Ten Days After Attack, Questions Remain Unanswered in Bangladesh

The attack has pinned fear into the minds of two communities: the foreigners and the upper-middle class.

The girl wearing face-scrub and cucumber slices on her eyes twitched in her seat.

“Can someone take the slices off? I’m feeling restless,” she said, breathing heavily.

We were at an upscale salon in Gulshan – the neighbourhood where 20 hostages were brutally murdered in a massacre claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria(ISIS). It was only five days since five attackers stormed into a café frequented by foreigners, and hacked to death 17 foreigners and two Bangladeshis. Two police officers, a café worker, and a guard were also killed in the 11-hour-long standoff.

“I’ve been restless ever since it happened, even in the safest places,” says Farah (name changed). “I’ve woken up crying – wailing – in the middle of the night, without anything directly triggering it.”

She is not alone.

Gulshan, being the neighbourhood where many diplomats and foreign workers live, had always been deemed safer than the rest of Dhaka. It was common to see foreigners running or jogging on the streets, or commute on the rickshaws (three-wheeled cycles), or just grabbing a bite at the roadside cafes.

Not anymore. In just ten days since the attack, the streets have become hauntingly empty – despite it being Eid holidays. This Eid holiday was special for Bangladesh because it fell on the cusp of a weekend, thus allowing many to extend their leave for ten days by squeezing in two weekends.

Many were excitedly looking forward to the holidays that began on 1 July. Instead, by the end of the first day, everything had changed. Instead of celebrating, all of Dhaka was glued to the TV – or news websites – probably not realising they were witnessing an event that could change Bangladesh forever. Or at least for a while.

What the Gulshan massacre did was pin fear and despair into the mind of two of the safest communities in the country: the foreigners and the upper-middle class. In this neighbourhood, peppered with foreign offices and embassies, crime rates have been relatively low. And that is where the ISIS attack hit: The comfort zone of the upper-middle class, the people who had been safely tucked in a corner away from the graver realities of the developing country.

Their attack was a message to all: Nobody is safe. Not those with connections high-up, neither those with foreign passports. Definitely not those with foreign passports.  

The attackers had specifically targeted the foreign nationals, in a shameful blow to the secular values the government says is practiced in the country. However, in a country that continues to uphold Islam as a state religion, secularism is nothing but a false hope. In the days that followed, a glum fell over Dhaka.

“This year, for the first time in 10 years, I didn’t go out with my friends on Eid eve,” says Bikash, a musician and activist in Dhaka. “My parents are terrified that I may be targeted because of my views regarding secularism, as well as my activism and involvement in music.”

Bikash’s parents, belonging to the religious minority in the country, say they don’t see a future in the country, and have constantly been thinking of ways to send him away.

A New Panic

But parents aren’t only worried about their children being targeted in an attack – they are also worried about their children being vulnerable to the rigorous brainwashing and recruiting by ISIS, as had been the case with the Gulshan attackers.

As details emerged identifying the attackers as private-school educated youths from affluent backgrounds, a new panic set in.

Now, there was another layer to the shock, anguish and questions everyone had – it wasn’t anymore just “How did they carry out an attack in the safest neighbourhood with such high security?”; it was “How were the attackers one of us?”

Now, parents are beginning to ask questions about everything ranging from the education system to the children’s friend circles to information available on the Internet.

Add to this panic the list of unanswered questions for the community here: How many hostages were actually killed? Where are the hostages who were freed and then taken in by the law enforcement? Did the attackers kill themselves or did the army actually gun them down?

Ten days on, two hostages have gone missing – local police have said they were let go, but the families complain that they haven’t returned home yet, a rather terrifying twist to the situation.

And once again, with these questions, the entire community is grasping at straws. There are no answers; there is no security.

There is no hope.

To Move Forward

Today, as the black profile pictures begin to change on Facebook, and newspapers replace headlines with advertisements, a lot of questions remain about what happened that night.

Questions about where the community should go to process this grief, this silence, which has seeped into every household, every dinner table conversations.

There are numerous opinions and conspiracy theories about what needed to be done or what should be done, the questions that need to be answered, the confusion.

However, there is no opinion on how the entire community must grieve, on how the community can battle the panic and how the community can heal from this collective trauma.

(Rashida Latif is a pseudonym that has been used to protect the author’s identity.)