US to provide equipment, training to help Bangladesh fight terrorism

The US ambassador in Dhaka has said that Washington will help Bangladesh with more equipment and training to fight terrorism and extremism.

Marcia Bernciat said they had finalised “a whole bundle of additional assistance programme” and would “bring in lot more training and equipment”.

She was replying to a question on Tuesday on the sidelines of an American Centre event on preventing violence against women at the EMK Centre in Dhanmondi.

Her comment came as Bangladesh witnessed a new phenomenon in which a suicide bomber killed himself after entering a makeshift camp of the elite police force, Rapid Action Battalion, in Dhaka's Ashkona.  In Sylhet, it took four days for the army to take control of a militants den.

The US, after the first of its kind terrorist attack on July 1 last year in Holey Artisan Café offered assistance to Bangladesh to help fighting terrorism. A strong US delegation also visited Bangladesh.

The ambassador said they had finalised their assistance programme based on those visits. She also stressed on sharing information to stop such attacks.

“We have been continuing to train; in fact, one of the police officers who died in Sylhet had received the training by the US,” she said, “we would like to see even more cooperation”.

“Our effort all along has been to help Bangladesh,” she said, adding that "they would work closely with Bangladesh’s other partners to avoid duplicating efforts."

Referring to the new suicide attack, the ambassador said, there are “new aspects of what’s going on certainly…but I think very much continuation of the trend we have seen before”.

Those are home-grown terrorists and have been inspired by those actors outside of Bangladesh, she said, referring to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s comment.

She said those extremists operate worldwide and have the same goal.

“We all have to cooperate, share evidence and share information to the extent that information is shared we can put pieces of the puzzle together,” she said.

“In the international crime scenes evidence that appears in Bangladesh can help stop next attack in Paris,” she said, adding that “if we cannot share, we cannot protect ourselves”.

“As long as working together, we have to find ways to increase our cooperation more and more,” she said.

“These terrorists do not respect borders and laws. We have to overcome our different systems and work as closely as we can together so that they can’t take advantage of that”.

“They are the agile group, and they can regroup. And they are always able to find people at their will,” she said.