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STRATEGICALLY SPEAKING

JMB changing base!

There were compelling reasons for the JMB to seek sanctuary outside the country given that they were underpressure from the law enforcing agencies since the time they announced their intention and demonstrated their capability through the simultaneous blasts that they carried out in the country in 2005.

Brig Cen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
JAMA'ATUL Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) is in the news again after almost nine years. Not since March 2005 has the extremist group hogged the headlines in two countries. Their reemergence, though not entirely unexpected, is not happy tidings for us. After they were badly mauled in 2007 and with a truncated organisation and little capacity to pose a substantive threat some might have thought that they had seen the end of the
extremist group.
However, for anyone who is conversant with the modus operandi of extremist and terrorist groups it was perhaps a matter of time before the JMB remerged, given the deep-rooted ideology that drives the extremist cadres and more importantly their likely links with trans-boundary extremist organisations or even with state agencies of a third country using these groups to exert indirect pressure on another country by conducting terrorist acts.
That the JMB was not sitting idle is clearly evident from the fact that between 2007 and now the security agencies have anticipated a large number of their cadres. And their operation to free their members from police custody by ambushing a police van on an interdistrict highway in February of this year shows that their operational capability had not been completely blunted. If anything, JMB continued to be well-funded and retained a good planning capability. However, their reemergence in a very different context, that they should choose Indian soil to conduct their operations against Bangladesh and also against Indian targets, throws a different light on the extremist group.
The Indian NIA has identified the victims of the October 2 bomb blast incident in Khagragar, Burdwan, as belonging to the JMB. One of the killed is reported to have been living there for the last six or seven years and even married there. Some 50 modules of JMB have been identified by the NIA but what is surprising is that the Indian intelligence agencies had been aware of their presence on their soil since 2005 according to two WikiLeaks leaked cables. The reported plan of the JMB, to kill our two leaders, as revealed by NIA, is a matter that Bangladesh cannot but take seriously. However, some aspects of the reports throw up some puzzling questions that we ought to seek rational explanations to.
There were compelling reasons for the JMB to seeksanctuary outside the country given that they were under pressure from the law enforcing agencies since the time they announced their intention and demonstrated their capability through the simultaneous blasts that they carried out in the country in 2005. But shifting base is generally resorted to when the current base becomes too hot to handle, which was perhaps true, but not without guaranteed safe sanctuary across the border.
One wonders why the JMB has considered the soil of India safer than Bangladesh given that the Indian agencies had been getting increasingly concerned with the spate of radicalisation in Paschimbanga, particularly in the bordering districts. That they had till now existed on the Indian soil without being apprehended by the agencies till recently, and given that there were, according to Indian sources, large scale influx of extremists elements in the last there or four years in particular, show that they had been enjoying indemnity of sorts and, perhaps, with the acquiescence from powerful quarters in Paschimbanga.
But it is their shifting of base across the border and plans to make IEDs on Indian soil and then transfer those to Bangladesh through what we know as heavily fenced border on the Indian side, to carryout terror acts, is beyond comprehension. No sensible terrorist organisation would take the risk. Notwithstanding the security operations inside the country, it
would still be a relatively safer proposition to operate from within Bangladesh. And one wonders what might be the aim of the JMB to attack targets inside Paschimbanga. And what benefit would it derive in the context of their overall aim, which is to establish Sharia law in the country. Unlike HUJI (B), whose aim is more international and concerned with a Muslim Caliphate, the JMB is Bangladesh specific, unless of course it is working at the behest of another country, and that is a distinct possibility.
Some people see politics in the whole affair, the purpose being to discredit the Trinamool Congress in Paschimbanga for not being serious enough in tackling the issue of extremism and pandering to minority groups for votes. But be that as it may, politics or not, Bangladesh and our leaders are targets (this is not a new information), and that may coincide with aims of international terrorist organisation/s. It should seek more specific information from India in order to move effectively against the threat.
The writer is Editor, Op-Ed and Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.