বেদনাদায়ক পনেরোই আগষ্ট

 

আমার সকল নিয়ে বসে আছি

সর্বনাশের আশায়’

রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

-তারেক মাহবুব

আজ দুঃখ ভারাক্রান্ত হৃদয়ে ১৫ই আগস্ট , জাতীয় শোক দিবস সম্বন্ধে লিখতে বসে শতবর্ষ আগে কবি গুরুর লেখা এই গানটির কথা বার-বার মনে মনে পড়ছে।  রবির ভাষায়ই বলতে হয়, 'সাত কোটি বাঙালির হে বঙ্গ জননী, রেখেছ বাঙালি করে মানুষ করোনি।' পাকিস্তান কারাগার থেকে মুক্তি পেয়ে ১৯৭২ সালে রেসকোর্স ময়দানে বিশাল জনসবায় বঙ্গবন্ধু তার ভাষণে কবিগুরুর এই পংক্তিটি উল্লেখ করে বলেছিলেন, “কবিগুরু আজ মিথ্যা প্রমাণিত হয়ে গেছে, আমার বাঙালী আজ মানুষ হয়েছে।"  আসলে কবিগুরু যে মিথ্যা হন নাই, বঙ্গবন্ধু নিজের জীবন দিয়ে সেটা প্রমান করে গেছেন।

আজ আমি লজ্জিত, মৰ্মিত, এবং ভাষাহত।  নিজেকে বঙ্গসন্তান হিসাবে পরিচয় দিতে বড় অসহায় এবং কলঙ্কিত মনে হচ্ছে।  আমরা কেউই কখনো ইতিহাস থেকে কোন শিক্ষাই গ্রহণ করিনি, আর কখনো গ্রহণ করব বলে মনে হয় না।  অর্ধ শতাব্দী পূর্বে ক্ষণজন্মা এই মহাপুরুষটি নিজ জাতির সঠিক পরিচয়টি  মূল্যায়ন করতে যে ভুল করেছিলেন আজ এত বছর পরে এসে তার কন্যাও একই প্রকার ভুল ক'রে বাঙালি জাতিকে অকুল সমুদ্রে ভাসিয়ে গেলেন।

আজ আমি ভূতপূর্ব সরকার সম্মন্ধে খুব একটি আলোচনা করব না।  তাদের হিসাব-নিকাশ তারাই দেবেন, অন্যায় করলে তার বিচার হবে। আমার প্রশ্ন হল বঙ্গবন্ধুকে অপমান ক'রে আজ আমরা নিজেদের চরম দৈনতার পরিচয় দিয়েছি।  যে মানুষটি আজ সবুজ বাংলাদেশী পাসপোর্ট নিয়ে যুক্তরাষ্টে এসে নীল পাসপোর্টধারী হয়েছে, সে হয়ত ভুলে গেছে বঙ্গবন্ধু না থাকলে ওই সবুজ পাসপোর্টটি থাকত না।  যে ছেলেটি বঙ্গবন্ধুর ভাস্কর্য এর উপরে উঠে বীরত্ব প্রকাশ করছে, সেই মহামানবটি না থাকলে হয়ত পাকিস্তানের কোন এক বিদ্যালয়ের দ্বিতীয় শ্রেণীর ছাত্র হিসাবে পড়ালেখা করতে হত।  তাকে তখন আর কোটার বিরুদ্ধে আন্দোলন করতে হত না, কোটার জন্য আন্দোলন করতে হত, আর সেই আন্দোলনের মূল বিষয় হোত পূর্ব পাকস্তানীদের জন্য কোটা চাই। ধানমন্ডি ৩২ নম্বর কোন প্রাইভেট সম্পত্তি নয়, ওটা জাতীয় সম্পদ। পাকিস্তান নামের জানোয়ারগুলোও সেই বাসা অক্ষত রেখেছিল, আমরা বাঙালীরা সেটা ধ্বংস করে দিলাম। এই লজ্জা রাখি কোথায়।  বঙ্গবন্ধু কোন একক দলের নেতা না, উনি সমগ্র জাতির নেতা।

আজ শেখ হাসিনা সরকারের দুঃশাসনের জন্য যদি বঙ্গবন্ধুকে দায়ী করা হয়, তাহলে তো মুসলিমদের বিভিন্ন ব্যার্থতা ও অপকর্মের জন্য নবী মোহাম্মদকে দোষ দিলে সেটা কি কোন অন্যায় হবে? বাংলার ইতিহাসে আজ পর্যন্ত্য সব সরকারই ক্ষমতা থেকে পালা বদলের পর স্বৈরাচারের তকমা গায়ে লাগিয়েছে। যখন কেউ বলে শেখ হাসিনার হাতে রক্ত তখন তারা ভুলে যায় ২১শে আগষ্টের গ্রেনেড হামলার কথা।  খন্ডকালীন স্বরাষ্ট উপদেষ্টা ব্রিগেডিয়ার সাহেব যেদিন বললেন যে গুলিতে মানুষ মারা গিয়েছে সেই ৭১ ক্যালিবারের রাইফেল বাংলাদেশের কোন আইন শৃঙ্খলা বাহিনী ব্যবহার করে না বা তাদের হাতে সেই অস্ত্র নেই।  কয়েকদিন পরেই দেখলাম তাঁকে স্বরাষ্ট উপদেষ্টা থেকে বদলি করে পাট ও বস্ত্রণালয়ের উপদেষ্টা করা হয়েছে।  আন্দোলন হয়েছিল বৈষম্য বিরোধীতার জন্য এবং স্বৈর শাসনের বিরুদ্ধে। আন্দোলনকারীদের দাবী আগেকার প্রশাসনের সময়ে কথা বলতে দেওয়া হোত না।  তবে এখন কেন ১৫ আগস্টে ৩২ নম্বরে যেতে দেওয়া হল না। কারো ইচ্ছা হ'লে সেখানে যাবে, তাকে বাধা দেওয়া কি স্বৈর শাসনের মধ্যে পরে না।

প্রতিবেশী দেশে মহাত্মা গান্ধীকে অসম্মান করার মত দুঃসাহস বিজেপি বা আরএসএসের মত ডানপন্থী, হিন্দু জাতীয়তাবাদীও দেখায়নি। কারন তারা জানে গান্ধী শুধু কংগ্রেসের নেতা নন, উনি সমগ্র ভারতবর্ষের নেতা।  জীবনের প্রয়োজনে মধ্যপ্রাচ্যের কয়েকটি দেশে বহুদিন কাটিয়ে এসেছি। সেখানে প্রত্যেকটি দেশে বিশালাকৃতির রাজার ছবি বিভিন্ন সরকারি ভবনের বাইরে বিরাজমান।  এজন্য কারো কোন ধর্মীয় অনুভূতিতে আঘাত লাগে না। যত ধর্মীয় অনুভূতির আঘাত  আমাদের মধ্যে। অথচ নারী কেলেঙ্কারিতে জড়িত এক হেফাজতি নেতা হঠাৎ জেল থেকে ছাড়া পেয়েই সুযোগ বুঝে কাদিয়ানীর বিরুদ্ধে বিষোদ্গার বক্তৃতা দেওয়া শুরু করেছে।  কি অদ্ভুত এই দেশ এবং ততোধিক অদ্ভুত ধর্মীয় নেতারা। ইসলামিক আইন মানতে হলে তাকে অর্ধেক মাটিতে পুঁতে পাথর মেরে হত্যা করার রীতিমত নির্দেশ আছে।

 শুধু এই ঘটনাগুলিই নয়, কান পাতলেই  শুনতে পাই সুন্নীরা বলবে "শিয়া" বা 'খারাজী"  মুসলিম না।  ওদেরকে নন-মুসলিম হিসাবে ঘোষণা দেবার দাবী তুলে তাদের পবিত্র কোরান শরীফ পর্য্যন্ত পড়তে বাঁধা দেয়। অপর পক্ষে শিয়ারা বলবে সুন্নিরা মুসলিম না। হুজুররা তো কথায়-কথায় বলে ৯০% মুসলমানের দেশ বাংলাদেশ।  এখন কোটি টাকার প্রশ্ন হচ্ছে  এই শিয়া, আহমদিয়া, কাদিয়ানী, বা খারেজীরা কি ওই ৯০% এর  মধ্যে অন্তর্ভুক্ত? ওদেরকে বাদ দিলে আদৌ কি ৯০% থাকে?  যতক্ষণ হিন্দু আছে ততক্ষনই আমরা মুসলিম। ওদের তাড়ালেই আমরা শিয়া, সুন্নী, ওয়াহাবি, সালাফি, হানাফী, কাদিয়ানী, আহলে হাদিস, মাজারি, কওমী, ফুলতলী, ফুরফুরী, আটরশি, মাইজভাণ্ডারী হয়ে যাব।" এরা সবাই একে অপরকে কাফের হিসাবে গণ্য করবে।

মনে পড়ে আফগানিস্তানের কথা, ৭০ দশকে দেশটি একটি উদীয়মান জাতি হিসাবে পরিচিতি ছিল। সৈয়দ মুজতবা আলীর লেখা আফগানিস্তান ভ্রমণের বই থেকে শুরু ক'রে বিভিন্ন ইতিহাসবিদের তথ্য থেকে জানা যাই সেকুলার আফগানিস্তানের কথা। একটি প্রগতিশীল জাতি কিভাবে ধ্বংস হয়ে যায় তার বাস্তব উধাহরন আফগানিস্তান, আর পাকিস্তান নামের দেশটি অনেক আগে থেকেই দেউলিয়া হয়ে বসে আছে।  আমার ক্ষুদ্র বুদ্ধিতে বলে বাংলাদেশ অতি দ্রুততম সময়ে সেই পথের দিকে এগিয়ে যাচ্ছে। কোন এক বিখ্যাত মনীষী বলে গেছেন , "কথা ছিল ধর্ম মানুষকে রক্ষা করিবে, যেদিন থেকে মানুষ ধর্মকে রক্ষা করা শুরু করিল সেদিন থেকে গন্ডগোল শুরু হইল"।  

Bangladesh: Investigate Torture Allegations

Bangladesh: Investigate Torture Allegations
Source: Human Rights Watch
March 25, 2009

(New York) - The government of Bangladesh should take urgent steps to ensure that those detained in connection with the massacre of 74 people at the Dhaka headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), the country's paramilitary border guards, on February 25, 2009, are not subjected to retribution, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said today.

