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Nationwide bombings in Bangladesh
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| 31 August 2005 |
Bangladesh may have come in for increased levels of criticism over the past six months for failure to respond with sufficient vigour to the developing patterns of Islamist-inspired violence. But the country was unprepared for the dramatic display of organisational control and the demonstration of intent that occurred on 17 August, staged by the banned Jama'at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) group. On this day a series of more than 300 co-ordinated bombings, all timed to go off between 10.30 and 11.30 am touched all but six of Bangladesh's 64 districts.
Incidents of terrorism and extremism have increased sharply over the last 12 months and have also taken on 'religious purity overtones' (this latest co-ordinated bombing came only three days after an explosion at a Muslim shrine in the east. During 2004, some 12 fatalities resulted from attacks on shrines. Most of the attacks have focused on religious minorities, or secular politicians, thinkers and writers.
Successive governments in Bangladesh have, like the government in Pakistan, openly wooed fundamentalist groups, to counter opposition. Back in the 1980s, the military government under General Hussain Mohammad Ershad fostered contacts with Islamist groups, in order to counter the Awami League, on the grounds of their 'secularism'.
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