Spurt of extremist activity

In the last seven days there have been three major extremist-related incidents, which luckily did not cause much casualty, although the aim of the aborted attempt to enter RAB premise in Uttara, where a mosque is located, on a Friday, is very clear.  And if there is a message in the spiked extremist activities in the recent times, it is that we have not seen the end of them, not as yet. But there are other indicators too, and cognisance of which should help reposition our counter and anti-terror efforts.

It should not escape anyone's eyes that the extremists are targeting the security forces for very obvious reasons, luckily without much success. It is also apparent that the extremists have sought to spread out their bases and training grounds to outside Dhaka which compels dissipation of the state resources of counter terror efforts. What is also very apparent is that they are choosing populated areas to set up base hoping to merge with the people. Change of extremist operation mode should be exploited to our advantage.

And not surprisingly, IS has sought credit for all that have occurred recently. But that should not influence the conduct of our efforts; and we should not be wasting time on proving or disproving the presence of IS in this country. There are well trained and organised people motivated enough to sacrifice their lives for their 'cause'. And that is what must occupy our minds so as to be able to preempt any destructive act or reduce the effect of such act by heightened level of caution and capacity to respond quickly to any terrorist act. We cannot afford to let our guards down.