{Al Jazeera speaks to professor Ali Riaz on recent killings in Bangladesh and the groups that might be behind them.}
Bangladesh has witnessed the killings of secular bloggers and activists. Last year four secular bloggers and a publisher were hacked to death.
This year a gay rights activist and minority groups such as Hindus, Ahmadi and Shia Muslims have been fatally attacked.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, but the government denies the armed groups role.
But who are these groups? Are they home-grown or linked to ISIL or al-Qaeda?
Al Jazeera spoke to Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi professor at Illinois State University, US, to get a sense of the situation. He has extensively written on politics and religious groups in Bangladesh.
{{Which groups are behind the killings of bloggers and activists in Bangladesh?}}
The first killing of bloggers was reported in 2013 in the wake of Shahbagh movement. For most of those killings, the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) claimed responsibility. ABT claims to be connected to al-Qaeda and is known as al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent. And those groups were present even before 2013.
On the other hand, all the killing of foreigners, attack on the Shia mosque, attack on bloggers and threatening of some priests have been claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Later ISIL media Dabiq ran a piece that they have been working together.
Here is my take: Militant groups have been active in Bangladesh for a long time, nothing new. In mid 1990s, we had seen the presence of militant groups. We saw spectacular attack in 2005 carried out by Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB). The group was banned after the attack. A counterterrorism strategy was adopted and to a great extent it succeeded.
The counterterrorism strategy under the 2007-08 caretaker government largely succeeded in keeping groups such JMB in check and other minor groups.
But since 2013, what we are witnessing is that counterterrorism has been used as political point-scoring. You should not be involving immediate political gain to counterterrorism. Counterterrorism and national security should always be above and beyond domestic and petty politics.
What do your take on the government claim that the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami party are behind the recent killings of bloggers?
The government has been trying to put the blame on BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. Yes Jamaat was behind political violence, there is no doubt about it, in the wake of war crime tribunal verdicts in February 2013. But at this point of time I have not seen anything that would point that Jamaat-e-Islami organization would be part of these attacks.
{{Is there a presence of ISIL in Bangladesh?}}
Government claims that they have arrested ISIL recruiters, all these to show that they were fighting terrorism and they were winning.
Later they realised that by doing so, they were actually admitting the presence of ISIL, which means they are failing. So then they started taking back step.
At this point, as far as I know ISIL as an organisation might not be present but there are people in Bangladesh who are aspiring to be part of it. We have seen that because of vibrant online presence of these radical elements in Bangladesh, they want to be part of ISIL.
{{What are chances of local groups joining hands with ISIL?}}
After the Dabiq (ISIL magazine) essay on Bangladesh, it is not unlikely that remnants of JMB coming together, and possibly they are trying to get in touch with ISIL or ISIL is trying to get in touch with them.
You cannot say it has happened, but you cannot say it won’t happen. It’s a matter of time and opportunity that such groups get in contact with ISIL. If that happens there would be a dramatic shift. It is likely that it would happen at some point.
{{What’s fueling the rise of armed groups?}}
The government tried to club Jamaat, JMB and al-Qaeda together. That was detrimental to counterterrorism efforts. That’s where the space was created [for fringe armed groups], and we saw proliferation and strengthening of small militant groups.
You have to put all these things into the context of domestic politics. If you keep on pushing the legitimate opposition into the corner, this makes fringe militant groups and their message, though not acceptable, resonate with the situation.
They can go and tell people, see there is no way you can be part of the mainstream politics. So shrinking democratic space creates an environment where radical elements find sympathetic ears.
{{Is extremism growing in Bangladesh? If yes, why?}}
My reading is different from the conventional interpretations. Let me try to explain. Within Bangladesh, there is a growing extremism, please note I am not saying growing Islamic extremism. Extremism is at both the ends.
In the last few years, Bangladesh’s mainstream parties have resorted to political violence. The rhetoric has become violent while in the past it used to be moderate. If you continuously keep talking in violent rhetoric, it is bound to have an impact on the society. I think that is making Bangladeshi society more violent.
If you keep on talking in very extreme language, both sides, whether it’s the opposition, government or secular or Islamists it does not matter. Society is going to become radicalized. So to say that it has become radicalized because it is a Muslim nation, I tend to disagree with that.
Extremism has crept in the political discourse, in political rhetoric and made it possible for having violence as a normal activity. We have witnessed violence during the 2013-14 election and after the elections perpetrated by the opposition but also responded by the government in a very heavy-handed manner. I think radicalization is taking place because extremism has been normalized in Bangladeshi society. It is not sudden.
It is coming from all the sides. So why blame only one party for the violence.
{{What’s the role of current government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina?
}}
All these things are happening in the context of flawed elections, and an increasingly shrinking of democratic space and of course, limit imposed on freedom of speech.
Also, we have seen rampant use of information and communication technology under which people have been arrested in the name of hurting religious sentiments or posting things online which is critical of the government. So if you have to take all these things together to see what are the impacts there cannot be one single element that can be separated from the overall picture.
{{What needs to be done to check the trend?}}
There are armed groups, which are ideologically committed to fanaticism and their interpretation of religion. Sectarianism, which was pretty much absent, is expanding into a pattern.
My reading is that at this point unless addressed properly, given the global environment is conducive for these kinds of extremism or militancy, there is a huge risk that it may proliferate, it may spread. It is not going to happen just because people are saying it has not gone to the stage where it is unmanageable. But it needs to be addressed.
There should be comprehensive strategy, simply apprehending them, simply using coercive apparatus, police and law enforcement agencies are not going to work because it has not worked elsewhere.
You have to make sure that there is very inclusive political system, make sure there is no space for these kinds of radicalization, tone down rhetoric of violence in mainstream politics so that there is no space for these kinds of people.
{{Is there any connection between the growing violence and the International War Tribunal verdicts?}}
I would not put direct connection with international tribunal and the growing militancy. The reason is that there is enormous support for the tribunal. Bangladeshis want these people to be tried despite the fact that there are some concerns at the international and domestic level regarding procedural aspects of the trial, but nobody has ever questioned the legitimacy of these trials. Even if it is symbolic, there has to be a trial so that Bangladesh can put a closure to this.
But I think despite this trial, the main issue is that militancy should be viewed in the overall environment created in which they flourish.
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