At the moment in which the Darfur genocide has entered it final phase—as Khartoum uses the completion of its “disarmament” campaign as an excuse to accelerate pressure on displaced persons to leave camps threatened with dismantling—the African Union has chosen to resume diplomatic activities on the Darfur file by threatening sanctions against hold-out rebel groups and continuing to push the failed Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) (July 2011). There could be no more misguided effort. With it, the African Union is now complicit in forcing defenseless, displaced civilians into areas of intolerable insecurity where their farming livelihoods have been destroyed. Instead of pressing Khartoum on the critical issues of increasing regional security in the Darfur states and augmenting humanitarian access—which is beginning to wither following the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions on Khartoum—the AU Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) is attempting to flog yet again the diplomatic dead letter that is the DDPD—signed by Khartoum and a meaningless “rebel coalition” seven years ago. The “coalition” (given the expedient name of the Liberation and Justice Movement, LJM) was made up of disaffected and ineffectual rebel fragments with no popular support or military power on the ground; it was cobbled together by U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration and Libyan strongman Muamar Gadhafi. The DDPD has been rejected fully by Darfuri civil society, which had no meaningful voice in its negotiation. Indeed, the DDPD—reflecting Qatar-led efforts and supported not only by the grossly ignorant and inexperienced U.S. Envoy Gration but the African Union’s top envoy Thabo Mbeki—had no meaningful solutions to any of the most pressing problems facing Darfur, including most consequentially restitution and the restoring of lands violently expropriated from non-Arab/African farmers by armed Arab militia groups. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki A corrupt and incompetent Mbeki is now perhaps the greatest diplomatic obstacle to meaningful peace negotiations for Darfur What terms there were in the DDPD were observed by Khartoum only insofar as the regime benefitted; and of course “negotiation” of the DDPD allowed Khartoum to fend off any subsequent diplomatic efforts. The regime has cleaved steadily and fiercely to the DDPD for good reason, and blunted any and all subsequent initiatives. It is worth noting that the African Union had earlier weighed in with a proposal for peace in Darfur, Thabo Mbeki’s “Roadmap for Peace in Darfur” (2009). Mbeki, who led what was then the “African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur,” made absolutely no progress, thus creating the opening for the disastrous Qatari intervention. It is also worth noting that the Mbeki Panel was re-named the “African Union High-Level Implementation Panel”—“implementation” referring to the Mbeki’s so-called and utterly unsupported “Roadmap.” In the intervening nine years, Mbeki and his “High-Level Implementation Panel” have not a single diplomatic success to their credit. Leaving aside failure to bring about an end to hostilities in South Kordofan and Blue Nile—or to negotiate a lifting of Khartoum’s barbarous humanitarian blockade targeting hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in these troubled regions—Mbeki and his panel have done nothing to diminish violence in Darfur or to increase security or to improve humanitarian access. They have put forward no peace proposal that enjoys the support of Darfuri civil society, and have by default remained committed to the DDPD. This shows an utter lack of diplomatic initiative and an abject capitulation before Khartoum’s obduracy and determination to complete the Darfur genocide on its terms. Moreover, one notable development in recent months, confirmed by several sources, is the gradual decline in humanitarian access throughout Darfur, an issue the African Union has never taken seriously and ignores despite its threats to impose sanctions on non-signatory rebel groups with no corresponding threats against Khartoum’s génocidaires (see Sudan Tribune at | http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article64828 and below). Indeed, the African Union, particularly by way of UNAMID leadership, had been complicit in obscuring the scale of humanitarian need in Darfur. See | “UN and African Union Complicity in Obscuring Darfur’s Realities: A long and disgraceful pattern of behavior,” February 21, 2018 | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2dO Various sources, who of necessity must remain confidential, have pointed to increasing difficulties in providing relief services to Darfuris, particularly in North Darfur. Moreover, we must wonder why the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) has not mounted an assessment mission to Central Darfur, where a serious re-emergence of cholera is affecting a number of villages in the Nierteti area. Tragically, it is patently clear from WHO’s refusal to confirm—or disconfirm—the existence of cholera in Sudan, despite highly reliable tests that have been positive for cholera, conducted by independent laboratories meeting WHO clinical standards, that the organization has been intimidated into silence by the Khartoum regime. On the issue, as on so many others, the African Union has been silent—disgracefully silent. True peace will come to Darfur only when there is a government in Khartoum that is willing to respond with justice and commitment to the terrible realities of destruction, suffering, and displacement that have unfolded in Darfur over the past fifteen years. The current regime is the very opposite of such a diplomatic interlocutor. Civil society unrest and demonstrations throughout Sudan make clear that the nation has lost all faith in the brutal, rapacious National Islamic Front/National Congress Party kleptocracy. That the African Union should effectively throw this regime a diplomatic life-line at the present moment by failing to focus diplomatic pressure in appropriate ways is a sign of deep corruption. Anger at the brutality and corrupt and economic malfeasance of the Khartoum regime has risen to the boiling point African Union urges progress on Darfur process, threatens sanctions Sudan Tribune, February 27, 2018 (KHARTOUM) The African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) urged mediators to make progress in the resolution of Darfur conflict during the upcoming three months and threatened to sanction those who continue to hinder the ongoing efforts for a lasting peace [an absurdly meaningless threat—ER]. In a meeting held on 20 February 2018, the PSC said concerned by the “unnecessarily prolonged” process for peace in Darfur and called for a rapid resolution of the 15-year conflict. The Council further pointed to “the lack of commitment on the part of the non-signatory Darfur armed movements” and urged them to engage discussions with the government on the basis of the Doha Document for peace in Darfur (DDPD). [What the AU PSC does not mention is that the Khartoum regime refuses to comply even with the terms of the wildly untenable Doha agreement—an “agreement” reached without meaningful representation by Darfuri civil society, or from the rebel groups with the most popular support and military strength. The DDPD was dead on arrival and is widely recognized as such; that it continues to be diplomatically flogged as a roadmap only signals the weakness and incompetence of the AU. Indeed, the DDPD (July 2011) was made necessary by the utter failure of the previous AU “Roadmap for Peace in Darfur” promulgated by Thabo Mbeki in 2009. The incompetent and morally corrupt Mbeki still leads AU diplomatic efforts, almost a decade after this monumental failure—ER] Following what the meeting directed the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) and the hybrid peacekeeping mission known as UNAMID to “continue with their engagement with the parties to the conflict” and update its members on the progress made on the peace process. Based on the outcome of the mediation’s efforts ” the AU Commission should, by May 2018, elaborate possible measures, including possible sanctions, which could be applied against all those who continue to obstruct efforts towards lasting peace and security in Darfur,” said a statement released on Monday 27 February. [The UNAMID referred to here—a colossal failure as a peacekeeping mission by any reasonable or objective measures during its decade of deployment in Darfur—has been celebrate by the AU has been celebrated as “worthy of emulation” in future peacekeeping operations in Africa. The disingenuous and desperate effort to make a success out of miserable failure tells us all too much about the African Union Peace and Security Council—ER] The holdout groups including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Sudan Liberation Movement—Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM) refused to sign the DDPD in July 2011 and called to open the framework agreement for talks. Other groups like the Sudan Liberation Movement—Abdel Wahid (SLM-AW) had declined to join the process and rejected its outcome. The African Union mediation panel (AUHIP) led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki proposed a holistic process to end the armed conflicts and produce political reforms in Sudan. http://sudanreeves.org/2018/02/28/8551/ (c) 2018 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy

What’s new? Two groups, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and Ansarul Islam, dominate Bangladesh’s jihadist landscape today. Attacks since 2013 have targeted secular activists, intellectuals and foreigners, as well as religious and sectarian minorities. The ruling Awami League has politicised the threat; its crackdowns on rivals undermine efforts to disrupt jihadist recruitment and attacks. Why did it happen? Bangladesh’s antagonistic politics have played a part in enabling the jihadist resurgence. The state confronted groups responsible for an earlier wave of violence with some success from 2004 to 2008. Subsequently, especially since controversial January 2014 elections, bitter political divisions have reopened space for new forms of jihadist activism. Why does it matter? A lull in violence over recent months may prove only a temporary respite. With elections approaching in December, politics could become even more toxic. The government’s continued marginalisation of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and its forcing underground of opponents like Jamaat-e-Islami, risk sapping resources from efforts to disrupt jihadists. What should be done? Instead of relying on indiscriminate force, including alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, the government should adopt a counter-terrorism strategy anchored in reformed criminal justice and better intelligence gathering. Rather than cracking down on rivals, it should forge a broad social and political consensus on how to confront the threat. Executive Summary As Bangladesh’s political polarisation reaches historic highs and local jihadist groups forge links with transnational movements, conditions are ripe for new forms of militancy that could threaten the country’s security and religious tolerance. Two groups, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarul Islam, dominate today’s jihadist landscape; a faction of the former appears to have consolidated links to the Islamic State (ISIS) while the latter is affiliated with al-Qaeda’s South Asian branch. Both have perpetrated a string of attacks over the past few years, some targeting secular activists, others Bangladeshi minorities. The ruling Awami League has politicised the threat. Its crackdowns on political rivals sap resources from efforts to disrupt jihadist activities. Instead, it should invest in reinforcing the capability of the security forces and judiciary and build political consensus on how to tackle the threat. The country’s recent history of jihadism dates to the late 1990s, when veterans of the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan returned to Bangladesh. A first wave of violence, involving two groups, the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh and the JMB, peaked on 17 August 2005, when the latter group synchronised bomb blasts in 63 of the country’s 64 districts. Successive governments subsequently took action against the JMB’s leadership, but the group has revived itself, albeit in a new form. Another group, Ansarul Islam (or Ansar), has also emerged, while a JMB splinter – dubbed the “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” by law enforcement agencies – calls itself the Islamic State-Bangladesh and has funnelled fighters into Iraq and Syria. Ansar portrays itself as the defender of Islam from those who – in its leaders’ view – explicitly attack the religion. The JMB, on the other hand, has named a longer list of enemies: it considers perceived symbols of the secular state and anyone not subscribing to its interpretation of Islam as legitimate targets. The Bangladesh police allege that JMB operatives have played a part in attacks claimed by ISIS on prominent members of minority communities and religious facilities and events, including Ahmadi mosques, Sufi shrines, Buddhist and Hindu temples, and Shia festivals. An attack on a Dhaka café on 1-2 July 2016 that killed over twenty people, mostly foreigners, appears to have involved loose cooperation between different groups, including both