In early May 2020, the Bangladeshi police counter-terrorism unit arrested 17 members of the banned terrorist group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), in Dhaka. At the time of the arrest, the JMB operatives planned to join Imam Mahdi, the spiritual redeemer of Islam, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
Bangladesh’s most lethal home-grown militant organization, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)—which has multiple ideological and operational factions, including the Islamic State (IS)-inspired neo-JMB and al-Qaeda linked core Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JM)—has gained notoriety over the last few years for recruiting and nurturing a network of women militants. Despite robust counter-terrorism operations following the July 2016 Holey Artisan Bakery attacks in the capital Dhaka, an alarming number of women are taking up the cause of militancy.
"The founding of JMI on Indian soil indicates two things—that Bangladesh’s concerted counterterror operations have pushed the JMB remnants into neighboring India in search of a safe haven, and that there has been somewhat of an ideological rift within the original JMB with the different strands adhering to either the jihadist ideals of al-Qaeda or those of Islamic State (IS).
Spreading Tentacles: The Islamic State in Bangladesh
Animesh Roul
In an interview with Newsroom Post, Animesh Roul, Executive Director, Society for Study of Peace and Conflict, says that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh (JMB) has flourished with the help of local support. Speaking to Newsroompost.com, Roul says that unchecked influx of Bangladeshi Muslims created pockets of influence for political parties in West Bengal.
Newsroom Post: What is your perception of the Burdwan incident?
Key points
Bangladesh faces growing security threats from a range of radical Islamist interests, including entrenched Deobandi militants, newly emergent jihadist groups, and even transnational operations such as Al-Qaeda.
A message from Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in January 2014, the first specifically directed at Bangladesh, will resonate with a number of radical groups aiming to spread jihad within the country.
six years after the audacious terrorist attacks of 2005, Bangladesh’s elite counterterrorism agency, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), claims to have neutralized JMB’s core and substantially reduced the risk it poses. Yet the JMB threat to Bangladesh has not been eliminated. While the group has been dramatically weakened, there are new concerns that it is attempting to reconstitute itself.This article assesses JMB’s current strength, which is based on interrogations from recently arrested operatives.
Very often western observers play down the existence and influence of Pakistan based Lashkar- e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami inside Bangladesh’s territory. Investigations into number of terror strikes in Bangladesh occurred between May 2004 and December 2005 have revealed, rather unearthed, a lethal nexus between these two Pakistan based terror groups and couple of mainstream political parties (Pro-Islamic Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) in Bangladesh. It also revealed how they teamed up to score a political point by assassinating rival political leaders.
After months of investigations, authorities in Bangladesh slapped a 40 year jail sentence to three militants of the outlawed Islamic outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) blamed for series of bombings in the country in 2005. Two convicts— Mohammad Awal and Ataur Sunny— have confessed their involvement in the 17 August countrywide bombings that killed three people and left over 150 injured. They also confessed that two British nationals financed the August serial bombings.
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