IT was only with the Holey Artisan Bakery attack that the people of Dhaka, for the first time, discovered the faces of their own children among the ranks of militants. Twenty-eight people, including both Bangladeshi and foreign nationals, among them five police officers and the five assailants themselves, were killed in the militant attack on the night of 1 July 2016 at this upscale café, fringed by arborous lawns, next to the Gulshan Lake.

‘This sorrow shall never pass. We have lost our children. And our guests.’ Three days after the attack, the mayor of Dhaka North, addressing those gathered at the citizen’s memorial service held at the Gulshan Lake Park, also said, ‘We must take better care of our children, we have to be aware of what they are doing at all times.’ A desperate helplessness rang through the voice of civil society on that day: ‘This is not something we can do on our own, we have not been able to watch over our children.’ The same poignant refrain persisted in the vows taken towards the close of the service, ‘We have to keep a close eye on our children, who goes where, what they get up to – so that something like this does not ever happen again.’

Without doubt, the Holey Artisan attack was a considerable victory for the militants. Only five young boys were able to cause a staggering number of fatalities in this operation. Not only that, over nearly 12 hours preceding the mission led by the joint action force, the boys were able to post several updates on the massacre and upload pictures of those killed, which were subsequently published by the IS (Islamic State) through its propaganda agency, Amaq.

On Saturday, the morning of 2 July, following the commando mission led by the joint action force, the police released photographs of the corpses of the five assailants to the media. The previous night, IS had claimed responsibility for the attack and published head shots of the same five boys – the incandescent smiling faces of five boys, barely past their adolescence, with red and white chequered scarves tied around their heads. Three of them, whose identities were brought forward by netizen journalists, were the boys that went missing from Dhaka – Nibras, Rohan and Mubasheer. The other two were Khairul and Shafiqul. One was a madrasa student. The other had done his HSC (High School Certificate) from a small town. Both were sons of agricultural labourers, and had no Facebook friends or contacts to recount the details of their colourful lives in retrospect.

 

Gisbelief, remorse, affection and grief overwhelmed statuses posted on Facebook the day after the massacre. Some were bewildered, devastated. It was impossible to reconcile the beautiful, innocent faces of the militants with the ruthless brutality of their actions. It was as if this disconnect between the two only exacerbated a sense of remorse. How these boys became militants was an even bigger enigma – how could these educated sons of the most privileged, most affluent class, have possibly turned into practitioners of terror!

Rohan Ibne Imtiaz was studying at BRAC University, after having completed his A levels from Scholastica, a top of the line English medium private school in Dhaka. On 30 December 2015, he said he was going on a trip with his friends, and then disappeared. This is what his father, Imtiaz Khan, stated in the GD (General Diary) he lodged at the police station after his disappearance. It became known in the course of the police investigation later that Rohan had become involved in terrorist activities. There followed attempts to intercept him. Messages were left at the airport to stop him from leaving the country. In January 2016, Rohan’s father posted a snapshot of Rohan and his mother on Facebook, alongside a status, that said, ‘Son, your mother is ill. Please come back home.’ It was followed by another plaintive status last June, ‘Where are you my child? Please come home.’

Aged about eighteen and a half, Meer Sameh Mubasheer was an A-level student at Scholastica. On 29 February this year, he went missing on his way to a coaching centre in Gulshan from his residence in Banani. After Mubasheer’s disappearance, it was observed in a CC camera footage that he had let go of his car next to the Gulshan Agora (a supermarket) and had continued towards Banani 11 in a rickshaw. His phone had been switched off around this time. He had not been in contact with his family either. A GD was lodged with the police stating his disappearance.

On the day of the attack at Holey Artisan, Mubasheer’s father had a feeling that after four long months, this was going to be the day he came back home. Mubasheer came back all right; only it wasn’t his father he came back to, but as one of the executioners at Holey Artisan. Mubasheer’s father, Meer Hayat Kabir, told journalists later, ‘He wasn’t the sharpest of kids. I kept having this feeling that he had come under some kind of ill influence.’

