Government of Bangladesh Continues to Deny Islamic State Involvement in Recent Attacks

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan publically stated on Monday that he believes that Bangladesh’s recent spurt of targeted attacks on journalists and secularists, which have been occurring since late 2015, have been the fault of Israel. The reason, Khan claims, is that an opposition politician “secretly met with an Israeli intelligence officer”; Bangladesh maintains no diplomatic ties with the state of Israel. The state of Israel has denied these attacks, calling them “utter drivel” .

The governing Awami League has repeatedly blamed the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP), the opposition party containing a number of Islamist sub-groups including Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) for the repeated attacks against secular activists. Bangladesh’s food minister Qamrul Islam claimed that “those who failed to make any movement against the government, they now have a new formula”.

Israel is only the latest of scapegoats for Bangladesh’s recent attacks, the most recent of which was the killing of the Bangladeshi police chief’s wife. Other attacks include the hacking-to-death of a gay rights activist and a Christian grocer, both of which have occurred in the past month and the latter of which was directly claimed by the Islamic State. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for roughly a quarter of the attacks since September. Their parent organization, Al-Qaeda, has also recently established a new branch in neighboring India and has been responsible for the deaths of multiple journalists and bloggers in Bangladesh.

While IS and AQ may not be directly responsible for the majority of the attacks, many small jihadist groups within Bangladesh likely have ties to the organizations.

Since January 2014, Bangladesh has essentially been under one-party rule. And while secular Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has prided herself on being tough on terror, her increasingly authoritarian style of governance has led to a politically polarized environment and a charged opposition. Given this, Hasina has an incentive blame the BNP for the attacks; associating the Islamist opposition with terror could delegitimize their political ambitions. Similarly, the Awami League’s trying of a number of Jamaat-e-Islami members for war crimes during the Pakistani Civil War in the 1970’s has heightened in tensions with the BNP.

Similarly, under this fragile one-party system, the Awami League, which has prided itself on being “tough on terror” needs to deny the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s (AQIS) involvement in the attacks, for admitting the groups’ presence would undermine the Awami League’s perceived success. Furthermore, Bangladesh’s label as a nation awash in terrorism could severely damage its economy, as companies would likely view it as unstable and thus unattractive for business. These factors provide motive for Prime Minister Hasina’s denial of multinational jihadist organizations’ involvement in the attacks.

The Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent have taken a unique strategy in Bangladesh: they have attempted to exploit the existing tensions between secularists and Islamists by targeting controversial secular journalists, civil society activists, and religious minorities. For instance, the bombing of an Ashura (Shiite Holiday) parade in Dhaka is the “first ever sectarian attack in the Sunni majority country and certainly hints at outside involvement”.

Awami League members have blamed the BNP, including Jamaat e-Islami for the attacks while the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for a number of them. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It would seem to be an odd coincidence that many of the people murdered happen to be people that support the trial of several Jamaat-e-Islami members. While Jamaat e-Islami may not be directly responsible for the attacks, they certainly benefit from local jihadi groups’ (many with ties to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State) targeting of supporters of the war crimes trials; the Awami League, for many reasons, has interests in denying these groups’ connection to larger organizations. It is no coincidence that Bangladeshi politics have become increasingly heated as the JeI’s trials continue, and that amidst this, multinational jihadi organizations have been able to gain a strong foothold in the country.