How Syria-trained Tamim Chawdhury resurrected new terrorism in Bangladesh

The man responsible for the bloodiest Ramzan in Bangladesh this year -- the emir (chief) of Islamic State in Bangladesh and master planner of Dhaka attack -- Tamim Chowdhury, was killed along with two other associates in an early morning raid by the Dhaka police on Saturday. The operation is considered as a major success for Bangladesh security and intelligence forces which have managed to clamp down on the violence unleashed by Islamist extremists in less than a year since the series of deadly attacks first began.

Tamim and his associates had taken shelter in a residential building in Narayangung, on the outskirts of Dhaka, where they were living as tenants. Acting on intelligence gathered over weeks, a team of over 100 policemen including from SWAT, Counter Terrorism Unit descended around 6.00am to cordon off the area surrounding the house. Before conducting the raid, public announcements were made calling the suspected terrorists to surrender. ``We wanted to catch them alive and made all the efforts to make sure they surrender. Instead they attacked us with grenades and fired some shots. In the ensuing encounter, the three were killed,’’ Bangladesh police Assistant Inspector General (Confidential) Md Moniruzzaman told dna.

Half a dozen live grenades, an Indian made .32 pistol, a rifle, knife and few documents were recovered from the house. Most of the other belongings including clothes, papers and laptops were put on fire. While there were no black flags or documents in the name of Islamic State, a paper with information on the recent killing of a Hindu priest in Narsingdi district. On Wednesday, the IS related media Amaq agency attributed the killing to `fighters belonging to the Islamic State.’ This was the first attack claimed by IS following the Holey café attack in Gulshan area of Dhaka on July 1.

Born in Sylhet, Tamim was a Bangladeshi national who resided in Ontario, Canada for more than a decade. Police officials confirmed that he had visited Syria before he came back to Bangladesh via Abu Dhabi in October 2013. Once he returned home, Tamim started organising cadres of Jamatul Mujaheedin Bangladesh (JMB) a banned local terror group in the name of IS.

Tamim’s training in Syria played a big role in organising IS presence in Bangladesh with the help of a local affiliate of JMB. Accounts of IS returned fighters now detained in Europe suggests that a secret intelligence division of IS called Emni, sent its trained operatives as foot soldiers to various countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh in Asia. These operatives were given responsibility to build an infrastructure and plan for attacks in the name of IS.

Tamim is believed to be one such operative by the senior IS leaders. Under the arabic kunya Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al Hanafi, he was introduced this April in the group's official mouthpiece Dabiq as the emir (chief leader) of soldiers of Khilafah in Bengal. Hanafi aka Tamim vowed to impose IS’s version of puritanical Islam in Bangladesh and use the front as a launchpad for jihadi operations in India and Burma.

Tamim was able to infuse fresh energy in the existing jihadi network of JMB forced underground since it was banned by the government in 2005. He was able to regroup JMB cadres in a module under the name of IS, as both these groups share similar Islamist extremist ideology: of bringing Bangladesh under governance of shariah and not secular democracy. Tamim did so with his innovative strategies: hunting for educated youth from rich and financially well background through social media. "He was the brain behind recruiting rich and young students as he believed that the old strategy of seeking recruits from madrassas was not good enough,’’ Moniruzzaman said.

He gave more importance on IT specialists, students from universities, people from higher society and incited them to act in the name of IS. With an aggressive propaganda on social media through channels and pages on Telegram, Twitter and Facebook, Tamim was able to reach out to a number of such youth.

The IS-JMB module would operate from rented houses many of them around the capital city of Dhaka where they were given motivational and ideological training. Physical training in how to operate arms and make killings with knives and machetes the recruits were taken to isolated locations in Gaibanda and Bogra districts located in Rangpur and Rajshahi divisions, which are strongholds of JMB.

Moniruzzaman said Tamim’s strategy of recruitment and planning at attack was on full display in the 10 hour long siege in Dhaka last month. Three of the six attackers at the Holey Café, were students at elite English medium schools and went missing at different intervals. They emerged in still photos, smiling and posing with a gun in front of IS flag, circulated by IS media minutes after the attack that killed 20 mostly foreign nationals.