rural-based madrasa students and elite urban young men. Bangladesh’s contentious national politics have played a role in enabling the jihadist resurgence. Ansar found its initial raison d’être in the Awami League government’s post-2010 trials of people accused of war crimes perpetrated in the 1971 war of independence. Those trials, targeting the senior leadership of the largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), prompted criticism for violating due process, lacking transparency, and involving intimidation and harassment of defence lawyers and witnesses. The prosecutions were used to crush the JeI, a close ally of the Awami League’s main political rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and to discredit the BNP itself. They provoked widespread anger among Islamists, which was mostly expressed through mass protest, not jihadist violence. Yet Ansar, depicting the trials as an assault on Islam, recruited urban, educated youth, albeit in relatively small numbers, and perpetrated brutal attacks on secular activists and bloggers who had demanded harsh punishment for those prosecuted. Political polarisation has contributed to the growth of militancy in less direct ways, too. The marginalisation of the BNP through politically motivated corruption and other trials of its leadership, including party chief Khaleda Zia’s 8 February 2018 conviction and five-year sentence for corruption, and of the JeI, through the war crimes trials and a ban on its participation in elections, have eliminated most democratic competition and encouraged the growth of a jihadist fringe. A purge of BNP and JeI sympathisers from the armed forces has elicited animosity within some military circles toward the Awami League, which the jihadists also appear to be seeking to exploit. The BNP, for its part, has on occasion used terrible violence, or supported groups that do so, fuelling political animus and deepening schisms. The influx of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August-December 2017 also raises security concerns for Bangladesh. Jihadist groups – including ISIS and Pakistani militants – have referenced the Rohingya’s plight in efforts to mobilise support. For now, though, little suggests that the refugees are particularly susceptible to jihadist recruitment. Bangladesh’s response to the humanitarian tragedy should focus primarily not on counter-terrorism but on providing support for refugees and redoubling efforts to assuage potential friction between them and host communities. The state response to the surge of jihadist violence over the past few years has relied primarily on blunt and indiscriminate force, including alleged enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Such tactics have eliminated large numbers of jihadists and weakened militant groups. But they undermine intelligence gathering. Security officials fear the ability of jihadist movements to recruit, raise funds and conduct operations remains intact. To make matters worse, Awami League leaders have exploited the threat to further discredit the BNP and JeI, accusing them of complicity in high-profile attacks. The government continues to use security forces to target its opponents, motivated, it appears, by the imperative of victory in the December 2018 general elections. While the past year has seen a lull in attacks, marginalising the mainstream political opposition is likely to play into the hands of jihadist groups. Politicised, the police force and judiciary will continue to struggle with the detailed investigative work necessary to disrupt networks that now tap not only madrasa students and their families in deprived rural areas but also privileged students in wealthier quarters of the capital. While the Awami League appears little inclined to do so ahead of this year’s vote, reversing the polarisation that creates an enabling environment for jihadists and building political consensus on how to tackle the problem, while investing in a professional police and judiciary, are likely prerequisites of forestalling further jihadist violence. Without a change of course – and particularly if the December elections trigger a crisis similar to that around previous polls – the country could face another jihadist resurgence. Brussels, 28 February 2018 I.Introduction Bangladesh faces a sustained threat from jihadist attacks. Since 2015, two jihadist groups, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarul Islam (hereafter Ansar), have targeted foreigners, secular activists and intellectuals, religious and sectarian minorities, and other perceived opponents with rising frequency. These groups appear to be more integrated into transnational networks than earlier generations of jihadists. Yet their expansion is largely rooted in domestic political dynamics, which influence and inform state efforts against them. The bloody 1-2 July 2016 siege at a café in Dhaka’s upscale Gulshan neighbourhood, the heart of the diplomatic zone, forced domestic and international policymakers to reconsider the extent to which jihadist militancy had taken root in Bangladesh. That three out of five alleged attackers belonged to Dhaka’s elite, not the madrasa sector more commonly associated with such jihadist militancy, suggests that the appeal of jihadism has spread and that jihadists may be able to tap a new constituency from which to recruit, even if thus far only in small numbers. The report analyses the roots of Bangladesh’s jihadist groups, their goals, organisational dynamics, recruitment patterns and links to regional and transnational networks. It is based on interviews conducted in April-August 2017 with security officials, the legal community, and political and civil society actors, including representatives from Islamist parties and umbrella groups. Security risks inhibited access to jihadist groups and detainees; the report thus draws on their leaflets, online literature and public statements, and interviews with lawyers and law enforcement officials who have closely dealt with them. It proposes measures to counter the threat, based on analysis of the impact and effectiveness of the government’s response. Given the topic’s sensitivity, and an increasingly repressive environment in Bangladesh, most names have been withheld. II.Genesis of Jihadist Militancy in Bangladesh Jihadist militancy in Bangladesh began in the 1980s, when around 3,000 Bangladeshis reportedly joined the U.S. and Saudi-sponsored anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. A first generation of Bangladeshi militants were veterans of that war. In 1992, a new group, Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (also referred to as Harkat-ul Jihad), led by three Afghanistan veterans, Mufti Abdur Rouf, Mowlana Abdus Salam and Mufti Abdul Hannan Sheikh, declared that Bangladesh should become an Islamic state. The group, which operated from the Chittagong Hill Tracts bordering Myanmar, also aimed to aid the Rohingya Muslims in that country. A Harkat-ul Jihad leader, Fazlul Rahman, along with jihadist leaders from Pakistan and the Middle East, signed Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa calling for jihad against the U.S. and its allies. In 1999, the group claimed a failed assassination attempt on Bangladesh’s leading poet, journalist and human rights activist Shamsur Rahman, and carried out a bomb attack at a cultural event in Jessore that killed ten people. After the 11 September 2001 attacks in the U.S., the group became more active under the leadership of Mufti Hannan, who had established strong links with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Pakistan. In February 2002, it attacked the American Center in Calcutta, killing four police constables and a security guard, and injuring over twenty in the first strike on a target in India. In May 2004, it attempted to assassinate the British high commissioner to Dhaka. Its deadliest action was the August 2004 grenade attack on an election rally of then opposition leader and chief of the secular Awami League party, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, killing over twenty people; scores, including Hasina herself, were injured. In addition to attacks in Sylhet Division, in the north east, and areas around Dhaka, the Harkat-ul Jihad also struck numerous times in southern locations such as Akhaura, Bagerhat and Khulna, mostly between 1999-2005. Founded in 1998, the JMB and its militant wing Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh became active in the early 2000s, recruiting and training, raising funds, running outreach programs, and mobilising members across the north and in selected southern districts such as Chittagong, Jessore and Khulna. Its Dhaka-based leader Abdur Rahman also began establishing links with political powerbrokers willing to support his agenda. Jagrata itself began as a vigilante group in north-eastern regions that had been the base of left-wing militants for decades. Khaleda Zia’s BNP-led government (2001-2006) initially failed to take action against it, due to limited law enforcement capacity but also sympathy for these groups within Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party and a member of the BNP’s governing alliance. The animosity of the military and some BNP leaders toward India also drove them to patronise various Islamist groups supporting insurgencies in India’s north-eastern provinces and Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Some government and police officials saw the JMB and Jagrata as useful tools against left-wing militants.Despite these reservations, domestic and international pressure nudged the government to form, in 2004, an elite paramilitary anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit, the Rapid Action Battalion, which includes military and police personnel. JMB’s 17 August 2005 countrywide coordinated and simultaneous attacks, involving over 459 low-intensity bombs, in all but one of Bangladesh’s 64 districts, killing two people and injuring around 100, proved a turning point. The subsequent security crackdown, including trials and executions of top JMB members, forced the group into hiding. In the following years, its leaders described the synchronised 2005 attack as a “sound blast” to draw attention to their message, contained in leaflets left at the bombing sites, which called for war against “Western imperial powers” and their local allies, including Bangladesh’s secular state. The judicial system was a particular target; there were several attacks on judges and court premises. While JMB and Harkat-ul Jihad represented similar threats, and often operated in tandem, violently opposing Bangladesh’s secular traditions, there were fundamental differences. Harkat-ul Jihad drew on South Asian Islamic traditions, its ideological bent close to that of today’s Deobandi-inspired Hefazat-e-Islam, a hardline Islamist movement which over recent years has won concessions from the ruling party (see Section VII.B). Harkat-ul Jihad was largely based in the south, and it found its recruits in qaumi (privately run) madrasas. JMB, on the other hand, drew on the Wahhabi-inspired Ahl-e Hadith movement and was located mainly in the north east, though it also conducted outreach and recruitment drives in the south west, in Satkhira and Bagerhat districts. Increasingly bitter competition between the Awami League and BNP ahead of elections scheduled for January 2007 led to paralysing street violence and a political crisis, prompting a coup and military rule, between 2006 and 2008, behind the veneer of a caretaker government. The military jailed much of the political class. The military-backed government redoubled counter-terrorism efforts, including through specialised trainings for law enforcement officials and anti-militancy messaging in the media and the state-run Islamic Foundation, as well as through Friday sermons in mosques across the country. It also tried some JMB leaders. Arrests and convictions of JMB and Harkat-ul Jihad members continued after the restoration of democracy and elections in December 2008, which returned the Awami League to office. By that time, the jihadist leadership appeared to have been dismantled and the security environment seemed much improved, leading law enforcement agencies to shift attention away from militant groups. III.Setting the Stage for a Jihadist Resurgence A.Politicised Justice and an Islamist Backlash The Awami League came to power in January 2009 having promised an international war crimes tribunal to prosecute those responsible for atrocities during the 1971 war of independence, a longstanding demand popular with the party’s voter base. Most of those expected to be tried were JeI members; others were from the BNP. The tribunal was established in 2010. While the quest for justice was legitimate, the trials were deeply flawed, lacking due process. They were also convenient tools for sidelining or eliminating rivals and rallying the Awami League’s political base. The convictions and executions that followed provoked a domestic backlash; many of the accused had major followings, notably among religiously conservative constituencies across the country. In particular, the 2013 death sentence for JeI leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a popular preacher, prompted violent countrywide demonstrations and clashes with police that left hundreds of protesters dead. Islamists portrayed the trials as an attack on Bangladesh’s Muslim identity. Secular activists mobilised, too, though to insist on harsher sentences. In February 2013, after another JeI leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, was given life imprisonment, activists demonstrated in Dhaka’s Shahbagh square demanding a death sentence. These protests, dubbed the Shahbagh movement, were led by urban, secular youth, including bloggers critical of the role of organised religion in Bangladesh’s secular polity. Islamists highlighted these opinions to discredit the movement as anti-Islam, demanding that Shahbagh organisers be punished. The war crimes trials and the Shahbagh movement provided the backdrop for a new era of Islamist and jihadist activism. By 2013, JeI was on the defensive, with most of its top leaders on trial. Hefazat-e-Islam, a hitherto marginal umbrella organisation sustained by qaumi (privately run) madrasas, stepped into the gap, quickly becoming a prominent socio-political force by channelling Islamist sentiment against the trials in large street demonstrations in late 2013. To defuse the protests, the government made concessions, including withdrawing plans to regulate the qaumimadrasa sector. Hefazat also allegedly delivered the government a list of 84 bloggers and activists it wanted prosecuted and executed for making derogatory statements about Islam. A new kind of jihadist mobilisation surfaced shortly thereafter. On 15 February 2013, ten days after the Shahbagh demonstrations began, prominent blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, whose writings had in part inspired those demonstrations, was brutally murdered outside his home in Dhaka. A new group, the Ansarullah Bangla Team (later renamed Ansarul Islam), an affiliate of al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility. The following month, the group gave a thirteen-point list of demands to the government, including for a blasphemy law to try secular bloggers, marking a convergence in aspects of its agenda – though not its methods – with Hefazat. B.Political Polarisation In addition to the flawed trials, Bangladesh’s deeply polarised politics and the increasingly exclusionary bent of the Awami League-led government have contributed to the resurgence of militancy. In mid-2013, the Bangladeshi high court banned JeI from contesting forthcoming parliamentary elections on the grounds that an Islamist party running violated the secular constitution. Even if not a political ruling, this ban served to undercut a critical ally of the Awami League’s main rival, the BNP. It also led the JeI to resort to violence ahead of the January 2014 vote. As elections approached, the government pushed ahead with preparations despite the BNP’s objections; in the end, the BNP announced the day before the polls that it would boycott. Law enforcement agencies focused attention on opposition leaders and activists spearheading violent protests to subvert the election. By the end of 2013, at least 500 people had been killed, making it the deadliest year of civil strife since Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan in 1971. The polls themselves, in January 2014, were likewise marred by violence. Given the BNP’s boycott, Bangladesh’s parliament is almost bereft of opposition to the ruling party. A year later, a very violent campaign led by the BNP and JeI – replete with arson attacks on polling stations and assaults on policemen, as well as hartals (strikes) and transport blockades – marked the anniversary of those elections. This campaign, aimed at forcing fresh elections, provoked months of clashes, leaving around 150 people dead or missing. JeI activists were responsible for some of the worst attacks. The BNP’s marginalisation from mainstream politics – part self-inflicted through its boycott and violent tactics; part due to the government’s rejection of its demands for electoral reforms – together with the government’s targeting of the JeI through the war crimes trials and electoral ban, created a major political vacuum. As law enforcement agencies focused on containing the Awami League’s political opponents, they failed to effectively counter the emergence of the Ansarul Islam and the re-emergence, starting around mid-2014, of the JMB, which still had a nationwide network of members recruited from qaumi madrasas, informants and sympathisers. IV.Today’s Jihadist Landscape A.Ansarul Islam What had started as an online community reportedly inspired by the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who joined al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, gradually morphed into a group of young Bangladeshis following a fiery local preacher, Jashimuddin Rahmani, based in Dhaka’s Basila neighbourhood. Ansar soon began identifying itself, through online posts, as the Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda. Beginning in 2013, Ansar prioritised killing liberal and secular bloggers, many of whom were reportedly on the Hefazat’s alleged list of 84 activists. In an online statement, Ansar said it was targeting writers, journalists, intellectuals and artists who publicly insulted Islam, rather than unbelievers who kept their views private. In February 2015, Avijit Roy, a prominent U.S.-based blogger visiting Dhaka, was killed by machete-wielding assailants at a major book fair. In the course of the year, six more bloggers and two gay rights activists were similarly hacked to death, and four others injured, either in their homes or in public places, with all attacks claimed by Ansar. Ansar is primarily urban-based. A well-informed source said many members do not know each other except through pseudonyms.Although it remains a small organisation, according to intelligence and counter-terrorism officials, Ansar has a formal structure that divides members into three groups, managed by a coordination team: dawa, which oversees logistics and recruitment; asqari, which oversees military training; and a media wing run by IT experts that collates domestic and international coverage of the group. The group also includes a sub-group, mashul, which plans and oversees all attacks, while the foot soldiers executing operations are part of a subcategory called mamur. Many of Ansar’s leaders and members appear to be well educated and Dhaka-based. Rezwanul Azad Rana, a former activist from Shibir, the youth wing of the JeI, and a teaching assistant at North South, Dhaka’s largest private university, was reportedly one of the group’s first organisers and allegedly planned and oversaw the bloggers’ murders, before fleeing to Malaysia after law enforcement agencies learned of his role. Other members kept Ansar’s organisation intact and active after Rana’s departure. One was reportedly Junoon Shikder, another North South student, arrested in 2013 for alleged links with Ansar but released on bail a year later. He, too, fled to Malaysia, in 2014, whence he reportedly moved to Syria, suggesting he may have shifted his allegiance from al-Qaeda to ISIS. Since late 2015, the killings of bloggers have stopped. Many prominent online activists either have fled Bangladesh or keep a lower profile.Ansar itself appears to have faded from public attention, its appeal perhaps diminished in part because it arose in the context of the war crimes trials. With most high-profile Islamists accused of atrocities in 1971 convicted and some executed, the trials generate less immediate attention from the constituencies they initially outraged. Still, some security officials believe that Ansar and what the government calls the “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” (discussed below) work closely together, contributing some of the 40 Bangladeshis who reportedly travelled to join ISIS in Syria. Junoon and an unspecified number of other jihadists allegedly continue to operate Malaysia- and Singapore-based cells, which have been key to the transition of some Ansar members to ISIS, as well as to the facilitation of movement to Syria. Three of the five alleged attackers in the 2016 Dhaka attack reportedly had operated in Ansar’s Malaysia cells for various durations, while four others, who were indirectly involved, had also spent time in that country. Intelligence officials claim to regularly discover communications between jihadists in Bangladesh and Malaysia- or Singapore-based Ansar cells during investigations. Ansar’s current threat level is difficult to gauge, given that the organisation seems to be moving on from its original raison d’être, the war crimes trials, to a broader agenda. B.Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh There were initially clear distinctions between Ansar and JMB. Ansar members saw themselves primarily as defenders of Islam battling Western secular ideas, rather than fighting for an Islamic state. The group’s targets were limited to those it considered to have insulted the faith. Most Ansar leaflets that investigators recovered at attack sites emphasised that the organisation was not at war with peoples of other faiths unless they slighted or undermined Islam. In contrast, JMB since its founding almost two decades ago, and again in its recent resurgence, has pursued the establishment of Islamic law and perceived anyone not subscribing to its interpretation of Islam, including religious and sectarian minorities, as well as non-Muslim foreigners, as legitimate prey. Thus, while Ansar targeted only individuals such as Bangladeshi secular and liberal bloggers, JMB, both as a whole and, later, a faction more closely identified with ISIS (discussed below), focused on Bangladesh’s minority communities, attacking Ahmadi mosques, Sufi shrines, Buddhist and Hindu temples, and Shia festivals, as well as prominent members of these communities. While ISIS claimed some of these attacks, police suspect a JMB role in executing them. Since 2015, JMB has expanded its activities beyond its traditional strongholds in the north and south west, and conducted attacks countrywide, including in Dhaka, where it was responsible – at least partly though perhaps entirely – for the 2016 attack. At the outset, the outfit had four tiers, each defined by level of responsibility and commitment to the organisation: majlis-e-shura, a consultative decision-making council directly under the amir, or chief; ehsar, or full-time members; gayeri ehsar, or part-time activists; and sudhis(well-wishers) and saathis (comrades). In principle, JMB’s organisational structure included a military wing, comprised entirely of ehsar (the other sections made up the non-military wing). This wing was meant to include six divisions, each with a chief and deputy, and four sectors – ordnance, operations, intelligence and medical – but it was never fully operationalised. Each sector was also meant to have subdivisions. For example, explosives, electronics technology, weapons collection and stockpiling fell under ordnance; guerrillas and fedayeen (suicide attackers) under operations. Today, the majlis-e-shura reportedly has seven members. It approves all attacks and killings. The current amir, Salauddin, oversees regional commanders and brigades, which have both dawa, or logistics and recruitment, and military wings. In a recent interview, Salauddin said the group was expanding its network beyond Bangladesh, although it is difficult to assess the veracity of this claim; despite ties to militants elsewhere, the JMB itself has never perpetrated an attack outside Bangladesh. According to counter-terrorism officials, the group recruits not just young men, but entire families, including women. They claim that recruiters also are attempting to attract youth in regions outside Dhaka that are politically volatile and have a large conservative base, including the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali, Lakshmipur and Chapainababganj. C.“Neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” and ISIS Since the 2016 Dhaka attack, law enforcement officials began using the term “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen”. Some analysts argue they use this term to obscure ISIS’s role in Bangladesh, and that many ISIS members are described by security officials as “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen”. In an interview, JMB’s current amir, Salahuddin, dismissed the term as an invention of “infidels”. He did, however, acknowledge that some members had joined ISIS. The “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” faction – which refers to itself as Islamic State Bangladesh – was thought to be led by a Canadian-Bangladeshi, Tamim Chowdhury, until his August 2016 death in an alleged extrajudicial killing. The faction was divided by geographic region, with each regional unit led by a commander who focused on operational activities endorsed by the central leadership. Several regional commanders have been killed in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and points further north. The structure that Chowdhury headed appears to have been dismantled but counter-terrorism officials say it has splintered into smaller cells that, for now, conduct fewer coordinated operations. In the run-up to the 2016 Dhaka attack, Chowdhury reportedly played a pivotal role in bringing together Ansar, a section of JMB’s network still active in northern districts and the south east, and individuals acting on behalf of ISIS in Bangladesh and Syria. Counter-terrorism officials believe he was the primary coordinator between ISIS and Bangladeshi jihadist groups. Chowdhury concentrated his recruitment efforts in Dhaka’s Banani neighbourhood and cantonment area, possibly tapping into discontent inside the army (discussed below). He also established contact with young extremists who provided access to youth studying at coaching centres. Many suspected militants detained or killed in security raids since July 2016 were young boys from affluent backgrounds who had months earlier left home; the “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” appears to be mining a similar demographic to Ansar, in other words. Even earlier, in 2015, Bangladeshi intelligence and security agencies uncovered communications between local jihadists and Bangladeshi fighters in Syria, though they could not decode much of the content. In a Chittagong raid, officials also discovered an ISIS flag and evidence of communication among JMB members arguing in favour of joining ISIS. ISIS also began claiming responsibility for several attacks in Bangladesh – including the 2016 Dhaka attack – on social media. The October 2015 issue of Dabiq, ISIS’s monthly magazine, contained a special story on Bangladesh, praising earlier JMB exploits. Saifullah Ozaki, a Bangladeshi who formerly was an associate professor in Kyoto, reportedly played a key role through an online platform in recruiting Bangladeshis to ISIS and arranging their travel to Syria. There have been claims he may today even be the leader of the JMB faction – the “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” – that is more closely identified with ISIS. According to Bangladeshi counter-terrorism officials, local jihadists began using ISIS propaganda to appeal to middle- and upper middle-class youth, and inducting former activists from Hizb-ut Tahrir, a pan-Islamist missionary movement that rejects jihadist violence, and retired military personnel. By the time of the 2016 Dhaka attack, some Ansar and JMB elements appear to have also formally pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Many security and counter-terrorism experts believe that a new generation of jihadists, earlier linked to JMB or Ansar, now identifies more directly with ISIS than with purely homegrown entities. The government, however, refuses to acknowledge an ISIS presence in Bangladesh. Some police officials contend that acknowledgment of such a presence would be too politically costly at a time when the government claims counter-terrorism successes. V.Flashpoints A.Resentment in the Military Soon after it assumed office in 2009, the Awami League faced a mutiny by personnel from the Bangladesh Rifles, a border security force. Around 74 people were killed, including senior counter-terror officials and 57 army officers. The consequences of the insurrection, including a subsequent shakeup that saw several officers removed or reassigned, continue to reverberate within an institution that has held the levers of political power for seventeen of Bangladesh’s 46 years as a state. In November 2009, five serving and six former army officers were detained in the attempted murder of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s nephew, Awami League parliamentarian Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh. In January 2012, the army detained twelve officers for an alleged coup attempt. Although none was tried, most were dismissed on various grounds, most often indiscipline. Estimates of the number of officers sacked or forced into retirement since 2009 vary from 50 to 250. Many former officers, and even an adviser to Hasina at that time, believe the Bangladesh Rifles mutiny was used as a pretext by the Awami League government to restructure the army and purge it of more conservative pro-JeI and BNP elements that oppose the Awami League’s secularism. To quell further dissent and unrest among officers and soldiers, the government offers financial incentives: salary hikes, budget increases and lucrative government contracts to military-controlled entities involved in housing, transport and major infrastructure projects. While these concessions may have yielded a less interventionist military in the short term, the aftereffects of the mutiny and the subsequent purges, which one former general officer described as “both a physical and psychological scar”, may have pushed a small number of his colleagues toward jihadism. One of the officers implicated in the 2012 attempted coup, Major Syed Ziaul Hoque, reportedly became Ansar’s military commander. Several young men living in residential quarters for former army officers were arrested in 2015 for attempting to establish ties to ISIS. The same year, a counter-terrorism official claimed that law enforcement officials had found military training manuals and military-issued uniforms and bullets during a 2015 raid of a jihadist hideout in Chittagong. Jihadist organisations are clearly trying to tap into military disgruntlement. B.The Rohingya Crisis Much as discontent in the military provides opportunities that jihadists might exploit, so too could the Rohingya crisis. A brutal military campaign against the Rohingya in late 2017, following an attack on security personnel by the militant group, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA, also called Harakah al-Yaqin) in the north of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, forced close to 700,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh. The Awami League government’s response has included confinement of Rohingyas to camps in border regions and diplomacy aimed at ensuring the refugees’ return, including through a late November repatriation agreement. Such efforts appear unlikely to bear fruit, given the Myanmar authorities’ uncompromising stance and because conditions in Rakhine state are not conducive to refugees returning in a safe and sustainable manner. The Rohingya influx has significant security ramifications for Bangladesh, though the challenge for Bangladeshi authorities is to assess the dangers accurately and adopt a measured and sensible response. A large, stateless population with slim prospects of returning to Myanmar any time soon places enormous strain on authorities and host communities, raising the potential for friction between refugees and the local population. That said, clearly it would be counterproductive – even offensive – to portray the long-suffering Rohingya community, for many of whom the past few months have brought unimaginable horrors, as jihadists in waiting. Some reports suggest that a small number from the refugee camps have joined the ARSA, though that group remains focused on Myanmar; as yet no evidence suggests it has ties to transnational jihadism. In the past, militant Rohingya groups had small bases in Bangladeshi territories and one, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, collaborated with Jamaat-ul Mujahideen on weapons and explosives training; and some counter-terrorism analysts believe that Ansar might be training and arming Rohingya militants today. Certainly, too, regional and transnational jihadist networks have shown interest in exploiting the Rohingyas’ plight. An April 2016 issue of Dabiq, ISIS’s online magazine, included a Bangladeshi ISIS commander sounding a rallying cry to fight for Rohingya rights. Al-Qaeda had included Myanmar on a 2014 list of key targets, and in December 2016 its Bengali media output included a video call to arms to avenge the persecution of Arakan Muslims. In a mid-September 2017 article in the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed’s main publication, Masood Azhar, its leader, wrote: “All Muslims of the world must unite for this cause. We have to do something and do it urgently. Myanmar’s soil is earnestly waiting for the thumping sound of the footsteps of the conquerors”. Akayed Ullah, the Bangladeshi immigrant who detonated a pipe bomb in a New York subway corridor on 11 December 2017, had visited the Rohingya camps three months earlier. That said, jihadists have long drawn attention to the suffering of Muslims around the world – including, for example, that of the Palestinians – to inspire attacks yet frequently this tactic does not translate into jihadist inroads into the conflicts in question. Clearly, Bangladeshi authorities must remain alert to such dangers. Overall, though, their response to the Rohingya crisis should involve less counter-terrorism than humanitarian provision for a traumatised refugee population. They should concentrate as well on preventing and containing friction between Rohingyas and host communities. VI.The State’s Response A.Blunt Force Since the 2016 Dhaka attack, law enforcement agencies have raided numerous jihadist hideouts in different parts of the capital, neighbouring Narayanganj and Gazipur, Chittagong, as well as in the north. Yet many counter-terrorism operations seem focused on killing those suspected of involvement with jihadist networks, rather than disrupting or dismantling those networks and countering their influence. Some of these killings reportedly have been staged as “fake encounters” or gun battles between militants and police in which militants are killed. Odhikar, a Bangladeshi human rights organisation, estimates that there have been as many as 2,000 such killings since 2001 by the Rapid Action Battalion and police, with 128 in 2016 and 154 in 2017. This group also says at least 330 people, including alleged militants as well as opposition BNP and JeI members, have disappeared since the Awami League government came to office in 2009. Many others have been detained for long periods without charge. Among the latter category were two survivors of the 2016 Dhaka attack, Hasnat Karim and Tahmid Hasib. Family members claimed that law enforcement personnel had apprehended them from their homes without warrants after images/videos of supposedly suspicious behaviour during the siege emerged on social media. Hasib was detained for almost a year before being released without charge; Karim remains in custody, charged with involvement in the attack, though officials have provided few details. Since the 2016 attack, the Dhaka metropolitan police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit, rather than the Rapid Action Battalion, has been given the counter-terrorism lead, a shift in authority that aims, according to officials, to build specialised counter-terrorism expertise in the force. But instead of using intelligence for operations aimed at dismantling jihadist groups, the state’s response continues to consist mostly of killing suspected militants, as is evident in recent raids in Comilla, Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi and elsewhere. A district police official acknowledged that extrajudicial killings were common. Many government and law enforcement officials believe the criminal justice system incapable of dealing effectively with terrorism cases, as delays and prolonged trials often end without convictions while militants recruit and proselytise in prisons. A former Rapid Action Battalion official claimed that jailed militants established protection rackets for petty criminals, whom they eventually recruit. A prison official suggested that prisons employ Islamic scholars: “I find myself at sea trying to argue religion with [detained] militants, who know a lot more about Islam than I do. How am I meant to prevent radicalisation here?” Circumvention of the criminal justice system is clearly the wrong response, however. It undermines the state’s legitimacy, sows fear and mistrust between authorities and communities, and risks provoking a violent backlash. The culture of impunity it breeds also erodes professionalism in the security forces and in some cases appears to have encouraged other forms of criminality. Some members are involved in contract killings and kidnappings for ransom; in 2014, a spate of murders in Narayanganj involved top Rapid Action Battalion officials including a former army lieutenant colonel. Human rights activists argue that the culture of impunity around enforced disappearances and unlawful detention has a lasting impact on victims and their families and undercuts the government’s internal security objectives. Extrajudicial killings feed jihadist propaganda about injustice; Ansar has shared images of those killed during the 2013 Hefazat protests through its Telegram channel to entice new recruits. Some law enforcement officials also express concern that killing rather than apprehending militants wastes opportunities to obtain vital intelligence. A security official contended that a killing in 2015 in which he was involved might have cost law enforcement agencies an opportunity to uncover planning for and disrupt the 2016 Dhaka attack. Other security officials said the killing of captured militants prevented investigation of suspected cells, including in regions close to Bangladesh’s border with India. Inadequate investigations and questioning of arrested militants may lead to similarly squandered opportunities. A prominent human rights activist argued, for example, that more thorough investigations of arrested militants’ involvement in earlier attacks on foreigners could have yielded intelligence about impending attacks, including that same Dhaka attack. B.Following the Money Jihadist groups raise funds from multiple sources. Militants’ families apparently contribute considerable sums for individual attacks, to hide and train operatives, and to acquire weapons. Zakat, obligatory Islamic alms for the poor, was a major funding source for the previous generation of jihadists and is still tapped by such groups. Bangladesh’s long, porous borders with India and Myanmar pose particular challenges to countering the flow of illicit funds, some of which may end up bankrolling jihadist operations. Indeed, Bangladesh is “a trans-shipment point for drugs produced in both the ‘golden triangle’ of Southeast Asia and ‘golden crescent’ of Central