May 29, 2025 5:06 pm
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How dangerous are the Afghan returnee militants ?

Nomad Dragonfly

Bangladesh has been talking about Islamist militancy and extremism or an armed struggle to establish a Shariah-based state since early 1999. Members of the Bangladesh branch of the Pakistani militant outfit Harkatul Jihad al-Islami or HuJI attacked poet Shamsur Rahman with an intention of killing him on January 18 in that year. After that, in a series of grenade attacks, HuJI-B militants killed at least 105 people in 14 operations over the course of six years to stop anti-Islamic activities. The victims included top leaders and activists of the Awami League, leftists and communists, secularist and non-Muslim groups. Later, it was revealed that the HuJI-B established armed training centers in Lalkhan Bazar Madrasa in Chittagong and the surrounding hilly areas, Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban. They preferred large scale attacks with Arges grenades, brought in from Pakistan.
Then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of the BNP-Jamaat government banned the group in late 2005. Earlier, the US blacklisted the Pakistan-based HuJI in 2002 and its Bangladesh branch in 2003.
The HuJI-B founders comprised many of over 12,000 Bangladeshis who went to Afghanistan from the mid-1980s to 2001 to fight against the Soviet army on behalf of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. There, they were able to meet al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. The Bangladeshi mujaheedins were mainly from teachers and students of Qawmi madrasas of the Hanafi school and Deoband school. They were trained in guerrilla warfare and heavy weapons and fought many battles in different regions of Afghanistan on behalf of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
During the Afghan war, Mujahideen were openly recruited from Bangladesh. At that time, members were also recruited by hoisting banners in front of Baitul Mukarram in Dhaka.

From HuJI’s own information, it is known that Maulana Abdur Rahman Farooqui of Monirampur, Jessore, who founded the militant group, went to Afghanistan in 1984. Later, on May 10, 1989, Maulana Farooqui was killed while clearing mines in Khost, Afghanistan. Maulana Nurul Karim of Jessore died in the same incident. It is known that Farooqui founded HuJI-B before his death.

After the death of Maulana Farooqui, Commander Manzoor Hasan, Mufti Abdul Hai, Commander Abdus Salam, Mufti Shafiqur Rahman, Abu Khaled, Zafar bin Qasem, Abu Tarek, Abdul Hakim, Ali Ahmed, Chacha Baset and freedom fighter Hakim, among others, represented Bangladesh, according to Al-Qaeda sources.
In addition, in 1986, HuJI members organized a public meeting at Altafunannesa ground in Bogra. About 1,000 Afghan returnee militants, including Maulana Abdus Salam, Maulana Ainul Haq, Mufti Abdul Hai and Mufti Shafiqur Rahman, joined that meeting.

Public Activities

When the military ruler General HM Ershad declared Islam as the state religion in 1988, the Afghan Mujahideens began to come out in public. The protests against the rehabilitation of the radical Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami also provoked the trained militants to form new groups and launch operations.

In late 1991, when war criminal Ghulam Azam was declared ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami, freedom fighters, intellectuals, writers, journalists, artistes, and cultural activists, under the leadership of Jahanara Imam, a martyr’s mother, formed the Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee for eliminating the war criminals and collaborators of 1971) on January 19, 1992. They threatened to stage a symbolic trial of Ghulam Azam for committing genocide and crimes against humanity in 1971 by setting up a Gono Adalot (People’s Court) on March 26—the 21st anniversary of our Independence—unless he was deported from the country.

On January 22, Matiur Rahman Nizami, the then secretary general of Jamaat, in a statement termed the members of the committee “enemies of the constitution”.
A month after the Gono Adalot, on April 30, the Bangladesh branch of the HuJI made its debut by holding a press conference at the National Press Club in Dhaka. They demanded that Sharia law be introduced in Bangladesh. Those present at the press conference on that day were: HuJI-B President Maulana Abdus Salam, Field Commander Manzoor Hasan, Dhaka City chapter President Maulana Delwar Hossain, Publicity Secretary Mufti Shafiqur Rahman and Maulana Abdul Hai.
Other top leaders of HuJI-B included Shaykhul Hadith Allama Azizul Haque, chairman of a faction of the Islami Oikya Jote (father of Khilafat Majlis Secretary General Mamunul Haque), Sylhet-based leader of the same party Maulana Habibur Rahman, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj (who was a BNP MP in 1991), Sultan Jawak Nadvi of Chittagong, Abdul Mannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali.
It may be mentioned that Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988, and Mullah Omar formed the Taliban in 1994. From 1992 to 1998, HuJI-B organized and operated in the frontier areas of Myanmar, working in conjunction with the Rohingya armed organizations RSO (Rohingya Solidarity Organization) and ARNO (Arakan Rohingya National Organization).
But when the conflict with the Rohingya organizations surfaced, HuJI-B withdrew from Arakan and started operation from inside Bangladesh. At that time, the organization was led by Mufti Abdul Hannan, who had fought on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and started working as the outfit’s propaganda organizer in 1994. Maulana Abdus Salam and Mufti Abdur Rauf led the other two groups of HuJI-B.
On May 21, 2004, HuJI-B launched a grenade attack targeting the then British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury at the Hazrat Shahjalal shrine in Sylhet. Chowdhury, who was of Bangladeshi origin, survived, but three people were killed and at least 70 others were injured. Mufti Hannan was hanged in this case.
Although HuJI-B never admitted responsibility for the attacks, they gave various arguments in support of those attacks while testifying during the trials of various cases. For example, in the case of the bomb attack at Ramna Batamul on April 14, 2001, in which 10 people were killed, the accused said that celebrating Pahela Boishakh was against Islam.

