From Military Major to Militant Mastermind: A Look at Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh’s Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque
From Military Major to Militant Mastermind: A Look at Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh’s Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque
With a bounty of 20 lakh BDT (approximately $25,000) on his head, Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque is one of the most notorious militant fugitives in Bangladesh. Haque has masterminded subversive militant violence in the country, including the recent targeted killings of secular bloggers.
A disgraced former Bangladesh army major posted with the Mirpur-based Engineer Corps, Ziaul Haque’s name came up for the first time in December 2011 for conspiring with and instigating fellow army men to carry out a coup d’état against the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government. Leading a band of nearly 15 rogue military officers, Ziaul Haque and his co-conspirators’ plot was aimed at bringing hard-line Islamist military personnel under one platform to overthrow the democratically-elected government, to establish Sharia law in the country, reinstate Bismillah and faith in Allah in the constitution and repeal women’s rights laws. (Daily Star, February 5, 2012). A few senior retired army officers, namely Lt. Col. Ehsan Yusuf and Major Zakir Hossain, assisted him. Subsequent investigation into this foiled coup conspiracy revealed Ziaul Haque’s Islamist indoctrination and the ties he established with the banned Hizb-ut Tahrir (HT) group while serving in the army. The coup conspiracy was also aimed at deploying an army brigade to encircle Dhaka Cantonment, Bangabhaban (the president’s office) and the Gonobhaban (the prime minister’s office) and to force the president to dismiss the government (Daily Star, February 5, 2012; New Nation, August 3, 2016). Ziaul Haque is the first such military trained officer in Bangladesh join the ranks of highly radicalized Islamists. His co-conspirator, a non-resident Bangladeshi national identified as Ishraq Ahmed, confessed to the crime, stating the coup’s goal was to topple Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from “letting Bangladesh be ‘turned into a Bantustan’ run by India.”(Economist, January 28, 2012)
According to the investigation into the failed coup attempt, Ziaul Haque, who has since been untraceable, used a roaming United Kingdom mobile phone SIM card to communicate with at least 11 army officers of various ranks about the plot (Daily Star, January 12, 2012). His association with the banned HT group was confirmed when HT’s Bangladesh branch distributed literature titled “Tale of Major Zia-ul-Haq” on January 8, 2012. The piece focused on Zia’s Facebook and other social media posts against the Dhaka government, showing how the latter had become subservient to neighboring India (NDTV News, January 20, 2012).
The transnational political Islamist organization Hizb-ut Tahrir has been active in the country since 2000. In 2009, Bangladesh declared HT illegal for carrying out anti-state, anti-government, anti-people and anti-democratic activities in the country (Daily Star, October 22, 2009). Founded in Jerusalem in 1953, HT has branches in over 20 countries. Hizb-ut Tahrir’s objectives have been to establish the Caliphate and to run the judiciary system according to Islamic Sharia laws. The organization began its activities inside Bangladesh (Wilayah Bangladesh) with the support from the UK-based HT. HT-Bangladesh has been trying to capture political power by influencing and infiltrating into Bangladesh’s army with the aim of establishing Sharia law in the country. Between November 30 and December 5, 2013, HT-Bangladesh organized talks in nine mosques across the country and appealed to the army to suppress political regimes such as the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party. It branded these political parties as agents of Western and Indian governments. [1]
Background
Ziaul Haque was born in the Mostafapur locality of Maulvibazar Sadar, located in the Sylhet division. His father, Syed Ziaul Haque, is a local businessman. Media reports investigating his background state that he is a practicing Muslim who has become increasingly radical, especially following his wife’s death. Before he turned to active Islamic militancy, Ziaul Haque studied at the Military Institute of Science and Technology. Thereafter, he joined Bangladesh’s army through a course conducted by the elite Bangladesh Military Academy. Following the foiled coup attempt, he went underground. There have since been conflicting reports about his whereabouts. Some reports suggested that he had been hiding somewhere between the Chittagong and Bandarban areas. Meanwhile, other reports claimed that he fled to Pakistan. (Dhaka Tribune, September 21, 2014).
Militant Activity
During various investigations, the Bangladeshi police came across information regarding Ziaul Haque’s involvement in numerous targeted attacks and killings in the country that occurred between January 2013 and April 2016. As he kept evading arrest after the failed coup plot and remained underground for couple of years, Ziaul Haque’s name surfaced once again as the military wing chief of Ansar- al Islam Bangladesh. An affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), Ansar- al Islam Bangladesh has been responsible for a number of targeted attacks against secularist writers, thinkers, bloggers and gay rights activists. Free speech writers and activists — such as Rajiv Roy, who was hacked to death on February 26, 2015 in Dhaka, and Ananta Bijoy Das, who was killed in similar fashion in Sylhet on May 12 that year — were also targets. (Daily Star, February 27, 2015; Dhaka Tribune, May 12, 2015. Ansar-al Islam, which was previously known as Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), is a proscribed Islamic extremist group in Bangladesh. Efforts are also underway to proscribe Ansar- al Islam as well (Daily Star, May 28. 2015; Daily Star, August 24, 2016).
