“THE JIHAD OF MACHETES”. CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

The aim of the research is to trace causes of the wave of terrorism in present day Bangladesh, to analyze the government’s response to it and to give possible scenarios of the further development of Bangladesh as the result of the clash between the government and radical Islamic terrorists. The research task is to make the monitoring of a press, the list of terrorist events and the list of victims and to analyze them. The main research method employed is historic one that puts all the events into the system of causes and consequences. The author finds the roots of present political instability in the ambiguous nature of Bangladesh and the conflict of the secular and the religious in its base. Bangladesh is the product of na-tionalist secession from the Islamic state of Pakistan while Pakistan is the result of Islamist secession from India. The author discusses numerous cases of terror in Bangladesh and attempts to give possible scenarios of political development in this South Asian country. The four most probable scenarios are the victory of the secular government, the change of the government and the domination of ‘mild Islamists’ in the new government, the Islamist victory and the new military coup that would suppress radical Islamists but also will suppress all legal political activity