Principal arrested on bribery charge in 

Polonnaruwa



July 15, 2016

The principal of a school in the Polonnaruwa area has been arrested on bribery charges. 

 The suspect was arrested this afternoon by officers of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, acting on information received, while at his office in the school. 

 He was caught in the act of soliciting a bribe of Rs 2750, handed over through a security guard, from a former teacher at the school in order to sign several of her documents. 

 Meanwhile the bribery commission says that in a separate operation an official working as a Management Assistant at the Puttalama District Court was arrested while receiving a bribe of Rs 4,500. 

The suspect had reportedly promised to reduce the spousal maintenance paid by a certain divorced individual. 

Ishara buys Chris’ company!

Jul 15, 2016

Wealthy businessman Ishara Nanayakkara’s Browns Group yesterday (14) bought control of Agalawatte Plantations (APL), whose majority shareholder was former Sri Lankan high commissioner in Britain Dr. Chris Nonis, for Rs. 304 million, say Colombo share market sources.

Nonis’s Mackwoods Securities (MS) owned a 60 per cent stake of APL, and 15.2 million out of its total 25 million shares were traded. Dr. Nonis and a sister of his are in a dispute over the management of the 170-year-old MS and the matter is now before courts.

Several employees expelled for the good of the company by his mother Sriyani Nonis, who committed her life to take MS to international level, and his grandfather N.S.O. Mendis, who bought the company from the British,  together with certain politicians, have created this dispute in the Nonis family, say reliable sources. Also party to the conspiracy is a notorious arms trafficker, who had divorced from a Nonis family daughter, as Dr. Nonis had refused to appoint his two daughters to the director board, which had led to the creation of this dispute, the sources say.

The aggrieved parties are now trying to get a court order to suspend the sale of APL.

When contacted, Browns Group chairman Ishara Nanayakkara told Lanka News Web that he had bought APL successfully within a short period. It was done legally and with transparency through the Colombo share market, he added.

SitRep: Horror in Nice as Death Toll Rises to 84

BY PAUL MCLEARY, ADAM RAWNSLEY-JULY 15, 2016

Attack in Nice. Chaos came back to France Thursday night, in the form of aterrorist attack in Nice that killed 84 people gathered to watch a Bastille Day fireworks display along the city’s main promenade. A truck driven by a man French authorities have identified as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a French-Tunisian petty criminal with no known terrorist links, simply plowed through crowds, shooting at those fleeing as he rampaged along a mile of the beachfront street before being shot dead by police.

As in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the travelers killed at the Istanbul and Brussels airports, or the clubgoers in Orlando, the dead were guilty only of being in public.

Paris reacts. “We cannot deny that it was a terror attack,” French President Francois Hollande said Thursday night, adding that Bastille Day is a “symbol of liberty,” and that “human rights are denied by fanatics and France is quite clearly their target.” The French government had just announced it was about to end the state of emergency begun after the November 2015 Paris attacks, but Hollande said he would extended it for three more months.

Although the attacker had a pistol, police say that all the other weapons found in the truck were fakes, raising questions over the extent of support he had from others, or from jihadist groups. Friday morning, State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed that two Americans are among the dead.

Gains and losses. Even as the U.S.-led coalition continues to hammer the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and Iraqi and Syrian/Kurdish rebel forces push the group out of more and more towns and cities, the group’s power to inspire attacks outside of its self-declared “caliphate” appears to be increasing.

“The problem is that the numbers of people who have been radicalized, mostly because of social media, are larger than anything we’ve seen before, and we are just behind the curve,” Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University told the Wall Street Journal. “We are dealing with a problem of an order of magnitude much larger than in the past.”

Truck attacks not new. Matthew Henman, Head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre reminds us in a statement Friday that vehicle attacks have been used by Palestinian militants in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and three such attacks have been conducted by suspected Islamist militants in France over the past two years. “The use of a large truck in the attack, alongside the high death toll and deliberate targeting of a large crowd at an ideologically symbolic event represents an evolution in the use of the tactic and potentially indicates a higher level of operational planning,” he said.