An apparent mutiny by members of the border guards against their army officers left 55 senior army officers and 19 others dead, including the director general of the border guards and his wife. The government, police, and army have begun parallel investigations into the incident. As of March 24, 693 border guard personnel had been taken into custody.

Human Rights Watch urged the government to conduct a transparent and swift enquiry to identify those responsible for the killings and to prosecute them in civilian courts.

"The massacre has shocked Bangladeshis and deserves the condemnation of the entire world," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "But the government should resist demands and threats from the army for summary justice and ensure that all those detained are treated properly."

At least five border guard members and an Islamic imam have died in custody. According to press reports, the authorities claim that the men either committed suicide or died of heart attacks.

Relatives of Mobarak Hossain, one of the detained guards, have publicly alleged that he was tortured to death. Sources at the Dhaka Medical College morgue have told the media that his wrists, arms, knees, and shoulders were swollen and badly bruised. Human Rights Watch has received credible information that several other border guard members in custody have been brought to hospital with signs of torture.

At least 1,800 guard personnel who escaped from the headquarters during the 33-hour standoff are said to be in hiding. While some may have been involved in the attacks, others could well be important witnesses, too afraid to come forward.

"Bangladesh's security forces regularly use torture to obtain confessions," said Adams. "The government should ensure that there is a prompt and independent investigation of these deaths and all other allegations of torture."

While those responsible for the massacre should be brought to justice as soon as possible, Human Rights Watch said that the government should respect its international human rights obligations by ensuring that all suspects are treated properly, detained only in official places of detention, have access to lawyers and family members, and are tried in a judicial process that meets international fair trial standards.

The border guards are not members of the army, and the organization reports to the Home Ministry instead of the Defense Ministry. But Law Minister Shafique Ahmed has stated that those accused of involvement in the massacre may be tried by a military court martial. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has said that the jurisdiction of military courts, if used at all, should be restricted to offenses of a strictly military nature, only when committed by military personnel, and only when the military courts provide full guarantees of a fair trial. The committee oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Bangladesh is a party.

"After this massacre and as angry as senior army officials are, there is little or no chance that those accused will get a fair trial in Bangladesh's military justice system," Adams said.

Bangladesh army: victims and victimizers

Bangladesh army: victims and victimizers
By Rater Zonaki
March 18, 2009
Source: UPI Asia

Hong Kong, China — The bloodshed at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifles, who protect the country’s borders, on Feb. 25 and 26 was initially labeled a mutiny. Since then more information has unfolded, and the media have termed it a massacre and a mass assassination. The BDR soldiers killed around 60 army officers, from the rank of captain to major general.

The death toll is reportedly 73, which includes six soldiers of the BDR, three pedestrians, the wife of the director general of the force, and a retired colonel along with his wife. The rest of the victims were officers, and one soldier, of the Bangladesh army. Four officers are still missing since the incident.

Separate civilian, police and army investigations are ongoing, some including experts from the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time the nation is busy commenting and analyzing the reasons behind the killings. As political parties debate the causes and consequences, measuring the success and failure of the authorities in accordance with their own interests, the government has launched “Operation Rebel Hunt” to catch the culprits.

The public image of the armed forces has been very mixed. Whenever there are floods, cyclones or other devastating natural disasters, the government calls on the army to conduct relief work and engage in disaster management. During such times soldiers and officers are perceived as diligent and brave, helping to restore calm and hope.

The people have applauded the army’s humanitarian efforts for decades, because they have helped the common man. Other than that, as the day-to-day functions of the armed forces are not directly related to the public, people do not see the army at close quarters.

However, many Bangladeshis have experienced the bitter side of the army, which is far different. People have witnessed their crackdowns on political opponents, social activists and human rights defenders and read of their arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings. They have also observed that such offences have not been thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators have not been brought to justice.

For example, on Oct. 16, 2002, the government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia deployed the army across the country in the name of "Operation Clean Heart," which continued until Jan. 9, 2003, to crack down on illegal arms and criminals.

During the 86-day crackdown, around 11,200 people were officially arrested and detained in custody; 2,500 people were listed as criminals and about 300 as suspects by the police. Around 2,000 different types of arms and 29,700 rounds of ammunition were recovered. Although more than 50 people died in the custody of the armed forces, their deaths were officially termed as "heart attacks."

In reality, an additional 8,000 people were arrested and detained, and all who were detained were seriously tortured. Who was responsible for such illegal actions, which affected the ordinary people financially, socially and physically? What kind of affinity could people have with the army in the light of their brutal actions?

The past two years under emergency rule have created new records of brutality at the hands of the armed forces, which have illegally arrested, detained and tortured thousands of people. Officers of the Bangladeshi army were the dominant perpetrators in almost all cases.

Allegations of extortion by the army have also surfaced where businessmen and industrialists were kidnapped and ransoms demanded. Such people were allegedly detained on fabricated corruption charges, intimidated and tortured in custody till the ransoms were paid.

Compared to the army, the BDR soldiers are more closely in touch with the public, at least in the cities they protect along the more than 4,000-kilometer-long border, under the leadership of the army.

Still there are corrupt BDR soldiers who allegedly allow smugglers to transport goods in and out of Bangladesh for personal benefit. While the beneficiaries of such illegal trade appreciate the soldiers' “supportive" role, the majority of the common people believe that the BDR protects the territory well.

Following the tragic killings on Feb. 25 and 26, the government immediately announced it would give one million takas (US$14,620) as compensation to each of the families of the army officers that were killed. Yet it completely ignored the civilians that died, for more than a week.

Only after the media reported the slip-up did the authorities announce they would give 200,000 takas (US$2,924) to the families of the civilian victims. Such discrimination, which has prevailed for decades, makes people wonder why civilians are considered less human than the armed forces.

The government must reconsider the fairness of such decisions. The armed forces should also rethink their actions during "Operation Clean Heart” and similar crackdowns, when politicians provided them impunity at the cost of huge grievances to the people.

The army officers should also reflect on their image as brutal giants during the state of emergency. The military should understand and accept that the Parliament has the right and responsibility to discuss such issues openly. They should accept that they are not above the laws of the land.

It is easy to vilify the BDR soldiers for the violence of the February killings. But one must not forget that this force represents at least 67,000 Bangladeshi families. It is important for the nation to look beyond political games and find the truth behind the February massacre.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong, working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national who has worked as a journalist and human rights activist in his country for more than a decade, and as editor of publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues.)

More than a mutiny

More than a mutiny
Saurabh Shukla
March 7, 2009
Source: India Today

The plot of senseless blood letting in Dhaka is thickening. And as the two-month-old Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina battles to bring stability to the country following the barbaric killing of over 140 top Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officers along with their family members in Dhaka on February 25, reports of a Pakistan-sponsored plot to assassinate her are gaining credence.

Increasingly intelligence is uncovering that the original plan was to assassinate Hasina and army chief Moeen U. Ahmed on February 24, but due to lack of coordination, the required ammunition couldn’t be smuggled into the Durbar area at the BDR headquarters where Hasina had gone a day before the mutiny. The plan was reportedly hatched at the behest of the ISI which is concerned with Hasina’s moderate outlook.

On February 25, a group of BDR junior commissioned officers, lined up the top brass of Bangladesh’s border guards and killed them. The brutality of the killing was shocking as the bodies of the officers and their families were dumped into manholes and mass graves. While some of the ringleaders of the coup and their accomplices have been arrested, over 1,000 BDR personnel have been charged by the Hasina Government.

A confidential report prepared by South Block suggests that Pakistani intelligence was behind the mutiny. The report claims “both Indian and some international intelligence agencies have received indisputable proof of the involvement of Salauddin Chowdhury—an influential BNP MP and a long standing Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent of influence in Bangladesh with a strong criminal mafia nexus—in the entire episode”.

Chowdhury, a prominent shipping magnate, was a close associate and parliamentary secretary to former premier Khaleda Zia. His name also figured in the Chittagong arms haul in 2004, in which a lethal cargo of arms was unloaded for terrorist activities in India. But Chowdhury has denied such charges.

However, exclusive details available with India Today suggest that intelligence agencies had intercepted a telephone call from Pakistan’s defence attaché in Dhaka, Sajaad Rasool, to a contact in the Pakistani consulate in Dubai. Another intercept revealed Rasool was in contact with Chowdhury.

According to sources, the Pakistani defence attaché monitored the situation from the Gulshan area of Dhaka and was in constant touch with his handlers in Pakistan.

In fact, on February 25 he knew the precise details about the plot unfolding inside the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana. At 12.30 pm, Rasool made a call to the ISI headquarters in Islamabad reporting that DG BDR Major-General Shakeel Ahmed had been killed.

