Bangladesh’s Militant Networks Are Back in Motion
Article by Aminul Hoque Polash
On 23 April, Bangladesh Police Headquarters issued an alert that should have shaken the government out of its political comfort zone. According to the warning, a detained member of a banned extremist organisation, Ishtiaq Ahmed alias Sami, had disclosed during interrogation that he was in regular contact with two dismissed army personnel. Their alleged targets were not vague or symbolic. They included the National Parliament, religious places of worship, recreational centres and installations linked to law enforcement agencies.
Four days later, on 27 April, security was tightened across eight airports in Bangladesh amid fears of a possible militant attack. Around the same time, nearly fifty members of the armed and security forces, including personnel from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, Ansar and BGB, were detained over suspected links to extremism. In the Air Force alone, nineteen individuals were detained, including officers at Squadron Leader level. Several senior officers were placed under surveillance.
The danger becomes even more serious when one looks at the organisation reportedly at the centre of the latest arrests: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Although Police Headquarters did not publicly name the banned outfit in its alert, those detained are understood to have links with the Pakistani Taliban. Founded in 2007, the TTP is not a fringe ideological club. It is an armed militant movement shaped by the Pakistan-Afghanistan war zone, currently fighting Pakistan while drawing ideological strength from the Taliban’s regional ecosystem.
The Bangladesh connection emerged after a warrant officer posted at Zahurul Haque Air Base in Chattogram left his workplace without authorisation and was later detained by the Pakistan Army near the country’s north-western frontier. Under interrogation, he provided information about TTP-linked individuals inside Bangladesh. Since then, the arrests of personnel from several Bangladeshi forces appear to have followed information supplied by Pakistan.
On 27 April, Bangladesh Army Chief Waker-Uz-Zaman and Pakistan Army Chief Asif Munir spoke for nearly an hour by phone, with the TTP-linked arrests among the issues discussed. That detail matters. It suggests that Bangladesh’s current counter-militancy operation is being shaped not only by domestic intelligence, but also by information and pressure coming from Pakistan. And here lies the uncomfortable question: if the government is truly serious about confronting militancy, why is the spotlight falling only on TTP-linked suspects, while Bangladesh’s older, deeper and far more dangerous extremist networks are being allowed to breathe again?
The TTP’s presence in Bangladesh has historically been more about recruitment than direct attacks inside the country. The real danger lies elsewhere: Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Ansarullah Bangla Team, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Jamaatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya. These are not imaginary threats. These are organisations with histories, networks, ideological infrastructure and, in several cases, known links to foreign patrons.
Since the political rupture of 5 August, these groups appear to have regained confidence. Some are recruiting. Some are reorganising. Some are appearing in public again. Some are building links with armed separatist groups. Some are believed to enjoy direct patronage from Pakistan. What was once underground is now testing the surface. And yet, the political response has been astonishingly familiar: denial.
On 28 April, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed claimed that there was no militant activity in Bangladesh. That statement does not reassure the public. It insults their memory. Bangladesh has heard this language before. During the BNP government of 2001–2006, when extremist networks were spreading across the country, the ruling establishment initially dismissed Bangla Bhai as a media invention. By the time official denial collapsed under the weight of reality, the country had already paid a terrible price.
The same script now appears to be returning: first deny, then delay, then blame others, and only act when the damage becomes impossible to hide. The most alarming development is not only that militant actors are resurfacing. It is where they are resurfacing, who is tolerating them, and how close they appear to be moving toward sensitive state spaces.
During the so-called anti-quota movement, and after the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August, more than a hundred convicted militant leaders and members escaped from prison. The interim administration led by Dr Muhammad Yunus failed to demonstrate any serious urgency in bringing them back into custody. Instead, several extremist-linked figures reappeared in public life with disturbing ease.
Jasimuddin Rahmani, widely known as the spiritual leader of Ansarullah Bangla Team, was released on bail. At the same time, Ziaul Haque alias Major Zia, the notorious former army officer and military-wing leader of Ansarullah Bangla Team, resurfaced. Major Zia was sentenced to death over the murder of blogger Avijit Roy. Yet the fear now is that such figures are not merely hiding in remote safe houses. They are allegedly through networks connected to former military officers, retired service circles and cantonment-adjacent spaces. This is where the story becomes deeply unsettling.
Major Zia stayed for a long period in Building No. 3 of Banani DOHS, adjacent to the Army Golf Club. He is also said to have remained active in several messaging groups of retired army officers. On 25 April, Jasimuddin Rahmani was seen attending the Hafezzi Seba Padak programme held at Sena Malancha Auditorium inside Dhaka Cantonment.
Let that sink in. Two of Bangladesh’s most notorious extremist-linked figures, one a convicted militant ideologue and the other a death-sentenced fugitive associated with the murder of a secular writer, appear to have moved within touching distance of the country’s most secure military environment. If this does not trouble the state, what will?
Militancy does not always return with a gun in its hand. Sometimes it returns wearing respectability. It enters through religious events, charity platforms, veterans’ networks, social-media groups, campus cells, madrasa structures and ideological gatherings. It does not always announce itself as terror. It first seeks legitimacy. Then it builds confidence. Then it captures space. That is what makes the current moment so dangerous.
The external dimension is no less disturbing. Since 5 August, several senior figures linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, including Hafiz Ghani, have visited Bangladesh.
