The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police, which has beeninvestigating the two explosions at a Hindu temple and a local railway stationat Varanasi on March 7,2006, announced on April 5,2006, that its investigationhas established that the two explosions were carried out by three terrorists ofthe Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami of Bangladesh, known as HUJI (B), with local helpprovided by one Walilullah, the Imam of a mosque at Phulpur inAllahabad, and five other Indians.
While Walilullah and the five other Indians who had helped the three terroristsfrom Bangladesh, have been arrested, the three terrorists, who actually carriedout the explosions, have managed to go back to Bangladesh after carrying out theterrorist strikes. Twenty innocent civilians were killed in the two explosions.The UP Police have described Walilullah as the Eastern UP Area Commander of HUJI(B).
In a confessional statement, Walilullah has reportedly cited the demolition ofthe Babri Masjid in UP in December 1992 by a Hindu mob and the anti-Muslim riotsin Gujarat in February, 2002, as the reasons for the terrorist strikes againstthe temple and at the railway station. He has projected the twin blasts as actsof reprisal terrorism. He has given the names of the three persons, who camefrom Bangladesh to carry out the explosions, as Bashiruddin aliasBashir,Mustafiz and Zakaria, all Bangladeshi nationals. According to hisversion, they had studied along with him at the Deoband seminary in UP someyears ago and he has been in touch with them since then.
Walilullah had once been arrested by the Allahabad Police in 2001 on suspicionof his links with the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Pakistan. He was released aftereight months without being prosecuted. Bashiruddin took him to Bangladesh inJune 2004 and introduced him to one Maulana Asadullah of HUJI (B), who enrolledhim into the organisation and appointed him as its Area Commander for EasternUP.
The other five Indian Muslims arrested are Syed Shuib and Farhaan (Lucknow),Mohammad Rizwan Siddiqui and Mohammad Saad Ali (Amroha) and Shahid (Allahabad).They were working in a power loom in Bhiwandi near Mumbai. All the arrestedIndian Muslims are reported to have confessed that they had visited Pakistan viaBangladesh for training in jihadi terrorism, organised by Maulana Asadullah.
HUJI (B) is the Bangladesh branch of the HUJI of Pakistan, which is headed byQari Saifullah Akhtar, who is presently in jail in Pakistan. He was arrested bythe Pakistani authorities in 1995, when Mrs. Benazir Bhutto was the PrimeMinister, on a charge of involvement with a group of Pakistani army officersheaded by Brig.Zahir-ul-Islam-Abbasi in trying to organise a military coup.Brig.Abbasi used to be the New Delhi station chief of Pakistan's Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) in the Pakistani High Commission and was expelled by theGovernment of India in 1988.The arrested Army officers and the Qari were accusedof planning to have Benazir and Gen.Abdul Wahid Kakkar, the then Chief of theArmy Staff, assassinated and capture power. While the arrested officers weretried before a court-martial and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, theISI did not prosecute the Qari for reasons which were not clear.
He was released. After his release, he settled down in Kandahar and emerged as akey adviser of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban. The HUJI, under hisleadership, participated in the fight against the Northern Alliance led by thelate Ahmed Shah Masood. Its volunteers also participated in the jihad inthe Central Asian Republics and Chechnya. It came to be known as the PunjabiTaliban.
The HUJI of Pakistan and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) led by Maulana FazlurRahman Khalil merged for some time and operated under the name Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA).They split and started operating again as two different organisations after theUS State Department designated the HUA as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation inOctober,1997. This was done because of suspicion of the involvement of some ofits cadres in the kidnapping of some Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir in1995 under the name Al Faran.
When the US started its military action in Afghanistan on October 7,2001, in thewake of 9/11, Qari Saifullah Akhtar and his followers crossed over into Pakistanand dispersed to different places. The HUJI was suspected to have been involvedin the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, at Karachialong with the HUM (Al-Alami meaning International) in January-February,2002,and in the two attempts to kill President General Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindiin December,2003, along with the JEM and some lower level officers of the Armyand the Air Force.
The Qari ran away to Dubai to escape arrest. His presence there was detected bythe Dubai authorities in August,2004. They arrested him and handed him over tothe Pakistani authorities, but he has not so far been prosecuted in connectionwith any of these incidents.
The Bangladesh branch of the HUJI came into existence in 1992 after the AfghanMujahideen captured power in Kabul in April,1992, after overthrowing the thenAfghan President Najibullah. It was set up by a group of Bangladeshi nationals,who had fought against the forces of the Najibullah Government after havingundergone jihadi training in Pakistan.The formation of the HUJI (B) wasannounced at a press conference in April 1992 by a group of Afghan warveterans. It was projected as a successor to a first BangladeshiMujahideen group that had been formed in 1984 by Commander Abdur Rahman, forfighting against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.He later reportedly died inthe Afghan War in 1989.