Attack plans. In October 2010, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released the second issue of its English-language magazine, Inspire. In it, two articles written by Yahya Ibrahim outline potential ways to carry out terrorist operations, including running over groups of people with trucks. One article, titled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” talks about using “a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”

Armed Guards. In a somewhat related event, the U.S. Navy has announced that it will soon begin stationing armed guards at recruiting stations across the country, a move that comes a year after the shootings at a recruiting station and a reserve center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that killed four Marines and a sailor.

“They will find us and kill us.” FP’s Siobhan O’Grady has just returned from a reporting trip to South Sudan, a country once again being torn apart by violence. Her first dispatch is a gripping look at the plight of civilians caught up in the maelstrom. “In more than a dozen interviews in Nyal in May, civilians recounted stories of mass rape, murder, and forced cannibalism at the hands of government soldiers and affiliated militias,” she reports.

GOP and Israel. Just days before the Cleveland convention, GOP leaders and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “have found a rare bit of common ground: ditching decades of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy calling for the creation of an independent Palestine,” reports FP’s Molly O’Toole. “The shift came when the Republican Platform Committeeunanimously approved an Israel-Palestine provision Tuesday night that had a striking omission: any reference to a two-state solution to the long-running conflict. The platform instead uses staunchly pro-Israel language that promises to oppose any outside efforts to force Jerusalem into a deal.”

Trump. The candidate pushed back the expected Friday announcement of his choice of Mike Pence for vice president due the attacks in France. FP’sPaul McLeary, David Francis and Dan De Luce write that the two politicians are worlds apart when it comes to their foreign policy views and opinions on free trade.

More troops to Iraq? Last week, the Pentagon announced it was sending 560 more troops to Iraq, bringing the official total to just over 4,000, and now a top general says he expects to ask for even more troops to help battle the Islamic State. Head of the U.S. Central Command Gen. told Reuters that “I think there will be some additional troops that we will ask to bring in.” He declined to offer a number.

Hey there! Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national  security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

Russia

Russia has disciplined it’s freshman class of boozing and cruising selfie spies, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Recent graduates of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) training school got themselves in hot water by going for a very public and very well documented victory lap around Moscow, hanging out the windows of their convoy of SUVs, snapping photos, and honking horns to celebrate their accomplishment. The videos of the would-be spies hit social media and now the FSB says “principled personnel decisions have been taken toward the guilty individuals, changing the condition of their service.”

The Islamic State of Me-Time

Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and current Trump vice presidential pick contender Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) writes in his new book that, despite their outwardly extreme piety, jihadists in Iraq loved them some porn. Lots of it. Flynn writes that in the mid-2000s, U.S. intelligence “determined that 80 percent of the material on the laptops we were capturing was pornography.” FP’s Paul McLeary and Dan De Luce recently read the book, and delivered some of the choicest bits.

Al Qaeda

al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is showing off its “special forces” training camp in a new video, the Long War Journal reports. The Hamza al-Zinjibari camp, named after an AQAP commander killed in a U.S. drone strike, shows al Qaeda fighters engaging in various acts of martial bravado and AQAP leaders such as former Guantanamo Bay inmate Ibrahim al Qosi giving speeches. Another leader from the group, Khalid Batarfi, describes the camp as an “extension” of previous al Qaeda training facilities established in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Bots o’ war

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Wait, no, it’s a plane made to look like a bird. Photos of a drone that crashed in Somalia show an airframe disguised as a bird, theVerge reports. The drone is painted black, complete with wings that flap, a beak-like nose and tail feathers. It remains unclear just who the drone belongs to but local media suspect Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency may be the owner. The concept isn’t entirely novel as a number of companies have attempted variations on the theme, including one used by U.S. Special Operations Command.

Subs

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has put out a new report on the hot topic of the submarine standoff between the West and Russia in northern Europe. The report, “Undersea Warfare in Northern Europe,” argues that NATO countries have underinvested in anti-submarine warfare capabilities at the same time that a newly confrontational Russia has managed to shield its own submarine assets from the kinds of budget woes that have bitten into other Russian defense priorities. The report recommends that NATO countries, often hesitant to spend big on defense, should pool resources for improved development of anti-submarine warfare capabilities and focus on developing cooperative structures.