Ties to Al-Qaeda
ABT, which emerged in early 2013 as a group of online Islamist activists from North-South University in Dhaka, has morphed into a deadly jihadist network in Bangladesh, seemingly under the leadership of people like Ziaul Haque and the firebrand spiritual leader Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani, who openly supported al-Qaeda’s Islamist ideals. Asar-al Islam received a boost in prestige with a direct endorsement by the AQIS leadership. AQIS has encouraged attacks in Bangladesh through its online English and Bengali language publications. In its publication titled Resurgence, AQIS urged fellow Islamists to start a revolt against the democratically elected government in Bangladesh. [2] Coinciding with Ziaul Haque assuming operational command, Ansar- al Islam began referring to itself as the Bangladeshi wing of AQIS in mid-2015, and the killings of bloggers and free speech activists continued through 2016.
Since its emergence as a militant group in Bangladesh, ABT has operated with the active support of a Pakistan-based man of Bangladeshi origin, Ejaz Ahmed, who had established ties with AQIS leadership in Pakistan. It is believed that following the arrest of Jasimuddin Rahmani, Ziaul Haque first helped the cadres learn to use arms and make bombs while overseeing planning and training in the group. He became its chief of operations sometime in early 2015. Haque assumed his new position with the blessing of the AQIS leadership in Pakistan (Prathom Alo, April 10, 2016; Reuters, June 29, 2016; Dhaka Tribune, August 03, 2016).
Rise to Prominence
Major Ziaul Haque’s role as a militancy “promoter” came to prominence at a time when Bangladesh’s most violent militant group, Jamaat’ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was facing severe setbacks in the face of security crackdowns amid a rise of jihadists under the banner of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). It is also believed that he had played an important role in planning a meeting of cadres of JMB and ABT in the Kashimpur high security prison. Although few details of this episode are known, it was believed that Ziaul Haque was imparting his expertise to members of both these groups. The interrogation reports of JMB cadres and intelligence sources both have confirmed subsequently that a high-level meeting between JMB chief Saidur Rahman and Ansarullah Bangla Team chief Mufti Jashiuddin Rahmani was held at Kashimpur jail in mid-2014. The meeting resulted in an agreement between the two groups to share resources to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh. They also agreed to utilize Ziaul Haque’s expertise in militant activities (Dhaka Tribune, September 21, 2014).
In June 2016, Dhaka police and detectives warned that about 200 trained Ansar- al Islam militants were active in the country waiting to take orders from Ziaul Haque (Daily Star, June 07). One of the arrested Ansar- al Islam Bangladesh members identified as Suman Hossain Patwari revealed more information about Ziaul Haque’s overall role as a strategist and trainer within the group. While confessing his own role in the attack on Shuddhoswar publisher Rashed Chowdhury Tutul and two others in late October 2015 in Lalmatia locality, Suman Hossain confessed subsequently that Ziaul Haque, a master of disguise, had frequented Ansar’s militant training at Tongi and that he has also been using pseudonyms such as “Sagar” and “Ishtaq” (Daily Star, August 03).
On October 31, Ansar- al Islam militants struck at another publishing house, Jagriti Prakashani, located in Dhaka’s Shahbagh locality, killing its publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan. Ziaul Haque ordered the attacks on Tutul and Dipan because both the publishing houses had published books by secular writer-bloggers such as the slain blogger Avijit Roy. One of the Ansar- al Islam operatives arrested for Dipan’s murder, Moinul Hasan Shamim, admitted to having met Ziaul Haque, who according to Shamim used to give motivational speeches on the necessity of waging an armed jihad. (Dhaka Tribune, August 24, 2016).
Conclusion
Through the arrests of a few operatives of Ansar-al Islam, Bangladesh police’s detective branch has unraveled many mysteries behind the spate of killings in Bangladesh, especially through investigations into the murders of bloggers Avijit Roy, Niladri Chatterjee Niloy and Faisal Arefin Dipan. After collecting substantial information about their whereabouts and movements, it was discovered that Ziaul Haque in fact ordered the killings of these men. Investigative agencies are now looking for Ziaul Haque’s hand in other similar targeted killings spanning the last couple of years.
After the death of Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the Gulshan cafe attack mastermind and Islamic State’s leader in Bangladesh, both the police and the Rapid Action Battalion in Bangladesh are now zeroing on the expelled Army Major Ziaul Haque. Under mounting pressure, Bangladesh’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal announced that the disgraced army officer, who is now the military wing chief of the pro-al-Qaeda outfit Ansar- Al Islam, is under surveillance and his arrest is impending (Independent Bangladesh, December 7, 2016). While the minster’s claim may be based on robust intelligence, the arrest or cornering of a militant mastermind like Ziaul Haque would be challenging, and thus the government or law enforcement agencies are likely engaging in likely wishful thinking.
NOTES
[1] BANGLADESH: People Demand the Khilafah under the Leadership of Hizb ut-Tahrir”, December 11, 2013
https://www.khilafah.com/people-demand-the-khilafah-under-the-leadership-of-hizb-ut-tahrir/ (Website is not active, accessed cache page)
[2] Sulaiman Ahmed, Bangladesh at the Cross Roads” Resurgence, No 1, Fall 2014, https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/resurgence-1.pdf
