is heartening to see think tanks in Bangladesh examining the issue of terrorism in the country in earnest. Much as we consider it unpalatable, we have been caught up in the phenomenon, manifestly, from the day when nearly five hundred IEDs were set off almost simultaneously in all but one upazilla of the country in Aug 2005. Since then the strategic and scholastic community in the country have been engaged in delving into various aspects of the issue. However, very little by way of scholarly work has come off the discourses and discussions. The book under review, Trends in Militancy in Bangladesh - Possible Responses, has made a commendable attempt to add to whatever little of published research and analytical work that exists in Bangladesh. This volume is the outcome of two seminars organised by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) in Feb and June 2008 under the same title, to address the threat and violence motivated by extremism and formulate strategies to combat it. In fact, BEI has been engaged with the issue of countering terrorism for long and this is the second book related to terrorism that BEI has published as a sequel to a series of seminars and dialogues that it had organised between 2006 and 2008. What draws our attention is the second part of the title Possible Responses. As is our wont, we are very adept in analysing and tearing apart a problem but stopping short of suggesting the means and mechanism to overcome and indeed prevent its recurrence. This book has overcome that deficit. The present volume is in two parts. Part I deals with the structural aspects, i.e., the nature of terrorism, the threat groups and future trends. A very illuminating part of this section is the perspective related to Rajshai and Sylhet regions of the country. Part II deals with institutional aspects and countering capability, i.e., money laundering, capacity building of government agencies and the role of education with focus on madrasa education. The six articles that make up the book are well researched and each in its own way sheds new light on the issue and suggests realistic measures to counter the phenomenon. The prefatory note by way of the introduction very crisply summarises the main thrust of the six articles, and it is from here that I wish to flag some of the important points that emerge from the six articles. A point that must be highlighted is avoiding falling into the trap of a wide definition of terrorism, as the introductory note does, when it states, "…terrorism includes a wide array of crimes and evils….." It should be kept in mind that while terrorism uses violence not all violence is terrorism. The upshot of enlarging the definition is the dilution of the corrective measures and dissipation of the countermeasures. We do not want counter-terrorism discourse to become so elastic that it affects the strategy. The first of the six articles, "Trends in Militancy in Bangladesh" by Zohra Akhter, is a very well researched piece that has addressed both right and left wing extremism and given a detailed account of how religious militancy ratcheted up between the late 1990s and mid 2000 as well as the unwillingness to acknowledge its existence till 2005. However, the readers would have benefited if the author had dealt on why the idea of Jihad caught the imagination of the people, particularly of some people of this region, taking a cue from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US war there. Similarly, the statistics displayed in the article show a quantum jump in extremist activities between 2001 and 2005 without dilating on the reasons. The next two articles that make up Chapter One recount the growth of extremism in Rajshahi and Sylhet, two bordering regions of Bangladesh. The articles are insightful and add value to the book. It is interesting to note that terrorist groups in Rajshahi were sponsored by the government. They had active help of the police and were used to suppress political opponents. Terrorist groups in Sylhet were outsiders unlike in Rajshahi. The redeeming feature is that these terrorist groups had no popular support from the locals, which explains the reason behind the arrests of the top leaders in March 2006 from Sylhet. The first article of the Chapter Two deals with money laundering and the author, Nazmul Hasan, a banker by profession, has flagged the deficit of the Money Laundering Preventive Ordinance 2008 The article on capacity building of government agencies by Md. Nurul Huda, an ex-IGP, who should know well, rightly flags the point that it is a folly to put a timeframe on ending terrorism, and also the lack of harmonized efforts and combating terrorism. The article, "Role Of Education In Preventing Radicalism In Bangladesh", by Air Commodore Ishfaq Elahi Chiudhury (retd) exposes the lacunae in the system of education with so many different strands. Of religious education he avers that it merely scratches the surface without going deep. The country is still to formulate a coherent line of action against terrorism. It will be folly to believe that we can defeat terrorism forever. And thus it will be worthwhile for all concerned to heed the many good and practicable suggestions made in the book, some of which are: do not fritter away resources, intelligence efforts must be led by an apex body to make optimum use of resources, radicalism is a state of mind, and, as Hegel has said, man is willing to die for a cause of greater value to him than life itself. And that is what the counter efforts must concentrate on first, that streamlining the different strands is a pressing need as also a need to register and exercise oversight on all educational institutions in the country.
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