On the move

The Navy’s top officer is headed to China on Sunday in the wake of an international court’s ruling against Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. USNI News reports that Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson will meet with Adm. Wu Shengli, the commander of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy. A Navy statement says events in the South China Sea and the forthcoming RIMPAC exercises will be on the agenda for the two sailors’ meeting.

Air Force

The Air Force’s top civilian and military officials have penned an op-ed forDefense One outlining how they plan to grow the number of pilots. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein write that the service will be short 700 pilots by the end of the fiscal year due to lucrative offers from the private sector and defense budget cuts. In response, the two say they’re trying to incentivize retention of current pilots by lobbying Congress for more pay for the airmen and trying to reduce their administrative duties and increase family time.

And finally

You may be pretty sure there’s a rare Meowth on the Golan Heights just waiting for you to catch it, but the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are warning troops not to even try. IDF officials have put out a warning to service members telling them not to install the wildly popular Pokemon Go app as it hemorrhages all manner of user data which could be used to compromise operational security.

Photo Credit: ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP/Getty Images

Military attempting a coup against Turkish government

A coup attempt underway in Turkey, prime minister says. (Reuters)

By Erin Cunningham,Zeynep Karatas July 15 

ISTANBUL — Turkey's military launched a coup Friday against the elected government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish officials and the country's armed forces said, in a stunning move that will likely plunge the country into further turmoil and reverberate across an already bloodstained and chaotic region.

"The Turkish Armed Forces, in accordance with the constitution, have seized management of the country to reinstate democracy, human rights, and freedom, and to ensure public order, which has deteriorated," the General Staff of the Armed Forces said in a statement Friday.

Armored vehicles and military personnel were deployed across key areas of the capital, Ankara, and the largest city, Istanbul. The military declared martial law and imposed a curfew, according to a statement carried by state-run broadcaster TRT.

Helicopters and fighter jets flew low over both cities Friday night as the embattled government struggled to maintain control. A senior government official said Erdogan was "in a secure location" and that a statement would "be made shortly."

"This is an attack against Turkish democracy. A group within the armed forces has made an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government outside the chain of command," a senior Turkish official said.

According to officials, Turkey’s military attempted to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The official Anadolu Agency reported late Friday that Gen. Hulusi Akar, the chief of the general staff, had been taken hostage in Ankara. That report could not be confirmed. The location of Erdogan was also unclear Friday night.

"Turkey's democratically elected president and government are in power," the senior official said. "We will not tolerate attempts to undermine our democracy."

The statements from the armed forces were not "authorized by the military command," the official said, suggesting that rogue officers within the military had staged the putsch.

Binali Yildirim, who leads Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said Friday that those behind the attempted coup "will pay a heavy price."

"We will never let this go," he said. "We will take all measures necessary, even if it means death."

Turkey is a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which has lost much of its territory in Iraq and Syria but needs Syria’s border with Turkey to funnel weapons and fighters. Turkey also allows U.S. aircraft to use Incirlik Air Base to fly bombing raids on the jihadists in Syria.

In Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had been engaged in discussions all day and did not hear about “what may or may not be happening” in Turkey.

“We’ve heard the reports that others have heard. I don’t have any details at this time. But I hope there will be stability, peace and continuity in Turkey.”

City of fear

Israeli border police push Palestinian men as they try to cross through the Qalandiya checkpoint, between the cities of Jerusalem and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on 11 July. Oren ZivActiveStills

Jalal Abukhater-14 July 2016

A few days ago, I was driving through Qalandiya checkpoint for the first time since I came back to Jerusalem.

My dad, sitting next to me, had to yell “stop here!” at me as I was queuing behind a car at the checkpoint.

“You’re too close,” he said, “stop and wait for them to call you, otherwise they’ll shoot you and not even care.”

When I left here to begin my life as a university student four years ago, and despite my sense of general optimism, I never really believed that I would come back to a better and more hopeful Jerusalem.

Over the four years, I would come back during the summer and end up leaving again with a strong belief that things would only be worse the next time I’d be home.

Here I am now, four summers later, having earned my degree, and I believe Jerusalem is worse than it has ever been for its non-Jewish inhabitants, the Palestinians.

