Commentary: Disunity of divisive politics attracted international terrorism

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The militant attacks in Dhaka was the predictable results of unchecked violence said the UK based daily Guardian in a report in the wake of the terrible mayhem in the capital’s Diplomatic Zone on Friday. Its assessment is not correct in the proper perspective. Terrorism grows where violence rules.
Nobody can deny that our politics itself, in the absence of practice of democracy, is violent and police power is used as political power. So, violence is coming from politics more than from any other sources. True examination of the reality will confirm the truth and help us and our foreign friends to help us against growing terrorism.
The attack which claimed so many lives has put Bangladesh in the global spotlight of growing militancy threatening public safety and state security at its worst. The mayhem on a popular eatery in Dhaka’s Diplomatic Zone killing over 30 people including 20 hostages, six militants and two police officers put Dhaka next to Paris, Brussels and Istanbul in terms of high volatility of shocks that rippled through Bangladesh and the global community. They have for the first time used heavy weapons shifting targets to large gathering at popular city spots.
This attack has made it clear that the militants do not belong to BNP and Jamaat, although the government has been using all the state power to suppress the oppositions as terrorists while others remain free and unnoticed for their acts of terrorism. This could happen because the government is not accountable and it feels no compulsion for transparency in public affairs.  
We must say time is running out to forge a national unity to create a positive socio-political environment to defeat and eliminate the militants and avoid the risk of making Bangladesh a battle-ground of international terrorism.
We are not interested whether or not IS militants or al-Qaeda outfits are having their presence in Bangladesh. The fact is that the country has already become home to dreaded terrorist groups and they must be defeated. So there is no alternative to strengthen internal politics through national unity to defeat international terrorism.
But the government security crackdown last month that arrested over 14,000 people proved to be quite misleading. The latest attack shows how blind the government has been in dealing with militants. It was observed with the notion of punishing the opposition. The government must now explain the justification of arresting thousands of people but the identified non-party young militants of universities like AIUB, BRAC and North South remained untouched.
The government has always blamed BNP-Jamaat for their hands in such attacks and at the same time also insisted that there is no presence of international militant groups in Bangladesh. But there is their influence. In fact the Islamist militants so far took advantage of the government’s political biasness. That is the reason why we have been pointing out the danger of the government being dominated by a special group of bureaucrats.
The identity of the militants as former students of the city’s prestigious educational institutions like North South University or Scholastica English Medium School suggest that they come from wealthy families who are not supposed to be easy recruitment of religious fanatics. So the reason has to be found out.
It is clear after the exposure of the present terrorist attack that government has no knowledge how the young educated students feel so frustrated as to be recruits of misguided terrorism in the name of Islam. Anybody will be right to question the competence of the government to understand and fight terrorism.
We will ask the government and security agencies to think in terms of national interest. Our peaceful people earning a bad name all over the world damaging our national interest.

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