 

Nibras Islam was a student at the Malaysia campus of Monash University. Before that, he had studied in Dhaka at the International Turkish Hope School and North South University respectively. Nibras was a smart, good looking, outgoing young man. In a status posted on Facebook someone had wondered: ‘How could such a sweet boy have carried out a militant attack at Gulshan!’ Nibras himself had been quite active on Facebook once. One can get a sense of the adventurous and glamorous life led by this 22 year-old youth from the snapshots of nightclubs in Kuala Lumpur, selfies shot with stars, or in the company of friends, and videos that he posted at the time. Nibras was incredibly passionate about playing football. ‘Who could have known that a boy so crazy about football would have met this end!’ said Nibras’ father, Nazrul Islam, speaking to journalists a month after the Holey Artisan massacre; he added, ‘I am a businessman. But no matter how much work I had, I always played football with my son every day. Our neighbours were completely astounded by the skills of our father-son team on the field.’

Even while he was in hiding at Jhinaidaha, Nibras used to play football with the neighbourhood kids in a field adjoining the mosque in front of the mess-house where he had put up. They knew him as ‘Saeed’, and called him Saeed bhai; Saeed bhai, who would often play English songs for them. Nibras Islam went missing from his residence in Uttara on 3 February. A GD was lodged by his family at Dhanmandi Police Station on 5 February.

 

No GDs were launched for the remaining two boys who were not from Dhaka. A lad from Bagura district, Shafiqul Islam had passed his Intermediate Arts (IA) and was working at a kindergarten in Ashulia, near Dhaka. On a visit home last December, he had said he was going to a chilla (continuous prayer for forty days) for the Tablighi Jamaat (movement urging Muslims to return to Sunni Islam) and then disappeared. Khairul Islam, on the other hand, vanished after enlisting himself in the fazil class (IA) at a madrasa. Khairul’s mother at first pleaded with journalists to have a missing notice published in the papers, but then hastily drew back in fear when she learnt that she would have to file a GD with the police.

Even after the Holey Artisan incident, when the police went to Khairul’s parents with a newspaper that had published a photograph of their son, they denied having any knowledge of his whereabouts. Both of them were taken into custody by the police. The same thing happened with Shafiqul’s father and brother, both agricultural labourers. People who tend to believe, or know from experience, that it is always dangerous to disclose the truth to the police, or to a court of law. Thus predictably, they lied and said that Shafiqul was in Dhaka, he had a job there. Later, the police compared the picture they had brought with them to a framed photograph of Shafiqul that hung on the wall. Shafiqul’s father and brother also identified him when they were shown a photograph of his corpse. They were then taken to the police station for questioning.

 

It has been widely believed for some time that the madrasas in Bangladesh are nurturing militants. This is the reason why there had been repeated demands for equal education for all – a secular education, founded on science. Ironically, four out of the team of five militants in the Gulshan attack happened to be boys ‘enlightened by secular education’. While this temporarily exempts madrasa students from being labelled potential militants, the upper class parents of the militants have now fallen victim to an ocean of blame. As parents who know nothing about their children, parents too absorbed in their luxurious lifestyles and the pursuit of money to care, etc.

But there are quite a few technology angles to this sudden surge of militancy that might elude even the most affluent of parents. They might well know of Facebook, or WhatsApp, but unless they are exceptionally adept in the use of these social media platforms, it is impossible for them to effectively monitor their children. Besides, they cannot really curtail their children’s movements online late into the night, because then it becomes an issue of breaching the privacy of someone over 18 years of age. While the majority of Bangladeshis might have no misgivings about invading their children’s right to privacy, the educated upper class still feels compelled to observe these finer boundaries.

 

A resident of Banani, Dhaka, Mubasheer’s father Meer Hayat Kabir, however, summarily waives these concerns about privacy when he says, ‘We were extremely conscious parents. And yet they managed to snatch my child away from my secure, well guarded home. How powerful do you think they must be, if no one has managed to apprehend them in all this time! Today, they have wrenched my child from my care. Tomorrow, the same fate will befall some other unfortunate parent. This is a national crisis.’

It was, in all senses, a national crisis. Consequently, the Holey Artisan attack at Gulshan literally shook the administration to its roots. Identification of militant bases and hideouts, and crackdowns to intercept and arrest suspects were being carried out simultaneously with the special force RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) releasing an exhaustive list of all missing persons. The list was collated from all GDs lodged with police stations associated with the disappearance of individuals. Though at first there were 262 names on the list, the number quickly came down to 68. This was because not everyone missing was a militant.