A few days before the ban on October 17, 2005, then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia attended a meeting with some leaders of HuJI-B at her office. Shaykhul Hadith, Maulana Habibur Rahman, Maulana Obaidul Haque, Mufti Shahidul Islam, Ashraf Ali, Abdur Rab Yusufi, Yusuf Ashrafie, Nezamuddin, Mohammad Humayun Kabir and Tafazzal Haque Aziz joined the meeting on October 11 as Islamic thinkers.
In addition, in October 2006, HuJI leaders held a discussion meeting in the capital under another banner. However, at that time, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan said that he had not seen any activities of such an organization.
In addition, Jamaat MP Riasat Ali Biswas said in Parliament on September 11, 2005, that the news of training JMB and HuJI-B militants to establish an Islamic state was nothing but propaganda.
During the 1/11 government, HuJI-B, on the advice of some high ranking officers of the military intelligence agency at the time, changed its name again and tried to enter public politics under the name of Islami Gana Andolan or IDP (Islamic Democratic Party). They opened a party office at Paltan in the capital, and applied to the Election Commission for registration. But in the end, the party did not get registration from the commission.
Within a year of the Awami League government coming to power in 2009, almost all the top leaders and militants of all three factions, including the so-called mainstream of HuJI-B, were arrested. Yet, the extremist leaders still out of jail started regrouping, since Sheikh Hasina opted for resuming the trial of war criminals, completing the trial of the killers of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and restoring secularism and socialism in the Constitution. These changes had been made by the military rulers who usurped power after the assassination of Bangabandhu in 1975.

When the influx of Rohingya refugees started in 2012 and later in 2016-17, HuJI-B members and their NGO Al Markazul Islami Bangladesh, which was founded in 1988 by Khelafat Majlish leader Mufti Shahidul Islam, became active again. He was elected as a member of parliament from the Islamic Oikyo Jote (Undivided), an ally of the then BNP-led four-party alliance, in the by-election from the Narail-2 constituency in 2001.
In addition, when Mufti Hannan was hanged on April 12, 2017, al-Qaeda vowed to avenge the killing. Claiming him as a symbol of Dawah and Jihad, a statement by the Pakistan-based Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) said that Mufti Hannan was a follower of the anti-British Faraizi movement leader Haji Shariatullah and played a strong role against the spread of secularism.

On March 6, 1999, a bomb attack at a program of Udichi in Jessore killed 10 people and injured about 150.

On October 8, 1999, an attack on an Ahmadiyya mosque in Khulna killed 8 people.

On July 20, 2000, HuJI-B members planted a 76-kg bomb near the rally of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Kotalipara, Gopalganj.

On January 20, 2001, a bomb attack on a Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) rally in Paltan, Dhaka, killed five people.

On June 3 of the same year, an attack on a Catholic church in Baniarchar village in Muksudpur, Gopalganj killed 10 people and injured more than 50 people.

On June 16, at least 20 people were killed in a bomb attack on the Awami League office in Narayanganj.

On September 23, eight people were killed in a bomb attack on an Awami League meeting in Bagerhat.

On June 21, 2004, a bomb attack on a rally of Awami League leader Suranjit Sengupta in Sunamganj killed one and injured several others.

On August 7 of the same year, a grenade attack was launched on the then mayor of Sylhet, Badruddin Ahmed Kamran. Though, the mayor survived the incident, another person died.

The most brutal bomb attack in the history of Bangladesh was staged on August 21, 2004. That day, 24 people including Ivy Rahman were killed and more than 300 people were seriously injured in a grenade attack on the then opposition leader’s anti-terrorism rally on Bangabandhu Avenue. Sheikh Hasina who survived the grisly attack was the main target of the attack as several Arges grenades were hurled on the makeshift dias and she was also shot at from firearms while being taken to her car. The explosions caused Hasina’s ear injuries.

On January 27, 2005, former Finance Minister Shah AMS Kibria and four others were killed in a grenade attack in Habiganj.

Disclaimer:
Opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not reflect The Voice’s views. The Voice upholds free expression but isn’t responsible for content in this section.

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