Asia”. According to a former senior security official, jihadist outfits also depend on forged Indian currency from Pakistan. Individuals as well as organisations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in particular fund madrasas and mosques across Bangladesh, with some of the money apparently finding its way to jihadist groups. Particularly vexing is the jihadist use of hundi, an informal domestic and international money transfer mechanism. For the most part, this mechanism is benign: an estimated six million Bangladeshis working in the Middle East and South East Asia send home about $12-15 billion annually, about half of it through hundi. But JMB has long run its own hundi operations that provide both profits and a secure method of moving funds. Moving small sums over time is a simple way of evading detection. The central bank, Bangladesh Bank, has had marginal success in screening these transfers. More promising are its attempts to make more attractive the use of regular banking channels for remittances. The government has taken steps to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. The 2009 Anti-Terrorism Act empowered Bangladesh Bank to freeze accounts and take other actions to curb criminal activity. The Money Laundering Prevention Act of 2012 and 2013 amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act lengthened the list of money laundering offenses and expanded the categories of reporting entities, while widening the scope of legal sanctions. The 2012 Mutual Legal Assistance Act aimed to strengthen international cooperation efforts. And Bangladesh became a member of the Asia Pacific Group on money laundering in July 2013. These efforts have met with international approval. In February 2014, the international Financial Action Task Force removed Bangladesh from its “grey list” which includes “jurisdictions with strategic AML [Anti-Money Laundering]/CFT [Combatting the Financing of Terrorism] deficiencies that have not made sufficient progress in addressing the deficiencies”,and an October 2016 Asia Pacific Group assessment noted significant improvement in compliance with international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing standards. It also found that the Bangladesh Bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit effectively disseminated information to law enforcement and other agencies. The 2017 Basel anti-money laundering index, published by the Switzerland-based Babel Institute on Governance, ranked Bangladesh second in South Asia behind India. Bangladeshi authorities now need to get better at investigating and prosecuting complex financial crimes. The state has won very few money laundering and terrorist financing convictions, though hundreds of cases are pending. Law enforcement agencies lack the capacity to collate and understand financial intelligence, including that gathered by the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, and at making use of that intelligence in their investigations. C.Politicising Counter-terrorism Rather than building political consensus on the threat posed by jihadist groups and how to tackle it, Prime Minister Hasina’s government has more often exploited the militants’ attacks to discredit the opposition. Awami League leaders accuse the BNP of assisting militants when it was in office from 2001-2006; some of them go so far as to accuse it of involvement in high-profile jihadist attacks since 2015. Condemning the 2016 Dhaka attack, Hasina blamed those who “have resorted to terrorism after failing to win the hearts of people democratically”, a thinly veiled reference to the BNP and its JeI allies.Even before the investigation into the August 2015 murder of Italian national Cesare Tavella started, Hasina pointed to the BNP and JeI; three weeks later the home minister, without evidence, named a BNP leader as the murder’s mastermind. In October 2016, a year after police had charged seven people, including a mid-ranking BNP member, for that murder, the Rapid Action Battalion held JMB responsible. Even now that internal government documents attribute the killing to the “neo-Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” and nothing suggests the BNP member who has been charged has ties to that group, his trial continues. Notwithstanding the BNP’s mixed record of combatting militancy while in office in the 2000s, the governments’ accusations of BNP support for such groups today have little credibility and serve mainly as a way for the ruling party to tarnish its principal political rival. Similar accusations against JeI are equally politicised, as evidenced by the measures taken to force the party from politics and its base almost entirely underground. With the JeI weakened and many senior leaders executed following the war crimes trials, there is a risk that some supporters throw in their lot with harder-line groups, as avenues to pursue goals peacefully close. The party’s student wing, Shibir, was once a key source of recruits for JMB, whose founder Shaikh Abdur Rahman was a Shibir member. One senior counter-terrorism official claimed that several former leaders of Shibir, which has a long history of violence, have joined jihadist organisations in recent years. It is, however, difficult to assess government and even nominally independent analysts’ claims of links between JeI and jihadists, particularly given the repression the JeI has suffered over the past years and the partisan agendas of many domestic observers. Leaders of JeI and its student wing deny allegations that party members have turned to jihadism, scorning those charges as a government conspiracy to discredit the party. A Shibir leader said: “Judicial commissions had been formed in the past to find our links to militancy and found nothing”. Yet suppressing the largest Islamist party could, by pushing its supporters underground, work to jihadists’ advantage. VII.Improving the Government’s Response A.Reforming the Criminal Justice System Law enforcement agencies in Bangladesh rely on brute force in part because the criminal justice system is enfeebled, with poor investigative capacity, weak prosecutors and a paralysing backlog of court cases. This is particularly the case in rural communities where significant jihadist recruitment takes place and police are poorly paid, prone to corruption and lacking in basic training. Together, these factors have allowed scores, possibly hundreds, of detained militants to escape punishment. By resorting to extrajudicial methods to overcome these problems, the state plays into jihadists’ hands, as such tactics harden popular perceptions of politicisation and score settling. A prominent ex-military security analyst said: “If extrajudicial killings continue, there is a possibility we will get more and more extremists. They can now say, ‘we told you there is no rule of law and this is the evidence’”. Killing alleged jihadists is doubly injurious: it validates this view while impeding intelligence gathering. It seems some political leaders would rather continue to use the flawed justice system against rivals than reform it. But hampering the ability of the police and courts to tackle the threat presented by jihadist groups will almost certainly erode the government’s own position. To implement a more effective counter-terrorism strategy, it will need to address the causes of its deteriorating criminal justice system, notably obsolete investigation methods and resources as well as the failure to professionalise police and prosecution agencies. B.Political Reconciliation and Democratic Debate Of equal importance, the government ought to redress the acute politicisation that has created space for the re-emergence of jihadist movements and hindered efforts to tame the threat they pose. That task will require a reorientation of present exclusionary policies. The Awami League, which claims to be the sole political custodian of the country’s constitutionally mandated secularism, has painted the opposition BNP as having been soft on militancy when in government and now, in opposition, reliant on groups such as JeI, which – the government argues – are friendly to or even conveyor belts toward jihadism. That welter of accusations is dubious on several counts. Certainly, the BNP’s track record in office was at best inauspicious; its rule between 2001-2006 saw an increase in militant activity (see Section II above). But the Awami League government’s marginalisation of the BNP and JeI ahead of the December general election is politically motivated. Khaleda Zia’s 8 February conviction and five-year sentence for corruption, whose timing suits the Awami League’s electoral planning, could prohibit her from contesting the polls and widen divisions. At the same time, the government is making its own concessions to Islamists, notably Hefazat, whose views – it opposes the principle of a pluralist, secular democracy; allowing women in the workplace; or appointing Hindus to key government posts – are arguably harder-line than those of JeI. In January 2017, responding to criticism from Hefazat, the government agreed to remove contributions by non-Muslim and secular authors in public school textbooks. In April, the education ministry agreed to recognise qaumi madrasa higher education degrees (known as dawra-e-Hadith) as equivalent to a master’s degree, despite the absence of regulation or enforcement of education standards in the madrasas. This decision effectively opened to madrasa graduates employment opportunities that are closed to others with the same limited formal schooling. The following month, Prime Minister Hasina supported Hefazat’s demand to remove a statue of Lady Justice, which the group deemed un-Islamic, in front of the Supreme Court. These concessions are effectively giving greater currency to the Hefazat’s hardline exclusionary agenda. The government’s targeting of BNP and JeI risks doing jihadist groups a service. Not only does it divert police resources from disrupting jihadist recruitment and planning. But, in addition, by depriving JeI of legitimate platforms for dissent and exposing it to a harsh crackdown, the government might force some JeI activists to follow exactly the path it accuses them of taking already – the path toward finding common cause with militants. The BNP joint secretary general warned: “Only a return to a multiparty democratic space can ensure solutions to rising militancy”.Some in the Awami League harbour similar misgivings, but the party’s top decision-makers fear losing to the BNP in a credible election, which would be the basis of any meaningful engagement between the two parties, and thus prefer the current stalemate. While the Supreme Court decision on the JeI’s participation in elections appears for now difficult to reverse, the government’s crackdowns on the party and the BNP are counterproductive. Instead, the Awami League would be better served by forging consensus with the BNP on how to tackle the threat. Zia’s conviction has made such a dialogue even more elusive. Her party, whose activists have already resorted to street agitation – which could turn violent – has said it will not field candidates in December if she remains imprisoned; another virtually uncontested election would further erode government legitimacy and risk violent BNP-Awami League clashes as in 2014. The Supreme Court could reduce Zia’s sentence on appeal to less than two years, thus removing any prohibition on her own electoral candidacy. Whatever the outcome of the appeal, in the interest of social peace, the Awami League should withdraw politically motivated corruption and criminal charges against Zia and other senior BNP officeholders and stop the repression of their supporters. The BNP should urge its cadres to exercise restraint, rather than turning to violence, and craft a compromise with the government. The alternative is continued confrontation and zero-sum politics that will increase the risks of another deeply contested election, with jihadists potentially taking advantage of any ensuing crisis or violence. C.Curbing Recruitment: Engaging Bangladesh’s Youth Police officers, lawyers, and others who have interacted with jihadists contend that large numbers of militants are drawn to jihadist ideas online prior to joining violent groups. That said, there is little credible research on what drives recruitment or on the profile of those recruited, beyond approximate age group (15-35) and broad geographic location (with a heavy concentration in northern regions). Indeed, recruits show enormous diversity: from madrasa students to upper middle-class youth at private universities. A senior counter-terrorism official admitted: “We are struggling to disrupt recruitment”. The government has adopted some strategies beyond law enforcement to counter the appeal of jihadism. Its approach includes public awareness campaigns and training muezzins (mosque preachers) to give anti-militancy sermons at Friday prayers. But the effectiveness of such measures remains unproven and, in any case, they are inconsistently implemented. Little has been done to regulate the qaumi madrasas, which teach around 1.4 million students in rural and other economically deprived areas, and which continue to supply a potential, if limited, pool of recruits and sympathisers. Aliya madrasas are largely state-funded and registered under the government-mandated Bangladesh Madrasa Education Board, which also designs curricula, holds exams and contracts textbook production. In contrast, the qaumi sector evades government supervision, even as security officials suggest tighter