Many stories disclosing the strange reasons for which people leave their homes were suddenly brought to light anew by this exercise. The most typical reason for leaving home has always been bankruptcy in business, or an inability to repay debts. School-going boys often ran away from home because of a particularly disastrous exam result, or because they felt overwhelmed by the constant pressure to study and do well. Recently, girls have been found to run away for the same reasons as well. Neither is it unusual for young boys or girls to elope and get married.

An incident of this sort caused a lot of turmoil once the list of missing persons was brought out by the RAB. A girl from Munshiganj, a college student, had run away from home a couple of months earlier. She was a hijabi. As if that wasn’t bad enough, to reassure her parents after her disappearance, she had sent them a chit of paper, which said, ‘Do not worry for me. I am in a sacred place.’ Naturally, her family, friends and neighbours all concluded that she must have left on a militant mission. In spite of a General Diary being filed with the police, this is how the rumours spread quickly. It was even reported in a couple of newspapers and magazines. The girl, however, having discovered her name and photograph on the list of missing persons that was being circulated everywhere, turned up at a police station and said that she had eloped with a teacher she knew from when she was in school, and was now married and living happily with her spouse in Dhaka.

 

The disappearance of an engineer, Rahaat Bin Abdullah, from a building under construction in Mohammadpur, Dhaka, was another mystifying incident. Eyewitnesses have testified that two men had come to see Rahaat while he was at work. It was 11 in the morning at the time. Rahaat was last seen walking along Road No. 10, Mohammadpur, while talking to these two men. He was never seen again. He used to have two mobile phones. One of those expensive mobile sets had been plugged in for charging, and was left behind. The owner of the building, for which Rahaat was supervising construction, lodged a GD with the police reporting his disappearance, and thus his name too has now been added to the list of militants.

This mode of disappearance, however, no longer surprises anyone. The disappearance of most of the young boys involved in the Holey Artisan and Sholakia (to be discussed later) attacks were all similarly abrupt. They had all left without the slightest indication to anyone, leaving everything behind.

When the lists of names and photographs of the missing youth had begun to be circulated on various platforms, the militant pages on Facebook became very vocal in response. ‘Salauddiner Ghora’ (Salauddin’s Steed) extended a maslat, or advice – ‘For the brothers who have left for jihad, keep your silence.’ Jihadi brothers were also advised to maintain the utmost care in the use of mobile phones and the Internet. At the same time though, extensive question-answer sessions on the IS and jihad were also taking place openly on online conferences and forums.

 

Anyway, the story of the missing boys of Dhaka is not done yet. Within six days of the Holey Artisan massacre, another horrifying attack took place in Sholakia, in Kishoreganj district, at the largest eid jamaat (congregation) in the country. In the Sholakia attack, two policemen, a local woman, and a militant lost their lives. The dead militant was another boy who had gone missing from Dhaka, Abir Rehman, who had completed his A-levels and O-levels from Bangladesh International Tutorial, before going on to study at North South University. (It must be noted here, that in a mostly monolingual country like Bangladesh, the only means to an English education are these English medium institutions, which in turn are accessible only to the children of the elite upper classes.)

Once the two sides stopped exchanging fire, Abir was found lying in the mud at Sholakia, shot dead, dressed in his eid finery, on the day of eid. As in the case of the Holey Artisan assailants, or the deceased militants of Kalyanpur Operation Storm 26, Abir’s family refused to take custody of his corpse as well. His body was interred at the municipal burial ground in Kishoreganj under the surveillance of armed policemen. The Imam-sahib performing Abir’s last rites took off his sandals on the grass and recited the janaza (funeral prayers) all by himself. Abir went missing from his residence at Basundhara four months before the Sholakia operation.

 

Abir was there at the Jhinaidaha hideout along with Nibras and six others. But he did not play football and would sit quietly by the side of the field. Sometimes he played cricket with children in some small ground or the other close to the field. He had a laid-back, swaying walk. When the local boys asked his name, Nibras had quickly responded, ‘He is my khala’s (uncle’s) son.’ The mess house where Nibras and the rest had put up used to be a cowshed. The owner had converted it into a room when he saw that several students’ mess-houses were doing good business in the neighbourhood. It was a simple brick and mortar affair, with a tin roof, roughly fifteen by twelve feet, divided into four small rooms. By way of furniture, it had tables, chairs, raised wooden planks for beds and a few pillows and quilts. Only two of the four rooms had rudimentary wooden racks for clothes.

