On March 6,2008, the US government announced that the US Secretary of State,Ms. Condoleezza Rice, has designated the Harkat ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Bangladesh,also known as HUJI (B) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’ (FTO) and as a’specially designated global terrorist’. The announcement added that HUJI(B) had signed the February 1998 fatwa of Osama bin Ladin that declared Americancivilians to be legitimate targets for attack.
The designation meant that it was illegal for persons in the United States orsubject to US jurisdiction to provide material support to HUJI-B; required USfinancial institutions to freeze assets held by HUJI-B; froze all property andinterests in property of HUJI-B that were in the United States, come within theUnited States, or within the control of U.S. persons; and enables the UnitedStates to deny visas to representatives of HUJI-B.
In April, 2007, the US State Department had issued an up-dated list oforganisations which it had till then designated as FTOs and another list oforganisations designated as "Groups of Concern", which were notsubject to the same restrictions as the FTOs. Among the organisations whichfigured in the list of FTOs were Al Qaeda, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad(JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ).
Among the organisations designated as "Groups of Concern" were theHUJI of Pakistan, HUJI (B), the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) of Bangladesh, theSipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, which is the political wing of the LEJ, the HizbulMujahideen of Jammu & Kashmir, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and theUnited Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).
The LTTE and the HUM under its then name of Harkat-ul-Ansar were designated asFTOs in 1997 when this list was started. The decision to include the HUA in thislist was taken since it was suspected to have carried out the kidnapping of someWestern, including American tourists, in J&K under the name Al Faran in1995. The LET, the JEM and the LEJ were so declared after 9/11 and the attack onthe Indian Parliament in December, 2001, jointly made by the LET and the JEM.
Though the HUJI and HUJI (B) have been involved in many terrorist strikes inIndia and were associated with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the terroristorganisations of the Central Asian Republics and Chechnya in Russia since 1998when they joined bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), the US StateDepartment for reasons, which were never made clear, had refrained fromdesignating them as FTOs. The evidence against them was as strong as theevidence against the HUM, the LET, the JEM and the LEJ.
Even now, the State Department has declared only HUJI (B) as an FTO, but notHUJI of Pakistan. No reasons have been given as to why it has not beenconsidered necessary to designate HUJI of Pakistan too as an FTO. In the revisededition of her memoir titled Recollections, published after herassassination on December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto had voiced her suspicion thatQari Saifullah Akhtar, former Amir of the HUJI of Pakistan, was involved in theunsuccessful attempt to kill her at Karachi on October 18, 2007.
Following this, on February 26,2008, the Lahore Police announced the arrest ofQari Saifullah Akhtar and his three sons--Muhammad Asif Ali alias Hassan, AbdulRehman alias Mani and Mureed Ahmad alias Abu Dajana-- from a mosque near Lahore.They also announced the arrest of Fahad Munir alias Mithtoo, a nephew of thelate Riaz Basra, of the LEJ. Hamid Nawaz, the Pakistani Interior Minister, wasquoted as telling the media that Qari Saifullah would be questioned by thepolice in connection with the investigation into the unsuccessful suicide attackon Benazir Bhutto at Karachi.
Surprisingly, on March 4, 2008, the Dawn of Karachi reported as follows:
"After claiming to have re-arrested one of the country’s mostmysterious militants, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Interior Ministry has startedto backtrack on its earlier disclosure, with its spokesman now claiming thatthere existed no record of his arrest. According to international news agencies,the re-arrest of the militant leader from Lahore, along with his three sons, wasconfirmed on Feb 26 by Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz. He was also quoted assaying that the action had been taken in connection with the October 18 suicideattack in Karachi in the initial attempt to assassinate PPP Chairperson BenazirBhutto. Quoting Interior Ministry and intelligence sources, Pakistani televisionchannels had kept reporting his arrest almost the entire day, and it wasreported by most of the newspapers on February 27, some quoting the InteriorMinister. And some of the reports had said that he was being questioned for hisalleged links with Al Qaeda and the plot to assassinate the former PrimeMinister. During all this period there was no official contradiction from theMinistry of Interior, or any security agency. However, when recently contactedby Dawn, the official spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Brig (retd) JavedCheema, said he had checked with all the concerned departments, and there was norecord of Qari Akhtar’s arrest."
