The Awami League government has rounded up all the usual suspects, pushed and pulled away from their seats of power and carnage. Its almost as if it were spring, just so and Sheikh Hasina thought it was time to clean house.
In the first instance and most recently, the paramilitary group Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained 4 men associated with Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Shibir.
The 4 youths are leaders of Shibir. They were caught with guns, money and morale boosting literature–perhaps with each passing day, Islamists will need to read that literature more.
RAB commanders claim that these young men were tasked to collect ammunition and firearms for violent public acts.
The four leading Jamaat leaders were only recently arrested. The days are still young. The arrest of the 4 Jamaat leaders and what amounts to the political leadership of the Islamist movement in Bangladesh has rocked to the core, the public’s very approach to political Islam in Bangladesh. How could it otherwise? Political leaders aren’t supposed to be arrested by the same party that led the nationalist push for self-determination. If then the relevant leaders were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for helping an entire generation of academics and intellectuals, one might be forgiven for thinking that its curtains for them.
Finally consider that when the government arrested the principal leader of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the banned terrorist group, the United States State Department sent off a public note of approval and congratulations on the move.
The sitting AL government might then do well to game out ways it can capture and remove more politically motivated Islamists. The motivation of the Islamists? Faith to the inspired word of god. Their opportunity for violence? Present and counted; for Islamists are part of the current fabric of Bangladeshi politics but their days might be numbered. War crimimals and public agitators do not, usually, hold sway over public opinion for very long.