Despite this depressing assessment, I have been looking forward to come back to Jerusalem as it is not only the city that I grew up in, but it is the place where I want to embark on the journey of being a young adult.

Fear everywhere

Two years ago, I wrote about the pervasive fear we Jerusalemites feel in our own city.

Today, sadly, this fear is even more intense and tangible. It is not just fanatics or nationalist mobs that worry me, it is every armed Israeli – citizen, police and military – who could end my or anyone else’s life in a second for no reason and without anyone batting an eye.

Since last summer, the ugliness of life in Jerusalem has come to show.

Hundreds of Palestinians of all ages have been harassed, brutalized, arrested, shot or killed.

This is in a city where Israel’s slow, steady but systematic discrimination is forcing Palestinian children out of schools and Palestinian families out of their homes.

In April, Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail, a 23-year-old mother of two small children, reportedly five months pregnant, and her 16-year-old brother Ibrahim Salih Hassan Taha, were gunned down by Israeli personnel at the same Qalandiya checkpoint, in the occupied West Bank, north of Jerusalem.

Israel claimed the pair were killed during an attempted knife attack on soldiers, but eyewitnesses described an execution of two people who didn’t understand commands being shouted at them in Hebrew and presented no threat to anyone.

The private firm contracted by the Israelis to man the checkpoint carried out an “internal investigation” andabsolved itself of any wrongdoing.

The siblings were among more than 220 Palestinians, as well as more than 30 Israelis and two Americans, who have died since a new phase of violence began last October.

And according to Israel’s B’Tselem human rights group, Maram and Ismail were among dozens of Palestinians killed when they posed no threat in slayings “tantamount to executions.”

Driving while Palestinian

On the day I drove through Qalandiya, I recall my dad reminding me repeatedly how I should be extra careful how I am perceived by Israelis while on the road as anything they deem suspicious could have fatal consequences.

It has become standard in recent months for Israelis to judge any driving irregularities or accidents to be deliberate vehicular attacks, prompting Israelis to attack the driver and ask questions later.

Last month, an Israeli driver plowed his car into a Tel Aviv restaurant, killing two people, before a mob pulled him from the car and beat him believing him to be a Palestinian attacker.

But the man had suffered a heart attack. He died, though it was unclear whether it was due to the beating or the heart attack.

Sometimes just driving around puts your life at risk. On Wednesday, three young men in al-Ram came under a hail of bullets from Israeli forces raiding the village north of Jerusalem. One, Anwar al-Salaymeh, 22, was killed. Another was critically injured and the third detained.

An Israeli spokesperson told the Ma’an News Agency that the soldiers “saw a speeding vehicle heading towards them” and opened fire.

An autopsy was ordered for al-Salaymeh, after it was discovered that he was shot in the back three times, challenging the Israeli narrative.

And during Ramadan, 15-year-old Mahmoud Badran was killed when Israeli soldiers fired on the car he and friends were riding in on their way home from a late-night pool party. In that case, Israel admitted the car was “mistakenly hit.”

Merely walking around in Jerusalem’s Old City for the first time this summer was an uneasy experience.

Anything deemed provocative by the pervasive Israeli police could have costly consequences. It is an environment of fear designed to make us Jerusalemites feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in our own city.

First resort

The killing of Fadi Alloun last October, and other instances of Israeli police shooting Palestinians as mobs cheered them on, are memories we cannot shake and reminders of the precarious nature of our continued existence in this place.

Newly revealed documents show that Israeli police have been authorized to use lethal force as a first resort against any Palestinian seen to throw stones or firecrackers.

For years, Israel claimed that lethal force was only a last resort – even though in practice Israeli forces killed frequently, without provocation and with total impunity.

But you would never see similar measures taken against Jewish stone throwers or attackers who harass Palestinians regularly across the West Bank. Instead, the attackers habitually enjoy army protection.

Every few days I wake up to news of Palestinians being shot for acting “suspiciously” or allegedly possessing a knife. In all these cases, Israel is judge, jury and, often, executioner, with no credible justice system in place to independently investigate such claims or killings.

I still remember a few years back when a man in front of me at Qalandiya checkpoint was kicked by soldiers, humiliated and reduced to tears as he was denied passage through the checkpoint.

