A claim that does not add up

The claim that the brutal militant group IS has carried out the bomb attack at the Huseni Dalan in Old Dhaka on the eve of the Tazia parade early last Saturday does not stand to reason. If one looks at the history of the emergence of the Islamic State or IS as it is better known, and its current operations in some regions in the Mid-east, it does not seem that the militant group was behind the attack.

Conditions here are not similar to the ongoing Sunni-Shia conflicts in some other Muslim countries and there appears no justification for IS to carry out any operation here at this time.    

Even then, just like in the two previous cases of the gunning down of one Italian and one Japanese national, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group has attributed the bombings on the Shia site to IS, the Sunni group.

The attack on the Shia community is perplexing to all. It has aggrieved people regardless of their affiliations, be it Sunni or Shia. There is no record of any attack on the Shia community in the last 400 years since the Huseni Dalan was built as an Imambara, known as a shrine, for mourning the events of Muharram.

In fact, every year, a large number of people belonging to the Sunni community join the Tazia parade as remembrance of the battle of Karbala when Imam Hussein (RA), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), was killed by the forces of Yazid. The boy who was killed in the blast on Huseni Dalan that day was a Sunni.

Both communities in Dhaka have been living with each other for long. No feelings of hatred exist between them. The conflicts and rivalries between the Sunnis and the Shias in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have never affected the Sunnis and the Shias in Bangladesh.

Even though this schism within Islam has been in existence for around 1400 years, many of us were not acutely aware of it.

The sectarianism has not been, however, deep or bloody for centuries in other Muslim countries as well, it is a rather recent phenomenon. The modern day's struggle between the Sunni and Shia had begun in 1979 following the Islamic revolution in Iran. The Shias had come to power through the revolution and their subsequent adoption of a theological statehood made the world nervous.

The rise of the Shia in Iran had left conservative Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and others in Middle East worried. Since then Saudi Arabia and Iran have started extending financial and armed supports to the Sunnis and the Shias in other countries to fight proxy wars to establish their political supremacy.

The Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s has intensified the sectarian schism as most of the Arab countries supported Saddam Hussein's Sunni dominated regime in Iraq against the Shias in Iran. Saudi Arabia had reportedly provided huge financial support to Saddam to fight Iran.

Now lets look at how IS was born and how its reasons. 

The invasion of Iraq by USA in 2003 has sown the seeds of IS, a claim by many. It has even been acknowledged by Tony Blair who had committed his country in the Iraq war. The invasion ousted Saddam along with the Arab Sunni camp from power. Their ouster put the Shia in state power.

The Shia-led government has however failed to build a democratic consensus following the overthrow of the Sunni-dominated regime. The Sunnis feeling excluded and marginalized, gradually turned to radicalisation and mobilisation to fight back. In June 2014, the group formally declared the establishment of a "caliphate" - a state governed in accordance with Islamic law, or Sharia, or caliph.

With this mission, the IS has kicked off military operations and has captured a large chunk of territory in Iraq. This has sharpened the sectarian conflicts between the Sunni and the Shia. The Shia militia moved quickly to fight the Sunni-IS to retain their powers.  

The uprising against President Bashar Al-Asad in Syria started a new chapter in the sectarian conflicts. Iran and the rest of the Shias in the Middle East have backed Asad's Alawite dominated regime. [Alawites follow a belief system similar to the Shias]. Sunni Arabs have extended supports to the country's Sunnis in Syria.

The war in Syria has affected the residents of Alawite and Sunni villages and towns with massive atrocities and sectarian point-scoring. IS launched operation in support of the Sunnis and has been successful in seizing large swathes of territory in Syria.

Thus, IS burst on to the international scene in 2014. And it has also become notorious for its brutality, including mass killings, abductions and beheadings.

A US-led coalition began air strikes against IS positions in Iraq and Syria last year to destroy it. But it did not make much progress.

Now Russia has stepped in with air strikes in Syria at the end of last month, saying it wants to help President Bashar al-Assad defeat IS and other extremists. In Syria, the IS is going through a tough time–facing the joint onslaught of Russian air strikes and the forces and supporters of Asad. 

So the question now is, why would IS be interested in going into operations in Bangladesh where there is no apparent aim of the Shias to capture state power by defeating the Sunnis and the Sunnis are not being repressed by the Shias?

If IS does not have any link to the attack on the Shia community, then who are behind the blasts and what are their motives? What do they want to gain by destabilizing the country? Do they want to generate a sectarian hatred in Bangladesh as the peaceful relation between Sunni and Shia community is not helping them?   

Sectarian unrest will give people nothing better. The ongoing sectarian conflicts in the Middle East countries have become glaring example of this. The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have generated a surge of refugees. More than seven lakh refugees, most of them from Syria and Iraq, have crossed into Europe this year.   

So, the government should take it seriously to unearth the mystery behind the bombings on the Shia community and bring the perpetrators to book. A fair investigation can play an immense role in foiling any conspiracy to poison the long history of the Shia and the Sunni in Bangladesh.