The big question is, how the Pakistani defence attaché knew what was happening inside when even senior officers of the Bangladesh Army and the Government were in the dark. Other intercepts that confirm the involvement of the ISI, include a series of phone calls made by some key Jamaat-e- Islami (JeI) leaders to their ISI contacts in Dubai, London and Islamabad updating them on the operation.

According to the report, the BDR was used by the plotters because resentment has been brewing in the lower ranks. Besides, the aim was to ensure a takeover by pro-Pakistan elements in the Bangladesh Army. So smooth was the planning that no intelligence agency got a whiff of the plot. Chowdhury allegedly used a former DG of BDR, Major-General Fazlur Rehman, as a frontman to instigate the troops.

Chowdhury is suspected to have paid Taka 40 crore (Rs 30 crore) to Fazlur Rahman, who in turn is said to have paid Taka 5 crore to four deputy assistant directors of BDR. While almost 400 sepoys were paid Taka 5 lakh, the key among them were paid Taka 50 lakh each, according to the report.

For India that has a vital stake in the stability of a moderate regime in Dhaka, the developments were worrying. In fact, on February 28, India had begun preparations to evacuate Hasina. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was in touch with Hasina and assured her of Indian support. Sources say New Delhi alerted Dhaka.

Following this, Hasina was taken to a Bangladesh Army safehouse. Two teams of commandos were kept ready at a forward air force base in Tripura and another one in Kolkata. But when the situation turned around with the Bangladesh Army backing Hasina and the mutiny quelled, the plan was shelved.

But the big question is why the ISI plotted to destabilise the Government. The reason is, compared to the fundamentalist regime of Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s government is considered to be moderate and has cracked down on Islamists. Sources say Pakistani intelligence fanned the conspiracy as it feared that many of its key assets could be tried for war crimes committed in 1971.

The Hasina Government had moved a resolution in Parliament last month to punish criminals of the 1971 war, something her party had promised in its election manifesto. Sources say JEI leaders Amir Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mujahid, who are alleged war criminals, provided logistical support to the mutiny.

The ISI plotted to kill Hasina as Islamabad has been uneasy with the Hasina regime’s policies and it’s perceived proximity to India. In fact the crisis in Dhaka should be another reason why India and Bangladesh should work together closely, especially on security issues. Besides, India has to align with the international community to ensure the stability of Hasina’s regime which is pivotal for India’s security concerns.

Experts say that New Delhi and Dhaka should use this opportunity to sensitise the world that Pakistan is the fulcrum of terrorism, and till its agencies, like the ISI, are neutralised, the world, beginning with our neighbourhood, cannot be free of terrorism.

Does Bangladesh military deserve impunity?

Does Bangladesh military deserve impunity?
By Rater Zonaki
Source: UPI Asia On-line
February 10, 2009

Hong Kong, China — Bangladeshi members of Parliament and the media have been speaking out against the former military-controlled emergency government, now that a new elected government is in place. They are demanding the prosecution of members of the military forces responsible for arresting and detaining high-ranking politicians, and subjecting them to physical and mental torture in custody.

Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the Awami League, which is now the ruling party, has demanded a parliamentary probe into such detentions. The veteran politician could not help crying while describing the torture he underwent in a detention center operated by the armed forces. He said around eight armed men had come to his office, blindfolded him and taken him away in a waiting car. They identified themselves as members of the Joint Forces.

Jalil was detained in custody where he was physically and psychologically tortured for five consecutive days. He was later paroled for treatment abroad, and after returning to Bangladesh, managed to get bail from the Supreme Court.

Another member of Parliament, Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir, has also described his arrest and torture in a number of articles, interviews and talk shows. He has declared his intention to sue the chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Lt. Gen. Hassan Mashhud Chowdhury, and other members of the armed forces for torturing and treating him inhumanely in detention.

Barrister Moudud Ahmed – who was minister of law during the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led regime and lost his seat in Parliament in the recent election – has also been trying to convince people through the media that he was a victim of brutal torture and degrading treatment in the custody of the armed forces. Moudud also announced that he is writing a book on his life in prison.

However, Moudud’s hue and cry about custodial brutality appears to be aimed at personal or political gain. In fact, Moudud was law minister when the government validated actions of the armed forces during Operation Clean Heart, an 86-day crackdown on political dissenters in late 2002, which resulted in 58 deaths in the custody of the armed forces. The government termed all these deaths as "heart attacks."

More than 10,000 ordinary citizens were illegally arrested, arbitrarily detained and brutally tortured under fabricated charges by the military-dominated law-enforcement agencies. Moudud, as the minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, issued an ordinance to ensure blatant impunity to the perpetrators in January 2003, which was then enacted by Parliament.

Moudud and his government ignored the people's fundamental rights, especially the right to life and liberty. Later, he was a victim of the same treatment.

Talking about human rights, as Jalil, Alamgir and Moudud are now doing, is rare in Bangladesh’s political circles. This discussion conveys a message to ordinary victims that some politicians now understand the taste of pain. At the same time, their stories support claims made by human rights defenders that the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies operate torture cells.

The real picture of brutality by the armed forces and the police is much more severe than the stories of these three politicians. Ordinary citizens have long suffered immeasurable atrocities at the hands of the military during the state of emergency and the police during previous regimes.

Now the incumbent law minister, Barrister Shafique Ahmed, is talking about the "doctrine of necessity" as a means of justifying the actions of the military-controlled emergency government. Speaking of the armed forces, he told the media, "You cannot say all their actions or activities were within the bounds of the Constitution …Whatever they did, they did responding to the necessity of the time. So we are not giving legal cover to all their actions, we're not validating all their ordinances."

This raises the question as to whether the illegal arrests, detentions, torture and killings were a "necessity of the time." Are the present politicians ready to accept the armed forces' actions even though they defied the Constitution? Isn’t the so-called "doctrine of necessity" merely an excuse to once again grant impunity to the perpetrators of injustice, with the permission of the present government and at the demand of the armed forces?

It is not convincing that those now in power can accept and explain the former government’s brutal and unconstitutional actions under the "doctrine of necessity." Why can’t people like Moudud and Shafique face the truth behind the recurrent take-over of power by the armed forces?

Will the current batch of politicians also surrender to the armed forces instead of taking effective action to stop such brutality forever? Why is there no effective resistance to keep the soldiers in their barracks?

The door must be closed forever on the armed forces’ ability to take over and abuse power. The ruling party could start now by using its absolute majority in Parliament to criminalize torture and repeal Article 46 of the Constitution, which allows Parliament to grant impunity to state officers for any action, however brutal, taken to “restore order.”

The demand for justice by a few senior members of Parliament has aroused the interest of the people. But ordinary people will treat such demands as mere political rubbish unless the politicians follow through and effectively punish the perpetrators.


(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)

Military invades Bangladesh's judiciary

Military invades Bangladesh's judiciary
By Rater Zonaki
Source: UPI Asia On-line
Date: October 14, 2008

Hong Kong, China — The judiciary in Bangladesh is being seriously undermined by the military, to the point that it can no longer carry out its functions. Judges and courts are subject to illegal, unconstitutional and even criminal practices.

Among the more serious recent incidents, two handmade bombs were discovered in the residence of Justice Sharif Uddin Chaklader, who until last week was head of a High Court Division dealing with petitions challenging detention orders against politicians and businessmen. In late September a bomb exploded in front of the house of Justice Tariqul Hakim, another Supreme Court judge. Luckily neither judge was injured.

Anonymous letters threatening assassinations were also sent to three senior lawyers – Barrister Rafique-ul Haque, Barrister Shafique Ahmed and Barrister M Amir-ul Islam – as well as the present and past presidents of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

Rafique-ul Haque, who is a former attorney general of Bangladesh, lamented the situation during an urgent meeting of the Supreme Court Bar Association last Sunday. “An army major sits in a room on the second floor of the Supreme Court building where no one is allowed to enter,” he said. He explained that this major handles the case list for the Supreme Court judge – meaning that only those cases the military-backed government approves of will be given a hearing.

Barrister Haque also explained that the chief justice has reconstituted the benches of the High Court Division, assigning junior judges to deal with sensitive criminal cases and sidelining more competent senior judges. It is generally understood that this was done under military pressure.

These incidents expose the vulnerability of judges and lawyers at the highest levels of the judiciary. Not even the Supreme Court of Bangladesh can confront the military authoritarianism in an organized manner.

These incidents have occurred whenever the military-controlled government has faced serious challenges from the highest levels of the judiciary, especially regarding enquiries into the legality of its actions in the past 21 months of emergency rule in Bangladesh.

The government, which grabbed power illegally, has no legitimate authority to rule the country. It is already unhappy with the decision of the High Court that declared its promulgation of ordinances to be beyond its constitutional powers. Also, under emergency laws, the current rulers have disallowed decisions by the Supreme Court on granting bail to certain accused persons.

It appears that over-ambitious high-ranking officers of the armed forces are behind these incidents. The armed forces of Bangladesh shamelessly believe that by invading the civil institutions they can achieve more, especially if a powerful institution like the judiciary is sufficiently suffocated. The people of Bangladesh seem headed for an even more disastrous era under the grip of the armed forces.

If the armed forces dictate to the highest judiciary, how can their abuse of power be curbed? Should the judiciary entertain or tolerate these ongoing military invasions? What role is the chief justice of Bangladesh playing to stop the humiliation of the judiciary at the hands of the military? Why is the lawyers' community silent while its professional dignity and sanctity are under serious threat? Why does the Supreme Court not hold the armed forces accountable for grabbing power and occupying civil institutions illegally?

