Pakistan looking to ‘secularize’ terrorism

SALEEM SAMAD

Amid the coronavirus pandemic taking a heavy toll of human lives globally, the General Head Quarters (GHQ) of the dreaded Pakistan army in Rawalpindi is attempting to “secularize terrorism” in restive Kashmir.

Rawalpindi has given birth to another jihadist terror network, The Resistance Front (TRF). The GHQ has developed the expertise in recruiting and abetting Islamic militias to fight and kill innocent people in a bid to establish “Naya Pakistan” of Imran Khan.

From Afghanistan to Bangladesh, Balochistan to Kashmir, Iran to India, the deep state has been engaged to destabilize the region, which the South Asian nations have strongly reacted to in regional forums.

Pakistan’s maiden brutal operation “Raiders in Kashmir” was in autumn 1948. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s blue-eyed boy Brigadier Akbar Khan, Burma war front veteran, pushed hundreds and thousands of ferocious tribesmen and unleashed a reign of terror in the picturesque valley for 5 days.

Presently the so-called “Azad Kashmir” is also known as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and rest of Jammu and Kashmir is Indian Administered Kashmir. 

Thus Kashmir remained in GHQ’s terror map.

Shabir Choudhry, a political activist from POK has written to British Leader of Opposition, Keir Starmer, informing that Pakistan continued to violate the UN Security Council’s resolutions on Kashmir. 

The withdrawal of the Pakistan army never materialized; instead, it infiltrates “jihad warriors” to commit violence and terrorism on the other side of Line of Control (LoC).

Rawalpindi’s skill in creating fright among the people was imported to brutally suppress the nation during the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

The hawkish General’s terrorism model was developed in the terror lab in POK and was transplanted in the Eastern War Theatre, a delta with the long monsoon season.

The shadowy lobby in Eastern Command of the Pakistan army in Dhaka implemented their sadistic plan to raise several terror groups and also brought in the paramilitary Rangers and Mujahid militias to implant fear-mongering among the local people.

Besides forming the “Shanti Committee” by staunch supporters of Islamic Pakistan with political leaders, the occupation forces also established the infamous razakars and raised 50,000 militias. The paramilitary East Pakistan Civil Armed Force (EPCAF) was attached to border security force East Pakistan Rifles (EPR), while the Al Badr and Al Shams units contributed another 5,000 militia each.

The strengthening of the groups of armed militias was mostly recruited locally to resist the Mukti Bahini’s onslaught and neutralize the dream to achieve independence of the people in towns and villages.

Al Badr was a secret death squad recruited largely from Islami Chhatra Sangha (later rechristened as Islamic Chhatra Shibir), a youth organization of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The secret death squad was responsible for enforced disappearances of nationalist supporters, savage torture, and brutal extrajudicial killings of thousands of intellectuals, teachers, and professionals all over the country.

To come out clear from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) -- the anti-terror financing watchdog -- Rawalpindi not only overnight floated TRF, but also the Joint Kashmir Front, Jammu Kashmir Ghaznavi Force, and other such new groups.

Well, the new terror group TRF has created waves in cyberspace streaming from Rawalpindi since October 2019. 

Pakistan’s spy agency ISI’s pandora’s box was exposed, like a chameleon, to secularize terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir by doing away with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen, which had gained notoriety, and merging them into one common non-Islamist label to make it look like an indigenous rebel movement with a modern outlook.

The Pakistani deep state’s idea of “bleeding India through a thousand cuts” is being experimented with for the last several decades, even as Islamabad gets little diplomatic or proxy military success in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been relatively peaceful ever since the abrogation of Article 370, concluded an Indian conflict researcher Aditya Raj Kaul.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 19 May 2020

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; he can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

The nation seeks official list of martyred intellectuals

Postal stamp in memory of martyred intellectuals. (From top left) Dr Harinath Dey, Dr Lt Col A F Z Rahman, Mamum Mahmud, Mohsin Ali Dewan; (from bottom left) Dr Lt Col N A M Jahangir, Shah Abdul Majid, Muhammad Akhter and Meherunnesa. PHOTO: COURTESY

SALEEM SAMAD

To this day the nation does not have a list of intellectuals abducted and murdered by the marauding Pakistan army and their local henchmen who joined in the plunder, genocide, and rape during the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

Last week Faruq Faisel, son of martyred journalist Mohsin Ali Dewan approached Mohammad Jahangir Hossain, director general of Jatiya Muktijuddho Council (Jamuka) under the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs.

