Within hours of ultra-Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) openly declaring its involvement with ongoing “India Out” notoriety that demands boycott of Indian products, local franchise members of global terrorist outfit Al Qaeda have been secretly sending messages to local traders to refrain from selling Indian products.
Hizb Ut Tahrir, another pro-Caliphate jihadist outfit, which is banned in Bangladesh, by joining the “India Out” campaign has been spreading propaganda through social media platforms as well as by distributing posters and leaflets in Bangladesh.
According to information, Al Qaeda, through members of its Bangladesh franchise Ansar Al Islam (AAI) started its activities in favor of “India Out” campaign immediately after BNP’s Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi called for the boycott of Indian products on March 20, 2024 in front of the party’s central office in Dhaka city’s Nayapaltan area.
Media reports said, throwing his Indian shawl away, BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi has expressed his party’s solidarity with the ongoing “India Out” campaign.
“Social media is buzzing with the ‘boycott India’ campaign. There is a public dissent against the import of Indian goods. The wave of boycotting Indian products is visible”, said Rizvi.
“Therefore, as a party representing the people, BNP and 63 democratic parties and patriotic citizens of the nation are expressing solidarity with the boycott of Indian products”, he added.
Rizvi claimed that Awami League does not seek the mandate of the Bangladeshi people, instead “clinging to power through the backing of the Modi government and entering into bonds of subjugation”.
He further accused the Awami League of perceiving Bangladesh as a “dummy state,” alleging that the real power behind the Awami League is not the people of Bangladesh but India. By supporting the Awami League, India is exercising control over Bangladesh, infringing upon the rights of its citizens”, Rizvi added.
Ever-since “India Out” movement was launched in Bangladesh following the January 7, 2024 elections, Weekly Blitz newspaper and I have been repeatedly saying, Al Qaeda-connected ultra-Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its ideological allies such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and other Islamist forces are behind such anti-India and anti-Hindu conspiracy. As our exposure had put BNP into extreme discomfort as it wanted to patronize and encourage “India Out” notoriety from behind the screen and ultimately take political advantage of its once its spreads throughout Bangladesh, anti-Awami League media outlets such as The Daily Star made foul attempts of discrediting claims made by me and Weekly Blitz about BNP’s involvement.
On February 1, 2024, Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star gave a huge space in his newspaper to an Islamist propagandist named Qadaruddin Shishir, who wrote a lengthy article claiming BNP is not involved in “India Out’ campaign. He also said, BNP does not have any connections with Al Qaeda.
It may be mentioned here that, BNP secretly hosted a group of Al Qaeda, which was headed by Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, for months in the country’s Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong and Dhaka cities. Security agencies as well as media outlets throughout the Western nations were either unaware or remained totally tight-lipped on this shocking and alarming incident.
It is essential to note that BNP has a history of harboring anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western sentiments. This ultra-Islamist party has been on record, setting fire to the American flag and chanting slogans like “Death to America” or “We shall become Taliban, Bangla [Bangladesh] will be Afghan”.
In a deeply concerning move, during the 2001-2006 rule of the BNP government, BNP even named a bridge ‘Hezbollah’ as a “mark of honor”, openly expressing their support for the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization. BNP government’s junior communications minister Salahuddin Ahmed told French news agency AFP, “I named the bridge Hezbollah because of our love for the Lebanese resistance group. Hezbollah is the only group which is fighting Israel and the bridge is named after the group as a mark of honor”.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s hosting Al Qaeda group including Ayman al-Zawahiri was first exposed by eminent journalist and counterterrorism expert Alex Perry, who in a TIME magazine article on April 14, 2002 had exposed Al Qaeda kingpin al-Zawahiri and other members of the terrorist group’s arrival and stay in Bangladesh.
According to him, on December 21, 2001 “five motor launches ferry in large groups of men from the boat wearing black turbans, long beards and traditional Islamic salwar kameez. Their towering height suggested these travelers were foreigners, and the boxes of ammunition and the AK-47s slung across their shoulders helped sketch a sinister picture”.
A senior member of Bangladesh’s largest terrorist group, the 2,000-strong al-Qaeda-allied Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), told TIME the 150 men who entered Bangladesh that night were Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan. Three senior Bangladeshi military sources also confirmed this case to TIME magazine.
Alex Perry further wrote: “The arrival of a large al-Qaeda group in the capital Dhaka that night raises pressing concerns that Bangladesh may have become a dangerous new front in America’s war on terror. Indeed, one Bangladeshi newspaper last month even quoted an unnamed foreign embassy in Dhaka as saying Osama bin Laden’s No. 2, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been hiding out in the country for months after arriving in Chittagong.
(Last week, in an audio message that authorities have tentatively authenticated, al-Zawahiri warned of further attacks against the US, vowing that it will not go “unpunished for its crimes”). According to a source inside a Bangladeshi Islamic group with close ties to al-Qaeda, al-Zawahiri arrived in Dhaka in early March and stayed briefly in the compound of a local fundamentalist leader. It’s unclear how al-Zawahiri came to be in Bangladesh, or whether he’s still there. However, a source in the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), a Bangladeshi military intelligence agency, told TIME that al-Zawahiri is believed to have left Bangladesh this summer, crossing over the eastern border into Burma with Rohingya rebels…
According to a source, al-Zawahiri even visited Dhaka and met several leaders of Bangladesh Nationalist Party while at the instruction of some influential figures of the party Zawahiri was housed at a high-secured property at Dhaka’s Gulshan area, which is owned by an intelligence agency. During his stay in Dhaka, Zawahiri had meetings with Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, a war-criminal and asset of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), while Brig Gen Abdur Rahim, then Director General of the National Security Intelligence (NSI) has carried a fruit basket, kebabs and bread on behalf of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman.
Following publication of Alex Perry’s article, journalist Bertil Lintner in another article in South Asia Terrorism Portal wrote: “…While Bangladesh is yet far from becoming another Pakistan, Islamist forces are no doubt on the rise, and extremist influence is growing, especially in the countryside.
According to a foreign diplomat in Dhaka, “In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the leftists who were seen as incorruptible purists. Today, the role model for many young men in rural areas is the dedicated Islamic cleric with his skull cap, flowing robes and beard”.
It may be mentioned here that BNP has been termed Tier-III terrorist organization by US courts, while its acting chairman Tarique Rahman is a convicted terrorist who has been living in the United Kingdom since 2007. With BNP’s past record of maintaining relations with Al Qaeda and its recently launched “India Out” campaign that reciprocates similar activities in Maldives, this party can pose a serious security threat to the region once it involves global terrorist outfits in its ongoing anti-India activities.