People who are aware of the situation in Bangladesh know that corruption and abuse of power with blanket impunity are among the biggest setbacks to the country's journey toward democratic stability. At the same time, the existing system allows people to become involved in corruption, either by choice or by force, due to the lack of transparency and accountability by civil servants and politicians who are close to the military rulers.

This does not mean that only a few members of a specific professional community are responsible for leading the country toward disaster or capable of improving things overnight.

Officers of the armed forces are accustomed to taking orders and following commands. However, such practices are useless in civil institutions. Many decisions taken by the military in civilian circumstances are not based on rationality or on a constructive assessment of the consequences of these decisions. This is true because the military officers have no respect for civilians and civil institutions. Most people agree that the armed forces are absolutely incompetent to solve civil problems by adopting military rules and regulations.

The Bangladeshis and the international community who are committed to the rule of law should think seriously whether it is time to remain silent or to act to ensure the survival of Bangladesh's judiciary and other civil institutions. Remaining silent could kill all hope of justice ever being restored to its rightful place in Bangladesh.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)

Military must not dominate civil administration

BANGLADESH: Military must not dominate civil administration
Source: Asian Human Rights Commission
Date: August 29, 2008

The government of Bangladesh has directed its civil administration to work in collaboration with the officers of the "Joint Forces" stationed across the country.

The government made the decision on August 25, after having reshuffled its administration by appointing 35 new Deputy Commissioners (DCs), the apex bureaucratic authorities in the district administrations. The government briefed the media on its policies on the proposed local and general elections, implementation and monitoring mechanisms and emphasized the need for friendly relations with the local people. Cabinet Division Secretary Mr. Ali Imam Mazumdar chairing the meeting on 25 August directed the officers to work together with the SPs (Superintendents of Police) and the commanders of the Join Forces across the country.

The direction to the administrators asserting collaboration with the Joint Forces which comprises of officers of the armed forces and which is dominated by the army, practically renders the civil administration officials subordinate to the army. It also generates multiple suspicions regarding the government motives behind such controversial directives. This adds to the already adopted government policy of placing the armed forces over the civil administration. This is a small picture of the ongoing disaster in the governance in Bangladesh. Here are some facts:

The Ministry of Home Affairs is headed by Major General (Retired) M A Matin. Major General (retired) Ghulam Quader, former director general of National Security Intelligence, has been made adviser to the Ministry of Communications. Brigadier General (Retierd) M A Malek is the Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser for Ministries of Social Welfare and Telecommunications

Founding Director General of the Rapid Action Battalion, allegedly the arbiter of hundreds of extra judicial killings, and former head of the Bangladesh Police Mr. Anwarul Iqbal has grabbed the position of the adviser to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives. Another Major General (retired), ASM Matiur Rahman previously occupying the Ministry of Health was later asked to resign from his position for poor performance.

Immediate past army chief Lt. Gen. (Retired) Hassan Mashud Chowdhury is the chairperson of the Anti Corruption Commission while Colonel Mr. Hanif Iqbal occupies the position of Director General (Administration).

Brigadier General (Retired) Muhammad Sakhawat Hussain is in the constitutional position of Commissioner of the Election Commission. Bangladesh Army has been given official responsibility to prepare the voter list for the whole country. The army deputed its Principal Staff Officer (PSO) of Armed Forces Division Lieutenant General Masud Uddin Chowdhury to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when he had been serving as the Chief Coordinator of the National Coordination Committee for deciding the corruption cases.

Major General (retd) Manzurul Alam chairs Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission while Colonel Md. Saiful Islam takes the position of the Director General and Lieutenant Colonel Shahidul Alam is the Director of its Spectrum Management Department. Lieutenant Colonel Shahidul Alam is the Project Director of a World Bank funded project while Major Rakibul Hassan is a Deputy Director of its Systems & Services Department.

Captain of Bangladesh Navy Mr. A.K.M Shafiqullah is occupying the position of the Director General of the Department of Shipping while Commodore Mr. A K M Alauddin occupying the position of the Chief Engineer and Ship Supervisor.

Navy Captain Mr. Yeaheya Sayeed is a Director of Chittagong Dry Dock Limited, an enterprise of the Bangladesh Steel & Engineering Corporation and also a Member of the Chittagong Port Authority. Captain Mr. SY Kamal is Member (operations), Captain Mr. Ramjan Ali is Deputy Conservator of the Chittagong Port Authority, and Captain Mr. Zahir Mahmood is Deputy Conservator of the Port of Chalna Authority in Khulna.

Brigadier General Md. Rafiqul Islam is the Director (signals) of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd.

Major Gen (retd) Manzur Rashid Chowdhury has been made the newly formed Truth and Accountability Commission's member.

Even the sports sector is not safe from their interference. The current army chief General Moeen U Ahmed grabs the positions of the Chairman of the National Sports Council and the President of Bangladesh Olympic Association. The chief of air force Vice Marshal Ziaur Rahman Khan heads Bangladesh Hockey Federation while the naval chief Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam heads the Swimming Federation. Major General Ahsab Uddin, the General Officer Commanding of the 9th Infantry Division, is the President of the National Shooting Federation. The chief of general staff of the army Major General Seena Ibn Jamali is the President of Bangladesh Cricket Board with Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Md. Abdul Latif Khan as Vice President. Lieutenant Commodore A K Sirker is occupying the post of General Secretary of the Basketball Federation.

These are very few out of the numerous positions occupied by the officers of the armed forces in the civil administration and autonomous institutions of Bangladesh. All information on such events is not available as the authorities suppress information to skip criticism.

Moreover, the armed forces have been deployed in all the district headquarters of the 64 districts of Bangladesh since the state of emergency besides the decades' long full-fledged militarization of three districts in the hill tracks of Chittagong region. Initially, the government deployed armed forces in all the upazillas (sub-district units) as soon as the emergency was imposed.

The DCs have been severely humiliate because army Majors being much junior to them have been placed in the districts levels. These Majors hurl abusive and exert illegal influences before the DCs, making the district heads embarrassed and frustrated. “People should no longer have patience and resist the audacity of these uncivilized Majors”, commented a DC, who did not wish to be identified.

All the national level policy decisions are made, changed and influenced by the top officials of the armed forces. The "National Coordinating Committee", which oversees the corruption issues staying atop all administrative setups, recommends the Anti Corruption Commission as to who will be charged and who will not be. The top officers of the armed forces occupy the coordinating body.
The Rapid Action Battalion, also drenched with the officers of the armed forces on deputation, is extended to the district and upazilla levels with their own setups besides the regular police force.

The police who are supposed to be responsible for maintaining law and order in the country have excessively been supported by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and the armed forces during the state of emergency. So, in reality, all the forces arrest people. The common people have access only to the police stations for enquiring on the whereabouts of the arrested and detained persons, and none of the law-enforcing agencies explain to anyone whenever arrests are made. When the armed forces and RAB arrest, detain and torture people the police remain out of the picture and none of the police stations record any case regarding such incidents. Even the lawyers rarely agree to assist the victims by drafting and lodging a complaint with the Magistrate’s Court, which is last resort for the vulnerable people to seek redress following a denial by the police.

According to reports, the armed force officers frequently make phone calls to the Magistrates and Judges regarding pending cases to address the issues meeting the interest of the officers. Magistrates also cannot ignore fearing the security of themselves, their families and relatives. However, none of these magistrates agreed to disclose it officially other than "off the record". The condition of the prosecutors is worse than that of the judges and magistrates. The offices of the prosecutors and attorneys are filled up with members of the intelligence agencies and in special cases the officers of the armed forces, who insist and direct them to lead the proceedings as the agencies wish.

Surprisingly enough, under the coverage of emergency provisions, officers of the armed forces remain present in the courtrooms and relevant offices of the courts during, before and after the trials as members of "Task Force". They visit the courts and the relevant offices to monitor, dictate and insist the staffs for the cases they are more interested.

The military remains far away from any mechanism of accountability unlike any other organizations of Bangladesh. Thus, the armed forces enjoy absolute impunity for their unlawful actions supported by the laws made by the government during the state of emergency.

The existing situation evidently shows the silent but gradual, and eventually complete, militarization in Bangladesh. The joint forces deployed across the country frequently intervene into many local and private institutions including the activities of the media, NGO, and human right activisms though they are not eligible and competent to do so. These unlawful attempts have already demoralized the concerned professionals. As a consequence of regular interventions by the armed forces into their work, they cannot contribute to the society and to their respective fields by accomplishing their official responsibilities.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is highly concerned about the all out militarization in Bangladesh. The military cannot be capable or substitute of the civil administration in any place of the world because of their training with arbitrariness. The armed forces are accustomed to command rather than being accountable to any civil authority. The ongoing huge militarization has been destroying the fabrics of democracy and rule of law in the country. AHRC urges the civil society and human rights groups in the country and the international community to insist the authorities of Bangladesh to immediately demilitarize all institutions the armed forces have been occupying illegibly.

The begums are back

The begums are back
Source: The Economist
September 18, 2008

Back to square one as the army admits defeat

Zia, free at last, and back in the battle. IT IS a spectacular military retreat. “You can smell the burning tyres,” says one Dhaka-based diplomat. Since the army seized power in January 2007 and installed a technocratic interim government, it has tried and failed to end an era of dominance by Bangladesh’s two squabbling former prime minsters, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League.

Yet, after a year in jail on charges of corruption, Bangladesh’s battling begums are back. On September 11th the government freed Mrs Zia on bail. Five days later, it cleared legal hurdles for the return of Sheikh Hasina from America, where she went for medical treatment following her release on parole in June. She is expected back in Bangladesh early next month.

