Dhaka Violence: ISIS Agenda or Attempt to Discredit Government?

ISIS reportedly claims responsibility for the bombing and murders. But are the incidents part of a political ploy?

(Eight to ten armed terrorists attacked a bakery in the diplomatic zone of Dhaka, Bangladesh on Friday night. The wave of violence in the country over the past months has killed rationalists, bloggers, activists, and members of religious minorities. This article has been republished in light of the attack.)

It has been a month of unusual violence in Bangladesh, with the murder of two foreign nationals and a bombing during a religious procession on October 24.

The murders of two foreign nationals—Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella (September 28) and Japanese grass farm owner Hosio Kunio (October 5)—happened within a week. While Tavella was killed in Dhaka, Kunio was killed in Rangpur in the north, where he ran a grass farm. According to monitoring group SITE, the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for both murders in tweets. Although the murders did not bear the usual ISIS template of beheading victims, they were identical; Tavella and Kunio were both killed by motorcycle borne assailants who fired thrice .

Interestingly, Hosio had converted to Islam after living in Bangladesh for a while. In fact, his body was not flown back to Japan because the Japanese embassy in Dhaka told the Bangladesh government to bury him in Rangpur. Apparently, Hosio’s family was not interested in funeral rites in Japan as he had converted to Islam. What would please hardline Islamists more than getting a non-Muslim to convert to Islam! So one is forced to wonder why Hosio was killed.

The ISIS tweet claiming the two murders talked about attacking citizens from the ‘crusader coalition’. If that was the driving motive, it would be natural to expect an attack on an American or a Russian national , not Italians or Japanese, especially one who had converted to Islam.

Behind the Attacks

• The October 24 bombing at Hussaini Dalan is the first ever attack on the Shias in Bangladesh.
• This follows the murders of two foreigners that has led many embassies to advise their citizens to avoid travel to Bangladesh.
• ISIS is reported to have claimed responsibility for the bombing and the two murders.
• Government says it is unlikely ISIS is at all involved and suspects the opposition BNP-Jamaat alliance for the attacks to discredit their rule.

Is the ISIS Responsible?

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has claimed that the so-called ISIS tweets have been traced to Bangladesh. This may well be true, but it does not automatically rule out the involvement of the group, which could well have employed local proxies to carry out such violent actions. The bigger question that clearly begs an answer, however, is why would Bangladesh figure so high in ISIS’s priorities at a time they are under huge pressure following Russian military intervention in Syria? Around the time these murders were reported from Dhaka, a US drone hit an ISIS convoy , reportedly critically wounding its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. ISIS is also very active on social media—but there has been no attempt by its followers to focus on the Dhaka murders and try use them for political mileage.

The October 24 bombings at Old Dhaka’s Hussaini Dalan is more bizarre. The attack on the Shia gathering was the first of its kind. While Bangladesh’s small Ahmadiyya population had been repeatedly targeted during 2003-05 at the time of the BNP-Jamaat government, Shias have never before been attacked. Large number of Sunnis in fact join the procession in memory of Hussain during the Muharram every year. Strangely, this attack was also reportedly claimed by the ISIS and branded as ‘action against polytheists’. Has the ISIS done anything like this in areas they directly control at this point of time? If they have not attacked Shias during Muharram elsewhere in the Middle East, why would they choose Bangladesh? Are their leaders really aware of a Shia presence in Bangladesh?

One needs to check what led the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) to put its team’s tour of Bangladesh this year on hold. The ACB cited “definite information about threats” to contend that the team’s tour of Bangladesh would be a risky affair . Interestingly, it was when the ACB’s security chief was on a tour of Bangladesh to personally examine the security scenario that Tavella was murdered. One would imagine the motive behind the murder had more to do with ensuring the cancellation of the Australian tour than with attacking citizens of the ‘crusader coalition’.

The ACB has not provide details about the ‘security threat’, but clearly there has been an attempt from unknown quarters to influence important governments into advising their citizens to avoid traveling to Bangladesh. The UK, US, EU and Australia have already issued travel advisories asking citizens to avoid travel to Bangladesh, while Japan has advised many of its nationals working for NGOs to return home.

Attacks Aimed at Discrediting Hasina Regime?

The murders of the Italian and Japanese nationals has led to some panic among foreign executives, like those of companies buying Bangladesh-made garments . Orders may drop if these executives fail to visit the country to supervise procurement deals. The tense climate has already impacted tourism, with hundreds of cancellations of advanced bookings by foreigners reported. This ruins hopes of a recovery by the Bangladesh tourism industry after huge losses in the 2014-15 winter-spring season due to the BNP-Jamaat violent agitation, marked by petrol bombings that killed more than a hundred citizens in four months.

If one were to go by the intended impact of these murders, they seem to be akin to those behind the sabotage on rail tracks and the violent bombings of passenger and cargo vehicles. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina may have jumped the gun by claiming BNP-Jamaat involvement in these murders, when her police detectives are far from finding definite clues . Her minister Mohammed Nasim may have followed her lead by claiming a link between the murders and bombings, and the prolonged stay of BNP chief, Khaleda Zia, in London with her son, Tarique Rahman. But given their no holds barred track record in trying to oust the government, there is good reason to suspect these murders were aimed at discrediting the Hasina regime and force her to put on hold the impending execution of some high profile ‘war criminals’ like Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury (against whom five noted Pakistanis are prepared to testify in Bangladesh’s war crimes court) rather than being the handiwork of the ISIS.

India needs to carefully monitor the developments in Bangladesh, because the troublemakers behind the murder of foreigners and the bombing of the Shia procession might attempt to hit at Hindu targets soon enough. That would upset the government and the ruling party in India—something that Hasina can ill afford.

(The writer, a veteran BBC correspondent, is author of two highly acclaimed books on Northeast India – “Insurgent Crossfire” and “Troubled Periphery”.)