Terror in Dhaka

As these lines are being written, Dhaka’s siege and terror attack is unfolding. By the time the article appears in cold print, the picture will have become clearer with regard to who is behind the audacious assault that saw many dead and several taken hostage.

So far Isis or Daesh has claimed ownership but it cannot be confirmed. The context of the attack, however, is already set and needs no further information to be debated and to learn lessons from.

First, the nature of attack – explosives, grenades, suicide shooters aiming for foreigners in the capital – resembles hits in Istanbul, Yemen and Lebanon. These are either by Daesh or Daesh-inspired groups who may not have been directed by Daesh leadership in Raqqa, Syria but rely on local resources to carry out their plans.

These Muslim countries, and others like them, are the new focus of groups that are either displaced from their strongholds in the Middle East, say Iraq and also in Syria and Libya, and are now expanding the footprint of their brand in more vulnerable places. Africa, South East Asia and South Asia provide a fairly hospitable environment to them.

Second, countries that are either struggling with internal disorders – political, economic or institutional – or have vulnerabilities on the border offer ideological and physical ingress to these groups. Messages fall on receptive ears if local grievances are large and dysfunctionality of the governing system hinges on paralysis.

Bangladesh has been in the throes of an endless political battle between its political begums. The Hasina government has added to the country’s woes by unleashing its political vendetta by hanging and jailing its opponents – sometimes in the name of history, sometimes in the name of nationalism. It has deployed state resources towards political oppression sidestepping clear warnings from terror cells that hacked bloggers and attacked writers and poets. Its alignment with India to the point of becoming a satellite government has been a red rag to radicalised groups that require just a push to cross the line from extremism to terrorism.

In Bangladesh, counterterrorism as a strategy does not exist: its government has spent more time bloodying its hands killing its own citizens than tackling in a systematic way organised terror. In fact it has been denying that terrorism of the Daesh kind even exists in the country.

In case of Turkey, Ankara’s handling of the Syrian issue and its concurrent engagement with the Kurds in the north has provided an explosive mix that is now being denoted by organised terrorists with depressing regularity. The airport attack, Turkish officials have confirmed, was meant to take hostages alongside creating mayhem and large-scale destruction.

Unlike Bangladesh, Turkey has a robust counterterrorism strategy – so robust that many European countries have objected to its vast scope. However, Erdogan has been deeply involved in stabilising his domestic support base that relies heavily on his personal politics. So his push against terrorism is more an individual effort than a national strategy that has a buy-in from different groups. Besides, the inevitable blowback of the policy of keeping borders open and projecting foreign policy objectives into a troubled zone is inescapable.

Third, it is obvious that in terms of efficacy Turkey as a state is far more advanced than Bangladesh, but this has not meant greater control over the operations of terror groups: the border and refugee situation has twined to neutralise whatever advantages effective policy and planning – missing in case of Bangladesh – may have given Ankara in its fight against terrorists. Monitoring funding, screening movement of individuals and ensuring a check on arms shipment and smuggling become difficult, nay impossible, when you play host or act as a transition camp to hundreds of thousands of refugees. It becomes doubly impossible when politics takes precedence over cogent planning based on long-term threat assessment – the real failure in Bangladesh.

Fourth, this attack – and others elsewhere – indicates that the distinction between native, regional and international terror groups and their messages has become pointless. A disenchanted or deviant group at home can suddenly cross the seven oceans and kill in the name of a leader they have not seen from a country they cannot even locate on the map. New media provides the virtual link; local issues can be given a global casing of a super ideological battle; and it takes one trainer to prepare a full brigade of attackers. This is how easy perpetrating internationally-sanctioned terrorism has become for home-grown groups in nearby neighbourhoods.

Fifth, the transnational nature of this new breed of terrorism requires deep cooperation among clusters of countries that are affected by this disease. The absence of experience sharing, intelligence cooperation and regional planning grids that pick out hugely mobile and intelligent planners of terrorism by concerted communication among different capitals is a recipe for terrorism expansion. In case of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, there is zero collaboration in analysing new trends of terrorism. Mutual blame game has soured relations to the point of a practical break-down in diplomatic ties.

The four capitals most affected by terrorism are not on talking terms with each other. This situation is tailor-made for trans-regional groups to make inroads and expand their influence in different countries that try to combat them on their own without any help and support from their neighbours.

In Africa Boko Haram’s operations have been hugely successful because, initially, no two countries could agree to create a joint front against them. And by the time Nigeria agreed with Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Beni to create a regional force it was too late. Islamic State or Daesh flourished in the Middle East as the Arabs, Iranians and Turks all dissipated their energies against each other carving, in utter vain, individual paths to tackle the same challenge.

This divisiveness of regional reaction is mirrored at a much larger scale between Russia and the US on the one hand and Europe and Russia on the other. For years all three agreed to disagree on how to stem the rising bloody tide of Isis terror – whose origins interestingly lay in Washington’s policy of upending the Middle Eastern region through mindless wars and regimes changes. As world powers battled on the diplomatic tables, Isis rampaged taking over city after city.

This makes the task for South Asian countries very clear: collaborate or be ready to be shaken by unprecedented attacks such as the one in Dhaka. India is sitting on a powder keg but is too arrogant to recognise it and is spending all its energies trying to play Kabul and Dhaka against Islamabad. Pakistan’s huge successes against organised networks are still far from becoming a job totally done. There are very strong reasons for South Asian countries to mount a united effort towards this common menace.

This does not have to be done on the back of the impractical romance of the South Asian region becoming one borderless unit: Brexit has shown us the hapless end such dreams meet. Regional cooperation should be fast-tracked purely out the compulsion of fast-changing circumstances heralded by the Dhaka attack. Governments have to talk to each other to weave a common front against these groups in order to secure their own land. No one state can manage the threat, nor can it fool itself into thinking that what is happening in the neighbourhood will not reach and cross its doorstep.

Alongside regional cooperation, countries will have to close governance gaps at home. Politically-split and domestically fragmented systems respond either too slowly or not at all to highly active and motivated groups that would not care if it is a holy month or Eid while planning and executing their agendas. International terrorism fuels domestic terrorism and domestic turbulence is the staple diet of local groups who easily connect with distant but deadly motivators.

This is a lesson that applies as much to Turkey as it does to Bangladesh India and Pakistan. This is a lesson the Middle East did not learn and the world has paid heavily for that. We cannot have that repeated in this region.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12