monitoring. The Awami League government’s decision to formally recognise a qaumi madrasa degree as equivalent to a master’s degree only makes these seminaries more attractive. To be sure, the vast majority of madrasa students do not turn to jihadism, but the lack of government regulation allows for the promotion of sectarian intolerance and, in some cases, even incitement to violence. Until there is greater state oversight over the madrasa curriculum, the government should rescind its master’s degree decision. The challenge goes well beyond the madrasa sector, though. Private university campuses like North South’s have also seen students drawn to jihadism, whereupon they have perpetrated some of the most lethal attacks at home and/or travelled to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Yet security agencies appear far more focused on countering opposition to the government than disrupting jihadism recruitment on campuses. While political polarisation deepens and the partisan crackdowns on the Awami League’s rivals continue, that is likely to remain the case. VIII.Conclusion Although there was no major attack in 2017, the potential for further jihadist violence in Bangladesh remains. The resurgence of jihadist groups over the past few years has been facilitated if not accelerated by years of political deadlock. While there is no direct line between toxic politics and the rise of jihadist violence, a bitterly divided polity, between those espousing secularism and those emphasising Bangladesh’s Muslim identity, and a brutal and highly partisan policing and justice system, nonetheless has opened space for jihadist groups. The politicised trials of senior JeI leaders contributed to the environment in which Ansar emerged. The BNP’s alliance with the JeI, whose activists, along with BNP cadres, have been responsible for much of the worst political violence since 2013, raises understandable concerns. Yet that violence was provoked by the attempt to drive JeI underground, itself the byproduct of a zero-sum game between the two largest parties. Ending the deadlock is even more urgent today as Bangladesh confronts a new generation of potentially more dangerous jihadists with apparent links to transnational terror groups such as ISIS. Instead, Sheikh Hasina’s government has made no serious attempt to reconcile with the mainstream opposition, opting instead to waste police resources on repression of opponents. This choice has undermined both democracy and security, with countrywide violence bringing the country to a standstill for months at a time. Given the jihadist revival since then, another breakdown of law and order would almost certainly play into the hands of groups like Ansar and JMB. If the government does not change course, such forces may experience another resurgence. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/bangladesh/295-countering-jihadist-militancy-bangladesh?utm_source=Sign+Up+to+Crisis+Group%27s+Email+Updates&utm_campaign=4e8fd144ab-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1dab8c11ea-4e8fd144ab-359909997 (c) 2018 International Crisis Group

In a swansong address on Tuesday, the United Nations envoy on Yemen described being tantalisingly close to a peace deal to end Yemen’s war – only for the northern Houthi rebels to pull out at the 11th hour. Addressing the UN Security Council for the final time as UN envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, revealed that the Iran-backed rebel group had scuppered a painstakingly brokered peace deal with Yemen’s internationally recognised government. “Today, I would like to announce, for the first time, that we were about to reach agreement on a peace proposal, developed in consultation with the parties, but they refused to sign in the last minute,” said Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who steps down at the end of the month. “In the end of the consultations, it became clear that the Houthis were not prepared to make concessions on the proposed security arrangements. This has been a major stumbling block towards reaching a negotiated solution.” He referred to peace talks in Biel in 2015 and Kuwait in 2016, but did not indicate when the Houthis dropped out of negotiations. The discussions had led to a “peace roadmap with a clear timeline” that was never implemented, he said. Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who has worked on Yemen since 2015, painted a bleak portrait of a country that is breaking apart, and with no “peace roadmap” between the Houthis, local forces and a Saudi-led coalition, the calamity is unlikely to end any time soon. “We see daily reports about civilians dying of poverty, hunger or illness but we should not forget that many politicians from all sides are profiting from this conflict, from trading of arms and exploiting public properties for personal purposes,” Ould Cheikh Ahmed said. His concerns were echoed by UN humanitarian John Ging, who said three years of war had led to “catastrophic” conditions in Yemen, with some 1.1 million new cases of cholera since April 2017 and 8.4 million Yemenis on the brink of famine. A proxy war is playing out in Yemen between Iran and US ally Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government against the Houthis. Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be replaced by Martin Griffiths, a veteran peace-broker and former British diplomat who currently runs the Brussels-based European Institute of Peace (EIP) and is expected to bring fresh approaches to ending the war. Tuesday’s meeting comes amid the change of UN envoys and heightened diplomatic focus on a conflict that has hitherto garnered few headlines and little interest from major powers despite what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. On Monday, Washington’s UN envoy Nikki Haley threatened unilateral action against Iran after Russia vetoed a western bid for the UN Security Council to call out Tehran for not stopping weapons flows to the Houthis. The same day, Saudi Arabia replaced some of its top military officers in a shake-up that elevates younger personnel, amid concerns over stalled progress in Yemen’s war and global outrage over civilian deaths in coalition air strikes. Lack of Strategy James Farwell, a former Pentagon adviser, told Middle East Eye that peace-making in Yemen remained confounded by the “lack of a clear strategy” to end the war by Hadi’s government, Riyadh or its backers in Washington and London. “You have a conflict without strategy that’s motivated by fear of Iran and a desire to checkmate an Iranian adversary that is not actually a central player in the conflict in Yemen itself,” said Farwell, an expert with the Middle East Institute, a thinktank. “The fact that the Houthis are getting some arms from Iran doesn’t make them a puppet of Tehran.” Yemen, a country of some 26 million people, plunged into war in 2014 after the Houthis took over the capital Sanaa and forced the internationally recognised government to flee and seek support from neighbouring Gulf countries. Ould Cheikh Ahmed called Yemen "the world's largest man-made humanitarian crisis," on top of an economic disaster that has shrunk the economy by some 40 percent since 2015 and halved the value of the Yemeni riyal in 2017. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/un-yemen-envoy-houthis-scrapped-peace-deal-last-minute-saudi-1416118733 (c) 2018 Middle East Eye

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to stop systematically disconnecting the Internet whenever opposition protest marches are held. The entire country was deprived of the Internet from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday, 25 February, while thousands of people marched through the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, and provincial cities in protest against President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to stand down although his term of office has ended. Called by the Catholic Church and the Lay Coordination Committee, the protests were dispersed violently by the security forces with an estimated toll of two dead, 47 wounded and more than 100 arrests. “Once again, the authorities have used an opposition protest as grounds for giving the order to block all Internet communications,” RSF said. “Preventing information from circulating does not help to limit the violence or conceal the crackdown on the protests. The Congolese people must not be deprived of its fundamental right to be informed.” The authorities already suspended messaging services, social networks and other Internet services during previous opposition marches on 31 December and 21 January. As a result, RSF and 12 other international and Congolese NGOs sent a joint letter to the prime minister and the minister of telecommunications on 23 February urging them not to do it again during Sunday’s march. The DRC is ranked 154th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index. https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-condemns-drcs-latest-internet-blackout (c) 2018 Reporters Without Boreders

Appeal to Civil Court Denied This morning in Malaysia, the Federal Court, Malaysia's highest court, has dismissed an appeal by four Christians seeking legal recognition of their Christian faith. This dismissed essentially cedes jurisdiction for this case to the Sharia courts, where these Christians must ask for a surat murtad which translates to "letters of apostasy." Three of the four were raised as Christians but converted to Islam in order to marry Muslims. Jenny Peter divorced her Muslim husband in 2006 and returned to Christianity. Salina Jau was divorced by her Muslim husband in 1992, and then she returned to Christianity. Tiong Choo Ting began to practice Christianity after his Muslim wife died in 2007. The fourth person, Syarifah Nooraffyzza, is an ethnic Malay raised as a Muslim. According to the Malaysian Constitution, all ethnic Malays are Muslims - a principle upheld in the case of Lina Joy, who was denied her right to leave Islam in 2007 and convert to Christianity. Syarifah filed a document stating that she no longer practices Islam, and she was baptized in 2009, according to published reports. She is asking to change her identity card from Muslim to Christian and to change her name to Vanessa Elizabeth. Now that their appeal has been dismissed, the Christians must seek the permission of the Sharia Court, and be granted a formal letter of apostasy in order to get legal recognition of their Christian faith. Climate of Discrimination Malaysia requires every person's ID card to show their religion, and uses that designation as the basis discriminating on the basis of religion. While much of the practical discrimination is against non-Muslim religious minorities, persons registered as Muslim also face enormous societal pressure to conform to Islamic norms and critically for the purposes of this case, are considered subject to the jurisdiction of Malaysia's Sharia courts. In Malaysia children born to Muslim parents are considered to be Muslims, and a non-Muslim who wishes to marry a Muslim must first convert to Islam. Therefore because these four Christians are legally considered Muslim, anyone who marries them, and critically any children they might have are Muslim according to the law. This means that the children are expected to be raised as Muslims, cannot be entered into Christian schools, and face serious risks of persecution if they participate in church or other Christian activities. Uncertain Future Despite the decision of Malaysia's highest court, Jubilee Campaign has not been able to verify any instance of a Sharia court ever granting leave for a believer from a Muslims background, to get their conversion legally recognized. In the context of the current case, the Shari'a courts had previously stated that they were without jurisdiction to even issue such a letter. Ominously, the Federal Court characterized these believers actions as apostasy, and declared that the Sharia courts had jurisdiction on that basis. It seems unlikely that any Sharia court, would grant such a letter. Even if they did, given the growing violence of Muslim groups in Malaysia including attacks on churches and church leaders, the consequences of being branded an apostate are enormous. "It means that freedom of religion, which is a constitutional right and a matter for the civil court, is subservient to Islamic laws," one Christian human-rights campaigner said. However, Muslim groups have criticized the constitution as something imposed on Malaysia during the colonial era. Islamists have gained significant power politically and used their legislative clout to increase the de jure levels of discrimination. While the final verdict is yet to be heard, the abdication of the civil court system on this issue, leaves the Christian community without effective access to justice on this issue. While Malaysia tends to present itself as a moderate Muslim nation, the ugly truth is that the landscape is marred by vicious discrimination and growing danger of open violence. (c) 2018 Jubilee Campaign