Among the founding fathers of the HUJI (B) are Shaikhul Hadith, AllamaAzizul Haq, who is also associated with the Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), amember of the present ruling coalition headed by Begum Khalida Zia, MuhammadHabibur Rahman of Sylhet, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj, Sultan Jaok ofChittagong, Abdul Mannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali. All of them aremembers of different Islamic organisations and madrasas. Ataur Rahman Khanwas reportedly elected to the Parliament as a candidate of Begum KhalidaZia's Bangladesh National Party (BNP) in 1991.
All of them visited Afghanistan in 1988 before the withdrawal of the Soviettroops and met, amongst others, Osama bin Laden. An account of their travel toAfghanistan at the invitation of the HUJI of Pakistan was given by HabiburRahman in an interview to an Islamic journal called "Islami Biplob"(Islamic Revolution), which was published by the journal on August 20,1998.Habibur Rahman is also the convenor of Sahaba Sainik Parishad and thefounding principal of the Jameya Madania Islamia, a madrasa at Kazir Bazar,Sylhet.
He said in the interview:
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"An invitation from Harkat-ul Jihad- Al- Islami made it possible for meto make the fortunate trip to Afghanistan... Those of us who visited the Afghanwar-fields during that trip were Shaikhul Hadith, Ataur Rahman Khan, Sultan Jaok,Abdul Mannan, Habibullah and myself. In Pakistan, leaders of the local chapterof the HUJI greeted us and took us to the HUJI Karachi office. HUJIPakistan chief Saifullah Akhtar and a Bangladeshi Mujahideen Abdur Rahman Shahiddrove us to an Afghan Mohajir ( refugee) camp on the Pakistan-Afghan border. Westayed at the camp and visited some injured Mujahideens and an Islamic cadetcollege, where the cadets received us with a guard of honour. Abdur Rahman thendrove us to the residence of top Mujahideen leader Rasul Siaaf. The housewas defended like a fort with anti-aircraft cannons and armed guards. Whilestill in Pakistan and on our way to Afghanistan, we visited a special Mujahideentraining camp and met about a dozen Bangladeshi young Mujahideens led by oneAbdul Quddus. We watched youths from different countries taking militarytraining on a mountainous terrain. The arms they were being trained to operateincluded rocket launchers. That night, I shared a meal of dry cold bread with ahandsome young Arab.When I inquired after his identity, I was told he was Osamabin Laden, a son of one of the richest Saudi families.The next day, we enteredAfghanistan and arrived at a Mujahideen cantonment on a mountain top. We visitedan armoury inside a tunnel. We were informed that some Russian forces were inposition nearby and that every one must prepare to fight. All of us were givenKalashnikov (AK-47) rifles. We stayed the night at the camp, while a Mujahideenteam advanced towards the enemy position and engaged in a skirmish. Thefollowing day we started our return journey."
The HUJI (B) subsequently appointed as its leader Shawkat Osman alias SheikhFarid. Imtiaz Quddus was appointed its General Secretary. He is probablyidentical with Abdul Quddus mentioned above. It has its main operational base inthe coastal area stretching from the port city of Chittagong south through Cox'sBazar to the Myanmar border. In addition to acts of terrorism, it has beeninvolved in piracy, smuggling and gun-running . It reportedly maintainssix training camps in the hilly areas of Chittagong and six more near Cox'sBazar. There are varying reports of its total strength, going up to 15,000, butmy own estimate on the basis of available intelligence is that it has ahard-core strength of about 700, consisting of native Bangladeshis,Rohingya Muslims from the Arakan area of Myanmar and Pattani Muslims fromSouthern Thailand. According to some reports, the Rohingya Muslims constitutethe largest single group in the organisation.
According to Bangladesh Police sources, a key suspect in the plot toassassinate the then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, in July 2000, Mufti AbdulHannan, was trained in a HUJI camp in Peshawar in Pakistan. A diaryrecovered by the Police from Hannan's brother Matiur Rehman, who was alsoinvolved in the assassination plot, reportedly indicated he was in touchwith the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka.These sources say that Pakistan'sInter-Services Intelligence uses the HUJI (B) for running training camps for theinsurgent groups in India's North-East, for Indian Muslims and for selectedmembers of the Bangladeshi illegal migrants to India. These training camps arereportedly located in the Kurigram and Rangpur areas of Bangladesh, nearthe border of Coochbihar in West Bengal. The presence of similar trainingcamps for training recruits from India were also reported in the past inRangmari, Sundermari and Masaldanga.
Instructors from the HUJI (B) are also attached to the training camps of theUnited Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) near the Tirupura border. It wassuspected that the attack on the security guards outside the US Consulate atKolkata in January,2002, was orchestrated by HUJI (B), in collaborationwith the JEM and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, under the name the Asif RezaCommando Force (ARCF). Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, theprime accused in the attack, was in touch not only with the office-bearersof these organisations in Pakistan, but also with Omar Sheikh, who hadmasterminded the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. Omar Sheikh claimedduring his interrogation by the Karachi Police in 2002 that it was he whohad asked Aftab Ansari to carry out the attack.
