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August 13, 2006

Bangladesh: The Islamists of Hizbut Tawhid

Hizbut Tawhid is an obscure Islamic group operating in Bangladesh. It is led by an elderly man from an aristocratic background called Baizid Khan Panni who is now aged 80. Panni is a cousin of former deputy speaker of parliament Humayun Khan Panni. He formed the group, whose name means "Party of Monotheism" in 1992, after several visits to the Middle East. His party has denounced all Islamic parties which work with the government. The group had not made much impact in the news until recently because their activities had previously tended to be low-key.

But they are extremists nonetheless, working mainly behind the scenes in an effort to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state ruled by Sharia. They briefly made headlines in September 2003, when activists bludgeoned an opponent to death, according to Weekly Holiday, One World and the Pakistan Daily Times.

In Poradaha railway station in Kushtia, in the southwest of Bangladesh, the group was campaigning and trying to distribute their leaflets, which called for an Islamist revolution, on September 9, 2003, when members of the public started to protest. In the subsequent fighting, 35 people were injured.

Four days later on September 13, in Juglia in Kushtia, they were attacked by students from a madrassa, who rushed from their dormitories to fight them. In the ensuing violence, a wife of one of the Hizbut Tawhid leaders was killed and several males were injured. 17 activists from the group were arrested.

14 members of Hizbut Tawhid from Kushtia had earlier been arrested on July 2 2003, for distributing leaflets in Jhenidah, a district adjoining Kushtia.

On Friday, September 26, members of the group were campaigning in Narayanganj, near the capital Dhaka, armed with hammers, and distributing leaflets. They clashed with members of the Bangladesh Islamic Constitution Movement (BICM also called Islamic Shashantantra Andolan or ISA), an Islamist group with similar aims, with whom there was rivalry.The ISA had links with the government, whereas the Tawhid were outlawed. In the clashes between the two groups, one ISA activist, 25 year old Abdul Malek, was killed.

The group fled from the scene in a truck, but Baizid Khan Panni was soon arrested. He said: "My activists are severely beaten by these so-called Islamic parties (like Jamaat-e-Islami) whenever they go out on a campaign, so they have to carry hammers for defense."

The coalition government, for the first time since it came to power in 2001, made a case against a fundamentalist group, pressing charges against Panni and three of his group.

It appears that Panni was not given severe punishment, as in August last year, one of his followers claimed that the elderly leader would be writing a new book. His previous book "This Islam is not Islam" received hostile criticism. The Daily Star stated then that the group had been allowed to operate freely since their clashes of 2003.

Activists claimed that they had cells cpmprising six to eight people in almost all the 64 districts of Bangladesh. They said they were well-funded from rich donors, and had links with extremists in the US, India and Pakistan.

55-year old Altaf Hossain, operations commander for the group, said: "It is not very far when we will ask the government to run the country under Islamic law. If they can not, we will ask them to hand over power to us. If they don't, we will tell them that they will face a war, which we will wage."

"We will have our 'trained mujahids' everywhere by that time to force the government to do as we say."

Hossain had been a member of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, which is now part of the coalition government, for eight years before he joined Hizbut Tawhid.

"You will get our mujahids at every district. Senior mujahids are sent to some districts to collect and train people. Six rich men from Kushtia were sent to Natore recently. They started living there; three of them pull rickshaws while the rest do work for Islam alternatively," he said.

The Hizbut Tawhid surfaced in the news again in April, when 4 activists were apprehended in a village in Jhalakathi district, in the southwest of Bangladesh. The members were captured by villagers who made citizens' arrests and handed them to police.

Now, it appears that the group is becoming active in Chittagong, in the southeast of the country. On Thursday night (August 10), five militants were arrested and the following morning, when two members of the group came to the see the activists in police custody, they too were arrested. 200 leaflets and books on Jihad were found with the suspects, which called for Islamic rule in the country, which would be achieved by armed revolution.

The seven men are now to be taken to Dhaka for interrogation, states the Daily Star. The seven were placed on a ten-day remand and will be questioned by a Joint Interrogation Cell (JIC) team, to establish more information about the group and its activities.

The cell in Chittagong appears to be well-established. Those arrested were all professionals. One was a sub-assistant engineer at Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd, and three were officials at the Suncrest Cola plant and three worked in export. There are apparently 50 members in Chittagong, with women amongst their number. The males meet every Monday at the house of their leader Humayun Kabir, who is one of the Suncest staff under arrest. His wife has claimed that HIzbut Tahrir has been active in Chittagong for five years.

An editorial from the Daily Star states

"The Hizbut Tawhid is reported to have spread its network to more than 60 districts with around 30,000 activists. If that is true it is really indicative of the organisation expanding itself in a planned way without our knowing it much. We should not be caught unawares by such developments....

....One noticeable aspect of the fight against the militants is that the presence of any group is usually overlooked until it resorts to violence or extreme measures. However, a more sensible and effective course of action would be to monitor their recruitment and training procedures, sources of funds etc. and counter them forcefully.

The point of worry is that the Islamic militants seem to be regrouping in different shape or form under the banner of this or that party. We must not forget that they are trying to attain the same goal through following more or less the same path. So their plan must be thwarted well before they can cause any damage."

This would be the best way. In 2003, very few people had heard of the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) in the nation. It was only in August 2003 that any members of JMB were arrested, when 23 suspects were apprehended from northwest Bangladesh. Despite subsequent bomb attacks, as late as January 26, 2005, the State Minister for Home Affairs, Luftozzaman Babar, was actually doubting the existence of JMB. He said: "We don't know officially about the existence of the JMB. Only some so-called newspapers are publishing reports on it. We don't have their constitution in our record."

Yet on August 17 last year, when JMB launched a campaign of more than 400 bombs in 63 of the country's 64 districts, killing two, and followed it up with bomb attacks on courthouses and high-fatality suicide bombings against members of the judiciary, the government was forced to lose its complacency. Five of the JMB's leaders were sentenced to death on May 29 this year.

Just because a major player in terrorism has been dealt a blow, now is not the time for any complacency. A group with similar ideological aims and no worries about using violence can soon become an active threat.

One of those sentenced to death in May was Bangla Bhai, who also had his own terror group, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (Vigilant Muslims Citizens of Bangladesh) or JMJB. No-one had heard of him until he gave a press conference in April 2004 with Abdur Rahman, the head of JMB. He said in the interview that his group, which specialised in killing suspected communists, had already been operating for six years.

Extremism starts with an idea, long before it becomes a threat.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 13, 2006 11:54 PM

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