Previously also, for over two years, Saifullah was in the informal custody ofthe Police in the Karachi jail, but in response to a habeas corpus petitionfiled by his relatives before a court, the Interior Ministry kept denying thathe was in their custody. It was saying that the security agencies had noinformation on his whereabouts. However, it allegedly admitted to the court offthe record that it was informally keeping Saifullah off circulation to preventhis falling into the hands of the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hewas ultimately released from the Karachi jail in May,2007, and the InteriorMinistry officially informed the court that he had been traced and send back tohis relatives.
The Post. a Pakistani daily, reported as follows on May 26,2007:"The counsel for Qari Saifullah Akhtar said he had been released afterdetention by the security agencies for two years and nine month. Prior to hisrelease, the agencies told him that "if they would not arrest him, the FBIwould do so." He said at the time of release, they again warned him to becareful otherwise the FBI would arrest him."
When the State Department updated the list of FTOs on April 30, 2007, it didnot consider it necessary to include HUJI (B) in the list, but now, it has doneso. One possible reason is the arrest of a number of terrorists of the LET andHUJI (B) in India and their claim that the LET and HUJI (B) were wanting tocarry out terrorist strikes against American companies in Bangalore and againstIsraeli and Western tourists in Goa.
The Bangladesh branch of the HUJI came into existence in 1992 after the AfghanMujahideen captured power in Kabul in April, 1992, after overthrowing the thenAfghan President Najibullah. It was set up by a group of Bangladeshi nationals,who had fought against the forces of the Najibullah government after havingundergone jihadi training in Pakistan. The formation of the HUJI (B) wasannounced at a press conference in April 1992 by a group of Afghan war veterans.It was projected as a successor to a first Bangladeshi Mujahideen group that hadbeen formed in 1984 by self-styled Commander Abdur Rahman, for fighting againstthe Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He later reportedly died in the Afghan War in1989.
Among the founding fathers of the HUJI (B) were Shaikhul Hadith, Allama AzizulHaq, who was also associated with the Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), a member of theformer ruling coalition headed by Begum Khalida Zia, Muhammad Habibur Rahman ofSylhet, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj, Sultan Jaok of Chittagong, AbdulMannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali. All of them were members ofdifferent Islamic organisations and madrasas. Ataur Rahman Khan was reportedlyelected to the Parliament as a candidate of Begum Khalida Zia's
Bangladesh National Party (BNP) in 1991.
All of them visited Afghanistan in 1988 before the withdrawal of the Soviettroops and met, amongst others, Osama bin Laden. An account of their travel toAfghanistan at the invitation of the HUJI of Pakistan was given by HabiburRahman in an interview to an Islamic journal called "Islami Biplob"(Islamic Revolution), which was published by the journal on August 20,1998.Habibur Rahman was also the convenor of Sahaba Sainik Parishad and the foundingprincipal of the Jameya Madania Islamia, a madrasa at Kazir Bazar, Sylhet.