The HUJI (B) reportedly receives financial assistance from Pakistan, SaudiArabia and Afghanistan through Muslim Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) of Bangladesh such as the Adarsa Kutir, Al Faruk Islamic Foundation andHataddin as well as from the ISI through its station chief in the Pakistani HighCommission in Dhaka. Amomg the terrorist incidents in Bangladesh in which it wassuspected were: the murder of journalist Shamsur Rahman, on July 16,2000, in Jessore, a plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina on July 23,2000, plots toassassinate 28 prominent intellectuals of Bangladesh , including NationalProfessor Kabir Choudhury, writer Taslima Nasreen and the Director General ofthe Islamic Foundation, Maulana Abdul Awal, an explosion at a Bengali New Year'sDay function in Dhaka on April 14,2001, which killed eight people, an explosionin a Roman Catholic church at Baniachang in Gopalganj on June 3,2001, killing 10worshippers, and an attempt to kill Dr.Humayun Azad, a Bangla Professor andfamous writer, on February 27,2004.
In February, 2005, under pressure from the European Union, Begum Khalida Zia,the Bangladesh Prime Minister, who till then was denying the presence of anyjihadi terrorist organisation in Bangladesh territory, admitted for the firsttime the presence of the Jamiatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the JagrataMuslim Janata Bangladesh and banned them. But her Government continued to denythe existence of HUJI(B) and the ban order did not cover it.
Commenting on this in an editorial on February 27, 2005, the usually reliable Daily Times of Lahore wrote as follows:
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"The disease of ‘Islamist terrorism’ was incubated in Karachi andKhost and then passed on to Dhaka. A glance at the looking glass in Dhaka willdiscover Pakistani-jihadi footsteps all over the place. The Harkatul Mujahideenal-Islami (the one called HUJI in Bangladesh) is the outfit whose leader was agraduate of the Banuri Mosque seminary in Karachi and whose activists tried tokill our Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently. HUJI is the international face ofthe Taliban and Al Qaeda. As for the "pseudo-Islamic" nature of what ishappening in Bangladesh, let us accept that that is the way of ‘Islamicrevolution’ these days. This is what the Uzbek Islamist Tahir Yuldashev did inOsh before he came down to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan’s Tribal Areas.The Hizb al-Tahrir, which Pakistan banned only after Yuldashev’s discovery,worked in tandem with him in Central Asia and is now clearly working in tandemwith HUJI in Bangladesh. As in Pakistan, seminaries also flourish in Bangladeshwith foreign funding because of poverty and — and this few observers mention— profits to the organising clergy. Had the clergy been devoted to a highercause they would have used the money to promote local Islam and not the hardlineWahhabi-Saudi one now associated with the Taliban. An increasing number ofBangladesh’s madrassas are now following the pattern of study of the madrassasin Pakistan and have become Deobandi in their world view. The Hindus have beentargeted, aided by the widespread belief that they should be expelled from thecountry. The jihad in Afghanistan brought in Al Qaeda money, and the trainingcamps in Bangladesh have since begun to turn out warriors for the Taliban and AlQaeda."
The paper added:
"The phase Bangladesh is passing through can be taken in two parts. Anaspect of it belongs to the early 1990s when the "Islamist" outfits inPakistan did not offend the conservative Muslim League but were seen as a threatby a liberal PPP (Pakistan People's Party). These days the ruling BNP inBangladesh is most reluctant to take action against the Islamists as theycontinue to attack Awami League cadres and communists; but when phase two opensup, the BNP will be equally threatened. The "purifying" dynamic of theIslamists will demand that the BNP bend to the kind of shariah the warriorsfavour in light of their training in Afghanistan and their "salafi" contactwith Al Qaeda. A day will come soon enough when the state of Bangladesh willcome under threat from the Islamic warriors it is now empowering throughdenial."
As predicted by the paper, that day came on August 17, 2005, when the twoorganisations banned in February,2005, but whose leaders and activists were notarrested, carried out 450 simultaneous explosions all over Bangladesh andthereafter introduced suicide terrorism. Acting in panic, Begum Khalida Ziaordered a round-up of the leaders and activists of these two organisations andtheir prosecution. She also banned the HUJI (B) in October,2005, but so far noneof the leaders of HUJI (B) except Mufti Abdul Hannan, who was involved inthe attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, has been arrested. Its cadres, many of themtrained in Pakistan, remain untouched and no action has been taken against itstraining infrastructure in Bangladesh territory, which continue to train jihaditerrorist recruits from India, Myanmar and southern Thailand.
The HUJI of Pakistan is a member of bin Laden's InternationalIslamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formedin 1998 and through its branch in Bangladesh, it has been trying to arabise andwahabise the Muslims of Bangladesh, who are in their overwhelming majoritydescendents of converts from Hinduism, and use them for carrying outits pan-Islamic agenda in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern Thailand.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.