He had been carrying a bag full of cooking equipment and chefs knives and he had multiple papers showing he was part of a culinary school in Jerusalem.

Today, a person in a similar situation would have been killed and no one would question it as the mere possession of a knife has become enough of an excuse legitimizing the summary execution of Palestinians.

Still standing

An internal police report exposed by the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz this week, revealed, to no surprise of any Jerusalemite, that Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem “deliberately provoke Palestinians” in order to get a violent response.

One such manufactured provocation in Issawiyeh, in January, led to a confrontation in which Israeli forces shot 12-year-old Ahmad Abu Hummus in the head, causing severe brain damage.

Social media is never lacking in daily videos documenting the regular harassment, searches and humiliation of Palestinian youths in Jerusalem that lead to similar violence.

It is weird living in Jerusalem right now, especially knowing that this situation only strengthens my determination to stay here, live here and fight for this city.

I know too that if I wanted to write about all the forms of abuse against Palestinians in Jerusalem, I would be writing endlessly for days.

It is a situation where the power and might of the whole Israeli state is determined to alienate Palestinian Jerusalemites. However, this cruelty and injustice only breeds further resistance and defiance.

They may deem our lives worthless, our dignity of no value, our existence an inconvenience, but I believe Jerusalem continues to stand tall and defy the oppression no matter how dark the times have become.

Hasina overlooked terror festering in Bangladesh’s backyard

Rather than waiting for political empathy in fighting jihadi terrorism, the PM will have to urgently rewrite her counter-terrorism template

by Col. R. Hariharan

( July 15, 2016, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is heartless to say the slaughter of 23 people, mostly foreigners, in a bakery in Dhaka’s posh suburb of Gulshan few days before the end of the holy month of Ramadan was waiting to happen. But that is really the case.

So “What next” would be a logical question easily asked than answered.

The inability of Sheikh Hasina’s government to bring to book those who carried out the lone wolf attacks to kill 30 people including secularists, foreigners and many non Muslims during the last 15 months probably encouraged the Jihadi elements to mount the concerted Dhaka attack.

But there are bigger political reasons hobbling Bangladesh war against Jihadi terrorism.

Khaleda Zia’s machinations

Prime Minister Hasina saw them merely as violent attempts to destabilize her rule by Begum Khaleda Zia-led opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its fundamentalist coalition partner Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), than as globally manifesting jihadi extremist activity.

Obviously, PM Hasina’s long political struggle to overcome the BNP-JeI opposition that had been hounding her and the Awami League (AL) after her father Mujibur Rahman’s assassination in 1975 continues to prevent her from taking a dispassionate look at the terrorist situation.

As a result the Bangladesh government had been busying trying to read the fine print to identify the involvement of BNP and JeI elements in the sporadic killings for nearly two years.

In this process, important indicators of the Islamic State’s efforts to step up their activities in South Asia, and in particular Bangladesh, seem to have been missed out.

This is understandable as it was Major General Ziaur Rahman, husband of Begum Khaleda, who usurped power in a military coup taking advantage of the turbulence after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family were assassinated in 1975.

It was Zia who condoned the killers of Mujibur Rahman and soft pedalled the JeI leaders’ collusion with the Pak army in the massacre of thousands of Bengali intellectuals and professionals, in order to gain their support.

It was also Zia, who founded the BNP to legitimize his power and started hobnobbing with fundamentalist elements to rewrite the secular credentials of the country which had been an article of faith of AL.

Islamic extremism of BNP, JeI and JMB

By and large Bangladesh Muslims are Sufis with a moderate world view of their religion. However, thanks to Saudi Arabian support, Wahabism with its fundamentalist discourse has been making steady inroads into the country.

After Zia’s assassination, General HM Ershad took over power till he was forced to hold democratic elections. Begum Khaleda Zia led the BNP-JeI coalition came to power. Their rule enabled Taliban-loving fundamentalist groups like the JeI and Nizam-e-Islami (NeI) to get entrenched in Bangladesh body politics.

