New breed of Bangladeshi Mujahideen: Young men abandon home to join Afghan militants

In the 1980s, groups of young men from Bangladesh travelled to Afghanistan to join the jihad against the Soviet occupation forces. Fast forward to present day four decades later: police believe more young Bangladeshis are pursuing the same path to extremism.

Three young men from Bangladesh have recently abandoned home for ‘hijrat’, or hegira -- migration for the cause of Islam -- and taken up the banner of Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan, according to officials in the police’s Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime Unit or CTTC.

The police can confirm that two of them, Abdur Razzak from Cumilla and Shibbir Ahmed from Sylhet, have already made their way to the rugged, mountainous terrain of Afghanistan.

Razzak studied at a madrasa in Sylhet and worked as a driver. His brother, Salman Khan, reported him missing at Sylhet Kotwali Police Station on Mar 25.

A Noakhali youth named ‘Rabiul’ has also reportedly left home to travel to Afghanistan, but the police have yet to confirm his whereabouts.

The Taliban have waged war in the landlocked country to overthrow the foreign-backed government since they were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001.

There may be a connection between the new recruitments by militant organisations and the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, believes Shafqat Munir, head of the Institute of Terrorism Research at Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Securities Studies.

US President Joe Biden announced that he would begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan starting May 1. The US plans to complete the process before the twentieth anniversary of the Sept 11 attack later this year.

“Afghanistan is going through a volatile situation with the foreign troops being withdrawn. The central government is in a tight spot. Such a situation is an ominous sign for the entire region, not only Afghanistan,” said Munir.

Security agencies recently learned of a Messenger chat group that served as a network for the distribution of extremist ideology and the planning of militant acts, CTTC chief DIG Md Asaduzzaman told the media.

There were 10 youths, including Razzak, Shibbir and Rabiul, in the chat group titled Science Project.

As far as authorities know, they did not use their passports to leave the country, according to Asaduzzaman.

Four other members of the Science Project group were arrested on Saturday.

The arrestees are Jasimul Islam Jack, 25, a student of Atish Dipankar University of Science and Technology in Dhaka, Abdul Mukit, 29, a teacher of Markajus Sunnah Al Islamia Madrasa in Habiganj’s Nabiganj, Aminul Haque, 20, a student of Al Hidaya Islamic Institute in Sylhet, and Sajeeb Ikhtiar, 20, an undergraduate from Sunamganj Government College.

During police questioning, the men said their accomplices had gone to Afghanistan “via Chattogram” and that an individual named ‘Abdullah’ from Sylhet had contacted them and told them to get their passports ready.

Additional details about the identity of ‘Abdullah’ were not released.

But, according to Sajeeb, his friend Razzak had been eager to take him to Afghanistan before Eid. ‘Abdullah’ had also pressured him on the matter.

Though the Science Project group was created in August 2020, the counterterrorism unit said that five members of the group had known one another for over two years.

The group had planned a “large-scale incident” in Bangladesh before they would abscond to Afghanistan, DIG Asaduzzaman said.

“You know that most of the militant groups in Bangladesh claim their affiliation to al-Qaeda. Ansar Al Islam claims to be the sub-continental wing of al-Qaeda. Maybe that’s why they moved to Afghanistan. This is what they say, but we’re not sure about it,” he said.

Saiful Islam, a deputy commissioner at Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s CTTC, said they were verifying the information given by the four arrestees.

FORGED IN AFGHANISTAN

A significant number of “Mujahideen”, or jihadist fighters, travelled from Bangladesh to Afghanistan to fight the war against the Soviets in the 80s. Many were teachers and students from Qawmi madrasas with an extremist bent. There is no accurate count of how many had gone to Afghanistan, but the rise of militancy in Bangladesh in the 90s was spurred on by those same fighters returning home.

On Apr 4, 2002, Swedish writer and journalist Bertil Lintner, a specialist on cross-country terrorism, published an article titled ‘Bangladesh: A Cocoon of Terror’ in the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review. The article stated that a branch of Pakistani militant organisation Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami, or HuJI, was established in Bangladesh in 1992. Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda, allegedly aided the formation of HuJI.

Dr Ali Riaz, a professor of politics and government at Illinois State University, traces the emergence of militancy in Bangladesh to HuJI. He says the organisation revealed its public face on Apr 30, 1992 through a press conference held at the National Press Club in Dhaka.

The press conference was conducted by Bangladeshi ‘volunteers’ who had been celebrating the Taliban victory in Kabul. HuJI had been operating as an organisation for ‘several years before that’.

According to Bangladeshi law enforcers, HuJI was the first organisation to conduct militant activity in Bangladesh. HuJI carried out its first bomb attack on an Udichi event in Jashore on Mar 6, 1999. Ten people were killed and over a hundred injured.

From 1999 to 2005, HuJi orchestrated 13 bomb and grenade attacks across the country, killing at least 103 and injuring over 700.

The most violent of these incidents was the grenade attack on a public rally joined by the then leader of the opposition Sheikh Hasina in 2004. Twenty-two people were killed in the blasts. The top leaders of HuJI were arrested in 2009 when the Awami League came to power.

Police officials say that the militants of that time would often travel to Afghanistan because those who trained there were highly respected by their peers.

In the past decade, extremists have made their hegira to Syria with the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. Several Bangladeshis travelled to Syria to take part in the so-called ‘jihad’. Police say some of them are said to have died there.

Police officials involved in counterterror work say HuJI has started showing inklings of activity once again.

Mahbub Alam, a joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said radical group Hifazat-e Islam has a subgroup called Manhazi, members of which include some people who had “fought in Afghanistan”.

“They harbour extremist views. Basically, it was them who instigated the violence in Chattogram,” said Mahbub.

The police have identified some former members of the banned militant outfit HuJI, he said.

The DMP counterterror unit says it arrested three members of HuJI on Mar 4. They were identified as HuJI Operation Branch chief Md Mainul Islam aka Mahin aka Mithu aka Hassan, the organisation’s ‘sheikh’ Sohan Shad aka Bara Abdullah and Murad Hossain Kabir.

The counterterror unit says that Mainul was giving children ‘jihadi’ training while operating under the guise of a madrasa in Dhaka.