He described that his father was abducted by the Pakistan army accompanied by armed militia, the Razakars, from his home in Bogura on June 3, 1971. He was the editor of weekly Uttar Bongo Bulletin, published from Bogura and was first elected president of Bogura Press Club. He was also principal of Sherpur Degree College and also established Bogura Law College, Shah Sultan College, and Joypurhat College. His body was never found.

Faruq sought the Jamuka chief’s advice regarding formalities to enlist Mohsin Ali Dewan’s name in the official document of martyred intellectuals. He was surprised to hear that the government does not have any policy to list murdered intellectuals.

Faruq Faisel, presently the regional director for Bangladesh and South Asia of international media rights organisation Article 19, was shocked to learn this from the DG of Jamuka. The government has not published a gazette notification regarding the documentation and compilation of a list of intellectuals who were singled out by the Pakistan army and killed.

Earlier, in a statement in the parliament on February 6, 2014, Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Huq informed that a complete list would be published by June 2014. The list has not seen the light of the day.

The intellectuals were abducted, tortured and killed by Pakistan army and their henchmen Al Badr, the secret death squad who were recruited from among the hardcore members of Islami Chhatra Sangha. The student outfit was rechristened as Islami Chhatra Shibir in 1977, with a similar ideology of Islami Chhatra Sangha.

Most of the senior level Al Badr commanders were indicted for crimes against humanity and tried at the International Crimes Tribunal. The tribunal handed down the death penalty to the leaders of Islami Chhatra Sangha held responsible for the death of intellectuals.

Thousands of intellectuals mostly university, college and school teachers, academics, politicians, filmmakers, physicians, poets, writers, journalists, engineers, sportsmen, lawyers, lyricists, singers, eminent personalities who had been deemed threats by the Pakistan army were abducted, tortured and executed.

The Bangladesh Post Office has issued dozens of commemorative stamps valued at Taka 2 in the memory of the martyred intellectuals.

It is widely speculated that the killings of intellectuals were orchestrated by Major General Rao Farman Ali. After the liberation of Bangladesh, a list of Bengali intellectuals (most of whom were executed on December 14) were found in pages of his diary, left behind at the Governor’s House (now Bangabhaban).

Various names of martyrs often appear in the media quoting different sources including Banglapedia, which listed 1,111 martyred intellectuals. Filmmaker Zahir Raihan, after going through General Ali’s diary, documents, and daily newspapers, claimed to have found 20,000 names. Unfortunately, he was abducted and went missing without a trace since January 1972.

The killing of the intellectuals virtually began following the army crackdown in Dhaka on the night of March 25. The Pakistan army during Operation Searchlight targeted victims and killed them systematically.

An initiative was undertaken by the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs to prepare a countrywide list of the Razakars, Al Badrs, Al Shams and other henchmen of Pakistan military, which we highly appreciate.

Besides preparing a complete list of the collaborators of the Pakistan army for crimes against humanity during the birth of Bangladesh, the concerned authorities should have also taken the initiative to document the names of our martyred intellectuals as a national priority.

First published in The Daily Star, 14 December 2019

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Bangladesh: Death for Merchants of Death

S. BINODKUMAR SINGH

After forty-three years, justice finally caught up with Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) ameer (chief) Motiur Rahman Nizami (71) as the International Crimes Tribunal-1 (ICT-1), one of the two War Crimes Tribunals constituted by the Sheikh Hasina Wajed Government, sentenced him to death on October 29, 2014, for atrocities during the Liberation War of 1971. Nizami was found guilty on eight of the 16 charges brought against him. The four charges which brought him death included involvement in the killing of intellectuals; the murder of 450 civilians; rape in Bausgari and Demra villages in Pabna District; the killing of 52 people in Dhulaura village in Pabna District; and killings of 10 people and rape of three women in Karamja village in Pabna District. He was also sentenced to imprisonment for life on the charges of involvement in the killing of Kasim Uddin and two others in Pabna District; torture and murder of Sohrab Ali of Brishalikha village in Pabna District; torture and killing at Mohammadpur Physical Training Centre in Dhaka city; and killing of freedom fighters Rumi, Bodi, Jewel and Azad at Old MP Hostel in Dhaka city.

Nizami, at that time, was the President of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, the students’ wing of JeI, the precursor of the present-day Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), and was also ex-officio chief of Al-Badr, a paramilitary wing of the Pakistan Army in 1971. As a leader, he not only took part in crimes against humanity, the judgment reads, but also delivered provocative speeches to incite thousands of his followers to commit similar crimes during the Liberation War. However, instead of being punished for the heinous crimes, President Ziaur Rahman permitted Nizami and other leaders of the JeI to revive the party in 1978. The JeI subsequently emerged as the largest Islamist party in the country and Nizami established himself as a key leader, organizing the ICS. He became JeI ameer in November 2000, and also served as the Minister of Agriculture (from October 10, 2001, to May 22, 2003) and Minister of Industries (from May 22, 2003 to October 28, 2006) in the Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led Government between 2001 and 2006.