He said in the interview:
"An invitation from Harkat-ul Jihad- Al- Islami made it possible for meto make the fortunate trip to Afghanistan... Those of us who visited the Afghanwar-fields during that trip were Shaikhul Hadith, Ataur Rahman Khan, Sultan Jaok,Abdul Mannan, Habibullah and myself. In Pakistan, leaders of the local chapterof the HUJI greeted us and took us to the HUJI Karachi office. HUJI Pakistanchief Saifullah Akhtar and a Bangladeshi Mujahideen Abdur Rahman Shahid drove usto an Afghan Mohajir ( refugee) camp on the Pakistan-Afghan border. We stayed atthe camp and visited some injured Mujahideens and an Islamic cadet college,where the cadets received us with a guard of honour. Abdur Rahman then drove usto the residence of top Mujahideen leader Rasul Siaaf. The house was defendedlike a fort with anti-aircraft cannons and armed guards. While still in Pakistanand on our way to Afghanistan, we visited a special Mujahideen training camp andmet about a dozen Bangladeshi young Mujahideens led by one Abdul Quddus. Wewatched youths from different countries taking military training on amountainous terrain. The arms they were being trained to operate included rocketlaunchers. That night, I shared a meal of dry cold bread with a handsome youngArab. When I inquired after his identity, I was told he was Osama bin Laden, ason of one of the richest Saudi families. The next day, we entered Afghanistanand arrived at a Mujahideen cantonment on a mountain top. We visited an armouryinside a tunnel. We were informed that some Russian forces were in positionnearby and that every one must prepare to fight. All of us were givenKalashnikov (AK-47) rifles. We stayed the night at the camp, while a Mujahideenteam advanced towards the enemy position and engaged in a skirmish. Thefollowing day we started our return journey."
The HUJI (B) subsequently appointed as its leader Shawkat Osman alias SheikhFarid. Imtiaz Quddus was appointed its General Secretary. He is probablyidentical with Abdul Quddus mentioned above. It has its main operational base inthe coastal area stretching from the port city of Chittagong south through Cox'sBazar to the Myanmar border. In addition to acts of terrorism, it has beeninvolved in piracy, smuggling and gun-running . It reportedly maintains sixtraining camps in the hilly areas of Chittagong and six more near Cox's Bazar.There are varying reports of its total strength, going up to 15,000, but my ownestimate on the basis of available intelligence is that it has a hard-corestrength of about 700, consisting of native Bangladeshis, Rohingya Muslims fromthe Arakan area of Myanmar and Pattani Muslims from Southern Thailand. Accordingto some reports, the Rohingya Muslims constitute the largest single group in theorganisation.
According to Bangladesh Police sources, a key suspect in the plot to assassinatethe then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, in July 2000, Mufti Abdul Hannan, wastrained in a HUJI camp in Peshawar in Pakistan. A diary recovered by the Policefrom Hannan's brother Matiur Rehman, who was also involved in the assassinationplot, reportedly indicated he was in touch with the Pakistani High Commission inDhaka.These sources say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence uses theHUJI (B) for running training camps in Bangladesh territory for the insurgentgroups in India's North-East, for Indian Muslims and for selected members of theBangladeshi illegal migrants to India. These training camps are reportedlylocated in the Kurigram and Rangpur areas of Bangladesh, near the border ofCoochbihar in West Bengal. The presence of similar training camps for trainingrecruits from India were also reported in the past in Rangmari, Sundermari andMasaldanga.
Instructors from the HUJI (B) are also attached to the training camps of theUnited Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) near the Tirupura border. It wassuspected that the attack on the security guards outside the US Consulate atKolkata in January, 2002, was orchestrated by HUJI (B), in collaboration withthe JEM and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, under the name the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF).Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, the prime accused in theattack, was in touch not only with the office-bearers of these organisations inPakistan, but also with Omar Sheikh, who had masterminded the kidnapping andmurder of Daniel Pearl. Omar Sheikh claimed during his interrogation by theKarachi Police in 2002 that it was he who had asked Aftab Ansari to carry outthe attack.
The HUJI (B) reportedly receives financial assistance from Pakistan, SaudiArabia and Afghanistan through Muslim Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) ofBangladesh such as the Adarsa Kutir, Al Faruk Islamic Foundation and Hataddin aswell as from the ISI through its station chief in the Pakistani High Commissionin Dhaka. Amomg the terrorist incidents in Bangladesh in which it was suspectedwere: the murder of journalist Shamsur Rahman, on July 16, 2000, in Jessore, aplot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina on July 23, 2000, plots to assassinate 28prominent intellectuals of Bangladesh , including National Professor KabirChoudhury, writer Taslima Nasreen and the Director General of the IslamicFoundation, Maulana Abdul Awal, an explosion at a Bengali New Year's Dayfunction in Dhaka on April 14, 2001, which killed eight people, an explosion ina Roman Catholic church at Baniachang in Gopalganj on June 3, 2001, killing 10worshippers, and an attempt to kill Dr.Humayun Azad, a Bangla Professor andfamous writer, on February 27, 2004.