Both leaders still face charges. But prosecutors are unlikely to take action against them without the approval of the government, which is no longer trying to bring their political careers to an end. So, barring an extraordinary upset, one of them will be Bangladesh’s next prime minister.

It is an astonishing volte-face. The begums alternated in power from 1991-2007 and are blamed for the fiercely antagonistic, corrupt politics that led the army to step in. First it tried to exile them and create a “third force” in Bangladeshi politics; then it jailed them and tried to split their parties, hoping that new leaders might emerge. But the begums’ parties are held together by two things: patronage and personality cult. They are unviable without their leaders: hence the BNP’s offer to Mrs Zia this week to lead the party “for life”. She declined.

The good news is that Bangladeshis, for the first time since 2001, will get the chance to elect a government. For once it will be almost impossible to rig the poll. The election commission has purged 12m duplicate, deceased or otherwise bogus names from voter rolls. On September 22nd it will unveil a firm date for the election, long promised for December. And the government is soon to announce steps to lift the 20-month old state of emergency.

It is troubling, however, that Bangladesh’s transition to multiparty democracy has in effect been entrusted to the two politicians who made it unworkable in the first place. They have refused to talk to each other for decades, though the government says it is working on getting them to “sit across the table”.

The price the government had to pay to prevent the parties boycotting the polls is the return of total impunity to Bangladesh. For five years from 2001, Bangladesh led international corruption rankings. But this month the government freed Mrs Zia’s son, Tarique Rahman, the main trophy of its anti-corruption drive. The begums’ coteries have been released on bail. It seems likely that the convictions of those jailed for corruption will be overturned.

Some in Dhaka worry that all of this might be too much for the generals to stomach. The army still has to secure its own safe passage into the multiparty era, but has little clout over the resurgent political parties. The two years Western governments quietly granted it to fix the country’s messy politics are drawing to a close. Neither foreign governments nor Bangladeshis want to see its rule extended.

But there are hints that the generals might not leave politics altogether. A banned Islamist militant group, the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which the army previously claimed to have crushed, is reported to have threatened members of the emergency government. This week the home ministry gave warning of worsening law and order. The general’s retreat seems inevitable, but such scares suggest it might not be total.

Bangladesh politics heading for uncharted water!

Suddenly, Bangladesh politics heading for uncharted water!
By A.H. Jaffor Ullah, USA

The capricious politics of Bangladesh, which was in doldrums like a boat in a river without any wind to move it in the forward direction, got the much needed gusty wind now — but the direction of the move is unfortunately in the opposite direction. It seems as if the riverine nation with its huddled masses is heading for uncharted water! Thanks to the invisible power that is ensconced in the cantonment, which had been propelling the government run by a bunch of oligarchs for the last 20 months.

Many political observers both inside and outside the country are puzzled by this new direction. Gone are the tough words that used to emanate from General Moeen, the silent dictator who made the coup possible on January 11, 2007. Also, gone are the strongly worded messages from advisors that used to grace the pages of Bangladesh’s newspapers. What lies ahead for this godforsaken nation of 160 million impoverished is quite uncertain.

The outgoing government of Khaleda Zia tried to engineer an election coup by placing election officials allover the nation sympathetic to her party. She also tried to manipulate the selection of advisors of the caretaker government that would conduct the upcoming parliamentary election. This was going on in the aftermath of Khaleda Zia government’s expiry sometime in late October 2006.

President Iajuddin Ahmed, who was a Khaleda Zia’s stooge through and through, took marching order from Hawa Bhavan, the epicenter of Khaleda Zia’s party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). He took the onerous job of the chief advisor of the newly minted caretaker government violating the constitution of the land. That however did not ruffle feathers in him or in BNP leaderships. The opposition parties including the Awami League headed by Sheikh Hasina Wajed took to the streets in retaliation to Iajuddin’s move. Consequently, a state of anarchy was engendered.

While all these were going on, the military of Bangladesh who is the arbiter of politics in this impoverished nation, received a warning shot from the United Nation. The U.N. officials knew that an army coup might come anytime soon. To thwart this unwelcoming development, the U.N. officials told the army in no uncertain term that if an army coup is stage, Bangladesh army stand to lose any future lucrative contract from the U.N. as peacekeeping force. This overseas job brought a steady source of extra income for army officials and foot soldiers who participate in the peacekeeping force in disputed areas throughout the world.

The Bangladesh military did not want to lose the contract; therefore, they engineered a silent coup to topple Iajuddin and the advisors from the caretaker government. The chose Fakhruddin Ahmed, an ex-employee of the World Bank, and a handful of ex-military officers and civilians to form the second consecutive caretaker govern for which there is no constitutional mandate. However, in Bangladesh, when the military talks everyone listens.

During the trying times of Bangladesh I penned an article a week after the silent military coup, which was published on January 19, 2007 eight days after the inauguration of the military-backed Fakhruddin Government, in which I clearly pointed out that the new caretaker government, had the tacit approval from the army. To my knowledge, mine was the first article to label the present government as the military-backed unconstitutional government. This extrajudicial government was legitimized because the civil society gave their approval through Center for Policy Development - a non-governmental organization headed by some powerful members of the civil society. This newly minted government also had the approval of Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen bank chief, whose popularity was cresting at the time due to the Nobel Peace Prize which he and his organization received sometime in late October 2006.

The caretaker government promised to make a level playing field for all political party by reconstituting the election commission, a demand waged by the opposition parties. They also promised to clean up the politics by arresting leaders who made theirs misbegotten wealth through bribe-taking, malfeasance, and influence peddling. The civil society gave their approval to this and the nation witnessed a mass arrest of politicians.

The military-backed caretaker government also railroaded the Islamists to walk the gallows for killing two judges in Jhalokati, a town in south Bangladesh. They did not allow the Islamists to talk to the press lest a can of warms comes out to implicate the military and BNP in the spate of bombings allover Bangladesh in August 2006 in which nearly 300-400 homemade bombs were blasted, synchronously. The August 21, 2004 bombing of Awami League’s meeting in Dhaka is an unsolved murder but many observers believe that it was a handiwork of a consortium composed of Islamists, BNP goons and persons from Kurmitola cantonment. It makes hell of a lot of sense as to why the Islamists were sent to gallows so quickly.

The military-backed government spoke mostly through Barrister Mainul Hosein and General Matin. Later, an ex-general Mashhud Chowdhury who got the portfolio of the chairman of a revamped anti-corruption department (ACC or DUDOK in Bangla) became the mouthpiece of the government. This anti-democratic and repressive government ruled Bangladesh tightfistedly for the last 20 months promising to reform many institutions and the politics but instead of solving the problems it has exacerbated the situation. The developmental projects mostly financed by WB and foreign governments came to a standstill. The productivity had slowed down and the economy hardly expanded with an anemic rate of growth.

The military-backed government promised to wipe out corruption from the government and politics. But it miserably failed. The government arrested in excess of 250,000 ordinary people calling them political hooligans. These incarcerated people were languishing in jail without facing the court. The government also arrested a few notable industrialists and newspaper publishers but failed to prosecute them. In April 2007 the government took a new initiative to send the two leaders, Ms. Hasina and Ms. Zia, in exile but for whatever reasons failed to execute the plan. Then the government tried to break the major parties without much success. It also tried to float new political party one time through Grameen Chief, Muhammad Yunus, and another time through an obscure politician by the name Ferdous Qureshi. This mischievous plan did not bore any fruit, though.

During Khaleda Zia’s five years stint at the helm many of her party men including her two worthless sons have amassed billions of Taka (Bangladeshi currency) through bribery, extortions and whatnot. And we thought finally these vile groups of politicians will pay a price receiving stiff jail sentencing and they will be barred from entering politics rest of their lives. But how wrong was I.

On September 11, 2008 when the world was remembering the victims of 9-11, I read Dhaka’s newspapers to learn to my amazement that Khaleda Zia's corrupt son was released from the jail and he was sent to U.K. for treatment. Khaleda Zia who was the protagonist in Bangladesh's “tragic” political drama was also released from the jail. Sheikh Hasina is also out on furlough now visiting America for medical treatment. The general secretary of Awami League, Mr. Jalil, was also freed from the jail. To add insult to injury, hardly a week ago a few other corrupt BNP politicians were let loose from the confinement by the military-backed government.

All of these new developments, which hardly make any sense, are telling a telltale sign. Why the government did make its volte-face? Did they realize at long last that it will be an arduous job for them to reform the existing political parties?

This writer has always expressed a concern for the oligarchs who ruled Bangladesh rather unconstitutionally for the last 20 months. During that time, the Harvard “trained” army General gave enough hints that democracy as practiced in Bangladesh needs to be reformed. The General being the servant of the government overstepped his authority to pontificate his fellow countrymen.

I have the slightest clue now what prompted this government to give up their reform movement. Maybe, under pressure from Big Brothers abroad the military is finally willing to host the parliamentary election. This is also perplexing to know that all the champions of the reform movement - the CPD, Muhammad Yunus, and the rest of the Civil Society Movement is maintaining their reticence. Rather than maintaining their deafening silence this is the time they should open their mouth to protest the unleashing of corrupt politicians from jail. Why it took so long to take the corrupt politicians to court? Where are Barrister Mainul Hosein, General Matin, and General Mashhud Chowdhury at this critical juncture, now that the nation needs to hear their strongly-worded warnings? Should not they vociferously complain the government’s unwise decision to turn the clock backward?

-------------------------
Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, USA
E Mail : jhankar@bellsouth.net

Four Pledges for Khaleda's Release

4 pledges secured release?
Source: Daily Star
September 12, 2008

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and her elder son Tarique Rahman's release through seemingly transparent legal procedures, was actually part of a 4-point deal with the government, authoritative sources claim.

