Nomad Dragonfly
Armed militant attacks and calls for jihad have been seen regularly in Bangladesh since 1999, but there was a sudden slowdown in 2005—only after numerous fatalities—with the arrest of a top leader of the Bangladesh branch of Pakistan-based Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI-B), Mufti Abdul Hannan. The following year, after months of denial of their existence, then the BNP-Jamaat government arrested the main organizers of the al-Qaeda inspired outfits Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), including JMB founder Shayakh Abdur Rahman and JMJB chief Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai. The duo and four other JMB leaders were hanged during the army-backed interim government in 2007.
Of them, Abdur Rahman was linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangla Bhai with Islami Chhatra Shibir and Mufti Hannan was an Afghan war veteran who had been radicalized during his studies in India and Pakistan.
In their armed operations spanning from 1999 to 2016, their targets were the Awami League and leftist parties, secularists, war crimes trial campaigners, cultural activists, NGOs, Shias, Ahmadis, and non-Muslims. In large-scale attacks, the militants mainly used grenades and IEDs, as well as chapatis and knives to injure individuals. None of the victims was from Jamaat-e-Islami or the BNP.
As HuJI-B and JMB became ineffective, their followers split into different groups and worked to raise funds and increase their membership through communication at home and abroad. Until 2011, many students and teachers were recruited from important private universities in the country and BUET, Dhaka, Rajshahi and Chittagong universities. In addition, after JMB’s supreme leader Salahuddin was freed by attacking a prison van in 2014, he took charge of the notorious group, formed with Ahle Hadith and Jamaat-Shibir men.
Although Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), which started its journey in 2000 targeting private universities and English medium schools, did not participate directly in armed operations as a group, their main task was to plan and coordinate and provide technical assistance to the jihadi activities of other organizations and to brainwash the army, BGB, police members and university students. The other groups involved with HuT were Jamaat-ul-Muslimeen and an NGO named Research Centre for Unity Development (RCUD), which was formed in 2002 by two founding directors of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited – Abdur Rashid Chowdhury and Abdur Razzak Laskar. Its operations were maintained by Prof Rezaur Razzak, son of Abdur Razzak Laskar.
Before its operations stopped in 2010, the RCUD financed radicalized students of private universities to go abroad and meet with al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan-based militants. At that time, Rajib Karim, a top militant linked to those visiting Yemen, was arrested for planning to bomb British Airways and sentenced to 30 years in prison, while another militant named Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was arrested for attempting to bomb New York Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan.
During the 1/11 government, the army’s intelligence gave HuJI-B the opportunity to work as a political party, styled Islamic Democratic Party (IDP), but the initiative collapsed under pressure from development partners and the media. Then, the new al-Qaeda group started working with the help of HuT, and on February 25, 2009, they launched a massacre at the then BDR Headquarters to kill the heroes of the anti-militancy operation and the smart officers of the army. Two years later, in 2011, the HuT elements again attempted a military coup under the leadership of Major Zia and failed, and many people, including former Major Syed Ziaul Haq, were dismissed.
In the meantime, after the Sheikh Hasina government executed five convicts of the August 15 assassinations and launched the long-pending war crimes trials in 2010, Jamaat and the militants became desperate.
When secularism was restored through the amendment of the constitution in June 2011, all Islamic parties, including HuT, JMB, HuJI-B, Jamaat and Hefazat started protesting. As evidence of this, we have seen the 13-point movement of Hefazat since January 2013, in which all Islamic parties and masked militants participated in various rallies. It should be noted that whether these Islamic parties contested elections or not, their main goal was against democracy, secularism and Bengali culture.
And in early 2013, as the trial of senior leaders of Jamaat for crimes against humanity in 1971 was nearing its end, Jamaat decided to oust Sheikh Hasina through jihad. When the Ganajagaran Mancha was established in Shahbagh on February 5 to demand the maximum punishment for the razakars and a ban on religion-based politics, the leaders and activists of Jamaat-Hefazat and their like-minded parties started a series of murders by calling the protesters and the Awami League enemies of Islam and fascists. The Jamaat-owned newspapers the Daily Amar Desh, the Daily Naya Diganta and the Daily Amar Desh supported the terror. They also managed to get statements from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey governments to save the Jamaat war criminals.
The militants tried to suppress the movement by attacking secular blogger Asif Mohiuddin with a machete on January 13 and hacking former BUET student Ahmed Rajib Haider or Thaba Baba to death in a machete attack on February 15. In the next three years, the Pakistan-based militant group Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) killed nine people in 11 more operations and claimed responsibility. Their Bangladesh branch is called Ansar al-Islam. At least seven more people of the same ideology were killed in the same way during this period, but no group claimed responsibility. In each incident, the militants accused the victims of insulting the Prophet and Islam and engaging in various un-Islamic activities.
It is worth noting that after the assassination of prominent secular writer, researcher and teacher Avijit Roy on February 26, 2015, Ansar Al-Islam took responsibility for all the killings after the attack on Asif Mohiuddin. Before that, a new organization called Ansarullah Bangla Team had claimed responsibility for them on Twitter.
