Combating militancy

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hit the nail on the head when she called for the UK and the West to do more to combat militancy. We endorse her views.

Bangladesh, along with the countries of South Asia is rightly worried with the so-called global war on terror shifting both focus and base from the Middle East to our region in the last several years. The trickle down effect is inevitable, but the policy of the current government has thwarted the overt rise of the extremists groups in Bangladesh. That notwithstanding, we have reasons to be worried that the gaze of the international extremists and terror groups has turned on our country as fertile grounds for recruitment as evidenced by the arrest of a Briton of Bangladeshi origin in 2014. And several intending Jihadists were preempted before they could leave the country. Reportedly, some of the British Muslims killed fighting for ISIL were of Bangladeshi pedigree. What is worrisome for us is the financing of Bangladeshi extremist groups by some section of the Bengali diaspora in the UK.

The statement of our prime minister underlines the fact that terrorism, provoked by convoluted religious motivation, is a universal phenomenon straddling geographical borders and needs cooperation of all the affected countries to counter. It would not be out of place to mention that the British counterterrorism strategy, formulated in 2003, is predicated on four Ps of which one stands for 'Prevent¬' i.e. to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism. That being said, on its part, we must also delve seriously into why the extremists' narratives resonate in the psyche of a segment of our youth, miniscule they may be, and what should be done to prevent it.