Their movements were concentrated around areas near the Bangladesh-India border. After the Pahalgam terrorist attack in Kashmir on 22 April 2025, Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Saifullah Saif said that “Mujahid brothers in East Pakistan” were preparing, and that India would next be attacked from both sides. This was not a casual slogan. It was a strategic signal. It reflected a dangerous fantasy in which Bangladesh is not treated as a sovereign country, but as a launchpad in a wider regional jihadist theatre.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, meanwhile, has stepped into the open with unusual boldness. On 7 March 2025, the group publicly marched in Dhaka demanding the establishment of a caliphate. Its spokesperson later claimed in a media interview that Hizb ut-Tahrir had actively participated in the movement that led to the fall of the government on 5 August. Since then, its posters, recruitment messages and ideological campaigns have reportedly expanded across Dhaka, especially around leading universities such as BUET and the University of Dhaka. This is not harmless campus activism. It is ideological conditioning. It is the slow poisoning of young minds at institutions that should be producing engineers, scientists, civil servants and democratic citizens, not recruits for authoritarian theocratic politics.
Then there is JMB. On 26 December 2025, an explosion reportedly occurred during bomb-making at Ummul Qura International Madrasa in Hasnabad, South Keraniganj. The madrasa was run by JMB leader Al Amin, who had previously been imprisoned in five militancy-related cases. After 5 August, like many others, he was released on bail and resumed extremist activity. That single incident reveals the danger of careless political indulgence. A man with a known militancy record walks out, returns to an institutional base, and bomb-making begins again. This is not a failure of intelligence alone. It is a failure of political will.
Jamaatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya adds another layer to the threat. Founded in 2017, the group has become active again. The son of Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Shafiqur Rahman, Rafat Sadiq Saifullah, is directly linked to the organisation. The group has connections with the Kuki-Chin armed separatist network in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, led by Nathan Bom. Previously, Kuki-Chin militants provided military training and weapons to members of Jamaatul Ansar in exchange for money. In September 2025, Tk 5 crore was reportedly handed over to Kuki-Chin in Thanchi, Bandarban, for fresh arms procurement and military training. More than a hundred members of Jamaatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya are believed to have already received military training from Kuki-Chin elements.
This is a dangerous convergence: Islamist militancy, separatist insurgency, cross-border terrain, weapons training and political silence. If such a network is allowed to mature, it will not remain confined to the hills. It will spread into the plains, into cities, into campuses, into mosques, into border corridors and into the bloodstream of national security.
Taken together, the pattern is unmistakable. Bangladesh is not facing one militant cell. It is facing an ecosystem. That ecosystem has recruiters, financiers, trainers, ideological mentors, fugitive convicts, radical preachers, foreign patrons, campus organisers, madrasa networks and alleged sympathisers within sections of the security establishment. It thrives in political instability. It grows when the state is weak. It becomes bolder when governments believe extremists can be used, appeased, ignored or selectively targeted.
This is the central danger today. The state appears willing to act against TTP-linked suspects because Pakistan wants that action. But where is the same urgency against JMB? Where is the same determination against Ansarullah Bangla Team? Where is the crackdown on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s open mobilisation? Where is the investigation into Lashkar-e-Taiba-linked visits? Where is the pursuit of prison escapees? Where is the accountability for those who allowed convicted extremists to reappear in public life?
Selective counterterrorism is not counterterrorism. It is political management. If a government arrests one set of extremists while allowing another set to reorganise, it is not protecting the country. It is choosing which fire to extinguish and which fire to feed. Bangladesh cannot survive such a cynical security doctrine.
The current anti-TTP operation may therefore be less a genuine nationwide campaign against militancy than a narrow, Pakistan-influenced exercise designed to satisfy Islamabad while diverting attention from Bangladesh’s older and more dangerous extremist networks. That is why the government’s denial is so dangerous. It does not merely hide the truth. It creates space for the threat to grow.
Militancy is not only a security threat. It is an attack on the very idea of Bangladesh. This country was born through a secular liberation struggle against a state that used religion as a weapon of domination. Bangladesh’s founding promise was that citizenship would not be held hostage by communal identity. Every time an extremist network is allowed to breathe, that promise is weakened. Every time foreign-backed militants are allowed to use Bangladeshi soil, sovereignty is compromised. Every time a government denies the danger for political convenience, the republic moves one step closer to disaster.
The question is no longer whether Bangladesh has a militancy problem. The evidence is too visible. The arrests, the alerts, the airport security measures, the prison escapes, the public appearances of extremist figures, the revival of banned groups, the campus activities, the border movements and the foreign signals all point in the same direction. The real question is whether those now in power have the courage, independence, and moral clarity to confront it. So far, the signs are not reassuring.
What Bangladesh needs is not another official statement claiming that everything is normal. It needs transparent investigations. It needs the immediate pursuit and re-arrest of escaped militants. It needs strict monitoring of radical networks. It needs accountability within the security forces. It needs a crackdown on foreign-sponsored extremist operations. It needs to dismantle recruitment networks in campuses, madrasas, and cantonment-linked circles. It needs to ensure that no political party, no foreign intelligence service, no retired officer network, and no ideological platform are allowed to turn the country into a sanctuary for militancy.
The militant shadow is back. The state can either confront it now, with clarity and courage, or keep looking away until the next tragedy writes the truth in blood.
Views expressed are those of the author(s)