After Ansar Al-Islam claimed responsibility, the name of Ansarullah Bangla Team was no longer heard. At that time, the intelligence police denied the existence of the foreign militant group Ansar Al-Islam and arrested many secular bloggers and writers based on the list provided by the militants. Again, the government was silent when the killings were being carried out based on this list. As a result, most of the cases were not properly investigated or tried. In some of the murders, the killers caught red-handed were identified as students of private universities and madrasas who were affiliated with HuT, Islami Chhatra Shibir and Hefazat.
Similarly, the intelligence agencies denied the existence of the militant group that carried out the killings in the name of the Islamic State in 2015.
Ansar al-Islam focused on building online support after the killing of LGBT rights activists Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Tanoy in their latest operation. They also joined the Cox’s Bazar-based jihadi activities to protect the rights of the Rohingya, which their predecessors, HuJI-B and JMB, had been doing for long.
Jihadi books, online forums and research show that militants from HuT, Ansar al-Islam, HuJI-B and JMB actively participated in the anarchist movement of July-August 2024 to overthrow the Awami League government and eliminate secularism from the country. However, no militant group other than Jamaat-Shibir and HuT has yet publicly acknowledged their involvement.
The interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof Muhammad Yunus released Jasimuddin Rahmani, the spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, and dozens of jihadists after coming to power. Many other extremists also managed to flee the prisons as their groups launched fatal attacks in July-August. Since then, Rahmani and other jihadist leaders have been speaking at Islamic conferences to instigate armed struggle in Arakan of Myanmar, north-east states and Kashmir of India while showing sympathy fort the Jamaat leaders executed for war crimes and those arrested for promoting extremism, raising eyebrows of the peace-loving citizens as well as international community.
List of murders claimed by AQIS
1/ On January 13, 2013, secularist writer Asif Mohiuddin was attacked with machetes in Uttara, Dhaka. The blogger was seriously injured and later went abroad.
2/ On February 15, blogger and former BUET student Ahmed Rajib Haider was killed in a machete attack in Pallabi.
3/ On June 14, 2014, activist Rakib Mamun was injured in a gun attack in Shyamoli, Dhaka.
4/ On September 30, Daffodil University student Ashraful Alam was hacked to death in a machete attack at his home near the Jahangirnagar University campus in Savar.
5/ On November 15, Rajshahi University teacher and Baul fan Professor AKM Shafiul Islam was hacked to death near his home.
6/ On February 26 of the following year, science writer and former BUET teacher Dr Avijit Roy was hacked to death near the Raju Sculpture of Dhaka University, and his wife Bonya Ahmed was severely injured when a group of militants attacked them with machetes. The couple came to Dhaka from the US to join the Amar Ekushey Book Fair.
7/ A month later, on March 30, secularist writer and war crimes trial campaigner Oyasiqur Rahman Babu was killed by three attackers wielding machetes while going to his office in the Begunbari area of Tejgaon. At that time, some hijras caught two of the murderers. They are said to be students of Hefazat’s Hathazari Madrasa.
8/ On May 12 of the same year, science writer Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death with a machete on the streets of Sylhet.
9/ Then on August 7, secularist writer Niladri Chattopadhyay (Niloy Neel) was killed in a machete attack at his flat in Goran, Dhaka.
10/ On October 31, publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was killed by a machete attack at his office in Aziz Supermarket, Dhaka. His father, Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, recently became the new president of Bangla Academy. He had published books by Dr Avijit Roy.
11/ On the same day, Shuddhaswar Prakashni publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and writers Rondeepam Basu and Tarek Rahim were attacked with machetes in Lalmatia. All of them were seriously injured.
12/ Then on April 6, 2016, Jagannath University student and secularist writer Nazimuddin Samad was killed in a machete attack on the streets of Sutrapur in Old Dhaka.
13/ On April 25 of the same year, LGBT rights activist and USAID official Xulhaz Mannan and theatre activist Mahbub Tanoy were killed in a machete attack at their home in Kalabagan.
Similar attacks not claimed
1/ Jagatjyoti Talukder, an active leader of Sylhet Ganajagaran Mancha, was hacked to death in a machete attack on March 2, 2013.
2/ Then on April 9, BUET Chhatra League leader and war crimes trial campaigner Arif Raihan Dwip was attacked with a machete by Hefazat and Shibir activists. He died on July 2 while undergoing treatment.
3/ Another BUET student, Tanmoy Ahmed Moon, was severely injured in a machete attack in Gaibandha on August 11, 2013.
4/ Then on December 9, Zia Uddin Zakaria, a college teacher from Bogra and organizer of the Ganajagaran Mancha, was hacked to death in a machete attack.
5/ On October 15, 2014, three militants were arrested while trying to kill a teacher from Dhaka’s Manipur School using machetes.
6/ Shanto Mariam University student and music teacher Riyad Morshed Babu was hacked to death with machetes at his residence in Palpara, Savar on January 4, 2015.
7/ On January 11, 2015, Anjali Devi Chowdhury, a teacher at Chittagong Nursing College, was hacked to death in a machete attack.
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