JAKARTA: The explosion of hundreds of small bombs, some little bigger than fireworks and mostly harmless, across Bangladesh on Aug. 17 may serve as a wake-up call that a much larger problem is brewing.
The size of the United Kingdom, impoverished and with the world’s third-biggest Muslim population, the Indian Ocean nation could become fertile ground for groups like Al Qaeda if Dhaka fails to act decisively, security analysts say.
Asia experts see disturbing parallels with Indonesia, another bastion of moderate Islam, where a long-ignored fringe announced itself with the blasts on the island of Bali in 2002 and has targeted Western interests in a major attack every year since.
“Bangladesh was very much like Nepal or Thailand or like Indonesia before their respective insurgencies broke out ... because all these governments were in denial,” said terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna.
“Both the government now in power, and the previous government, have not taken this threat seriously and as a result we have seen this deep escalation in the more recent past.”
US officials are concerned the Aug. 17 blasts that killed two people and wounded about 100 may presage bigger things. They say that although the damage was relatively minor and deaths few, sophisticated coordination was evident.
The blasts were in many areas accompanied by leaflets warning the government not to arrest Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members.
They also warned Washington and London against meddling in Muslim lands.
That group and others were banned in February for what the government called involvement in criminal activities.
Critics who have warned about the dangers of extremism for months say the government has been reluctant to take a harder line.
Bangladesh denies it has ignored the problem.
“It’s just a silly allegation that Bangladesh has been denying the existence of extremists. We have been aggressively hunting them from the moment we knew they existed,” said Moudud Ahmed, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister and a senior member of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
“How could we do it (crack down on them) before they committed a crime? Did England know that there were criminals and they were going to bomb trains in London?” he told Reuters.
Bangladesh police now have nearly 150 people in custody in connection with the bombings, most of them suspected members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, and are seeking 500 more.
Bangladeshis are relatively used to political violence.
Attacks during political gatherings are commonplace and a grenade attack last August at an opposition party rally killed 23.
The country’s fractious politics and corruption have created a political vacuum that has done as much as poverty to foster extremism, said Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Group’s South Asia project director.
“Islamic extremists have exploited the political vacuum elsewhere and could here too,” said Ahmed.
“These are very early stages of threat that could assume more dangerous proportions ... I think the Indonesian case is the same. If you deal with these issues far earlier on and in terms of an inclusive political process you can stop the rot.”
The Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, most of them foreigners, were preceded by less deadly attacks.
After Bali, anti-terror laws were passed and police rounded up scores of militants. Many have now been tried and sentenced.
But a fear of upsetting sensitivities means Indonesia has yet to outlaw, or even fully acknowledge, the existence of the group held responsible.
Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global network of Terror, believes like ICG’s Ahmed that foreign militants have yet to make serious inroads in Bangladesh.
But that could change.
“It’s definitely something we think would be a wake-up call to the Bangladesh government about the dangers of extremism there,” an official in Washington told Reuters.
Local analysts agree.
“Next time they are expected to come in a big way, and in a more violent manner,” said Shahedul Anam Khan, a retired Bangladeshi brigadier-general turned analyst.—Reuters
