Bangladesh bans TV station, tracks students

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DHAKA, July 10, (AFP): Bangladesh moved to counter a deadly wave of Islamist attacks Sunday, ordering an Islamic television station to stop broadcasting and telling schools to report any missing students. The measures come after several suspected Islamist extremists were reported to be fans of the television channel, while others were found to be from elite universities but had been missing for months.

A Bangladesh cabinet committee decided to ban Peace TV from the country, information minister Hasanul Haq Inu told journalists Sunday.

The station is run by Indian doctorturned- preacher Zakir Naik, the founder and president of Mumbaibased Islamic Research Foundation, and its programmes are aired from Dubai. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier in the day called on every school, college and university to “create a list of absent students and publish it”. Bangladesh has been reeling from dozens of attacks, mainly targeting secular activists or religious minorities. “We will be rigorous,” the premier said. “We must uproot militancy and terrorism from Bangladesh.”

Attack
Three of the alleged jihadists who participated in an attack on a Dhaka cafe last week, in which 20 hostages were murdered, attended top schools and universities in the Bangladeshi capital. The revelation that the attackers were educated, well-off members of society has sparked fears that Islamism has spread far beyond disenfranchised youngsters being radicalised in madrasas. School authorities would now have to provide information on any students who have an unexplained absence of 10 days or more, education minister Nurul Islam Nahid said.

Another student of a well-regarded university participated in a deadly attack in northern Bangladesh on Thursday that killed at least three people at a huge prayer gathering marking the start of Eid. Police said both attacks were carried out by a banned local militant group, despite vocal claims from the Islamic State group that they were responsible for the siege at the Dhaka cafe.

Authorities, meanwhile, have launched a publicity blitz, urging parents to closely monitor their children. Television channels have broadcast photos of missing students and advertisements to deter extremism.

Security
US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal flew to Dhaka Sunday to discuss the security situation with Bangladesh foreign minister Mahmood Ali. She offered US expertise in building Bangladesh’s counterterrorism capabilities, the American embassy in Dhaka said in a statement. “We will continue our assistance in combatting the global threat of terrorism that our countries both confront,” she said. Bangladesh has been hit by a surge in Islamist attacks in the past three years that reached new heights last weekend when 20 hostages were murdered in Dhaka.

The wave of attacks has been notably brutal with many of the victims, including the hostages, hacked to death with machetes. One week on from the end of the siege at an upmarket cafe in the capital, AFP looks at some of the factors fuelling the attacks, who might be responsible and how the government is reacting: Bangladesh has been blighted by unrest since it broke from Pakistan in a war of independence in 1971 and has witnessed more than a dozen coups.

Islamist groups such as Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and the newer Ansarullah Bangla Team have long posed a challenge to authorities, with the JMB killing at least 28 people in a bombing campaign in 2005. The group, blamed by the government for the Dhaka siege, was banned after the 2005 attacks and is seen as a largely spent force following the subsequent arrest and execution of its leaders. While the 2005 attacks were largely indiscriminate, the recent killings have had specific targets, including secular bloggers and gay activists.

Members of minority groups such as Hindus, Christians and Sufi Muslims have also been victims, with many of them hacked to death. Although a handful of foreigners had previously been killed, last weekend’s siege was by far the deadliest attack. The victims included nine Italians and seven Japanese. Experts point to several factors behind the recent violence, including the execution of top Islamists over their role in the independence war.

Protest
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 2013 to protest at the guilty verdicts handed down by a domestic tribunal that critics say was intent on neutering opposition to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The Supreme Court then barred the biggest Islamist political party Jamaate- Islami from contesting the 2014 general election, disenfranchising millions of supporters.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party — allied to Jamaat — subsequently boycotted the polls. What was then effectively a one-horse race was held against the backdrop of firebombings across the country.

Many observers say the lack of genuine democracy has made Bangladesh a fertile ground for extremists. “There is a lot of support for the organisations (Hasina) is trying to quash,” said C. Christine Fair, associate professor at Georgetown University in Washington and South Asia expert. “The country is torn. She is essentially silencing, politically, half the country.” Both the Islamic State (IS) organisation and the competing Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have claimed many of the attacks.

However, the government insists international jihadist networks have not got a foothold in Bangladesh and that local extremists are culpable. There is little evidence that IS trains and funds attackers in the country, although it has recruited Bangladeshis to fight in Syria. More likely, analysts say, is that radicalised youths are being inspired by the group and pledge allegiance — a murky line in the age of social media. During the cafe siege, IS was sent gruesome pictures of the carnage by the attackers, which it immediately distributed via its affiliate news agency Amaq.

Al-Qaeda may have more of a claim of presence in Bangladesh, with Bangladeshi fighters aiding the anti- Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan as far back as the 1980s. “The ties to AQIS are much more credible. South Asia is Al-Qaeda territory,” said Fair. The use of machetes has become a chilling hallmark of the murders and nearly all the slain hostages were attacked with sharp blades, even though their killers had automatic weapons.

Some experts say a lack of access to suicide vests or car bombs explains the prevalence of machete attacks but others see a more deliberate reason behind the brutal killing style. “They wanted to show the world that they can go to any extent for jihad,” said K. G. Suresh of New Delhi’s Vivekananda International Foundation think-tank. Bangladesh is intensely politically polarised, characterised by a poisonous rivalry between Hasina and the main opposition leader Khaleda Zia that stretches back decades.

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