2 ISSN 2334-3745 February 2016 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 10, Issue 1 I. Articles Who are the Bangladeshi ‘Islamist Militants’? by Ali Riaz Abstract Bangladesh has attracted international media attention for heightened militant activities in 2015, particularly afer a series of killings of bloggers by a local militant group allegedly associated with Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and afer murders of foreign nationals, responsibility of which was claimed by the Islamic State (IS). Islamist militant groups in Bangladesh which emerged in the 1990s have undergone several transformations. Originally grown out of the volunteers who joined the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, these groups have since then taken diferent shapes. Since the 1990s, fve ‘generations’ of militant groups appeared on the scene. In some measures, the militant groups have come full circle: they began as a result of a global agenda fghting an ‘atheist’ Communist system (war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) to now being part of establishing a global ‘khilafat’ (by joining the IS in Syria and Iraq) via pursuing a circumscribed local agenda for a period in the early 2000s. Despite such transformations, very little is known about the Bangladeshi militants. Tis article attempts to address this lacuna by examining the socio-demographic profle of Bangladeshi militants arrested between July 2014 and June 2015. Te fndings reveal a signifcant diversity among the militants. Contrary to public perceptions in Bangladesh, signifcant numbers of militants are well-educated and come from a middle class background. Keywords: Bangladesh; Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS); Islamists militants;profles. Introduction T here has been a signifcant increase in militant activities in Bangladesh in recent years, particularly in 2015. Both Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and the Islamic State (IS) have claimed their presence in the country. Te Ansar al Islam (also known as the Ansarullah Bangla Team, ABT) claimed to be the Bangladesh unit of the India-based militant group AQIS and has taken responsibility for the murders of four self-proclaimed atheist bloggers and the publisher of one of the atheist blogger’s book. [1] In a video posted online on 2 May 2015, titled “From France to Bangladesh: Te Dust Will Never Settle Down”, AQIS claimed responsibility for six targeted killings in Bangladesh and Pakistan.[2] Additionally, between September and November, there were a total of fourteen attacks allegedly carried out by individuals or groups that claim to be followers of the Islamic State. Tese attacks have included the murder of two foreigners (and seriously injuring two others, shootings and bomb blasts at Shiite gatherings, attacks on other minority religious personalities, and death threats to missionaries.[3] Not only were the murders of foreign nationals claimed by a militant group unprecedented in the history of the country, but so were the brazen attacks on the Shi’a community in October and November 2015. It was reported by the SITE intelligence group that the IS claimed responsibility for these attacks immediately following the attacks. Tese claims were reiterated in the IS’s propaganda magazine named Dabiq (issue 12, Safar 1437), published in November.[4] Te magazine also claimed that disparate militant groups in Bangladesh have come under the leadership of a proscribed militant organization named the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Tese incidents have been widely covered in global media and have stoked the fear that international terrorist groups, particularly the IS, have gained a foothold in the third largest Muslim majority country of the world.