Over the past two years, Bangladesh has been shaken by more than 30 brutal murders of individuals deemed enemies of extremist Islam: atheist bloggers, gay activists, Hindu priests. All were killed by machete-wielding attackers.
Yet as the attacks grew more frequent and carnage mounted, prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed dismissed warnings of international Islamist terror groups operating in Bangladesh. Instead, she accusing her long-standing political rivals of trying to destabilise the country.
Now, the sophisticated weekend attack on an upmarket Dhaka restaurant, in which 20 hostages, including 18 foreigners, were killed, leaves little doubt that Bangladesh's young Islamist radicals are plugged into global jihadi networks.
Islamic State, through its news agency Amaq, claimed responsibility for the Dhaka attack soon after it began.
Inside the siege
During the militants’ 12-hour stand-off with police, Isis disseminated what proved to be eerily accurate information on the hostages slain inside the restaurant – and grisly photos from inside the premises – many hours before Bangladeshi commandos stormed the restaurant and ended the siege.
Afterwards, Isis disseminated photos of the young militants, grinning as they posed with an Isis flag, cradling their weapons. Authorities have confirmed that the attackers were all Bangladeshis, several from well-off families.
"This has been in the making for some time, but the government remained in their own cocoon of saying no, it doesn't exist," said Ali Riaz, a professor at Illinois State University who specialises in political Islam and South Asia.
“Some security analysts seem to think that the presence of international militant groups means someone has to show up and organise things,” he said. “But in this day and age, you don’t need to show up. There are hundreds of ways to indoctrinate people and motivate them remotely.”
Unlike the primitive machete attacks, the assault on the restaurant was designed to reverberate far beyond Dhaka – to the developed economies to which Bangladesh’s booming garment industry exports $26 billion (€23.3 billion) in apparel each year to US and European retail brands.
Among the 18 slain foreigners, nine were Italians working in textile industry and seven were Japanese consultants for a government aid agency.
Survivors said hostages who could recite a Koranic verse were spared.
"What we thought was going on in Bangladesh two weeks ago looks very different today," says Alyssa Ayres, a south Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
“The horrific machete attacks seemed to be embedded in a local political conversation,” she said, “with terrorists trying to send a message about the nature of the Bangladeshi society that they wanted to create.
“The nature of this attack is totally different. It is something designed to be visual, and demonstrate strength to people watching all around the world.”
Aggressive policies
Analysts say the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery shows how jihadi networks have exploited Bangladesh’s growing polarisation between moderate secular forces and more religious Muslims – tensions that Hasina’s policies have aggressively stoked, according to critics.
"I'd hope that the attack will serve as a wake-up call," says Michael Kugelman, a south Asia expert at the Wilson Center, a US think-tank. "There is a really big threat to the country, and it's time to rise above the poisonous levels of partisanship and try to get something done to resolve the problem."
With a population of 160 million, Bangladesh has long been touted as an example of a moderate Muslim democracy, which has progressed socially and economically since its bloody 1971 breakaway from Pakistan. It has no record of providing state support to Islamist terror groups.
Bangladesh launched a robust counter-terrorism programme a decade ago, after the simultaneous explosion of 300 small, home-made bombs in August 2005 made clear that the country faced a homegrown terror threat.
Targeting opposition
However, analysts say the government security apparatus has focused less on identifying genuine Islamist radicals and more on weakening the prime minister’s traditional electoral rivals – the Bangladesh Nationalist party.
“Instead of focusing on the militants and those who needed to be apprehended, the government kept pointing fingers at the opposition for political expediency,” said Riaz.
“If the prime minister keeps saying, ‘it is the Bangladesh Nationalist party’ after every attack, what are police going to do? Are they going to defy it? They went after whoever the political directions pointed to.”
Tensions between secularists and Islamists have risen since 2013, driven by executions of the ageing leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami (an Islamist political party that was previously part of the electoral process) for atrocities during Bangladesh’s liberation struggle.
Analysts say this, coupled with a harsh crackdown on secular civil society groups, free speech and political criticism of those in power, has led to growing radicalisation. providing fertile ground to international groups looking to expand.
– (Copyright the Financial Times Limited 2016)