Ina Levine Annual Lecture By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees Remember the Holocaust How did German Jewish refugees recall their past? Centered on those who fled their homes before the mass deportations began and resettled in the United States before the end of the war, Dr. Judith Gerson considers how people collectively remember their lives in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Please join us for this lecture by the 2018 Ina Levine invitational scholar on March 15 at 7 p.m. at the Museum. Thursday, March 15 7 p.m. Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Theater United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW Washington, DC RSVP NOW Relying on memoirs, testimonies, diaries, and letters as evidence, and based on a recently completed book manuscript by the same title, Dr. Gerson will analyze the myriad of complex ways these refugees grappled with the enduring legacies of a catastrophic past even as many recognized their good fortune. Speaker Dr. Judith Gerson, Associate Professor, Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, and 2018 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies This program is free and open to the public but reservations are required atushmm.org/events/2018-levine-lecture. For more information, please contact calendar@ushmm.org. https://www.ushmm.org/online/calendar/eventDetails.php?event=MCHLEVINELEC0318 (c) 2018 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

It is six months since Burma's army launched its attacks on Rohingya communities. Since then, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. As new mass graves are discovered, we are still learning the full extent of the Burmese army's march towards genocide of the Rohingya. Click here to tell your U.S. Representative: end the genocide of the Rohingya. Six months on, we must press Congress to put tough sanctions on Burma's army. Your emails and phone calls are making the difference in moving the sanctions through the U.S. Senate. Now, we must switch our attention to the House of Representatives to pass the Burma Unified Through Rigorous Military Accountability Act (H.R.4223). Click here to tell your U.S. Representative: end the genocide of the Rohingya. Please call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your representative's office. Or simply search the web for the phone number of their office in Washington, DC. When you reach your legislator's office, ask to be connected to the staffer responsible for foreign policy. (Before being connected, ask for the spelling of the staffer's name and their email address.) Simply tell the staffer - in person or on their voicemail - to support and co-sponsor H.R. 4223: the Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability (BURMA) Act of 2017. Leave your name, number, and city of residence to indicate that you live in the district. Follow up with an email to the staffer. The House staffer's email will follow this format: "[first name].[last name]@mail.house.gov". Email me at simon.billenness@rohingyacampaign.org and tell me how your call went and send me the name and email of the staffers. And, finally, if this is the level of activism that you'd like to continue, contact me. I'm looking for a few good folks in every state willing to work together to form a local chapter of the International Campaign for the Rohingya. If that's you, let's talk! When the world says "Never Again" after an incidence of genocide, we have to mean it. Let’s make this a habit of calling Congress every week until they do the job of sanctioning Burma's army. Thank you, Simon Billenness, Executive Director For the International Campaign for the Rohingya: Joseph K. Grieboski, Olivia Dulmage, Mariane Leite, Michael DeLong, and Emily Claire Goldman. (c) 2018 International Campaign for the Rohingya

Syrian government forces launched a ground assault on the edge of the rebel-held eastern Ghouta enclave on Wednesday, seeking to gain territory despite a Russian plan for five-hour daily ceasefires, a war monitor and sources on both sides said. Smoke rises from the besieged Eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, February 27, 2018. REUTERS/ Bassam Khabieh Hundreds of people have died in 11 days of bombing of the eastern Ghouta, a swathe of towns and farms outside Damascus that is the last major rebel-held area near the capital. The onslaught has been one of the fiercest of the civil war, now entering its eighth year. The U.N. Security Council, including President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest ally Russia, passed a resolution on Saturday calling for a 30-day countrywide ceasefire, but it has not come into effect, with Moscow and Damascus saying they are battling members of banned terrorist groups excluded from the truce. Russia has instead proposed daily five-hour local ceasefires to establish what it calls a humanitarian corridor so aid can enter the enclave and civilians and wounded can be evacuated. The first such truce took place on Tuesday but quickly collapsed when bombing and shelling resumed after a short lull. Moscow and Damascus have accused rebels of shelling the corridor to prevent people leaving. Rebels deny this, and say people will not leave eastern Ghouta because they fear the government. A senior U.S. general accused Moscow of acting as “both arsonist and firefighter” by failing to rein in Assad. Wednesday’s ground assault targeted the Hawsh al-Dawahra area at the eastern edge of the rebel-held area. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, reported advances by the government forces in the area, describing it as the resumption of an assault that first began on Feb. 25. It said rebels had inflicted heavy losses on government forces. An official with one of the rebel groups in eastern Ghouta said fighters were battling to repel an attempted incursion, and characterized the battle as “back and forth”. A commander in the military alliance that backs Assad said an elite unit of the Syrian army, the Tiger Force, was taking part in the assault, but the advances so far were small. With no sign of decisive international pressure to stop the attack, eastern Ghouta appears on course to eventually meet the same fate as other areas won back by the government in lengthy, punishing assaults, where rebels and civilians who oppose Assad were finally evacuated in negotiated withdrawals. Damascus appears to be applying tried and tested military means, combining air strikes and bombardment with ground assaults, as it did to win back eastern Aleppo in 2016. US, RUSSIA CLASH OVER CHEMICAL WEAPONS Diplomatic sources have said the chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, opened an investigation into attacks in eastern Ghouta to determine whether banned munitions were used. U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said on Wednesday that Russia has violated its duty to guarantee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and prevent the Assad government from using poison gas. Syria agreed to give up its stockpile of poison gas and join the international chemical weapons ban in 2013 under a Russian-brokered deal that averted U.S. retaliatory air strikes after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people. Washington accused Damascus last year of again using nerve gas and ordered air strikes. More recently, the United States says it has evidence Syrian forces have used chlorine, which is permitted for civilian purposes but banned as a weapon, in attacks in eastern Ghouta and elsewhere. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, addressing a disarmament conference in Geneva, said Syria had eliminated its poison gas stockpiles, and called allegations it was still using chemical weapons “absurd”. Lavrov said militants entrenched in eastern Ghouta were blocking aid and the evacuation of people who want to leave. Moscow would continue to support the Syrian army in totally defeating the “terrorist threat”, Lavrov told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. A Syrian army officer told journalists insurgents had shelled the corridor again on Wednesday to prevent people leaving. Rebels have intensified shelling of nearby government-held Damascus. A medical official in the capital said on Monday 36 people had been killed in four days. Damascus and Moscow say the campaign in eastern Ghouta is needed to halt such shelling. The United Nations said on Tuesday it was proving impossible to aid civilians or evacuate wounded, and said all sides must abide by the 30-day truce sought by the Security Council. The multi-sided Syrian war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of the pre-war population of 23 million from their homes. Fighting has escalated on several fronts this year, with the collapse of Islamic State giving rise to conflict between other Syrian and foreign parties. As Assad has pressed the offensive against eastern Ghouta, Turkey has launched an incursion against Kurdish fighters in the northwestern Afrin region. Tensions have also flared between Iran and Israel, alarmed by Tehran’s influence in Syria. Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli F-16 earlier this month as it returned from a bombing raid on Iran-backed positions in Syria. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta/syrian-government-ground-forces-attack-ghouta-despite-russian-truce-plan-idUSKCN1GC0VVhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta/syrian-government-ground-forces-attack-ghouta-despite-russian-truce-plan-idUSKCN1GC0VV (c) 2018 Reuters

For every one of the almost one million Rohingya living in camps in camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, life is an incomprehensible struggle. The winding, malodourous labyrinth of tarpaulins and bamboos stretches for kilometres and within each tiny tent are families with stories of loss, grief and futility. Survival in this place – where no human should have to live – is the main objective of each day: the men line up for hours to collect food distributions, children carry firewood and bundles of sticks to light fires to cook with. Groups of men haul bamboo day and night to construct dwellings for newcomers as the ever-expanding camp swells. But for the girls here, particularly teenage girls, it is hell. Most live out their days here in this hot and unsanitary place confined to tents no bigger than a few metres square. Some cook for their families and spend their days praying. Some care for younger siblings or their own children. Few venture outside, only once a day, early in the morning or at night, to use the toilet. Today marks six months since more than half a million Rohingya people fled into the camps near the border of Bangladesh. Today, we’ve launched a new report, Childhood Interrupted: Childrens’ Voices from the Rohingya Refugee Crisis, in partnership with Save the Children and World Vision International. In December, the three organisations conducted a series of workshops with children and teens living in the camps to determine what they fear, what they need and how we can make life more comfortable for them while they are stuck in this grim purgatory. A few of the focus groups involved teenage girls. They told us that first and foremost, they felt afraid. Afraid of going outside, worried about landslides and the coming torrential rains, scared of what lies in wait when they’re forced to walk into the jungle to collect firewood. Teenage girls who have small children say their kids no longer attend school and worry about their future. Even now in the spring, it is hot. In summer it will be unbearable. And no-one knows what will become of these precarious structures, built mass-like, one on top of the other, when the monsoonal floods come in March. How many teenage girls, trapped inside their tarpaulin prisons as this unstable place implodes under the weight of the torrential rain, will perish? How many will contract water-borne diseases? Menstrual hygiene products are scarce. The masses of unfamiliar men are frightening. They’ve no prospects, no money and very little hope. Unlike the boys and younger girls, many of whom have adapted to this place and play with the other kids nearby, teenage girls are considered adults. Religious protocol and safety fears severely restricts their freedom. They have few friends, if any. Many have witnessed or survived horrific sexual assaults. The sense of boredom and hopelessness is profound. Rohingya people, particularly women and girls, have inadequate supply of water and bathing facilities. Access to toilets and showers remains challenging and some deliberately restrict their food and water intake to avoid having to use the bathroom, or are using makeshift toilets inside their homes (or defecate in the open). Women and adolescent girls refrain from going to the toilet at night, partly out of cultural belief that they should not go out at night, but mostly because they are scared of their personal security. The majority of adolescent girls here do not attend school. They cannot read or write. Some will be married early as a means of protection and survival. Plan International is working to support these girls with the establishment of adolescent-friendly spaces, where they can find relief from their solitary existence, meet others, establish friendships and access counselling. Their opinions and voices will be heard and they will be listened to. Their dignity, too, is a priority. As well as the installation of 200 bathing spaces for women and girls, Plan International has distributed 12,000 dignity kits to young women, with reusable menstrual hygiene and bathing products, so they at least can feel clean and safe. Girls need segregated toilets and bathing spaces. They need better lighting to find their way at night and for safety. And they need social support to help them recover from the horrific trauma many have suffered. Teenage girls need to be involved in activities to take measures to improve their feeling of safety and they need safe spaces where they can access counselling and develop social networks. https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/life/health/article/2018/02/21/rohingya-girls-are-living-grim-purgatory (c) 2018 SBS