The militant hideout at Kalyanpur, on the other hand, better known as the ‘Jahaj-bari’ (Ship-house) not only had no furniture to speak of, there were no beds or mattresses either, although the fourth floor apartment of the six-storied building had been rented out as a bachelors’ mess. Following Operation Storm 26, the police brought out a list, with pictures, of all the items and belongings that were found in the flat. For example, a pistol, two machetes, and a sunglass were found on a pink plastic tray. Two plastic shelves in a corner carried two cans of shaving foam, toothbrushes and the red and white checkered headscarves. Elsewhere, there were black banners made in the manner of IS flags, inscribed with the kalmia (holy words) in white lettering (one such flag was hung in the place of a window curtain in one of the rooms), head-coverings similar to the IS, and similar black outfits.

There were jihadi books along with documentation of their own activities. Several backpacks bearing Wilson logos were piled together, the kind of bags that were found on the Holey Artisan assailants as well. Because of the jihadi books and notebooks found inside the backpacks, it has been speculated that this hideout was probably used by the militants to hold meetings. A bag found with its zipper open contained mobile phones, modem boxes, notebooks and scarves. Two laptops were found in an untidy pile of bags and clothes. Ash and burnt fragments of currency notes of ten, twenty, and five hundred and other paper documents were found littered on the floor. The dead militants had been wearing black punjabis (loose, short, collarless shirts), and had red and white check scarves wound around their necks. One of the militants had been carrying a backpack when he was gunned down.

 

On 26 July 2016, in the Kalyanpur mission led by a special force of Bangladesh, SWAT (Special Weapons and Arms Tactics), nine militants were killed, one of them was intercepted in an injured state, and another got away. Out of the nine who were killed, three were Dhaka’s missing boys. One of them, a student of North South, called Shahzad Rouf Arko, was a friend of Nibras Islam’s. He held of an American passport, and was the son of an arms and ammunitions trader.

 

Though Shahzad was born in Dhaka, he had been brought up in the United States. After his mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2008, the entire family moved to Dhaka, where he was enrolled at the American International School. Their company, New Victor Limited (NVL), had been operating as a local agent since 1977, supplying arms and ammunition. This was a matter of great pride to Shahzad. In the biography he shared on LinkedIn, he says: ‘We (NVL) are the oldest company in this business sector. …We supply military defence equipment from abroad (China, England, Italy, USA, Canada, Korea, South Africa) to Police, Army, RAB, Navy, BOF headquarters.’ After his grandfather, Brigadier General Abdur Rouf, and his father, Towhid Rouf, Shahzad Rouf must have been slated to become the next managing director for the company. This was the role he had been preparing himself for. Shahzad wrote about his work with NVL: ‘I supervised how the company was undertaking current and future transactions.’

Moreover, after his BBA, Shahzad was supposed to leave for the US for his MBA. On 3 February Nibras and Shahzad went missing from their respective houses within a few hours of each other. Shahzad’s father, because of the nature of his business, was on good terms with all branches of the armed forces. Apart from lodging a GD on 6 February, he made every possible effort to find Shahzad. Yet he was unable to find his son while he was still alive.

The day after the Kalyanpur Operation, on 27 February, when Towhid Rouf arrived at the Dhaka Medical College morgue to identify his son’s body, he felt, in spite of a birthmark next to his nose and his slightly crooked ear, that he couldn’t quite recognize his son. He appeared a lot thinner than he could remember.

Like Nibras Islam’s, Shahzad’s death also created a lot of noise in newspapers, magazines and on social media. Not merely as the son of his dollar-millionaire father, but because of his smart, fun loving personality and his sweet face. Shahzad Rouf’s mother used to sing songs of Tagore. Shahzad liked to sing as well. He had been last heard singing the Anjan Dutt song ‘Chakrita ami peye gechhi Bela shunchho’ (‘Bela, are you listening, I got the job’) at a family gathering in January 2016. A Facebook status about Shahzad Rouf laments – ‘You were born with the resplendence of the sun. Why did you extinguish yourself to the dark? Is this what you meant all along?’ In all likelihood it’s an excessive reaction. Another online reader says, ‘Like Shahzad, we would like to know the story of the other eight militants killed in the gunfight with the police at Kalyanpur in Dhaka.’

