TCAP Expansion Profile: Islamic State Bangladesh

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Reasons for inclusion

· Islamic State Bangladesh (ISB) (also known as Neo-Jama’at Mujahideen Bangladesh (Neo-JMB) or IS – Bengal Province)[1] is a violent Islamist group and regional Islamic State (IS) affiliate. The group has been designated as a separate terrorist organisation from IS by four designating authorities consulted for the TCAP Inclusion Policy, namely the US State Department, US Treasury, Canada, and Australia.[2]

· ISB was founded in 2014 and remains operationally active in Bangladesh as of May 2023. The group has claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings and other attacks across Bangladesh including the 2016 Holey Artisan Bakery Café attack that killed 22 people.

· ISB and its supporter networks have been consistently active online enabling the stable hosting of pro-ISB propaganda content. This propaganda content is produced by official and unofficial media entities recognised by the group as well as by centralised IS media outlets such as Amaq News Agency. Although this network is currently less active (at least publicly) on social media than in the past, historical propaganda content produced by the group’s official media outlet remains easily accessible on websites and archiving services.

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Legal status

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Threat

ISB is a violent Islamist group founded in 2014 by a group of unidentified individuals who pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then leader of Islamic State. This followed a wave of violent Islamist militancy in Bangladesh after the execution of Abdul Quader Mollah.[3] ISB claimed its first attack on 28 September 2015 when an Italian aid worker was killed in a shooting in Dhaka.

Bangladesh has a longstanding and sustained presence of violent Islamist militants and terrorist groups. One notable group is Jama'at Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown terrorist group that previously held ties to al-Qaeda. JMB splintered into two groups in 2014 with a new faction Neo-JMB aligned with Islamic State ideology forming Islamic State’s operative arm in Bangladesh. Neo-JMB is designated as a synonym of ISB by the Australian government and should be considered the same organisational entity. A key founder of Neo-JMB is Canadian/Bangladeshi national Tamim Chowdhury, a leading plotter of the 2016 Holey Artisan café attack.

On 1 July 2016, Islamic State claimed an attack carried out by five militants at the Holey Artisan Bakery café in Dhaka. During a 12-hour protracted hostage situation which led to the storming of the café, 20 hostages, 2 police officers and all of the militants were killed. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack posting images of the perpetrators with IS flags on official IS channels, however the Bangladeshi government disputes this claim. The attack marked a watershed moment, leading to increased counterterrorism focus on violent Islamist groups in Bangladesh.

ISB has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and other attacks across Bangladesh via its own propaganda outlets and through official IS propaganda outlets. On 25 March 2017, ISB claimed a bombing of security forces and a crowd in Sylhet that had gathered to watch a police raid against a suspected ISB network. The bombing killed six and injured a further 57 people. There has been extensive violent Islamist activity in Bangladesh since 2013 including the targeted killings of secular bloggers, members of the LGBTQ+ community, critics of fundamentalism, foreign nationals and members of the security forces.

The attribution of violence to specific groups in Bangladesh is complicated due to the presence of many overlapping militant groups and a lack of transparency by the government in Dhaka which has played down the role of transnational extremist influence. There has been a decline in the levels of terrorist violence in Bangladesh following the waves of violence from 2013-2017. However, experts at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) assess that the terrorist threat across Bangladesh has grown with wider radicalisation a concern despite lower levels of violence. In a 2022 report, Mubashar Hasan and Geoffrey Macdonald highlight that the current threat is catalysed by factors such as a lack of space for legitimate political dissent, radicalisation driven by the influence of domestic Islamist socio-political movements, and regional factors leveraged by extremists such as the plight of the Rohingya refugees and the Indian BJP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy.

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Online activity assessment

Islamic State Bangladesh has maintained a stable online presence since its inception, with heightened propaganda and recruitment activity online coinciding with the peak of its violent activities in 2015-2016. The earliest evidence of the group’s online activities is 2014 when Islamic State released a video featuring Bengali speakers pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi, the Emir of the new Caliphate. However, IS did not formally declare its presence in Bangladesh until November 2015 through an interview titled ‘The Revival of Jihad in Bengal’ in its English-language magazine Dabiq. This marked the start of a promotional drive of ISB’s activities by official IS media outlets, including the translation of propaganda content into Bengali and a growing number of attack claims in the country. [4]

The most high-profile attack claimed by the group, in which several armed men took hostages at a restaurant in Dhaka killing at least 20 people, was livestreamed on IS-affiliated social media accounts. The attack was claimed in an online post by ISB’s official media outlet, and promoted by an official news outlet affiliated with IS where photographs were shared from inside the restaurant and of the attackers holding their weapons before the assault.

ISB operates one official media outlet but has stated its recognition of five other unofficial outlets within its media network. The official media outlet has produced a range of audio, video and text materials including original content such as Bengali-language anasheed as well as Bengali translations and subtitling of other IS propaganda. The unofficial media outlets produce other (sometimes branded) content in support of ISB, including original videos in Bengali, articles, and Bengali-dubbed official IS propaganda videos.

There are two Bengali language websites dedicated to promoting ISB, providing a stable and centralised location for the groups’ propaganda. The more popular site has received over 40,000 visits on its current domain, which has been live since February 2023. Both sites host propaganda content produced by ISB’s official and unofficial media outlets and outlink to some of this content (such as videos and PDFs) hosted on file-sharing sites. One of the websites was reportedly created as part of a large-scale online propaganda campaign in early 2021, but has likely not been maintained following the arrest of the administrator by Bangladeshi authorities in July 2021.

ISB media entities have an online footprint elsewhere, including on a decentralised chat server affiliated with IS and its supporters, and dedicated channels on a popular messaging app. The group has been previously active on mainstream social media and its propaganda is easily accessible on archiving sites.

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Alerting Islamic State Bangladesh content

We will only be alerting propaganda content via the TCAP that is produced by ISB’s official media outlet. This will include videos (including subtitled IS propaganda videos), anasheed, IS newsletter translations and other official content. Content produced by the unofficial media outlets recognised by the group or in support of the group will not be in scope.

This entry is part of a series of monthly blogs dedicated to TCAP expansion, explaining the reasons for inclusion of each new TCAP entity. You can find our full Inclusion Policy, which explains the process and legal grounding we use for deciding which terrorist content we alert here.

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[1] While the group is referred to and designated under different names (most commonly IS Bangladesh or Neo-Jama'at Muhahideen Bangladesh), for our purposes we will use Islamic State Bangladesh to provide clarity on the group’s affiliation with Islamic State in line with the TCAP's current Inclusion Policy. These other names are listed as synonyms by the Australian government: ISIL-B; Islamic State of Iraq and Levant Bangladesh; Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Bangladesh; Islamic State-Banglar Caliphate; Islamic State-Bengal; Neo‑JMB.

[2] ISB is an affiliate (not an official province) of Islamic State’s global network. Neo-JMB (or its synonym Islamic State Bangladesh) is designated as a separate organisation to Islamic State by the US State Department, US Treasury Department, Canada, and Australia (see designation table).

[3] Abdul Quader Mollah was the leader of the Bangladeshi Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami. He was executed in 2013 by the Bangladeshi government after being convicted of perpetrating war crimes during the 1971 Bangladeshi war of independence.

[4] Note: Many of these claims are disputed, especially by the Bangladesh government (see above).