Nizami was first arrested on June 29, 2010, in a lawsuit for hurting religious sentiments. After three days, he was shown arrested for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War. Subsequently, on May 28, 2012, he was indicted on 16 specific charges for his involvement in War Crimes. It took around 29 months to go from the indictment to the sentencing, as the verdict was deferred three times in the past.

Earlier, on January 30, 2014, the Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1 had awarded the death penalty to Nizami in the sensational 10-truck arms haul case of 2004, the country’s biggest ever weapons haul case. On February 7, 2014, the verdict on the arms haul case was transferred to the Chittagong High Court for confirmation of its sentences. Nizami filed an appeal with the Chittagong High Court seeking acquittal from the charges and, on April 16, 2014, the Chittagong High Court accepted the appeal. The case is still pending in the High Court.

Meanwhile, as in earlier cases, soon after the verdict, cadres of JeI and its student wing ICS went on rampage across the country. 30 persons, including 28 JeI-ICS cadres and two Security Force (SF) personnel have been injured in violence across the country, thus far. 71 JeI-ICS cadres were also arrested from various parts of the country for bringing out processions. The JeI called for a countrywide hartal (general strike) on October 30, November 2 and November 3

The verdict has attracted some negative international attention. Calling for a commutation of Nizami’s death sentence, the European Union (EU), in a statement on October 29, 2014, declared, “The case of Motiur Rahman Nizami has now reached a stage where an execution of the death sentence constitutes a serious threat.” On October 29, the United States (US) reiterated its support to bringing to justice those who committed atrocities during the Liberation War, but demanded that the trials should be fair and transparent maintaining the international standards.

On the other hand, minutes after the news of Nizami’s death penalty reached the Shahbagh intersection in Dhaka city on October 29, Gonojagoron Mancha (People’s Resurgence Platform) activists erupted into exhilarated cheers. Showing victory signs, they demanded the immediate execution of the verdict, chanting slogans like “we demand hanging”.

Meanwhile, on November 2, 2014, ICT-2 sentenced JeI central executive committee member Mir Quasem Ali (62) to death after finding him guilty on two charges, one for abduction, torture and killing of 15-year-old freedom fighter Jasim of Sandwip Sub-District in Chittagong District; another for abducting, torturing and killing Ranjit Das alias Lathu and Tuntu Sen alias Raju of Chittagong town in Chittagong District. Quasem, considered one of the top financiers of JeI, faces 14 charges, including murder, abduction and torture committed in Chittagong city between November and December 16, 1971. He was allegedly the chief of the Chittagong Al-Badr and was indicted on September 5, 2013, after being arrested on June 17, 2013.

Thus far, the two ICTs conducting the War Crimes Trials, which began on March 25, 2010, have indicted 18 leaders, including 13 JeI leaders, three BNP leaders and two Jatiya Party (JP) leaders. Verdicts against 12 of them (including Nizami and Quasem) have already been delivered, in which nine persons have been awarded the death sentence (including Nizami and Quasem), while three have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Remarkably, in the first-ever execution in a War Crimes case, JeI Assistant Secretary Abdul Quader Mollah (65), who earned the nickname Mirpurer Koshai (Butcher of Mirpur), was hanged on December 12, 2013, at Dhaka Central Jail, against his conviction on charges of atrocities committed during the Liberation Wars of 1971. Of the six other convicts who were awarded death sentences, three – Al-Badr leaders Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Khan and Chowdhury Mueenuddin, and JeI leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad – were awarded sentences in absentia. The verdicts against JeI leaders Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, and BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, are currently pending with the Appellate Division.

Significantly, former JeI Chief Ghulam Azam (92), who led the JeI during the country’s Liberation War in 1971, died at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) in Dhaka city after suffering a stroke on October 23, 2014. Azam had served a year and three months of his 90-year jail term for crimes against humanity. Protest rallies by opponents of JeI were held during his funeral at Baitul Mokarram National Mosque in Dhaka city, demanding that his body be sent to Pakistan for burial there. Ziaul Hasan, chairman of Bangladesh Sommilito Islami Jote, an alliance of progressive Islamic parties, observed, “The janaza (mourning procession) of a war criminal can never be held at the national mosque.”

