Syed Ishtiaque Reza, Editor-In-Chief of GTV and sarabangla.net : In March last year, Bangladesh police revealed a figure that stunned most of the sensible people. A police study said around 82% of the arrested militant suspects were radicalized through social media platforms. The findings came in a research conducted among 780 militants arrested since 2010. The “militants” are from groups like Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Ansarullah Bangla Team, Ansar al Islam, Hizb ut-Tahrir and Neo-JMB.
Bangladesh is now witnessing an online race between militants or communal forces and the law enforcing agencies. Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms are being used for inciting violence in the society. The country’s security units are in a real war to spot and block violent militant contents from the web.
This is, in fact, not an easy job. Militant operatives and communal forces are creating internet destinations, using the established sites to promote anti-Bangladesh violent militant materials.
Traditionally, Bangladesh has been over-reactive to military threats, but has always been timid and susceptible to other forms of threats. The country is truly in a new war that is not actually a conventional warfare. Bangladesh and its adjoining regions are passing through shifting dynamics. Unless policy makers try to comprehend the issue, the loss will be for the country. The massive and spontaneous uprisings of social media hate-mongers are generating new security issues.
We have a culture of confrontational politics. The political landscape is extremely divided on the liberation war issue. The governance issue is also another big concern. Corruption is unabated and all regulatory, accountability and transparency bodies stand politicized, resulting in a situation where all the major political forces are surrendering to fundamentalists.
Print media by fundamentalists were becoming a lucrative business since 1975. Together with religious and political leaders, individuals started investing in this new venture and during the 90’s, militant media turned into an alternative platform to contest widely circulated dailies. Currently, groups and individuals are investing in social media both from within and outside the country.
The government regulatory bodies banned many militant sites and pages, and their efforts are still continuing. The contents shared on the militants’ web platforms are very simple – in the name of religion, they spread communalism and anti-liberation theories. It is believed that these extremist organizations have specialized public relations strategies. Their Facebook posts often carry emotional messages. While the religious outfits have the most organized media apparatus, their particular focus is now on the web. Their rhetoric expresses strong anti-liberation sentiment and demonstrates little tolerance for minority religious groups. They have millions of followers on Facebook and are very efficient in propagating their views.
Their supporters are working on social media on a big scale. They are reportedly paid for this and they even contribute while working in offices; other times its women who are participating from their homes. A number of these organizations and individuals are spreading terror and radical messages. They even hired intellectuals from the minority groups to promote radical narratives. They are behind the killings of writers, bloggers and secular activists and they sometimes openly give logics to these attacks.
As their influence of social media is to increase in public sphere, this has become a major security threat. Although the authorities are making promises to counter these forces, it is apparent that the government has failed to counter this problem efficiently.
There is no solution in shutting down the Facebook as the government did several times. Rather we need to explore different approaches. Our security forces should target ‘communal or militant websites and pages’. There are some websites which are devoted solely for backing the anti-government forces, while others incite hatred towards the minorities and aim at spurring communal and sectarian conflicts.
A more serious attempt to tackle the spread of online terrorism was observed after the Holey Artisan attack in 2016. This attack initiated a change in the government’s policy towards domestic terrorism. A military intervention was sought by the government to kill the café attackers while police had been given authorities to contain militants at any cost.
Now we need to oversee militant social media activities even closely and monitor propaganda as part of the counter terrorism strategy. Even though the counter terrorism unit of Bangladesh Police keeps itself well informed about the social media activities of militant organizations, it is expected that police and other forces deal with the issue in a new fashion. Militant and communal pages should be eliminated completely while Facebook and other social media platforms should be made unavailable for the individuals who are too active to destroy social fabrics.