Over the past few years there have been troubling reports about the growth of Islamic militancy in Bangladesh, which has received a lot of play in the press. For example, the grenade attacks against leaders of the main opposition party, the Awami League (AL), including one in January 2005 that killed former finance minister Shah Kibria, have been well publicized. So too have reports of isolated attacks on members of the Hindu minority as well as pressures on the Ahmadi minority.

For a number of years, however, the government led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) seems to have been in a state of denial over these developments, prompting observers to draw parallels with the attitude of the Indonesian government to the activities of the Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia before the Bali bombings.

But now some change seems to be in the air. Analysts believe this has been prompted by renewed pressure on the Dhaka government from the international community — aid donors in particular — to take action against terrorist elements in the country. Some media have even called the tougher stance as a “crackdown” — with the government reportedly banning radical organizations such as the Jammatul- Mujahideen, among others, and making some arrests, though the authorities have been careful to dress these up as law and order initiatives.

While this apparent change in attitude is heartening, there are also signs of a certain defensiveness and internal differences in the government, leading to speculation that the presence of fundamentalist Islamic parties in the ruling coalition government may be making it difficult to take strong and sustained action against the militants.

Since it came to power in 2001, the ruling coalition government led by the BNP under the leadership of Begum Khaleda Zia has had two Islamic fundamentalist parties among its coalition partners. First, the long established Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) which has seventeen out of 300 elected MPs and two ministerial posts; and the smaller Islamic Oikyo Jote (IOJ) with two MPs.

Some observers are not perturbed by the presence of the JEI in the government, arguing that the JEI has only a small popular support base and its participation in the ruling coalition helps moderate its politics. However, other analysts view its role in the government in a dismal light.