Bangladesh's 'democracy' threatened by extremism

GAZIPUR, BANGLADESH — Nobody noticed the suicide bomber. He seemed to be an ordinary tea hawker: the poorest of the poor, dressed in dirty clothes and carrying a pair of tea flasks -- a common sight in the streets of Bangladesh.

As he tried to enter the local government headquarters, two policemen stopped him. His behaviour suddenly changed. "I will teach you a lesson," he shouted. He put down his tea flasks and yanked a wire device from one of them. There was a deafening explosion, and a crowd of people fell to the ground, covered in blood.

Mohammed Nurul Amin, a prominent lawyer, was just a few feet away. He was walking to a rally to protest a suicide bombing that had killed and injured dozens of lawyers just two days earlier in the same town. But as he tried to protest against one suicide bombing, he was caught in the devastation of another. "I couldn't imagine that he was carrying a bomb, even when I saw him pulling the wire from the tea flask," Mr. Amin said. Read all of Geoffrey York's article here: Extremism exploding in Bangladesh: Islamic militants turn to suicide bombings in threat to country's secular democracy

Mark