Lets consider micro-actors in anti-terrorism exercise
IN the recently held 9th Parliamentary Election Bangladeshi voters completely rejected negativity and cynicism in political campaign in which some parties repeatedly invoked Islam, and they voted decisively against such political use of Islam. The overall result demonstrates the peoples' ultimate verdict against all forms of religious militancy. Bangladesh's 153 million people showed very little appetite for political Islam. Thus the new government is in the heart of the people, hoping to save the country from the rise of Islamist extremism. Obviously it is not the time to debate whether to give combating terrorism the top priority for the new regime, rather it needs to be put on the 'emergency' list for inclusive development. No doubt terrorism has been a worrying factor for Bangladesh - a lethal offshoot of political use of religion, defective education system and the socio-economic backwardness of the country. It generates national security threats, creating tailback for inclusive development of the country. It is important to take into consideration the terrorist groups and individuals who always take advantage of the weaknesses of a state or a government. The government is responsible to take the most appropriate steps to protect its citizens from the threat of terrorism. Again, the government is well placed to assess the threat for the country. The government is in a position to develop a comprehensive counter terrorism strategy with the help of other state and non-state actors. To face it, it is essential for the government to map out the terrorism threat level in a country. Bangladesh has been implementing several plans and strategies to counter idiosyncratic nature of terrorist threat. Mostly the government initiatives can be categorized into two types: (i) operational drives by the law and security forces, and (ii) legal initiatives. The law and security forces achieved some operational success in disrupting command and control structure of several extremist groups. A large number of extremist leaders and activists have been captured, put on trial and executed. A great deal of arms, explosives and grenades have been recovered. But the success in other operational spheres like disrupting financial and support bases, profiling terrorist individuals, groups, and organizations, and mapping out vulnerabilities and opportunities of threat, etc. is limited. In most of the cases, the Four-Party Alliance Government has taken coercive, quiet, amnesty and negotiating approaches to minimise the terrorist threat. The immediate past non-party Interim Government enacted the Anti-Terrorism Ordinance 2008 and the Anti-Money Laundering Prevention Ordinance 2008. Despite the shortcomings and confusion over these two Ordinances, Bangladesh has got a legal leverage to prevent terror activities in the country. There are several deficiencies at different levels of anti-terrorism exercises in Bangladesh that the new government should take into notice. First, the profiling of threat groups and the early detection indicators are not sufficient to face new actors and techniques of terrorism. There is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the ideologies, organizations and operations of the threat groups. Second, the law enforcement agencies do not have close link with the other service sectors to identify suspicious activities to prevent terrorist activities. Third, the government is not strategically, operationally, and tactically fully capable of handling the terrorist elements. The Bangladesh government is not sufficiently addressing strategic issues like dismantling motivation, ideologies and support base of the threat groups. Operationally, law enforcement agencies are not adequately developed in dealing with the technology of terrorism. At a tactical level, there is very limited scope for the members of law enforcement, security and intelligence services to be trained or retrained to understand and respond to the threat of terrorism. A number of inadequacies have been identified in the armed forces, such as short supply of trained manpower in counter terrorism, lack of intelligence gadgets and equipment, inexperience in anti-money laundering, information insecurity, etc. Fourth, there is a lack of general consensus for all-out drive against terrorism and extremism in Bangladesh. Fifth, there is a very limited initiative to educate formally and informally professional groups like academics, media community, service sector officials, and political leaders to be aware of and sensitised about the terrorist activities. Sixth, the overall strategic responses are still inadequate. The counter ideology or motivations and de-radicalisation measures are almost absent in the architecture of most of the institutions. In fact, there is hardly any institution in Bangladesh to address different kinds of motivation factors like ideological and experimental motivation, destructive and profit driven motivation, motivation to gain acknowledgement, etc. Furthermore, there are poor commitments in political society, lack of coordination among the anti-terrorist alliances, insufficient role of academics and media to address the challenges of extremism and terrorism. Seventh, there is a tendency to overemphasise military and coercive approaches in dealing with terrorism issues. There is no dedicated research institution in the government to provide forum for understanding and research on critical issues of terrorism in Bangladesh. Although the counter terrorism bureau of DGFI is responsible for policy related activities, it is barely possible to workout a viable strategy by a body of armed forces alone. Finally, it may be mentioned that, in Bangladesh, strategies and policies are preoccupied with processes highly centralized, overly bureaucratic, too ambiguous, unaccountable and unresponsive. Most of the initiatives are overly focusing on macro issues, not on micro issues and actors like ideology, motivation, and propaganda activities, empowerment of the individual, etc. to promote counter terrorism discourse. The anti-terrorist security spending has been rising every year. Today, analysing the costs and benefits, it has been claimed that the benefits are still lower than the costs. If someone dismantles operational tactics, the other moves with even deadlier tactics - the ideological grouping. As evident in Bangladesh, a few terrorist groups have been attempting to regroup, and networking in different names and structure. Some of the new Islamist groups have emerged in Bangladesh preaching ideologies by training, distributing books and pamphlets among the common people and educational institutions in rural areas. Some groups often attempt to disseminate ideologies and operational techniques and the most frightening part is choosing female trainees to motivate the local people, especially the local women. Thus, the indicators suggest that terrorist threats to Bangladesh remain foremost among its national security challenges. As such, the new government would need to maintain maximum monitoring, and operational and strategic efforts to counter the constant evolution and adaptive capability of terrorist groups in Bangladesh. To support these efforts, one has to understand the threat level, group's intention and capabilities, and risk factors. In most cases the current anti-terrorism discourse demonstrate the use of 'hard power' without sufficiently addressing the root causes and new trends of terrorism. The 'soft power' mechanisms are not being sufficiently addressed in Bangladesh. Thus the new counter terrorism discourse should look for new techniques and understanding in order to reduce the impact of terrorism on society. Three important new trends should be taken care of in future anti-terrorism policy formulation in Bangladesh. First, the emergence of micro-actors in capability of terrorist groups, i.e. reduction in the operational capability of the terrorist groups, but increase in their ideological, motivational and propaganda ability. The second is the promotion of operational sophistication of terrorist activities with the option of using modern technology and information flow, finance and ideas in planning, communications, and targeting. And the last is the increasing trend of overlapping terrorist activities with crime, using the same supply, transport, and money moving networks. During the last two years in the absence of political activities in the country it may happen that the threat groups have become more capable in launching any future deadly attack. Also, the new government must look into whether the corrupt money is spent for financing terrorist activities against the state and its citizens. The author is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Jagannath University. He would appreciate feedback at aynulbd03@yahoo.com
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