In February, 2005, under pressure from the European Union, Begum Khalida Zia,the then Bangladesh Prime Minister, who till then was denying the presence ofany jihadi terrorist organisation in Bangladesh territory, admitted for thefirst time the presence of the Jamiatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the JagrataMuslim Janata Bangladesh and banned them. But her government continued to denythe existence of HUJI(B) and the ban order did not cover it.
Commenting on this in an editorial on February 27, 2005, the usually reliable DailyTimes of Lahore wrote as follows:
"The disease of ‘Islamist terrorism’ was incubated in Karachi andKhost and then passed on to Dhaka. A glance at the looking glass in Dhaka willdiscover Pakistani-jihadi footsteps all over the place. The Harkatul Mujahideen(Jihad) al-Islami (the one called HUJI in Bangladesh) is the outfit whose leaderwas a graduate of the Banuri Mosque seminary in Karachi and whose activiststried to kill our Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently. HUJI is theinternational face of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. As for the "pseudo-Islamic"nature of what is happening in Bangladesh, let us accept that that is the way of‘Islamic revolution’ these days. This is what the Uzbek Islamist TahirYuldashev did in Osh before he came down to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan’sTribal Areas. The Hizb al-Tahrir, which Pakistan banned only after Yuldashev’sdiscovery, worked in tandem with him in Central Asia and is now clearly workingin tandem with HUJI in Bangladesh. As in Pakistan, seminaries also flourish inBangladesh with foreign funding because of poverty and — and this fewobservers mention — profits to the organising clergy. Had the clergy beendevoted to a higher cause they would have used the money to promote local Islamand not the hardline Wahhabi-Saudi one now associated with the Taliban. Anincreasing number of Bangladesh’s madrassas are now following the pattern ofstudy of the madrassas in Pakistan and have become Deobandi in their world view.The Hindus have been targeted, aided by the widespread belief that they shouldbe expelled from the country. The jihad in Afghanistan brought in Al Qaedamoney, and the training camps in Bangladesh have since begun to turn outwarriors for the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
The paper added:
"The phase Bangladesh is passing through can be taken in two parts. Anaspect of it belongs to the early 1990s when the "Islamist" outfits inPakistan did not offend the conservative Muslim League but were seen as a threatby a liberal PPP (Pakistan People's Party). These days the ruling BNP inBangladesh is most reluctant to take action against the Islamists as theycontinue to attack Awami League cadres and communists; but when phase two opensup, the BNP will be equally threatened. The "purifying" dynamic of theIslamists will demand that the BNP bend to the kind of shariah the warriorsfavour in light of their training in Afghanistan and their "salafi" contactwith Al Qaeda. A day will come soon enough when the state of Bangladesh willcome under threat from the Islamic warriors it is now
empowering through denial."
As predicted by the paper, that day came on August 17,2005, when the twoorganisations banned in February, 2005, but whose leaders and activists were notarrested, carried out 450 simultaneous explosions all over Bangladesh andthereafter introduced suicide terrorism. Acting in panic, Begum Khalida Ziaordered a round-up of the leaders and activists of these two organisations andtheir prosecution. She also banned the HUJI (B) in October, 2005, but none ofthe leaders of HUJI (B) except Mufti Abdul Mannan, who was involved in theattempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, was arrested. Its cadres, many of them trained inPakistan, remained untouched and no action has been taken against its traininginfrastructure in Bangladesh territory, which continues to train jihaditerrorist recruits from India, Myanmar and southern Thailand, even by thepresent military-orchestrated government.
The HUJI of Pakistan is a member of bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF)for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998 and throughits branch in Bangladesh, it has been trying to arabise and wahabise the Muslimsof Bangladesh, who are in their overwhelming majority descendents of convertsfrom Hinduism, and use them for carrying out its pan-Islamic agenda in India,Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern Thailand.
B.