In the remote Darfur region of western Sudan, a human disaster is accelerating amid uncontrolled violence. The United Nations' undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs has called it probably "the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe." Doctors Without Borders has observed "catastrophic mortality rates." And yet, so far as most of the world is concerned, it isn't even happening. There have been what Amnesty International calls "horrifying military attacks against civilians" throughout Darfur by the Sudanese government and its militias. The government has sent bombers to attack undefended villages, refugee camps and water wells. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have been displaced by war and that more than 3 million are affected by armed conflict. Yet Darfur has remained practically a non-story in international news media. One big reason is the fact that the central government in Khartoum, the National Islamic Front, has allowed no news reporters into the region and has severely restricted humanitarian access, thus preventing observation by aid workers. The war in Darfur is not directly related to Khartoum's 20-year war against the people of southern Sudan. Even so, military pressure from the Darfur insurgency that began a year ago has been instrumental in forcing the regime to commit to peace talks with the south. But there are now signs that these talks have been viewed by Khartoum only as a way to buy time to crush the insurgency in Darfur, which emerged, inevitably, from many years of abuse and neglect. Despite efforts by the regime to stop it, a widening stream of information is reaching the international community, from tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Chad (which shares a long border with western Sudan), and according to accounts from within Darfur. Amnesty International has led the way in reporting on Darfur; one of its recent releases speaks authoritatively of countless savage attacks on civilians by Khartoum's regular army, including its crude Antonov bombers, and by its Arab militia allies, called "Janjaweed." An especially disturbing feature of these attacks is the clear and intensifying racial animus. This has been reported by Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group and various U.N. spokesmen. The words "ethnic cleansing" have been used by U.N. officials and diplomats. This term, which gained currency during the breakup of Yugoslavia, is another description for genocide. But whatever they are called, the terrible realities in Darfur require that we attend to the ways in which people are being destroyed because of who they are, racially and ethnically -- "as such," to cite the key phrase from the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide. Darfur is home to racially and ethnically distinct tribal groups. Although virtually all are Muslim, generalizations are hard to make. But the Fur, Zaghawa, Masseleit, and other peoples are accurately described as "African," both in a racial sense and in terms of agricultural practice and use of non-Arabic languages. Darfur also has a large population of nomadic Arab tribal groups, and from these Khartoum has drawn its savage "warriors on horseback" -- the Janjaweed -- who are most responsible for attacks on villages and civilians. The racial animus is clear from scores of chillingly similar interviews with refugees reaching Chad. A young African man who had lost many family members in an attack heard the gunmen say, "You blacks, we're going to exterminate you." Speaking of these relentless attacks, an African tribal leader told the U.N. news service, "I believe this is an elimination of the black race." A refugee reported these words as coming from his attackers: "You are opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs." An African tribal chief declared that, "The Arabs and the government forces . . . said they wanted to conquer the whole territory and that the blacks did not have a right to remain in the region." There can be no reasonable skepticism about Khartoum's use of these militias to "destroy, in whole or in part, ethnic or racial groups" -- in short, to commit genocide. Khartoum has so far refused to rein in its Arab militias; has refused to enter into meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups; and, most disturbingly, has refused to grant unrestricted humanitarian access. The international community has been slow to react to Darfur's catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/02/25/unnoticed-genocide/d9e40128-c203-4614-86fe-b23b1f98edd7/?utm_term=.1b3dea918c6e (c) 2018 The Washington Post

This week, Syrian government-led airstrikes in the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta killed an estimated 500 civilians. On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate the wounded. Ann Barnard of the New York Times joins Hari Sreenivasan from Beirut via Skype for more. Read the Full Transcript HARI SREENIVASAN: A new wave of Syrian government airstrikes on a rebel held suburb of Damascus killed at least 22 people. It’s just the latest in a week long bombardment targeting Eastern Ghouta. Human Rights Monitors say the airstrikes are coming from both Syrian and Russian aircraft. They estimate 500 civilians including 200 women and children have been killed this week alone. Today, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution calling for a 30-day humanitarian ceasefire in Syria with the support of Syrian ally, Russia. Several previous ceasefires have failed over the years long conflict. For more on the situation in Syria, we’re joined by Ann Bernard of The New York Times who joins us via Skype from Beirut. Let’s put this in context. 500 people killed in just the span of a week. I mean these are just rough estimates but what what is responsible for this surge of violence? ANN BARNARD: Well, mainly right now the government is trying to take over the last couple of large rebel held area and one of them is East Ghouta, which is just to the east of Damascus. It’s really adjacent to the capital city in the suburbs, a collection of sort of concrete locked buildings in agricultural fields. Right now, the bombardments in a sense are just a more intense version of what’s been going on year after year after year. The besieged area, the people can’t get out of, and the government hasnt really been able to advance much on the ground up to now. So the strategy is just to bomb the area and try to force a surrender. HARI SREENIVASAN: Now you mentioned a phrase it’s important that people can’t necessarily get out of, because a lot of folks are going to wonder if there is such strife going on, why don’t people leave? How are people actually maintaining some semblance of life in this suburb? ANN BARNARD: I mean the main reason they can’t leave is because they physically cannot get out. This area has been surrounded by the government for years. And the siege boundary was tightened in recent months because the government took over an area where there had been an outlet for tunnels that were used for smuggling. There still wasn’t exactly free movement in and out back then. You know, the war economy was such that people on both sides would profit from food and people coming and going and it was really expensive for ordinary people. That said, there was technically a way to get out if you wanted to but now even that has become much more difficult and much more expensive. And then there’s a second reason, which is that the government has tended to treat anyone from these areas as suspect, and anyone who has a file against them with the government let’s say they’ve been a civilian activist or a fighter, even doctors who treat people on the rebel held side or even civilians in the rebel held areas, are considered criminals and terrorists by the government. So there are peopl,e who if they enter government held areas they are concerned that they will be arrested and sent to the security detention centers where there is torture and all kinds of things that they don’t want to be involved in. HARI SREENIVASAN: How are people carrying on their lives there? I mean, some of the descriptions you have and some of the photographs it seems that a lot of it is literally underground? ANN BARNARD: Well it depends on the area, in some areas people are have basements in their buildings or there are tunnels that have been dug that they can stay underground shelters. In other areas there are not. So there was a town few days ago where 43 people were killed in an airstrike because they were heavily in a in a basement that wasn’t really built to shelter people. And there is other areas where people just don’t have somewhere to go underground. HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Ann Barnard of The New York Times joining us via Skype from Beirut. Thanks so much. ANN BARNARD: Thank you. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/un-passes-syria-ceasefire-resolution-after-strikes-in-eastern-ghouta-kill-hundreds (c) 2018 PBS

Every four years, over 17 days, the Winter Olympics captures our attention as thousands of hours of programming plays on broadcast and cable channels around the world. This year, South Korea is hosting the XXIII Olympic Winter Games, its first-ever Winter Olympics, with 92 countries participating — 2,952 athletes in 15 sports competing in 102 events. But it is North Korea, not Pyeongchang that has dominated the news cycle. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent 22 athletes, artistic performers and dignitaries, including his only sister, Kim Yo Jong to the Olympics. She delivered a message of reconciliation and an unexpected invitation to the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. In the opening ceremony, North and South Korea delegations marched together under one flag. However, 73 years after they were separated, North and South remain deeply divided. Olympic headlines and social media posts ignore the brutality of the North Korean regime and the harsh realities of living under an oppressive communist dictatorship. Totalitarian North Korea tops the Open Doors World Watch List of 50 most dangerous countries for Christians, and it is one of 10 nations designated by the U.S. State Department as countries of particular concern (CPC) for systemic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations. The 2017 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report on North Korea provides this assessment: “The North Korean government continues to rank as one of the world’s most repressive regimes, in part because of its deplorable human rights record. Freedom of religion or belief does not exist and is, in fact, profoundly suppressed. The regime considers religion to pose the utmost threat — both to its own survival and that of the country. The North Korean government relentlessly persecutes and punishes religious believers through arrest, torture, imprisonment — and sometimes execution.” Yeonmi Park, a human rights activist who fled North Korea when she was 13 years old, has said, "We need to focus less on the regime, and more on the people who are being forgotten." I recently had the privilege of hearing the powerful testimony of another North Korean activist, Grace Jo, who after several attempts finally escaped the cruelty of the Kim regime. Here, her story is summarized: Grace Jo grew up in North Korea with her mother, father, maternal grandmother, and five siblings. Her father died while being transferred to a prison camp; her grandmother, older brother, and youngest brother died of starvation. Her older sister disappeared attempting to cross into China. Jo’s mother decided to flee with Jo, her sister, and her last surviving brother to China. Her mother couldn’t manage three kids crossing the river, so she left Jo’s brother behind with friends, planning to retrieve him in North Korea days later. Jo’s mom could not make it back in time, and her family found out that Jo’s brother had also died. Jo herself was captured and repatriated to North Korea twice. On her third attempt, with the help of a Korean-American pastor, her mom and older sister came to the United States in 2008. She is now vice-president of the North Korean Refugees in the United States, a nonprofit organization. The Olympics coincides with the beginning of Lent. It is hard to believe that North Korea had a revival in 1907 that spawned one of Asia’s strongholds of protestant Christianity. For the next three decades more than 3,000 churches sprang up and Christian seminaries and colleges trained Korean leaders. The Christian community, however, relied on Western missionaries who left with the onset of World War II. After the war, the peninsula split into South Korea with Western influence and North Korea with Soviet communist influence. The communist north became officially atheist and has persecuted Christians ever since. Pray that God will bring a change of heart for leaders and religious freedom once again to North Korea. Lou Ann Sabatier Director of Communications Take Action: 1. Watch a short video of North Korean refugee Grace Jo. 2. Support Free North Korea Radio, established by North Korean defector Kim Seong Min. FNKR has become the most popular single program among North Koreans. 3. Visit northkoreachristians.com for resources 4. Read the Open Doors North Korea Fact Sheet 5. Pray for revival and religious freedom in North Korea. (c) 2018 Wilberforce Initiative