It was also the period that saw heightened activity of the Al Qaeda affiliate Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HUJI) which established its tentacles in Bangladesh. HUJI was the prime suspect in a plot to assassinate PM Sheikh Hasina in 2000 after she came to power. HUJI was also believed to have been involved in a number of bombings carried out in 2005 that led to its ban.

The BNP-JeI coalition chose to ignore the rise of the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) fundamentalist extremists led by ‘Bangla Bhai’ Siddiqul Islam that terrorised the AL and the nation.

Even Sheikh Hasina was not spared of their wrath; according to the AL she has survived 19 attempts on her life by various opposition groups including fundamentalist parties, JMB and the BNP.

The JMB, which had Taliban links, grew bold enough to explode 500 small bombs in a span of half an hour in 50 towns in 63 of the 65 districts across the country on 17 August 2005! This led to the banning and arrest of JMB leaders and cadres.

After Bangla Bhai and six other JMB leaders were apprehended and executed in March 2007, the JMB was dormant for some time.

Their morale was shattered when PM Hasina during her second tenure prosecuted 53 leaders largely from JeI but also from ML, NeI, BNP and Jatiyo Party for war crimes against Bangladesh.

This deprived Jihadi extremists the political patronage they had enjoyed which was vital for their survival.

Encroachment from Al Qaeda and the ISIS

The decision of the Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to expand their tentacles into South Asia in 2014 found a fertile ground in Bangladesh. It provided rallying points for the JMB and other Jihadi outfits like the Al Qaeda-inspired machete-wielding Ansar ul Bangla Team (ABT) to step up their activity.

In fact, JMB elements became assertive enough to plan an abortive attack on the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s motorcade last March.

Now almost all parties have in their ranks fundamentalist elements with Salafist beliefs, which may not support Jihadi terrorism, but favour in its other articles of faith.

PM Hasina has been waging an ambivalent struggle to gain the support of these conservative sections of society as the BNP and JeI have become increasingly dependent upon their support.

This is probably the reason for the government to allow some leeway for fundamentalist propaganda that provides the religious idiom for Jihadi extremism.

Perhaps this was also the reason for the Bangladesh government to allow Salafist preachers like Dr Zakir Naik to hold religious discourse in the country, although it probably inspired terrorists as shown in the Dhaka bakery killings.

There are other factors too which make Hasina’s fight against Jihadi terrorism more difficult.

Exposure to Wahabism/Salafism

Bangladesh has over two million expatriate Muslims working in Gulf countries with over 1.2 million living in Saudi Arabia alone. With constant exposure to conservative life styles and beliefs they are a highly vulnerable source of recruits for Jihadi terror outfits.

The IS has already mastered the idiom of attracting educated and tech-savvy Muslims. These young converts to terrorism are invigorating Bangladesh Islamic extremism. And the IS is providing them guidance and global exposure.

Bangladesh has a volatile political culture with the involvement of both left-wing and fundamentalist extremism in politics. Major parties including the AL, BNP and JeI have their own highly motivated student groups who are used as tools for political activism that often ends in fisticuffs or even murders.

With Bangladesh’s political discourse providing space for violent means to settle scores, it is not going to be easy for PM Hasina to separate political extremism from jihadi extremism as they are seamlessly interwoven.

The Dhaka Bakery slaughter has underlined the urgency for PM Hasina to have a minimum level of political concurrence with other parties in handling terrorism.

However, such a proposition is unlikely to make headway in the near term, given the political blood feuds poised to move into third generation.

Must rewrite counter-terrorism template

So rather than waiting for political empathy in fighting Jihadi terrorism, the PM will have to urgently rewrite her counter-terrorism template.

Introduction of systemic improvements in the employment of counter-terrorism forces is probably on the cards. This would include police, paramilitary outfits specializing in fighting extremists like the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and army commando groups.

Modern investigative and surveillance tools need to be used. And most importantly real time exchange of intelligence among various agencies to enable better coordination of their actions has to become part of the standard operative procedure.

Real time international cooperation

PM Hasina will have to further strengthen networking on counter terrorism cooperation with India and the US who are also coming together to scale up such cooperation between them.

India-Bangladesh border despite all the goodwill prevailing between the two countries remains porous.

