Dhaka, Jan 8 (IANS) Bangladesh is undergoing an unstable transition following the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government, enabling Islamist extremists and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to exploit power vacuums. With decades of experience, the ISI is weaponising religious identity to destabilise the region, a report said on Thursday.

According to a report in Bangladeshi weekly ‘Blitz’, while political turbulence is not new to Bangladesh, the serial killings of Hindu citizens across multiple districts represent a dangerous shift. It stated that such acts of violence are not merely a law-and-order failure but a direct assault on the country’s moral foundation and the pluralist compact forged in blood during the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.

“Six Hindu men murdered in roughly 18 days is not a coincidence. Nor is it random criminality dressed up as communal friction. The pattern is too clear, the methods too theatrical, the timing too politically convenient. From lynching on fabricated blasphemy charges to targeted shootings and arson, these acts bear the unmistakable signature of orchestrated terror. And behind that terror, one sees familiar shadows: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), their local cohorts in Bangladesh, and a nexus of political Islamist parties and militant networks that have never reconciled themselves to Bangladesh’s secular origins,” the report detailed.

It stressed that Bangladesh’s origin lies not in a Muslim theocracy but in a linguistic, cultural, and political revolt against Pakistani authoritarianism and religious majoritarianism.

“In the Liberation War, Hindus and Muslims died together, fought together, and dreamed together. Hindu villages were razed not because Hindus were outsiders, but because they symbolised a plural Bengal that Pakistan’s rulers could not tolerate. To attack Hindus today is, therefore, to finish an unfinished war from 1971—one that Pakistan lost on the battlefield but never abandoned in its imagination,” the report noted.

“The recent killings underline this continuity. They are geographically dispersed but ideologically linked. A Hindu man lynched by a mob over false blasphemy allegations. Another was beaten to death after alleged extortion disputes. Others shot at workplaces, hacked in shops, or stabbed and burned after closing their businesses. These are not crimes of passion. They are acts of intimidation. They send a message to a community: you are unsafe, you are watched, you can be erased,” it emphasised.

The report asserted that Pakistan’s hostility toward Bangladesh did not end in 1971 but instead evolved into new forms.

“Unable to reclaim influence through diplomacy or development, elements within Pakistan’s security establishment have long invested in proxy networks: radical madrasas, militant outfits, disinformation channels, and sympathetic Islamist parties. Their objective is simple—undermine Bangladesh’s internal cohesion, poison Hindu-Muslim relations, and weaken Dhaka’s strategic autonomy by keeping it perpetually insecure,” it mentioned.

–IANS

scor/as