Bangladesh’s war on terror

Islamist terrorists have killed more than 40 people in Bangladesh, usually by hacking them to death with machetes in last three years. The victims had offended their murderers by being gay, hindus, Christians or any non-Muslim or critical of Islamist parties. The government has done quite little to end the carnage.

However, a recent murder seems to have shocked it into action. On June 5th the wife of a police officer investigating a militant group was hacked and shot dead in front of her six-year-old son. Five days later Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, promised to catch “each and every killer” and accused the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and its Islamist ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, of orchestrating the murders. A wave of arrests followed. More than 11,000 people had been rounded up.

Officials say the rising death toll and broadening range of targets made the crackdown “an absolute necessity”. On June 7th a Hindu priest was found dead, nearly beheaded, in south-western Bangladesh, just weeks after an elderly Buddhist monk was hacked to death in the country’s south-east. But in private, senior police officers complain that mass arrests are no substitute for proper investigation.

Of the thousands arrested, only a few hundred at most are believed to be members of militant groups. Few high-ranking figures from Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Ansarullah Bangla Team—the two outfits that have claimed most of the murders—have been arrested. Perhaps the police do not know who the leaders are, or where they are hiding. But some Bangladeshis speculate that they are deliberately leaving them alone.

Nobody seriously suggests that the government is in league with the terrorists. But it has been slow to deal with the threat, long denying that al-Qaeda and Islamic State were active in Bangladesh, even as followers of both groups claimed credit for murders. Instead, the government has blamed the opposition party.

The ruling party, the Awami League, has allowed its own religious wing, the Olema League, to grow ever bolder. Earlier this year, with Hefazat, it campaigned to defeat a petition calling for the removal of a constitutional provision recognising Islam as the state religion. The challenge took 28 years to wend its way through the legal system; the country’s highest court spent all of two minutes dismissing it. Doubtless the judges did so for sound legal reasons, but had they come to a different decision, they might have been murdered.

India, which almost completely surrounds Bangladesh, will be watching with great interest what happens next. Its border with Bangladesh has traditionally been as calm as its border with Pakistan is restive. It fears instability and radicalism on both sides.

India’s government is also concerned for the safety of Bangladesh’s Hindu population, which has declined markedly in recent years. Many have fled across the border; India has vowed to make it easier for them to claim citizenship. More may follow.