It will remain so given the common roots and contiguity of identity among people living on both sides of the border. That is one of the reasons extremists from both countries are able to find sanctuaries across the border.

It will be prudent for both the countries to make it extremely difficult for the extremists from one country to seek sanctuaries in the other.

This would involve sharing of data bases on criminal and extremist elements operating between two countries on a real time basis.

With sizeable Bangladesh immigrant population living along the border areas of Assam and West Bengal, India has proved to be vulnerable to infiltration by Jihadi extremists for nearly two decades.

India has huge stake

Bangladesh is equally vulnerable to Jihadi extremists operating from Indian sanctuaries. The NIA’s follow up investigations in 2 October 2014 Bardhman blasts in West Bengal has revealed that Enamul Mollah, the suspected IS mastermind in India was an active member of JMB.

Among his followers, 20 IS suspects have been arrested; ten other absconding suspects are believed to be in Bangladesh.

In Assam, in April 2016 the Imam of Amguri masjid in Chirang district has been arrested for motivating young men to join JMB. Police have arrested 29 members of an extended module of JMB in the same district.

But as far as India is concerned, the moot question is how much India can help Begum Hasina fight Jihadi terrorism?

If she fails, its fall out will not only affect Bangladesh but India as well, particularly the highly militancy-prone northeast region.

India will have to do the extra mile and enroll Mamta Banerjee’s support to ensure West Bengal fully cooperates in weeding out Bangladeshi extremist elements holed up in the country. The same applies to Assam where a BJP government is in power.

Courtesy: India Today opinion portal DailyO 

Pro-Sisi MP 'beaten by police' as Egypt's byzantine power struggle boils over

Members of Egypt's pro-government parliament are beginning to feel the brunt of the police state they have empowered

Members of the Egyptian police special forces patrol streets in al-Haram neighbourhood in the southern Cairo Giza district on 25 January, 2016 (AFP)--Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (top-L) listening as Ali Abdel Aal (top-R), speaker of Egypt’s parliament, delivers a speech to the parliament headquarters in Cairo, 23 February, 2016 (AFP PHOTO / HO / EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY)

Snapshot of the WhatsApp group: The first message is from Zainab Salam and reads: “SOS from a fellow MP help me from Nasr City police station.” The responses are from fellow MPs asking what is wrong.

Karim El-Bar-Friday 15 July 2016

A pro-government MP claims she was assaulted by officers in a police station in Egypt in a story that has taken Egyptian social media by storm and exposed the fault lines in the country’s byzantine power struggles.

The staunchly pro-Sisi Zainab Salam is a member of Egypt’s House of Representatives from the northern province of Sharqia, and secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on Tourism and Civil Aviation.

She went to a police station in Nasr City, a district in eastern Cairo, on Thursday evening in an attempt to forcefully free her nephew from police custody when what started as a verbal argument soon escalated into a physical confrontation.

Sources told Egyptian media that she was shocked to see police officers assault her nephew, prompting her to object to his treatment and threaten to escalate the matter due to their breaking of the law. It was at this point, according to the sources, that a police officer physically assaulted her.

In a video posted to YouTube, she is seen arguing with police officers and threatening to end their careers.

At one point, she screams: “I swear it’s my right to take him! I swear to God I will make him come home! He is going to come home!”

At the end of the clip, she faints and drops to the floor – but the video did not show any of the police officers touch her physically.

‘I swear by my hair I’m going to fire you and your officers!’

Security sources told Egyptian media that Salam’s nephew, 15, was in custody for stabbing another young man with a knife, an attack that led to the victim being transferred to a hospital’s intensive care unit in critical condition. The two young men fought each other after Salam’s nephew verbally harassed the victim’s sister and wife with sexual comments. Other Arabic media outlets also cited drug abuse as being a factor in the arrest.

For his part, the accused officer – Ahmed Alaa el-Deen Abdel Aziz – told a local court that Salam had marched in saying she was an MP and could go where she liked and have her demands met.

When he arrived at the scene he was surprised to find a woman screaming loudly and tried to calm her without hurting her, he told the court. Salam then threatened that she could have him fired and grabbed his clothes, ripping one of the buttons on his shirt, saying she would call one of her senior contacts in the Interior Ministry.

