Once again giving the lie to those who see the conflict in Bangladesh, and other conflicts involving jihadists, as primarily nationalistic. From Indo Asian News Service, with thanks to DFS:
Dhaka, April 2 (IANS) Visiting members of foreign Islamic organisations, including from India, provided Bangladeshi Islamist militants with financial and logistical support to create a ‘war-like situation’ in Bangladesh, investigators here have alleged.
According to investigators, most of these Islamic delegates were from Pakistan, India, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, Baharain and ‘a few other Muslim-dominated countries’, The Daily Star reported.
Important among the foreign Islamic delegates who visited Bangladesh on different occasions are Abdul Matin Salafi of India, Moulana Fazlur Rahman, Malik Mohammad Khan Sherani, Allama Osaya and Monjur Ahmed Chiniutee of Pakistan, Abdullah Abdut Tawat al Madani of Nepal, Sajlee Rifat Osman Mahmud, Abbas Bao, Kamal Hossain and Mohammed Ahmed al Sheikh of Sudan, Zafar Musa Abu Moaz of Iraq, Abdur Rahman of Yemen, Moulana Sheikh Abdullah Nasser al Rahmani.
Fazlur Rahman, president of Pakistan’s Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam who also heads Muttahida Majlish-e-Amal, a coalition of six Pakistani Islamic organisations, addressed a meeting in Sylhet in March last year.
‘They asked people to join the movement to save Islam, saying the religion is in danger across the globe,’ the paper said.
The Khaleda Zia government is a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and a combine of four Islamist parties. Looking at the political aspects of the case, the paper said: ‘The government has also remained inactive regarding the ruling party leaders, police officials and local administration whose links to the militants have long been revealed by the media as well as the arrested militant leaders themselves.’
‘It has been reiterating that all involved with the militants will be punished, but no action has been taken yet against these militant patrons,’ it said….
An investigator said the aim behind the foreign assistance to the Bangladeshi militants is to initiate jihad for establishing Islamic rule.
‘Many delegates of foreign Islamic organisations have visited Bangladesh, stayed for significant period of time on different occasions and met the militant leaders,’ an investigator told The Daily Star on condition of anonymity.
The militants took all sorts of assistance from these delegates to create a war-like situation in Bangladesh, in the name of jihad, to pave the way for establishing Islamic rule in Taliban style, he said.
The financial support chiefly came through different ways, including hundi, in the name of funds for Islamic activities, Islamic NGOs, construction of mosques and madrasas and publication of Islamic books and booklets.