 

All three boys killed in the police gunfire in the Kalyanpur Operation were from Gulshan-Baridhara-Dhanmandi, the poshest neighbourhoods of Dhaka. They were all students at North South University. On their team was another militant called Motiyar, who came from a poor family from Satkheera and had nothing to call his own. Motiyar’s parents were separated when he was four years old. He spent many more years living with his father and his stepmother in dismal poverty, with little access to education. His biological mother sometimes worked as a labourer in garment factories, or as an agricultural day labourer in the village. It is not clear if she knew what her son did for a living.

Motiyar lived with an aunt who worked as a labourer in the garment industry since he came to Dhaka a few years ago. She did not know what he had been up to, where he went, or who he met. This is how unsupervised his life had been, not unusual for someone of Motiyar’s means. Parents like his had to be content as long as their child was not a burden on them. When someone told Motiyar’s father, about ten or twelve days before the incident at Kalyanpur, ‘Your son has signed up with militants’, the news inspired neither belief, nor disbelief. Lodging a GD for his son’s disappearance was obviously out of the question. This did not mean he loved his son any less. He lost consciousness when he heard on the television news that his son was dead, and has been in extremely ill health since then. His mother now works as a domestic labourer in Saudi Arabia, but no one knows what state she is in.

 

The entirety of Motiyar’s life as a militant is unknown, and inaccessible to our knowledge. But he left behind a photograph which probably says a great deal. By some extraordinary sleight of hand, he was granted the same status as Shahzad, a millionaire’s son from Baridhara, Alam Abdullah, the Madrasa graduate, or Naeem, the Middle East returned militant. All of them stand side by side in the photograph, dressed in the black outfit of the IS, knife in hand. It probably compensated for all the things Motiyar had been denied in life.

But what was the story with the missing boys of Dhaka? Compared to Motiyar, they were rolling in money. They weren’t children from broken families either. They had been known to read the namaz however, nearly all of them. Some of them played football as well. Some pounded drum sets and sang songs. The ones who read the namaz, were regular attendees at their mosques. It is also popularly believed that the mosques are where boys are initiated into militancy. This is how events unfold in the memoir titled, The true story of how a young man slowly became a militant.

 

It was quite a few years ago, the narrator was an adolescent at the time; speaking about his life back then, the narrator writes, ‘My home, school and coaching centre gave me no respite, it was only at the mosque that I could find a strange sense of calm. I spent as much time as I could sitting in the silence of the mosque.’ This was where he met another well meaning young man, who seemed genuinely interested in listening to him. One day, the narrator was cruelly humiliated by a girl in his class, and sat weeping by himself in the mosque, when this caring young man came up to him. Having listened to the whole story, he said, ‘This girl is an emissary from the devil, she can only lead you into sin.’ A few days later, the narrator was invited to a daawat (banquet), where discussions were held on how to protect Muslims from oppression and abuse, and how to establish Allah’s rule on earth.

Akifuzzaman, a boy from Gulshan who was killed in the Kalyanpur operation, was remembered thus by his next door security guard when he spoke to journalists: ‘He used to take the road towards the north of the house to go to the mosque. He was sometimes dressed in a punjabi, and sometimes in a shirt and pant.’ His statement was descriptive, not very illuminating in terms of actual facts. It was the same in the case of Taj-Ul-Haque Rashiq, a boy from Dhanmandi, who was also killed in the same operation. It was known from Rashiq’s apartment manager that he read the namaz-kalma. He would go out when it was time for maghrib (prayer after sunset, the fourth of the five formal daily prayers). He had not been seen in the last six months.

About the youngest assailant in the Holey Artisan attack, Meer Sameh Mubasheer, his father said that he read the namaz regularly. Rohan Imtiaz’s father says he had been reading the namaz since class five. Shahzad Rouf Arko’s mother passed away when he was in school. He used to wake his father up on Friday mornings, and asked to go to his mother’s grave so he could pray for her. Arko’s father, Towhid Rouf, says – ‘He had suddenly started reading the namaz. My son was reading the namaz, and I was not; this caused a feeling of guilt in me.’ Towhid Rouf has come to believe that his son fell into the clutches of a militant group nearly three years ago, after he was admitted into North South University. He suspected from the changes he observed in his son’s behaviour that something was wrong at North South.

