Thread by @tasneem

New report from @crisisgroup on Bangladeshi jihadi groups. IMHO, this one does not live up to the standard we saw in previous ICG reports on Bangladesh. Here I note the bad and good.

crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asi…

I will start with the most glaring mistake in the report. That is how it presents the ISIS position re: Rohingya. The report cites an April 2016 interview in Dabiq and claims: "a Bangladeshi ISIS commander [sounded] a rallying cry to fight for Rohingya rights" 🤦‍♂️

Anyone who has read that Dabiq (# 14) interview (with Sajit Debnath aka Saifullah Ozaki aka Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif) knows that this claim (of "rallying cry") is demonstrably false. I am actually quite surprised to see such a serious misreading of jihadi messaging in an ICG report.

What the ISIS amir actually said in that interview (Dabiq # 14, p. 62): "... we believe it will be more effective to strengthen the jihād front in Bengal first before fully moving into Burma, as fighting the nearer murtaddīn takes precedence over fighting the farther enemy...

... comprised of kuffār asliyyīn (non-apostate disbelievers). [...] The kāfir regime in Burma can only be fought effectively after we bring an end to the apostate Bengali regime, biidnillāh, just as the Jewish state can’t be fought effectively until the apostate regimes of...

... Sisi and Bashar are annihilated first, inshā’allāh."

In other words, from the jihadi horse's mouth, ISIS plans to engage in the Rohingya question *after* defeating the "apostate Bengali regime". This is the ISIS position re: Rohingya, AFAIK, unchanged since 2016.

The second serious error in the ICG report is re: Ansar al-Islam (AQIS) and the 2013 Shahbag movement. Looks like the author of the report got the timeline messed up bad.

ICG: "A new kind of jihadist mobilisation surfaced shortly thereafter. On 15 February 2013, ten days after the Shahbagh demonstrations began, prominent blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, whose writings had in part inspired those demonstrations, was brutally murdered..."

Not really.

The "new kind of jihadist mobilisation" actually started with the *January 15, 2013* assassination attempt against the blogger Asif Mohiuddin. The Shahbag protests started on February 5, 2013. That was *after* the "jihadist mobilisation" (in the form of an attack) started.

Long story short: there is little relationship between the rise of Ansar al-Islam (previously Ansarullah Bangla Team, which was initially led by Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani since *early 2012*) and the Shahbag movement.

Anyone interested about the longer version of that story should read this piece where I tried giving a timeline of Ansar al-Islam's birth tasneemkhalil.com/bangladesh-fre…

The best thing about the new ICG report? It does expose a serious problem with the current CT efforts in Bangladesh: that is the phenomenon of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances.

"A security official contended that a killing in 2015 in which he was involved might have cost law enforcement agencies an opportunity to uncover planning for and disrupt the 2016 Dhaka attack." [fnt: Crisis Group interviews, security officials, Dhaka, June-August 2017.]

"Some law enforcement officials also express concern that killing rather than apprehending militants wastes opportunities to obtain vital intelligence." This is exactly one of the things many of us have been saying for years!

Extrajudicial execution is a terrible CT tool!

made a similar point earlier when he noted in an article: "... using unorthodox and illegal methods could well backfire – creating obstacles in defeating the militancy."

thewire.in/71832/due-proc…

Thanks to the new ICG report, we now know that even some LEA officers in BD, engaged in CT efforts, agree with this.

So there, my quick take on the new report. Let me know what I have missed 🙃