The verdict against the JeI chief is a body blow to the organization. The Government is already considering banning JeI, which was debarred on August 1, 2013, from contesting elections. Awami League (AL) Joint Secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif on October 29, 2014, noted, “The verdict has once again proved that JeI was involved in war crimes with a political decision.” With its very existence now under threat, JeI attempts to retaliate violently are imminent, and likely to vitiate the security environment of the country.

Compounding the problem are the recent activities of other Islamist extremist and terrorist groups, particularly the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). On September 22, 2014, the Detectives Branch (DB) of the Police claimed that 25 top leaders of JMB and seven other Islamist outfits, including Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), Jamaatul Muslemin, Majlish-e-Tamuddin, Hizbul Zihad, Hizbut Tahrik, Jamaatil Muslemin and Dawatul Jihad, discussed a regrouping plan at a meeting in a remote char (riverine island) area at Sariakandi sub-District in Bogra District on May 5, 2014. More recently, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested JMB’s chief coordinator Abdun Noor and four of his close aides from the Sadar sub-District Railway Station in Sirajganj District on October 31, 2014. 49 primary detonators, 26 electronic detonators, four time bombs, 10 kilograms of power gel, 155 different kinds of circuits, 55 jihadi books and a power regulator were recovered from the JMB cadres. During preliminary interrogation, the JMB operatives confessed that they were planning to carry out large-scale bomb attacks across the country, particularly in Dhaka city.

Remarkably, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), currently investigating the October 2, 2014, Burdwan (West Bengal, India) blast case, on October 28, 2014, uncovered a suspected plot by JMB to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed and carry out a coup. The JMB had also planned to assassinate BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia. Earlier, on October 27, 2014, Indian investigators had revealed that the JMB module in Burdwan had managed to transport six consignments of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to Bangladesh, to be used for terrorist activities in the country.

The War Crimes Trials, and the cumulative verdicts against leaders of extremist parties and groups that have been at the core of destabilization in Bangladesh over the past decades, have been crucial in turning the country around after years of mounting chaos that had brought it to the very brink of failure. This process needs to be sustained, indeed, accelerated, despite the backlash of extremist entities, if the gains of the recent past are to be consolidated.

First published in South AsiaIntelligence Review, Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 13, No. 18, November 5, 2014

S. Binodkumar Singh is a Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Bangladesh War Crimes Trials Follow Evidence, Not Politics

MOHAMMAD A. ARAFAT

Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan in 1971, but at a terrible price. Pakistan didn’t just oppose Bangladeshi liberation on the battlefield. It unleashed one of the most shameful genocides of the 20th century on ethnic Bengali citizens with the help of local extremist groups. As many as three million Bengalis were killed in just nine months and more than two hundred thousand women were raped and tortured.

As is the case with war crimes elsewhere, many decades later those responsible for the massacre are finally being brought to justice. In 2009, a domestic War Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) was established in Bangladesh to investigate and prosecute those accused of crimes against humanity.

Bangladesh’s war crimes victims deserve justice and so do their families. The passing of time cannot wipe away the horrors of that period even though many of those responsible for mass murder have avoided justice, some by taking refuge in foreign countries. Others have even worked their way into the country’s political establishment.

The purpose of the tribunal is to set right this great wrong. Over the past year, it and a second tribunal have heard evidence against two accused ringleaders of the genocide — Motiur Rahman Nizami and Delwar Hossain Sayeedi. The evidence against both is extensive, compelling and ghastly.

If they are found guilty, they likely will hang, as the death penalty is still part of Bangladeshi law. Verdicts may come at any time.

Nizami is not just an accused killer. He is also the head of Jamaat-e-Islami, an extremist group responsible for a wave of murder and violence across Bangladesh during the past year. Its attacks have resulted in 500 deaths. Jamaat has deep roots in the region going back to its collaboration with the Pakistani military during Bangladesh’s war for independence. Back then, Jamaat launched the fearsome paramilitary group called Al-Badr, which were death squads similar to Adolph Hitler’s SS during World War II.

Jamaat, in essence, it is a domestic terror organization with a political arm. It has worked since Bangladesh’s independence to destroy the country’s pluralistic constitutional democracy and to replace it with a primitive version of Sharia law.

Nizami faces 16 counts of crimes against humanity including genocide, murder, torture, rape and property destruction, all of which are based on eyewitness accounts. As Al-Badr’s chief leader during the genocide, Nizami is accused of either personally carrying out or ordering the deaths of nearly 600 ethnic Bengalis as well as the rape and the torture of many women.

Some of the worst atrocities came at the infamous Mohammadpur Physical Training Institute in Dhaka, which was a human abattoir reminiscent of Nazi death camps.