They say the army-backed caretaker government had a lengthy negotiation with Khaleda Zia who was totally cold towards the present regime but finally gave in and agreed to cooperate with them.

Under the agreement, Khaleda agreed to take part in dialogues with the government and also participate in the upcoming general election.

And accordingly, just five hours into her release, the former premier announced the four-point conditions put to her.

The BNP chairperson, for now,

claims that there is no split within the party. Meanwhile sources say she will soon take the steps to unite the party by accommodating the reformist leaders.

Sources say Khaleda Zia agreed to declare immediately after her release that BNP would join the current dialogue with the Election Commission and government, participate in the December parliamentary election and keep her son Tarique away from the upcoming parliamentary poll by sending him abroad for treatment and keeping him away for at least a few years.

And finally, that Khaleda would withdraw the expulsion order of ex-BNP secretary general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and joint secretary general Ashraf Hossain and accommodate the pro-reformist faction of the party.

The BNP leadership, of course, claims there was no deal regarding the releases of both Khaleda and Tarique, and that they were released completely on the merit of the legal process.

A competent source within the government said that Khaleda, prior to her release from the makeshift sub-jail, agreed that she would first make it clear to the public that Tarique is to go abroad for treatment and remain away from politics till he recovers fully.

A top ranking BNP leader, not wishing to be named, admitted that Tarique's absence from the next election was part of the deal between Khaleda and the government.

He, however, said that the BNP chairperson would not remain in the sidelines but be a frontrunner in the December election.

The release of Tarique Rahman

The release of Tarique Rahman
Shamsuddin Ahmed
Source: The New Nation
September 10, 2008

The release of Tarique Rahman on Wednesday has certainly amused the BNP cadres and bemused the nation. He was accused in 13 corruption and extortion cases and set free on bail when undergoing trial by the special court. Son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, senior joint secretary general of BNP Tarique was supremo of the Hawa Bhaban and earned bad name for running parallel government during the BNP regime. The way BNP former state minister Ehsanul Haque Milon, former Adviser Barkatullah Bulu and former woman MP Bilquis Islam were subjected to mob beating on Wednesday has amply manifested the character of the JCD and Jubo Dal built up by the leader of the Young Turks Tarique Rahman. Their fault, they favoured reforms in the party.

Former minister Anwar Hossain Manju has been convicted, in absentia, and sentenced to jail for five years for keeping few cans of bear and bottles of wine. His closed friends felt wounded by the conviction of Manju, a non-alcoholist, chief of his faction of Jatiya Party, one of the owners of mass circulated daily and also owner of a couple industries. It is natural that he required to host foreign friends at his home and serve them with drinks they take as normal.

Barrister Maudud Ahmed, another former minister, has been accused in a number of cases, including one for having forbidden hard drinks in his house. He could have the similar fate of Manju had not the proceedings of his alcohol case been stayed by the higher court.

Manju and Maudud are among the scores of high profile politicians and business leaders who have been brought to book during anti-corruption drive launched soon after the caretaker government of Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed was installed in the January 11, 2007 change over. They were undergoing trial by special courts on charges of corruption, extortion and abuse of power. In the midst of trial former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Awami League, facing about a dozen corruption and extortion cases, was released on parol and allowed to leave the country, understandably with the change of winds in the national politics. That opened the floodgate. Many more politicians and business tycoons have been enlarged on bail and proceedings of the cases against them halted by the order of the High Court. Tarique Rahman is the latest corruption suspect released on bail. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia undergoing trial in a number of cases is also expected to be released soon.

Conviction of Manju and setting free Hasina, Tarique and others remind the keen observers of a satirical cartoon. The cartoon depicted a minister-in-waiting brought before the king three men, with handcuff and rope round the waist. The first man, the minister told the king, was caught cursing you. "Off his head," came the order. The second man was caught stealing bread. "Feed him to the lions." The third was caught falsifying documents, money laundering and pilfering 700 million in corporate loans. "Hire him," roared the king.

Release of political leaders detained on corruption charges has indeed caused ACC Chairman Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury to lament. "The image of ACC is affected," he admitted referring to the recent bails granted to the accused in corruption cases and stay orders on the cases against them. People want punishment of the corrupt elements and they will certainly not like it, said the chairman.

The government wants the nation to understand that the detained politicians are released to bring all the political parties to the election planned for December. For, the caretaker government is under severe pressure from within and without the country for holding the election with the participation of all parties. But the major parties, especially the Awami League and the BNP, would not take part in the election without release of their detained leaders. So, they are set free.

Now Hasina, Tarique and their associates are free for taking part in the election. We have before us examples of recent democratic elections in Thailand and Pakistan. Followers of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, overthrown and discredited for corruption, won the election. Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a protégé of Thaksin, last week declared emergency in the face of mass upsurge but the military declined to salvage him. Some two lakh people laid siege on the government administrative building and vowed they would not withdraw until Samak steps down.

In Pakistan, PPP won the election held in February. It entered into alliance with Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif and forced President Parvez Musharraf to step down. PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari is now poised to become the President of Pakistan through election by the parliament on September 6. Zardari, known as 'Mr 20 percent' (taking commission during PPP rule) was debarred from the parliamentary election because of corruption case against him. Only recently attorney general of Pakistan got the money laundering case against Zardari withdrawn in Switzerland. Investigation found he had funneled 60 million dollars ill-gotten money.

Reputed columnist Mr Cowasjee wrote in daily Dawn on August 31, "I have been inundated with e-mails calling upon me to come to the aid of the country and save it from Zardari." He wondered how the armed forces feel at Zardari's becoming the President for he will also be the Commander in Chief and have his finger on the country's nuclear button. This has frightened the people of the world and the people of Pakistan, he added.

We believe that none would like the situation of Pakistan in Bangladesh. We have been assured by US Ambassador Moriarty who told the Amcham luncheon meet on May 21, "US does not want to see a repeat of Pakistan President Gen Parvez Musharraf government's nemesis in Bangladesh."

Chief of our Army Staff General Moeen U Ahmed who was wholly behind the January 11 change over had pledged to free the nation from corruption and dynastic politics. In his statement on April 2 last year he said, "…..we have to read the resolute character of Bangladeshi people that enabled us to overcome the perpetuation of dynastic rule for a transparent and accountable Bangladesh."

The advisers' regime

The advisers' regime
Source: Himal Southasian
September, 2008 Edition

Since a military-controlled interim government assumed power in Dhaka in January 2007 – suspending elections, announcing a jihad on corruption, arresting former prime ministers, and promising to right all that is wrong – a little-known Chinese proverb has entered the Bangla street lexicon. Riding a tiger is easy, the danger is in getting off strikes many as tailor-made to describe the unenviable plight that Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed and his colleagues find themselves in today, some 20 months after assuming power.

In late July, local elections to a handful of city corporations and municipalities (in Sylhet, Khulna, Barisal and Rajshahi), held under the ongoing state of emergency, may have confirmed the regime’s deepest fears. Last year, the Chief Election Commissioner, A T M Shamsul Huda, had time and again told the media that the emergency would have to be lifted before free and fair national polls could take place. In the wake of July’s local elections, however, he seems to have quickly changed his mind.

Though candidates in the local polls were not allowed to contest under the banner of the mainstream political parties, it was almost exclusively candidates with known party affiliations who won. Since the interim government came to power last year, a pro-government media blitzkrieg that blamed all of the coutnry’s ills on the politicians had sought to ensure that the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) stood thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the public. As undeserving as they are of public favour, these polls have shown that the people of Bangladesh still side with their candidates, despite the fact that almost everyone will agree that the party top brass is corrupt and autocratic.

This failure to transform politics could not have been brought home with greater impact than through a recent remark by CEC Huda, who publicly admitted to the interim government’s failure to bring “honest and capable candidates” to stand in the recently held elections. Huda’s comment made all the more of a splash due to the fact that this tagline of honesty and competence in politics has been regularly touted by the interim government as one of its strongest selling points.

Meanwhile, even the emergent elite, one of the strongest constituencies for this military-controlled government and its ambitious plan to ‘democratise’ the country, there is increasing disillusionment. There is no escaping the proof on the ground that all is not right. The Berlin-based Transparency International, which has ranked Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world for three years in a row, recently ruled that corruption had not abated under Bangladesh’s new uniformed rulers.

Exit and indemnity
In fact, most political observers believe that the coin dropped a long while ago. Having spent the first year arbitrarily arresting top politicos and businessmen for corruption (their confessions often extracted after torture, methods rendered inscrutable by the state of emergency), the government seemed to have changed its tack as the need for a safe landing became more and more pressing. The ‘minus-two’ formula envisioned exiling the two former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, along the lines of Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan. Now, this seems to have been abandoned.

In June, Sheikh Hasina (whose supporters largely swept the July polls) was suddenly released on ‘parole’ for ‘medical treatment’. This came after the Awami League leader had spent a year in detention on a slew of corruption charges, with bail being consistently denied through the use of emergency powers. Three months on, the interim cabinet seems to be devoting an inordinate amount of rhetoric to reassure the BNP that its leader, Khaleda Zia, is also in the process of being released from detention. In fact, it is emerging as a source of embarrassment for the interim regime that she has been repeatedly quoted in the press as refusing to accept any form of exile, and demanding instead that her imprisonment run its normal legal course, rather than having an expedited release. If she does not want to be released, people are asking themselves, and yet if she is still as corrupt as the government has been saying, then why does the chief adviser need to reassure the BNP of her imminent release? The waters get murkier as the Awami League mounts pressure on the goverment to release arch-rival Khaleda -- to prevent her from emerging as a symbol of the pro-democracy movement, but mostly due to the fact that her continued incarceration makes Hasina seem too eager to compromise with the cantonment.

