THE 300 bombs that went off all over Bangladesh yesterday may have been crude and technically unimpressive devices but the level of organization that went into their being placed in 50 different towns and cities is worthy of note. If leaflets left at some of the scenes are to be believed, the attacks that have slain two and injured dozens are the work of the outlawed group Jamatul Mujahedeen who, with another fundamentalist outfit, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, was banned earlier this year. Both have been linked to attacks on local aid agencies. They are also prime suspects in the multiple bombing of a Muslim shrine in the east of the country five days ago and in a similar attack in May 2004 with grenades at another shrine at Sylhet.
These latest high-profile assaults will rightly cause a great deal of concern to the Bangladesh authorities who had long assumed — and indeed insisted — that there was no danger of any Al-Qaeda-linked activities in their country.
Fifty swift arrests, presumably of individuals known to have had links with Jamatul Mujahedeen before it was banned, may help the security forces to break this terrorist cell quickly before it became more proficient and deadly. It must, however, be assumed that the perpetrators fully expected a rapid police dragnet and made preparations.
It is also a puzzling matter as to why an organization such as Jamatul Mujahedeen would mount such a spectacularly big assault with such relatively low deadliness. Could it be that the real targets were not the innocent Bangladeshis caught in the blasts but the higher echelons of Al-Qaeda leadership? Was this in fact an attempt to prove to Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts that Bangladesh now has a homegrown terrorist group worthy of their support and training?
If this proves to be the case, then Bangladesh will have to shoulder yet another burden on top of the social, climatic and environmental challenges that already beset it. Yet there is reason to believe that despite the overcrowding and poverty in this country of some 153 million — half the population is reckoned to earn only a dollar a day — Bangladesh may not be ideal operational territory for terrorists. Even though there are often deadly rivalries between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League, Bangladeshis as a whole are united by pride in their country.
Unless intimidated or duped, they are unlikely to welcome terrorists and more likely to expose them.
We have every right to expect that as they confront the now clear menace of organized terrorism, the local security forces will be given all the outside help and support that they request.
If yesterday’s mass attacks were indeed an attempt by Jamatul Mujahedeen to establish its credibility with Al-Qaeda, then particular attention need to be paid to Bangladesh’s homegrown terrorist outfits.