He said that Salam tried to forcefully smuggle her nephew out of the station, and when she was prevented from doing so assaulted police officers around her, tore off her hijab and screamed, “I swear by my hair I’m going to fire you and your officers!” The police officer claimed to have recorded the events and said he would present his video to the courts.

In an interview on Friday with Tahrir, an Egyptian newspaper, Salam seemed to backtrack on her original claims: “I have not been injured at all … and after it (the ordeal) I decided to go home to rest, and I am currently with my family at home and among the people of my constituency.”

Lightning rod

Bakr Abu Ghareeb, a parliamentarian from Giza governorate, told Egyptian media: “The police officer is from the Nasr City branch. He severely beat the parliamentarian Zainab Salam during her presence at the station where she asked for her nephew to be freed.”

Salam had sent a message in the early hours of Friday morning saying that she had been assaulted by police officers. The message was sent to a private WhatsApp group used by Egypt’s parliamentarians.

After reading the message, Abu Ghareeb left immediately for the police station and was greeted on arrival by Cairo’s security chief and heads of the Nasr City police directorate. They offered their apologies to the members of parliament present who had also arrived after reading the WhatsApp message.

Abu Ghareeb told Egyptian media: “This apology is not enough and if justice for the MP is not obtained, I am going to resign from the House because this is an insult to the entire parliament and a show of disregard by the Interior Ministry towards members of parliament.”

Mostafa Bakry – a well-connected pro-Sisi MP who often finds himself at the centre of Egypt’s political scandals – said that Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar suspended the police officer involved in the case and placed him under immediate investigation.

Bakry said that House of Representatives Speaker Ali Abdel Aal, who is currently in Russia visiting the Duma, personally called the Interior Minister and told the minister in no uncertain terms that he would not accept any slight to any member of parliament.

The case soon became a lightning rod for Egypt’s political class, who rallied around their fellow MP.

Margaret Azer MP, the deputy chairperson of parliament’s human rights committee, toldEgyptian media that an assault on their fellow parliamentarian should be taken as an affront to the entire House of Representatives.

“This MP has parliamentary protection and she was physically assaulted,” Azer said. “So how will this kind of police officer treat ordinary citizens in the context of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s instructions that asked for better treatment of citizens, safeguarding their human rights, maintaining their dignity and treating them humanely?"

Salam was elected to parliament in 2015 on the For the Love of Egypt parliamentary list – which also saw the election of 24 members of the now-dissolved, Mubarak-era National Democratic Party. The staunchly secular and neoliberal Free Egyptians Party is a member of the list and also currently the largest party in parliament.

Alaa Abad, head of the Free Egyptians Party parliamentary bloc, said: “This single incident does not represent the Interior Ministry but is attributable to a number of individuals and trustees who must be prosecuted immediately.”

Blank cheques

This is not the first time Salam has been in hot water. In April, a fellow MP from the same province of Sharqia filed a complaint against Salam to the deputy speaker of the House accusing her of being verbally abusive.

She is also no stranger to controversy. In a telephone interview the same month regarding the country’s controversial protest law, Salam said that “any protestor should be shot with live rounds”.

Salam is an unwavering supporter of Sisi, who came to power following a military coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Last year, for example, she told Egyptian tabloid Youm 7: “I give President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a blank cheque with my life,” and argued that some laws – such as those on terrorism – should be passed by parliament without debate.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry was the backbone of Mubarak’s security state, who bolstered their influence to balance the country’s powerful military. Following the July 2013 coup, the military have regained their stature as the dominant player in Egypt’s byzantine power pyramid – to the detriment of an increasingly bitter police force that has recently been lashing out at other state institutions.

As if to underline this point, while these dramatic events were unfolding on Friday, MP Hassan Omar claimed that his brother and friends were held in detention for more than five hours by police without cause.

He made his claims in the same WhatsApp group set up by Egypt’s parliamentarians, where he wrote: “They were released and I found traces of electricity (shocks), torture and beatings, and they (police) told him: ‘Let the MP that you brought benefit you.’”

“Is all this because he is a police officer who steps on anybody and knows that he will not be held to account?”