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The mysterious
financiers of JMB
A.H.
Jaffor Ullah
Published
on
April 02, 2006
You don�t have to be a rocket
scientist to know that nothing moves in this world without money.
Therefore, wherefrom JMB goons had received their financing to do all
their diabolic activities that include the wanton killing in rural
Bangladesh throughout 2004.
I was reading an article written
in Bangla on March 6, 2006, in Dhaka�s vernacular newspaper
�Ajker Kagoj.� Today�s was a hot issue. Many articles were written on
�Bangla Bhai� Siddiqul Islam and Shaikh Abdur Rahman�s arrest dramas.
However, one article that I found to be interesting was on the
financiers of militant JMB. It was mentioned that a Sylheti Bangladeshi
by the name Imran Rashid (or Rashed) Chowdhury who lives in England
and work for Microsoft (England) had donated a large sum of
money to JMB. Another person, Waliur Rahman, who is the younger brother
of Shaikh Abdur Rahman, from Middle East also financed the JMB�s all
kinds of odious activities throughout Bangladesh.
According to the Bangla
newspaper, Ajker Kagoj, these financiers from abroad used to send money
through Sonali Bank, Islamic Bank, and Al-Baraka Bank. Shaikh Abdur
Rahman and Bangla Bhai maintained several accounts in their names. And
so did other Islamists associated with JMB. This information came out
on the heels of the recent dramatic and spellbound arrest of Shaikh
Rahman, the chief of JMB. The complexity of the stories of JMB leaders
and their symbiotic relationship with the ruling four-party government
beats the story of Mahabharata.
The Sylheti financier, Mr. Imran
Chowdhury, we learn from the news story is the nephew of Bangladesh�s
one-time speaker, Humayun Rashid Chowdhury. His profession was listed
in the newspaper as engineer (probably a software engineer).
The name of Imran Chowdhury
rings the bell in me. During 1997-98 long before E-forums came into
vogue in the Internet, some of us the secularists used to debate with
Islamists from Bangladesh and Pakistan. I
distinctly remember the name of Imran Chowdhury who used to say often
that Islam should be purified in Bangladesh. I am not
certain whether this Imran Chowdhury who used to debate with us
endlessly is the same person who had financed the JMB operation. I
remember very well that Imran once wrote � he was an IT or computer
expert. The netigens of the Internet in 1997 were computer savvy people
in those early days of World Wide Web. For some strange reason Imran
Chowdhury stopped coming to our forum. He simply vanished into the thin
air! I did search the Google to find what Imran Chowdhury is up to
these days but without any luck.
Now, let me write few sentences
about the banks that were in cahoots with the Islamists in
Bangladesh. It is natural that Islamic Bank or Al-Baraka Bank
would be sympathetic to Islamists� causes. But why the Sonali Bank? It
beats me!
In January 2001, I wrote an
editorial which was published by Dhaka�s Daily Star.
In late December 2000, Bangladesh�s High Court had
finally given its verdict on legality of Fatwa, the religious edict.
Two judges declared that Fatwa was illegal in Bangladesh. I
wrote my commentary congratulating the judges of the high court.
Another writer, Dr. Esam Sohel, also wrote his commentary on the same
subject. Hardly a month could pass by the chairman of Islamic Bank in
Bangladesh rebutted our commentary by falsely asserting that fatwa, the
religious edict by Mullahs, could work side-by-side with the secular
laws. After reading the news that Islamic Bank and Al-Baraka Bank
laundered money for JMB goons, I now realize why the Islamic Bank�s
chairman is sympathetic to the cause of JMB followers. The chairman
probably was sympathetic to the cherished goal of the JMB goons who
wanted to transform Bangladesh into a Taliban nation.
The vernacular paper also
mentioned that JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman�s younger brother, Waliur
Rahman, sent money regularly from Middle East. What kind of
profession was he doing in the M-E? Is it possible that Waliur Rahman
found some Middle Eastern men who were willing to donate money for a
�worthy� cause?
The name of three or more
Islamic NGOs was mentioned in the vernacular article that donated money
to the accounts maintained by JMB bosses. Among them was Islamic NGO
Al-Haramain. We learnt later that this NGO was propagating the Wahhabi
Islam everywhere in Muslim dominated countries.
The onus of finding the
financiers of Jihadi activities in Bangladesh is now on
Khaleda Zia Administration. Will the government do a thorough and
decent job? The presence of two powerful ministers who are sympathetic
to JMB causes makes it very difficult for the four-party alliance
government to undertake a noble mission to weed out jihadi activities
from Bangladesh. The Prime Minister could ill afford to
annoy the two Jamaati ministers lest they pull their support from the
alliance government. In today�s politics in Bangladesh, the
BNP has a slim chance to win the upcoming election without the support
of Islamists. Thus, for the sake of unity, Khaleda Zia won�t push the
Central Bank to investigate the money matters centering the financing of
terror activities in Bangladesh in recent years.
The civil society and newspapers
should push for the truth to come out about financing the JMB
activities. Since no jihadi activities could continue without a
continuous supply of money, it is imperative that the government publish
the list of donors. If the PM shows her unwillingness to probe into it
by throwing a monkey wrench into the Central Bank�s investigation, then
we would know something is grossly wrong in the way she manages
Bangladesh.
Many folks think that militancy
by Islamists in Bangladesh will go down the tube because the
government had decimated the leaderships of JMB. The leaderless rank
and file of JMB, who are in great numbers, may regroup and tap the
spigot of petro-dollars and British pound to jumpstart the nefarious
jihadi activities all over again. Therefore, it is prudent to figure
out the money channel from which the Islamists used to nourish their
organization and create a hell of a lot of trouble for the entire
country. The nation won�t forget the turbulent months of 2004 when
Bangla Bhai�s men ran a separate judiciary through which they killed and
tortured many rural people in western districts of Bangladesh.
Should we allow this to happen
one more time? It is about the time that we put the jinni of militant
Wahhabi or Ahle-Hadis back into the bottle and throw it in the turbulent
water of Bay of Bengal hoping it won�t come to the shore to
reignite the flame of jihadism.
Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist,
writes from Ithaca, New York.
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