 

Many others are of the same opinion. In 2013, the murderers of blogger Rajib had been students of North South. The assailants in Gulshan and Sholakia and most of the men from Dhaka killed at the militant den in Kalyanpur all went to the same university. Among them only Rohan Ibne Imtiaz had been a student of BRAC. ‘Where was he trained, where did he spend the last six months?’ asks Rohan’s father. ‘I never saw him read anything about jihad. I was dumbfounded when the IS published his photograph.’

Most people have not been able to get over this state of shock. Rohan Imtiaz Ali was one of the assailants at Holey Artisan, whose faces made you think it wasn’t them, but someone else who must have perpetrated the massacre through their hands. But if it had indeed been them, how long did it take for them to graduate to this stage?

Only eight months. The answer was a confession from Suman Hossain Patwari, who was a salesman at a medical equipment shop in Andarkillah, Chittagong. His statement was documented by the court on 21 June under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Bangladesh. Nineteen-year old Suman was sent on a mission to slaughter Ahmedur Rashed Chowdhury Tutul, the publisher of blogger Avijit Roy, who had been murdered earlier. Eight months was all it took for him to be fully prepared to embark on a mission, during which he listened to nasihats (advice) from the Hadith and the Holy Quran, was initiated in jihad, and trained to use a machete and a pistol.

 

It is no longer possible to listen to the confessions or testimonials of the boys killed in Holey Artisan, Sholakia, or Kalyanpur. Perhaps the only recourse left is to search the recruitment manuals of the IS or Al Qaeeda for clues. By the time Shahzad was singing an Anjan Dutt song in January 2016, his life had already been committed to the path of jihad – this was concluded by putting together the news and facts that have been published in newspapers and magazines. It’s not known if he had faith in the Islamic interdiction against music and songs for being haram (forbidden). But the declaration of jihad that Shahzad makes in an audio message is harsher, and more horrific.

Following the police raid at the militant den in Kalyanpur, along with various kinds of jihadi alamat (signs), some audio clippings were found, among which were audio messages from Shahzad and two other boys.

‘This is Shahzad Rouf a.k.a. Arko. I want to dedicate this message to my family, Towhid Rouf and others, and all my family members, everyone, and those who support Sheikh Hasina, the taghut (renegade or idolater), people who do not support Allah’s Shariyah law. Remember, only if you support Allah’s Shariyah law that’s when you can go to heaven. That’s the only way to go to paradise. That’s exactly what we did. We are here. We immigrated from our homes. We had everything, we had everything. All for the sake to do jihad. That either we kill or get killed, then paradise is for us. You’ve to understand the real thing here. That jihad is all about maintaining the Shariah law. That’s exactly what we do. You have to understand that you guys support Sheikh Hasina, the murtad (a Muslim who consciously abandons Islam by a word or act). You guys support democracy, that is why you guys are doing shirk (the sin of polytheism or idolatry) and that’s why I’m happy to call my family all murtads, all kuffars (non-believers). You can be saved and go to paradise. Allah Hu Akbar. And remember, small people, you know, small group like us will get victory over the huge people. That’s exactly what’s going on. Small group of us, we are gonna defeat you, we are gonna fight you until there is no more fitnah (chaos or secession from true rule, persecution of true believers). And Insha Allah, we are ready with our weapons right now. The police and RAB and whoever it is, all the kuffars can come any time. We are ready to kill them and gain jannat (paradise).’

 

How does Sheikh Hasina configure as a woman leading the state, or even as a person, in this context? It could just as well have been any other head of state instead, or even a dictator for that matter. The curious thing is that when lack of democracy is cited, from all quarters at home and abroad, as the reason behind the rise of extremist militancy in Bangladesh, it is this very naam ka waastey ‘democracy’ that becomes the democracy described with such aplomb in Shahzad’s statement. Perhaps it is precisely because democracy is a man made state system opposing the rule of Allah that makes these attacks jayaz (legal, permitted, justified) in Bangladesh. And it follows that anyone who supports democracy, or does not declare jihad against it, is a murtad, and therefore can be killed with impunity.