It certainly does not help the government’s case that ordinary Bangladeshis know that, historically, such developments have always been the result of dirty deals between the powerful and those in power. There is already talk on the street that the results of the national elections, now scheduled for December, could be determined by whichever party offers the advisers a safer ‘exit route’, as well as indemnity through a desperately necessary constitutional amendment. Bangladesh’s politicians, warts and all, may yet hold the key to ending this latest bout of military rule.

Proscribing Islamist Politics in Bangladesh

Proscribing Islamist Politics in Bangladesh:
Lessons from and for Pakistan

Taj Hashmi
Professor, Security Studies
Asia-Pacific Center for Security studies
Honolulu, Hawaii

Contrary to what Indian nationalist Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) is said to have observed, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow”, in view of the ongoing and least expected “Pakistanization” of Bangladesh, one may rephrase the statement as, “What Pakistan thinks today, Bangladesh thinks tomorrow”. It is beyond the comprehension of many analysts and scholars that a country created in the name of Bengali nationalism, democracy and secularism, within five years of its inception adopted Islamism and autocracy turning away from the last vestiges of secularism, democracy and the rule of law.

The growing menace of Islamism and state-sponsored Islamization has been wrecking havoc to Pakistan’s economy and socio-political structure, at times making experts and laymen wonder if the country has already become a “failed state” or on the verge of becoming one. The situation in Bangladesh, an erstwhile Pakistani province, is slightly different in this regard as Islamists do not pose any impending threat of taking over parts of the country, as in Pakistan.

Nonetheless, it has also inherited Islamism as a legacy of the past; Islamist terrorism, including suicide attacks, is no longer an unfamiliar phenomenon in Bangladesh; Islam-oriented parties have become decisive factors in forming governments. While overt or covert martial law has become normative, with periodic interregnums of dynastic civil oligarchies a la Pakistan, Islamism and state-sponsored cosmetic Islamization of the polity have remained well-entrenched since late 1975.

One may attribute these phenomena to the failure of the welfare state, not that different from what has happened in Algeria, Egypt, Afghanistan and The Sudan, among other Muslim countries. Nevertheless, we need other explanations as to why not only the crest-fallen masses have been drawn to Islamism (considered an alternative to the “failed” secular ideologies of democracy, nationalism and national-socialism by many), but also the bulk of political and intellectual elite, including some hitherto-radical leftists.

As poverty, bad governance and the “Global Jihad” breed Islamist nihilism, so is illegitimate rulers’ exploiting religious sentiments of the people with a view to legitimizing their rule with state-sponsored Islamization. Islamization of the polity out of sheer political expediency, in the long run, could be disastrous for the polity as we find out in Pakistan, and on a minuscule level, in Bangladesh. What was once beyond one’s imagination that Bangladesh, a country created in the name of secular nationalism, would one day adopt Islam as its “state religion”, and pro-Pakistani Islamist political parties would play important role in running the polity, is a reality now.

However, despite the abysmally poor state of affairs in regard to governance and overall well-being of the people, there is a faint hope that Bangladesh will eventually reduce the level of Islamist obscurantism and insurgency in the near future. One is hoping against hope in view of the latest development in the country. The so-called Neutral Caretaker Government (NCG) is contemplating some bold steps towards curtailing the influence of Islamist political parties.

As reported in the media, the NCG is contemplating impose a ban on all religion-based political parties in accordance with the 1972 Constitution. It is indeed heartening that the provisions of the latest Representation of the People Order (RPO) stipulate that “a political party shall not be qualified for registration if any discrimination regarding religion, race, caste, language or sex is apparent in its constitution”. Since Islamist parties allow membership exclusively to “religious Muslims”, the RPO, in accordance with the Constitution, may legitimately de-register all religion-based parties.

In view of the above, as Bangladesh have lessons to learn from the Pakistani experience that unbridled growth of Islamism and even worse, state-sponsored Islamization of the polity, can be disastrous in the long run; similarly Pakistan may learn from the example of Bangladesh, where the government is thinking about proscribing Islamist political parties as a step towards containing, if not eliminating, Islamism. A successful deregistration of all Islamist political parties, especially the well-organized and well-funded Jamaat-i-Islami in Bangladesh, would be a good example for Pakistan and other countries confronting similar Islamist menace. This would also demolish the myth that Islamization of a polity is not reversible. We once nourished similar view about communism.

There is no reason to be complacent about allowing the so-called “constitutional” and “non-violent” Islamist parties like the Jamaat, Muslim Brotherhood and their likes. Although apparently they look different from al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Harkat Ul-Jihad al Islami (HUJI), the Taliban and similar Islamist outfits, there is no reason to assume that the Jamaat and Brotherhood believe in democracy and peaceful co-existence with liberal Muslims and non-Muslims. These proto-fascist organizations are committed to installing Islamist governments throughout the Muslim World by gradually infiltrating into every level of the polity, finally to takeover by violent means.

Let us hope Bangladesh will make an important breakthrough in delegitimizing Islamism by de-registering all Islam-oriented political parties as the first step. All democratic and secular Bangladeshis should come forward demanding the immediate de-registration of all religion-oriented parties. The civil society has to play an important role in this regard as some of the leading “secular nationalist” political parties are still going around with Islamists, weighing in the “vote bank” potential of the Islamist groups. Then again, Bangladesh alone cannot delegitimize Islamism in the country. Since deregistration of the various Islamist parties would be a major step towards their elimination process, countries and international donors can play a vital role in this regard. Having enough leverage to influence the policy makers in the country, they should press them hard to implement the proposed deregistration order vis-à-vis the Islamist parties.

Conversely, if Bangladesh fails to contain the so-called “constitutional and democratic” Islamist parties along with the clandestine Islamist ones now, under this unique military-backed Caretaker Government, the forthcoming elected government (in the event of elections taking place by December) is least likely to succeed in this regard irrespective of which party or coalition comes to power. Firstly, the major political parties in the country want to appease the Jamaat and similar Islamist groups out of political expediency; and secondly, the prevalent Islamization of the polity mainly due to bad governance, corruption and patronage of Islamism by various governments in the last thirty-odd years, Islamism has its special niece in the body politic of Bangladesh. In sum, we must realize what Islamist quagmire Pakistan has fallen into due to sheer negligence of the menace in its formative phase and the various governments’ flirting with the Jamaat and its likes since the 1970s. Bangladesh government’s success in deregistering Islamist parties would be a positive example for others, signaling a major victory in the “war on terror”.

Major Setback in Jail Killings Case

Source: The Independent
August 29, 2008

The High Court yesterday got down to delivering judgement on appeals along with death references in the 1975 Jail Killings Case, closing long-drawn legal arguments from both sides.

On November 3 in 1975, Syed Nazrul Islam, acting president of Bangladesh government in exile during the Liberation War, Tajuddin Ahmed, prime minister, M Mansur Ali, finance minister, and AHM Qamaruzzaman, minister of home affairs, relief and rehabilitation, were gunned down inside Dhaka Central Jail by a raiding cabal of army-men.

The killings, seen as a desperate bid of power usurpers, came amid a political vortex 79 days after the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family on August 15, 1975.

A designated death-reference Division Bench of the High Court, comprising Justice Nozrul Islam Chowdhury and Justice M Ataur Rahman Khan, began spelling out the judgement after 2pm today. Nearly four years before, on October 20, 2004, the trial court sentenced three rankers to death and awarded life imprisonment to 12 midlevel army officers for the bloodletting.

It had acquitted four politicians and an army officer in the long-awaited verdict of the historic Jail Killings Case. The trial court awarded capital punishment to Risalder (retd) Muslemuddin, Dafadar (dismissed) Marfat Ali Shah and Dafadar (dismissed) Abul Hashem Mridha-all on the run for long.

Those who were awarded life imprisonment for abetting the assassins are Lt Col (dismissed) Syed Farook Rahman, Lt Col (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Maj (retd) Bazlul Huda, Lt Col (dismissed) Khondaker Abdur Rashid, Lt Col (relieved) Shariful Huq Dalim, Lt Col (retd) SHMB Noor Chowdhury, Maj (Retd) AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, Lt Col (retd) AM Rashed Chowdhury, Major (relieved) Ahmed Sharful Hossain, Capt (retd) Abdul Mazed, Captain (relieved) Kismat Hashem, and Captain (relieved) Nazmul Hossain Ansar.

Of the dozen lifers, Farook, Shahriar, Huda and AKM Mohiuddin are in jail, with death sentences also hanging over their heads for the murder of the country's founding father. The rest remained absconding.

The four were sentenced to death in the Bangabandhu Murder Case, following the scrapping of the Indemnity Ordinance by the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina.

Those exonerated were three then BNP leaders-KM Obaidur Rahman (dead), Shah Moazzem Hossain and Nurul Islam Manzoor-Taheruddin Thakur and additional secretary of foreign ministry Maj (Retd) Khairuzzaman.

The infamous Indemnity Ordinance had blocked the investigation and trial of the killings for about 21 years until the law was scrapped during the 1996-2001 Awami League regime. The belated trial was also delayed for repeated interventions by governments and judicial tangles.

