The Wednesday attack on a police checkpost in Ashulia that left a
policeman dead and another one critically injured shows that setting up
road side checkposts are not enough to foil missions of terrorists
blinded by ideological corruption.
The nature of attack also shows that the terrorists have become more
aggressive – especially considering that the police victims were on duty
and armed.
It also shows that in order to spread fear among the public, the
terrorists are picking up unpredictable targets, locations and time.
First, they killed two foreigners separately in two regions – Dhaka
and Rangpur, and then they bombed a Shia community gathering, and then
they attacked cops in the capital. Side by side, terrorists have
separately killed five writers and publishers and several religious
leaders and have announced to kill ‘enemies of Islam’, who could be
anyone as it is the terrorists who judge and execute people.
The recent spate of terror began from late September – just a few
days after the Australian cricket team declined to visit Bangladesh on
security grounds. Australia had intelligence that there would be some
terrorist attacks on foreigners and other targets. Later, according to a
report of The New York Times, we learnt that the USA also shared
similar messages with the government in late September, just a few days
before the murder of the Italian citizen in Dhaka. It seems the
government did not take those seriously.
We later saw that several other countries were also informed about
possible spate of terrorist activities and these countries had issued
travel alerts for their citizens in Bangladesh.
Sadly, while foreign nations have such information, our intelligence seemed to be in dark. Why?
A probable answer to that question is how the government reacted to
the murders of the foreign nationals, bombing on the Shia community,
slaying of the freethinkers and even the police. The government wasted
no time in faulting the BNP-Jamaat for the killings. When the government
high ups bring up such conspiracy theories, how can our intelligence
agencies work independently and professionally?
Threats of militancy are nothing new in Bangladesh. It crept into
Bangladesh in the ’90s and attacked anything that stood for indigenous
culture, secularism and freethinking using the name of Islam.
Following the fall of the Jama’atul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) by
2008, the government had formulated its plan to uproot terrorism for
good by not only strengthening the police forces, but also by fighting
terrorism intellectually by mobilising religious leaders at mosques and
other places. The intellectual bid fell flat by 2010 as the government
could not motivate religious leaders for its cause. The government could
have then asked the parliamentarians to help motivate these people. But
it seems the government just gave up.
All the while the government was more interested to use the cops politically to bash its BNP-Jamaat rivals.
In the wake of the recent terrorist activities, the government beefed
up the security by installing checkposts. But it did not prepare or
train cops to deal with sudden terrorist attacks. Now we have seen the
consequence. These checkposts are good for harassing innocent people.
Terrorists can avoid checkposts if they want as they follow detailed
plans.
The situation demands the government asks itself why our cops and
intelligence agencies are failing to stop terrorism. They need to be
more professional and competent. And that would be possible only through
depoliticisation of these institutions. Fighting terrorism is a tricky
battle, which must be fought both intellectually and professionally –
not by hatching conspiracy theories.