This had been the crux of Shahzad’s message to his family – judged in his tariqa (path towards spiritual knowledge) they are murtads no less. This message from a beloved child must have sunk like a dagger into the heart of everyone who had been close to him. It did provoke a string of instantaneous reactions online – ‘See today’s headline. These terrorists especially Shahzad hated their families! What a bunch of losers!’

 

A lot more has to be said in this context. Shahzad and his peers want to overthrow democracy, to establish the rule of Allah, and Shariah law in its place. This is the very raison d’être of their jihad. A jihad in which one must kill and be killed, until fitnah (chaos) is brought to an end, and Allah’s deen (absolute submission to the rule of Allah) is founded. This is a martyr’s death. And it is the only way to behesht or paradise.

Following the Kalyanpur operation, the investigating body seized some digital devices belonging to the militants. There was a diagram found on a device. It explains with the help of a flow chart the trajectory of the path to behesht, which echoes Shahzad’s audio message. At first a child is conceived in its mother’s womb from the realm of the rooh (spirit or soul). Once it is born it is blessed with life as a human. In the diagram, right next to ‘death’ appears the word ‘shaheed’ (martyr) marked in red; a line leads directly to behesht from it, which means they need not be subjected to the hassle befalling ordinary souls on roz-e-hashr (the day of judgement). Is this what incited the missing boys of Dhaka into becoming militants?

On 23rd September 2016, the day after the bodies of the Holey Artisan assailants were buried, the IS, following their usual practice, released a video running 14 minutes and 58 seconds, which makes the larger motive behind their global anti-imperialist agenda, and more specifically the Holey Artisan attacks, a little clearer.

 

According to the narration in the video, it was primarily to avenge the slaughter of Muslim men, women and children in Iraq and Syria by the ‘Crusaders’, that the five young jihadis undertook this operation. ‘Dear Crusader, you will flee the soil of Bengal’. Nibras Islam, gun slung around his neck, and with a chopper extended towards the audience, adds to his statement ‘… We will not let you sleep in peace, your hearts will quake in fear.’ Like his four companions, Nibras was, at the time, garbed in the’ black uniform of the IS, his head swathed in a red and white checkered scarf, with the black banner of the IS visible behind them as backdrop. It ought to be noted that the corpses of all the assailants, after being held at the Dhaka CMH (Combined Military Hospital) for a period of one month and 22 days, were interred as unclaimed bodies at the Jurain burial grounds.

A lot of people believe that the attack at Holey Artisan was definitely a suicide mission; it doesn’t matter whether they were killed in the commando attack or by their own hands. They had the opportunity to execute a lightning attack and flee. In which case, they would have had to confront, at the most, four or five policemen on patrol. But they did not do that. Instead, they staged their act throughout the entire night, a horrific example of how savage extremist Muslims could be. They left a message scrawled on the wall at Holey Artisan in English, ‘We are on our way to the afterlife, the police will find bad news waiting for them.’ As if going to the afterlife was like dropping off the network. An apt thought for smart boys of the digital generation no doubt!

The staff of Holey Bakery recounted how the boys cheerfully made jokes among themselves. A member of the staff told journalists that on the morning of 2 July, when the kitchen staff were let out of the toilet (where they had been locked in the entire night), he came out and saw corpses lying everywhere all over the large room of the café. The floor was awash with blood. There were a couple of young men present at the scene, so he thought to himself they were probably plainclothes officers of the law, the murderers had fled. He walked up to them and asked, ‘Bhai, they killed so many people. Couldn’t you have done something about it?’ The boys with weapons laughed at him, ‘But we were the ones that killed them.’ They added a little later, still smiling, ‘See these corpses? We will be lying there in the same way in a while. And be on our way to paradise.’

Another member of the staff from Holey Artisan testified that he had seen the militants use phones, tabs and laptops. They had read out one of the messages to the staff held as hostage, which was sent to congratulate them on their good work. The militants had been reading the news on their mobile phones and laughing among themselves, we could hear them say loudly, ‘They used to call us terrorists before, now they’re calling us militants (jongi). They don’t know what they’re going to call us tomorrow.’

Did these boys themselves know who they were, or what might be an appropriate name to call them?