Moeen vs. Musharraf

Drawing parallels and lessons
Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan and Moeen U Ahmed in Bangladesh

Mahmud ur Rahman Choudhury
Source: The Bangladesh Today
August 26, 2008

What happens in Pakistan ought not to overly concern us here in Bangladesh but it does because we were once part of Pakistan and have inherited some of the worst aspects of that Country's politics and governance. The four core institutions of our State - the Judiciary and system of Justice, the system of law-enforcement and Police, the system of administration and Bureaucracy and the Military - are all direct descendents of and still display many of the characteristics of the Pakistani system. Military involvement in politics is one of these awful legacies which we in Bangladesh are still tolerating and living with.

I don't know General Pervez Musharraf personally but I have read his very interesting auto-biography, "In the Line of Fire" and I happen to know one of his very close friends from whom I heard quite a bit about the General. As for General Moeen Uddin Ahmed, I have a passing acquaintance with him, having served for 25 years in the Bangladesh Army. Both of these individuals have catapulted themselves into politics in very critical moments in their respective countries' histories and therefore deserve a closer scrutiny of their characters and their deeds so as to draw appropriate lessons for the immediate future. The Pakistani General had to let go of power when he was forced to resign from his presidency on 18 August 2008 while the Bangladeshi General still holds a firm grasp of political power or so he believes.

Starting with the Pakistani General, Pervez Musharraf was a "Muhajir", that is a person who migrated to Pakistan after the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. In Pakistan, his family made good; he joined the Army and was commissioned in 1964. Through dint of his intelligence and hard work he rose through higher ranks in the Army. As he attained higher ranks and responsibilities, he carefully choose his mentors and friends both within the Army as well in political circles. On the way to the top, he earned respect of both his under-command and his seniors for his courage, integrity, determination, hard work and patriotism. In 1998, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Miah Newaz Sharif choose him as the Chief of Staff after the powerful Army Chief General Jehangir Karamat resigned. Some independent commentators suggested that General Musharraf's promotion came precisely because he did not belong to the Punjabi officer class and that Musharraf's ethnic background would leave the general unable to build a powerbase but by that time Musharraf had already built a powerbase. Barely a year later, on 12 October 1999, the aircraft carrying Pervez Musharraf from a visit to Sri Lanka was denied permission to land in Pakistan. When the plane ultimately landed with fuel for 10 minutes flying left in it, Pervez Musharraf had mounted a coup to oust Newaz Sharif. Supporters of Pervez Musharraf claim that Newaz Sharif intended to murder him while his detractors claim that the whole thing was a well planned ploy to capture state power. Pervez Musharraf ruled Pakistan for 9 crucial years during which time the Army went along with him by default.

General Pervez Musharraf assumed or more appropriately usurped political power some 9 years back on the contention that the political, economic and social systems in Pakistan have gone so corrupt that the Country's integrity and sovereignty is threatened. Moreover, the Taliban problems in Afghanistan and the Kashmir issue had serious spill over effects in Pakistan in terms of law and order situation and internal stability or so it was contented. All in all, excuses for Military intervention in politics were not lacking and this tendency towards military dictatorship was actively encouraged by the US who saw in General Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistan military a bulwark against the further spread westwards of radical "Islamic terrorism". In the 9 years that Pervez Musharraf "ruled" Pakistan, he brought the Country to near ruination until the people were near revolting. In an election about a year back, acceded to reluctantly by Musharraf, the people gave their verdict overwhelmingly against what the General stood for and now with the forced resignation of General Pervez Musharraf from the post of President that "ballot-box revolution" is complete. Whether the people of Pakistan can enjoy the fruits of their "democracy" will depend entirely on their determination to continue the process of democratization of their polity inspite of their politicians who are as corrupted a lot as there can be and who have betrayed the confidence of their people more than once.

In a sense Moeen U Ahmed is a Muhajir too; he was a cadet in the Pakistan Air Force College, Sargodah when the War of Liberation of Bangladesh was going on and only returned to Bangladesh a couple of years after the country had gained its independence. In 1974 he joined the Army and was commissioned with the 1st batch of officers of an independent Bangladesh. Like Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, Moeen U Ahmed in Bangladesh is intelligent and hard working and he too selectively cultivated friendships both within the Army and political circles as he proceeded upwards in rank and responsibility. Unlike Musharraf, Moeen U Ahmed is an introvert who is not much liked or respected by either the rank and file or fellow officers but he does know how to command obedience. When in July 2005, Lt General Hasan Mashud Chowdhury was about to retire as the Chief of Staff, Moeen U Ahmed pulled his political connections in BNP through his course mate Major Syed Iskander, the brother of the then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, to get to the top Army slot bypassing a dozen or so equally competent senior candidates. In December 2006, when political conditions in Bangladesh turned critical, Moeen U Ahmed supported by Major General Masud Uddin Chowdhury ( the brother-in-law of Major Syed Iskander), the GOC 9infantry Division based in Savar, made their bid for power. On the early morning of 11 January 2007, Moeen U Ahmed and Masud Uddin Chowdhury escorted by troops of 9 infantry Division invaded the Bangabhaban and forced the President to sign a Declaration of Emergency. A civilian façade was created by the formation of a council of 10 advisors with a Chief Advisor to head it; all advisors being retired bureaucrats, government servants or military officers. The excuses for this blatant grab at power were similar to those enunciated by Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. "All the evidence of Bangladeshi politics, point to the compelling conclusion that the political parties divided the Nation to a dangerous threshold that had no recourse but to confront a civil war" contented General Moeen U Ahmed in an interview with Global Bangladesh on 01 August 2007.

Much like the Pakistani Army with Pervez Musharraf, the Bangladesh Army went by default with Moeen U Ahmed. In the days after the military coup, there was a sense in the armed forces that they were all in this together. Much of it has evaporated in the past 20 months, and the current activities by Moeen only make clear that he is very much following his own agenda, and any collectivist goals have been discarded a long time ago, if he ever took them seriously at all. A lot of people had a lot of things in mind when they signed up for the military coup, but no one really visualized Moeen as another dictator.. It had taken all of 9 years for Pervez Musharraf to get his Country to the point of ruination but Moeen U Ahmed has managed to ruin Bangladesh within just 20 months; it only remains to be seen how he goes and what lessons we derive from these events.

The lessons than are:

Lesson # 01: Corrupt politicians, divisive politics and weak political institutions readily invite military interventions. Military dictators come to power with messianic goals which they rarely implement, instead breaking down existing institutions without being able to replace them with better ones further aggravating social, economic and political problems thereby initiating a cycle of conflict which in extreme cases leads to complete disintegration of the polity itself. Therefore, principled representative politics and strong political institutions are the "preventive medicines" against military dictators.

Lesson # 2: Weak political institutions lack control mechanisms of all sorts, most tellingly in the control of the Military. War, the preserve of the military demands rigid, hierarchal structures of command, control and communication for the military so that they can respond instantaneously to single commands at different levels emanating from the top and ending at the bottom. Surprise, shock, fear and dislocation - the stuff of successful warfighting can only be employed through such a system. Military dictators employ the same system when taking over the State. As long as Military dictators retain the uniform, the rank and the command goes along with it by default, they are impossible to remove even through massive public agitations and protests. It is only when they discard their uniforms and ranks, that they loose command and are vulnerable to removal and that too not immediately as the case of General HM Ershad in Bangladesh and Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan prove. Therefore, strong political control of the military at strategic and operational levels is the only way to prevent military dictators from taking over the State.

Lesson # 3: Military dictators are elitists. The military decision making process depends on a few selected lot of highly trained specialists called Staffs, who analyze all situations and work out courses of actions for the commander to select from. The Staff-Commander relationship is almost symbiotic with the commander responsible or answerable to no one for his decisions except the next higher commander. The highest military Commander is only accountable and answerable to his political master, whoever that is; in the absence of strong institutional political control, the highest military commander is accountable and answerable to no one save himself. Thus, when military dictators take over the State they aim for absolute control, often suspending or truncating existing core institutions of the State to establish that absolute sway. So, Military dictatorships are inimical, even hostile to institutional developments. The only way out of this is to keep on insisting on broadening the decision-making base, increasing the number of participants in the decision making process, not with the purpose of seeking solutions to problems but aimed at overwhelming the military dictator's decision making process with contradictory and conflicting inputs, finally paralyzing the decision process. This is a gradualist approach, demanding patience and determination on the part of the civil society wanting to get rid of a military dictatorship. This is the process through which the Pakistani civil society and politicians got rid of Pervez Musharraf and this is the process Bangladeshi civil society and politicians have to master, if they intend to get rid of military dictatorships.

Lesson # 4: The first thing military dictators do on taking over the State is to suspend or severely curtail existing laws and legal systems replacing them with such legal devices as emergency power rules, ordinances, special tribunals etc. One consequence of this is that military personnel who are paid just enough by the State to lead a life of "genteel poverty" create and use opportunities to enrich themselves by all sorts of corruption and since the military in State power is not answerable and accountable to anyone except themselves, military personnel often get away with such corruption. The regime itself indulges in corruption by buying up collaborators in politics, business, media and academicia by providing money or other privileges. This coterie of vested interest then supports the military dictator in perpetuating his hold on State power. Such regimes can sometimes be so rapaciously kleptocratic as to reduce the polity and its populace to abject penury or poverty. At the least, corruption is endemic in military dictatorships as is evident from Pakistan under Musharraf and Bangladesh under Ershad and now under a military-backed Emergency. The only way to get out of this is to ensure that democratic movements and governments which often replace military dictatorships do not post-facto legitimize such dictators but declare them unlawful and punish dictators and their collaborators.

This has gotten a mite lengthy and I have to end it here today but stay tuned as next Monday we will continue with our dissection of military dictators and see why and how they rely on foreign powers to shore-up their regimes.