RAJSHAHI: Their calling card was a bomb and a written declaration of war on Bangladesh’s constitution and democracy.
Across the length and breadth of Bangladesh, outside its most secure and important buildings, Muslim militants exploded 500 small bombs in just half an hour last month.
Leaflets made the threat explicit: establish an Islamic state under sharia law or we will bring the country to its knees.
The power and organisational ability of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, (the Party of Holy Warriors) came as a shock to Bangladesh — and to the rest of the world. But in Rajshahi district in the country’s wild west, their extreme views and brutal sense of drama came as no surprise at all.
On April 1, 2004, the group announced their presence to the people of Bagmara town with the stabbed and chopped-up body of a supposed bandit, and a call for an armed Islamic revolution.
“They chanted ‘long live Al Qaeda’, ‘Bangladesh will be the next Afghanistan’ and ‘we are the soldiers of Al Qaeda’,” said farmer Abdul Bari, who saw their first rally.
A few weeks later, 2,000 supporters marched through Rajshahi city under police escort, green strips of cloth around their heads, hockey sticks, iron bars and machetes in their hands.
Whether Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen had active links to Osama bin Laden’s network is far from clear, but it is clear where they drew their inspiration.
Journalist Hasibur Rahman Bilu interviewed the group’s leader, Shayek Abdur Rahman, and a top operational commander known as Bangla Bhai (Bengali Brother), in April 2004.
“Bangla Bhai said he had trained in Afghanistan for two years, about eight years ago,” he said. “Abdur Rahman said they were preparing for an Islamic revolution through armed struggle, using rural people who believe in Allah and Islam.”
Osama bin Laden had based Al Qaeda’s strategic and training operations in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban before the Afghan rulers were ousted by U.S.-led troops after Sept. 11, 2001.
Bangla Bhai, a heavy-set man with a bushy black beard and green skull cap, says he has a degree in Bengali literature. Rahman, the group’s “spiritual leader” is a more austere figure with white hair, a white cap and a beard dyed with orange henna.
For 10 months Bangla Bhai worked openly with local politicians and the police, according to journalists and residents. His declared mission was to drive out criminal gangs with Maoist roots, involved in extortion, arms smuggling and drugs trafficking across the Indian border
But Bangla Bhai soon revealed he was as brutal as the men he promised to fight.
Rights groups say that over the next 10 months he and his men killed 22 people: some were chopped into pieces, one was stabbed and hung by his feet from a tree. Police say his group killed 12.
Hundreds more were beaten, like 25-year-old Tashir Ali.
“Bangla Bhai and seven masked men came into my mobile phone shop with machetes and hockey sticks, beat and chopped me, and took my phones and my money,” he said.
Ali had his arm and leg broken and lost so much blood he is lucky to be alive. He thinks he only survived because Bangla Bhai suddenly got a call on his own mobile phone.
Farmer Bari saw his rice and potato crops destroyed because he refused to join the group or contribute 100,000 taka ($1,500).
For 15 days his wife and their three-year-old daughter were imprisoned in their own home. Yet Bari says every attempt to file a police complaint was rebuffed, and only invited more threats — sometimes from the police themselves. For a while Bangladesh’s government dismissed reports of Bangla Bhai, labelling him a “media creation”.
In February, under international pressure, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen was banned, and since the Aug. 17 bomb blasts 400 suspects have been arrested.
Bangla Bhai and Rahman are on the run. Police have released photographs and offered a reward for Bangla Bhai in one of the biggest manhunts in the country in years.—Reuters