Bangladesh on edge: Salafist groups unite raising fears of impending coup

New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) Bangladesh is witnessing a dangerous trend where more Islamist outfits are coming together to press for the imposition of harsher laws in the country.

Protests erupted after the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government rolled back its recruitment of music and physical training teachers to government primary schools.

Several hardline Islamist groups have come together to protest against this move as they call the recruitment to such posts as un-Islamic.

Officials say that the decision by the Yunus administration to lift the ban on the Jamaat is backfiring. Yunus completely misread the situation and gave too much leeway to the Jamaat, officials say.

It is a well-known fact that the Jamaat is a completely ISI-controlled unit. Now, the dangerous trend is that several radical organisations such as the Hefazat-e-Islam are joining hands with the Jamaat to seek imposition of radical Islamic laws in the country.

Since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh has descended into chaos. The radical Islamic groups have taken complete control and to make matters worse, they are being played by the ISI.

It was at the behest of these outfits that Yunus opened the doors for Pakistan. In doing so, he ended up granting access to the seas, while also relaxing visa norms for Pakistanis.

Bangladesh watchers say that there is an Islamist counter-revolution that is taking place in the country.

On the face of it, the situation looks impossible to fix as of now. If not fixed, then the situation in Bangladesh would redraw the political map in South Asia.

Officials say that what one is witnessing in Bangladesh is not some knee jerk reaction. Like the coup of August 2024, this one, too, is a well-planned conspiracy.

The ISI is backing such conspiracies by encouraging groups such as the Hefazat and Jamaat. While these outfits would try and erase democracy, the ISI has tasked terror groups such as the Harkat-ul-JIhadi Islami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JuMB) to carry out strikes in India. The idea of the ISI is to make the country so volatile that the problem spills into India.

There is a form of radical Islam that is being imposed both on the political and security front. The terror groups are planning large scale infiltrations into India with the intention of carrying out attacks.

On the political front, there is unleashing of violence against the minorities. Temples have been attacked in large numbers and all these are taking place in a planned and coordinated manner.

Further, scores of social media accounts have been created to spew venom against India and also the minorities in Bangladesh.

Many posts call for the elimination of infidels. There are also calls to impose the Sharia law in the country. Further messages to carry out beheadings in an Islamic State or Hamas fashion have flooded the Internet.

Indian agencies say that once Hasina was out of the country the ISI was quick to ensure close coordination between the Salafist organisations in Bangladesh and Pakistan. These are the ones who are leading the Islamist coup in the country, officials said.

The ploy is to go the Iran way whereby Bangladesh would be headed by a supreme leader. Further the Indian agencies have picked up information that over 8,000 youth are being trained in several places in the country to be part of the Islamic Revolutionary Army (IRA).

This would be on the lines of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Indian officials say.

The Intelligence agencies say that as of now, there is not much hope for the country unless there is some intervention. For Bangladesh to bounce back to normal, it is not just important to hold elections, but it is equally necessary that Pakistan is not allowed to meddle.

–IANS

vicky/rad