An entire of generation of Bangladesh’s best minds were wiped out at the Institute, tribunal prosecutors charge, because Nizami and other collaborators devised a systematic plan to torture and execute professors, engineers, artists and scientists. The plan was that if Pakistan could not prevent Bangladesh’s independence, it would seek to cripple the young state in its infancy by destroying its top intellectuals.

First published in The Daily Caller, 09 May, 2014

Mohammad A. Arafat, Executive Director, Shuchinta Foundation

Some things must never be forgotten

Hiranmay Karlekar

A long struggle against daunting odds has kept the values and memories of Bangladesh's Liberation War alive. This is a remarkable achievement

The mass upsurge in Bangladesh, demanding death sentence to those guilty of crimes against humanity during the country's Liberation War in 1971, has erupted suddenly. The legacy of the liberation struggle and memories of the atrocities, mass murder and rape by the war criminals and the Pakistani Army, which galvanised the young demonstrators, had, however, been kept alive by a group of dedicated people working against daunting odds. Many who had collaborated with the Pakistani Army, mainly leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami, its auxiliaries like al Badr, al Shams and the Razakars, had been arrested after Bangladesh's liberation on December 16, 1971. Some had gone underground. A few, like Golam Azam, perhaps the most hated of them all, had fled to Pakistan just prior to it.

While Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's grant of an amnesty to War Criminals in November 1973, had enabled them to return to public life, the military dictatorships running Bangladesh after his assassination on August 15, 1975, promoted them to undermine the influence of the Awami League-led secular and democratic elements. Thus Major-General Zia-ur Rahman, Begum Khaleda Zia's husband, who became Chief Martial Law Administrator on November 19, 1975, and President on April 27, 1977, allowed Golam Azam to return to Bangladesh in July, 1978, on a Pakistani passport and two weeks' visa. Allowed to stay on, he was secretly made Amir of the Jamaat when it was revived in May 1979. Abbas Ali Khan acted as officiating Amir. Islami Chhatra Sangha was rechristened Islami Chhatra Shibir. Both organisations became active as the military dictatorships headed by Zia-ur Rahman and HM Ershad sought to progressively Islamise Bangladesh and wipe out the values and memories of the liberation war including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's historic role.

Counter-efforts began simultaneously. On March 21, 1981, the Chairman of the Central Command Council of the Muktijoddha Sangsad (Freedom Fighters' Council) , Lt-Col (Retd) Qazi Nur-Uzzaman, announced the programme of an anti-al Badr/Razakar week to be observed from May 1, 1981. He demanded the trial of all traitors including Golam Azam, adding that the Muktijoddha Sangsad would try them by forming a People's Court if the government did not. On March 25, 10 opposition parties, including Awami League, expressed concern over the activities of communal parties and met to discuss a programme of action. Awami League leaders said at a public meeting on April 5 that no longer would there be any mercy for Razakars and activists of al Badr. In a statement on April 16, Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir (Bangladesh Writers' Camp) expressed grave concern over the re-emergence of “merchants of religion” like Razakars and organisations like al Shams and al Badr and the Jamaat. Accusing the BNP Government of supporting the criminals, it endorsed the Muktijoddha Sangsad's campaign against the murderous political forces they represented and urged people to carry forward the movement in association with organisations of the toiling masses. An important landmark was the establishment of the Muktijuddher Chetana Vikas Kendra (Centre for Developing the consciousness of the Liberation War) in 1984 to identify the collaborators and war criminals in the administration.

General HM Ershad's declaration in June 1988, of Islam as Bangladesh's state religion and the Jamaat's formal election of Golam Azam as its national Ameer in December 1991, triggered strong reactions. The first led to the formation of the Shairachar o Sampradayikata Protirodh Committee (Committee to Resist Despotism and Communalism) and the latter, Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmal Committee (known popularly as Nirmul Committee). The latter tried Golam Azam at a people's court in Dhaka on March 26, 1992, which sentenced him to death before a gathering of about half-a-million people who had collected in the teeth of the Government's furious opposition.

The late Jahanara Imam, one of whose sons, Rumi, a freedom fighter, was savagely murdered by the Pakistanis in1971, was Nirmul Committee's first convener. The momentum the committee generated has survived her passing. Shahriar Kabir's meticulously documented and devastating workm Ekattorer Ghatak O Dalara Key Kothaye (Who and Where The Killers and Agents of Seventy-One), made an important contribution. It, along with similar other publications, made sure that nothing was forgotten.

First published in The Pioneer, 28 February 2013