Bangladesh jihad update: the jihadists have friends in high places. No surprise in that, really, since the jihad ideology is (as so few wish to admit) so deeply rooted within Islam. “A disquieting revelation: Time has come for government to clean house,” from The Daily Star, with thanks to JE:
The facts could not be any clearer. Elements within the government have for a long time been sponsoring and sheltering the outlawed JMB and JMJB militants. This original revelation was reported in the media long ago and has since been corroborated time and again through confessional statements made during the interrogations of suspected militants.
The evidence suggesting such links is now so great and disquieting that it can no longer be plausibly denied, and the revelations of recently arrested JMB leader Lutfar Rahman are merely the latest in what now amounts to a mountain of substantiation.
What is becoming clear is that, when it comes to the militants, the government has been pursuing a policy that can at best be described as extremely short-sighted, and at worst, utterly reckless and indefensible.
The evidence is incontrovertible that in response to banditry of so-called leftist groups in the north-west of Bangladesh, certain elements within the government took a decision to sponsor the rise of the militant religious groups to take up arms against those outlaws. This is how the religious militancy arose and how it was able to spread far and wide with relatively little check from the authorities.