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Bangladesh for Beginners
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 30, 2005 04:13pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:20:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Why Americans should care about the increasingly radical insurgency.
By Eliza Griswold
Posted Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005, at 7:18 AM ET
When Bangladesh's first two suicide bombers blew themselves up recently, the attacks marked a significant escalation in the growing militant insurgency that threatens an already wobbly state. Now, at long last, the world is beginning to pay attention to the spate of bombings, killings, and threats against judges, lawyers, journalists, teachers, professors, politicians, and religious minorities by the banned jihadist group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, among others, for the past five years.
Faced with increased pressure at home and abroad, the Bangladeshi National Party, the leader in the four-party coalition government, is finally rounding up the terrorists—more than 600 so far—and scrutinizing its alliance with two Islamist parties within the ruling coalition that are suspected of having links to the militants. But the government will have to end the long-standing tradition of using young men to foment violence for political ends if it wants to ensure that the nation of 152 million—the world's third-most-populous Muslim country—does not become another Afghanistan or, more aptly, another Darfur, where the rebels whose presence the government has long tolerated have seized virtual control.
One of the problems in routing Bangladesh's militants is that sectarian violence is so deeply entrenched in the nation's brief history, and religious division has been used to justify violence since the country gained its independence in 1971. |
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