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By IILD Research Desk | March 2026
The standard counter-terrorism playbook — surveillance, detention, prosecution — has its place. But in a society emerging from prolonged political violence and institutional decay, applying that playbook without a corresponding investment in grievance-reduction is likely to generate as much instability as it resolves. Bangladesh is at precisely that juncture, and the choices made now will shape the country’s security environment for a generation.
The threat landscape in Bangladesh is neither simple nor static. Extremist networks that gained recruits during periods of political marginalisation do not disappear when the political wind changes. They adapt. Organisations that operated under the cover of legitimate politics may find themselves newly exposed; some will go underground, others will seek new patrons. Understanding these dynamics requires analytical capacity that goes beyond security agencies counting arrests.
What the evidence from comparable contexts consistently shows is that security-centric approaches, unaccompanied by political accommodation and development investment, tend to be self-limiting. They can suppress overt violence in the short term, but they rarely address the underlying conditions — exclusion, humiliation, the perception that the state is predatory rather than protective — that make extremism attractive to marginalised young men. Bangladesh’s post-uprising context, with its heightened political tensions and economic pressures, is one where those conditions require careful attention.
The Rohingya situation adds a layer of complexity that deserves honest acknowledgement. The camps in Cox’s Bazar represent a humanitarian emergency, a significant economic pressure on a poor region, and a potential security vulnerability — not because Rohingya people are inherently threatening, but because large concentrations of stateless, legally constrained populations with limited economic opportunity create the conditions that criminal and extremist networks can exploit. A counter-terrorism strategy for Bangladesh that does not include a serious engagement with the Rohingya situation is incomplete.
Community policing models have shown promise in several South and Southeast Asian contexts. They are difficult to implement because they require genuine trust between police and communities that has often been destroyed by years of partisan policing. Rebuilding that trust cannot be done by decree; it requires sustained, consistent behaviour change over years. This means that the reform of the police — its culture, its accountability mechanisms, its relationship to political authority — is not merely a governance question but a security one.
Deradicalisation programming in Bangladesh has a mixed record. Some community-based initiatives have shown genuine results; others have been captured by political considerations or implemented without adequate theory of change. A serious evaluation of what has worked, by whom, and under what conditions would be a valuable contribution to both policy and practice. IILD’s own work in this space has pointed to the importance of local ownership and flexibility in design.
The regional dimension matters. Bangladesh’s security environment is directly shaped by developments in Myanmar, India, and increasingly in the broader Indo-Pacific. Coordination with regional partners — on intelligence sharing, border management, and the governance of shared maritime spaces — is essential and remains underdeveloped. The institutional frameworks for this coordination exist in partial form but function poorly.
Finally, there is the question of the digital space. Radicalisation increasingly occurs online, and Bangladesh’s growing internet penetration means that young Bangladeshis are exposed to extremist content that originates far beyond the country’s borders. Regulatory responses have tended toward blunt censorship, which is both ineffective and has significant costs for free expression. More sophisticated approaches — counter-narrative programming, digital literacy education, cooperation with platform companies — are available but require investment and expertise.
Counter-terrorism in Bangladesh requires a strategic patience that is politically difficult but analytically necessary. The temptation to demonstrate effectiveness through visible action — raids, arrests, prosecutions — is understandable. But the deeper work of building a society in which extremism finds fewer recruits is slower, less photogenic, and ultimately more important.
Bangladesh’s security is ultimately a function of its political health. A state that is perceived as legitimate, accountable, and committed to the welfare of all its citizens — including its minorities and its poor — is a state that extremism cannot easily exploit. That is not a counter-terrorism strategy; it is a governance aspiration. But in a post-conflict context, the two are inseparable.
