The first suicide bombers in Dhaka made me remember a Bangladeshi youth I had chanced to meet in Rome in 1996. I was out on a stroll around Trevi?s Fountain one October evening when the young man barely out of his teens approached me. He was selling flowers. I immediately knew him as a Bangladeshi and asked him if he was one. He first said he was from Siliguri in West Bengal. A few questions later, he not only gave up the pretence, but also became friendly enough to tell me his story.

He was from Lakshmipur in what used to be Noakhali district until H.M. Ershad, the army chief who seized power to become Bangladesh?s president in 1981, upgraded all 62 upazillas (subdivisions) to districts. Life for the young man?s family was, like that for most families in that country, a grim battle against crushing poverty. By the time he left school, young men from poor families were offered an escape from poverty and a bleak future ? only if they mustered some courage. They could look forward to becoming soldiers of Islam, fighting infidels in far-off lands and, in death, becoming martyrs for the cause.

So this youth was launched by his mentors on the jihadi course. He was taken to Pakistan for a training in arms, sent to Kashmir, the taliban camps in Afghanistan and finally landed in Bosnia to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs. When the Bosnian ethnic war ended, he was smuggled into Italy by his former comrades-in-arms. Having found shelter among the Bangladeshis who lived in their ghettos near the Roma Termini railway station, he began a new life doing odd jobs. ?One day I hope to return home as a muktijoddha,? he told me.

That was the first time I heard the word, ?Muktijoddha? used by a Bangladeshi to mean warriors of Islam. For a quarter of a century since the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, the word meant warriors of the country?s liberation from Pakistan. The 1971 war had been the focal point of not only Bangladesh?s politics but also of its new culture, of the new identity of its people.

Even before the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in that country, sections of Bangladeshis faced a conflict of identities. Are they Bengalis first or Muslims first? That was the sum of this conflict. The overwhelming majority of them still believed themselves to be Bengalis first. How else would one explain the 1971 war, they argued. Of course, they were Muslims, but if that was all, they had no reason to rise in revolt against Muslim Pakistan.

Islamic fundamentalists saw things differently. They wanted Bangladeshis to be Muslims first and Muslims last. But the political and cultural legacy of 1971 was the biggest hurdle for remaking Bangladesh in their image. Hence their attacks on all institutions, individuals and ideas that kept the legacy alive. In politics, the targets were the Awami League and other secular parties; in cultural fields, songs of Rabindranath Tagore or secular Bengali festivals such as Poila Baisakh were the icons that needed to be demolished; liberal poets and writers such as Shamsur Rahman and Humayun Azad had to be silenced. Also high on the fundamentalists? hit lists were NGO activists, especially women, and the press.

Two events gave a big push to the Islamists? agenda in Bangladesh. The Soviet pullout from Afghanistan happened in 1989, followed soon by the rise of the taliban. Two years later, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party assumed power in Dhaka on the crest of a wave of anti-Ershad agitations, in which the Awami League too had a major role. For the majority of Bangladeshis, the end of Ershad?s military rule brought the first taste of demo- cracy since the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in 1975.

But, for the Islamic militants, it was their moment of opportunity. Driven by their hatred of the Awami League, sections of the BNP leadership moved closer to the fundamentalists and their Pakistani minders. In its zeal to settle scores with the League, the government of Khaleda Zia raked up anti-1971 ? and anti-India ? sentiments. This was just what the Islamists wanted.

As the taliban, and Afghanistan, increasingly became the centre of Islamist world, Bangladeshi jihadists quietly worked their way into different sections of the society. They were still small in number and their influence limited, but they formed a nucleus that would later spread much wider. No less than 34 Bangladeshi mujahedins died in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. One of them, Abdur Rehman Farooqi, is believed to be the founder of the Bangladesh wing of the Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami.

The next big surge in Islamic militancy in Bangladesh came when the Awami League returned to power in 1996 after a gap of 22 years. The League?s liberal, if not entirely secular, politics was anathema to Islamists. What had so far been covert campaigns now turned into open acts of terror. Five years of Sheikh Hasina Wajed?s rule saw countless attacks on liberal institutions and people, including two on her life. Time and again, Hasina accused the BNP, the Jamat-e-Islami and the more aggressively fundamentalist groups of plotting these attacks. Such groups proliferated under different names and unleashed new forms of terror as if to compete among themselves.

Over these years, the Islamists learnt to ask for more. It was no longer enough for Bangladeshis to be Muslims first and Muslims last. The fundamentalists now wanted Bangladeshis to be good Muslims, which, in their interpretation, meant that they had to move away from Western-style democracy, accept sharia law instead of the present legal system, train in madrassah education, follow strict social and religious codes and punish the enemies of Islam.

?Bangla Bhai?, the former school teacher who sought to establish such an Islamic state in the northern parts of Bangladesh after his return from Afghanistan, became the most terrifying face of this new militancy. He gave fatwas for men to grow beard and women to wear burqas. His men began by torturing and killing communists, often in public. Soon after, they were threatening, torturing and killing common people who dared to voice even mild protests ? and all this with full knowledge of the police and other wings of the Zia government.

The Zia regime became inexorably caught in the web of fundamentalist violence that it had connived at. Most democratic countries, rights groups at home and abroad rang alarm bells. Major international media warned the world that Bangladesh is becoming a ?cocoon of terror? (Far Eastern Economic Review, 2003), a ?State of Disgrace (Time magazine, 2004) and a theatre for the ?Next Islamist Revolution? (The New York Times, 2005). The regime in Dhaka pretended to be hurt, blamed the ?Indian hand? behind such articles and carried on with its suicidal games. Now, the spate of suicide bombings ? for the first time in Bangladesh ? come as the Zia regime?s possible nemesis.

Is there no hope then for freedom in Bangladesh? None, it seems clear, from the government which has sunk itself deep in the fundamentalist quagmire. But it is still difficult to see Bangladesh going the taliban way. The people who have shown such courage and sacrificed more than a million lives to win their freedom will not be easily enslaved again ? not even in the name of their own religion.

This is no pious hope. To anyone who keeps track of the relentless fight that liberal Bangladeshis daily wage against their tormentors and killers, this hope is very real. The Reporters Sans Frontiers, the watchdog body for international press freedom, has put Bangladesh among the most dangerous places of work for journalists. This year, six journalists were killed for daring to write against Islamists and their political cohorts. Many more regularly receive death threats. But Bangladeshi journalists in general are among the bravest anywhere in the world, as are women NGO activists and liberal political workers and intellectuals. The people defy the fatwas to celebrate Nabo Barsho and sing Rabindrasangeet, often at great risks to their lives. They do not see these detracting from their Muslim identity. Suicide bombers may kill people more easily than they can stamp out this brave spirit. The free world has a big stake in helping these warriors of freedom.