Bangladesh's Tahrir Square: Blogger's Death Ignites More Protests

By: Eko Armunanto 

Source: digitaljournal

Bangladeshi activists attended a rally to demand the execution of Jemaah Islamiah leader Abdul Quader Mollah and others convicted of war crimes involving the nation's independence war in 1971 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Rajib Haider, the initiator of the movement who wrote a blog devoted to them, was attacked outside his home Friday night after returning from that rally in Shahbag Square. Haider's family said he was stabbed to death for standing up to Islamists and drawing people to the protests. Police said they had detained five suspects.

Some expatriate Bangladeshis have flown home to support the call for the death penalty. Children have been filmed with the slogan "We want death by hanging" painted across their cheeks and torsos. Jon Boone's report for The Guardian said the rally was involving hundreds of thousands who has been camped on the streets for 10 days demanding the execution of war criminals. It described the movement as Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. "On Saturday, an even larger crowd thronged the square to attend funeral prayers for Haider, many vowing to avenge his death or breaking down in tears as his coffin passed", Anis Ahmed told CNN.

Abdul Quader Mollah was found guilty this month of crimes including massacres, torture and rapes during Bangladesh's bloody war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, another eight members of Mollah's Jemaah Islamiah party are also on trial, as are two members of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, including a former government minister. The estimation was that anywhere between 300,000 and 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army and their allied local militias. Bangladesh formed the eastern part of Pakistan until it gained independence in 1971.

Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was elected Prime Minister on a platform of making the prosecution of war crimes a priority of her government - Bangladeshis were angered that Quader Mollah was only given a life sentence. Public fury grew further when Mollah, nicknamed the "Butcher of Mirpur" for his crimes, flashed a "V" for victory sign when he came out of the courtroom. Jemaah Islamiah said the war-crimes trials were being carried out with ill political motive as it begun after more than 40 years of independence, while demonstrators vowed to continue protesting at Shahbagh and asked the government to ban Jemaah Islamiah, which sided with Pakistan and opposed the 1971 founding of Bangladesh.

The agonies of Bangladesh come to London

Source: The Guardian
By: Nick Cohen

The Shahbag junction in Dhaka has become Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. Hundreds of thousands of young protesters are occupying it and raging against radical Islamists. Even sympathetic politicians cannot control the movement. The protesters damn them as appeasers, who have compromised with unconscionable men.

Theirs is a grassroots uprising for the most essential and neglected values of our age: secularism, the protection of minorities from persecution and the removal of theocratic thugs from the private lives and public arguments of 21st-century citizens

Naturally, the western media show little interest in covering the protest. The indifference is all the more telling because the Shahbag movement is a response to a crime westerners once deplored, but have almost forgotten.

The young in Dhaka have revolted over the war crimes trials of members of Jamaat-e-Islami. That useful leftwing term "clerical fascist" might have been invented to describe what they did. In 1971, the oppressed "eastern wing" of Pakistan rose against its masters to form Bangladesh. The Pakistani army responded with a campaign of mass murder and mass rape, which shocked a 20th century that thought it had seen it all. George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, the Bonos of their day, organised benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden. The murder of Hindus and Christians, the flight of refugees and the chance to weaken Pakistan pushed Indira Gandhi into one of the finest actions of her murky career. She sent the Indian army to liberate the tortured land.

The Pakistani occupiers were helped at every stage by Islamist activists. Jamaat took its inspiration from Abul Ala Maududi who has as good a claim as anyone to be the founder of political Islam. Maududi wanted a global war to establish a caliphate. The break-up of Muslim Pakistan impeded the prospect of a world revolution. To prevent this reverse, his followers formed death squads to slaughter the intellectuals, engineers, administrators and teachers who could make an independent Bangladesh work. The outcome of a belated trial of handful of Jamaat war criminals has set Bangladesh on fire.

As with popular revolts throughout history, Bangladeshi liberals are in two minds about the Shahbag demonstrations. On the one hand, they cannot fail to admire the determination of the young to state loudly and clearly that "religion-based politics had poisoned society", as Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune put it. On the other, the demonstrators are saying with equal force that they want the death penalty, that most anti-liberal of punishments, applied to the war criminals without mercy.

Do I hear you say that Bangladesh is far away and the genocide was long ago?

Not so far away. Not so long ago. And the agonies of Bangladeshi liberals are nothing in comparison to the contradictions of their British counterparts.

The conflict between the Shahbag and Jamaat has already reachedLondon. On 9 February, local supporters of the uprising demonstrated in Altab Ali Park, a rare patch of green space off the Whitechapel Road in London's East End. They were met by Jamaatis. "They attacked our men with stones," one of the protest's organisers told me. "There were old people and women and children there, but they still attacked us."

The redoubtable organiser is undeterred. She and her fellow activists are going back to the park tomorrow for another demonstration. Her friends are worried, however. They asked me not to name her after unknown assailants murdered Ahmed Rajib Haider Shuvo, one of the leaders of the Dhaka rallies, on Friday.

Whitechapel was where socialists and Jews confronted the British Union of Fascists in clashes that leftists mythologise as a grand moment of anti-Nazi solidarity. While they still talk about the Battle of Cable Street and remember 1936, it is far from clear to me where today's British left stands in relation to modern struggles against ultra-reactionaries.

Liberal muliticulturalism contains the seeds of its own negation. It can either be liberal or multicultural but it can't be both. Multiculturalism has not meant a defence of all people's rights to practise their religions and speak their minds without suffering racial or sectarian hatred. As events have turned out, it has led to official society picking the pushiest group of "community leaders" and honouring them.

In the case of British Islam, the anointed group was Jamaat-e-Islami, even though its British members included men accused of war crimes in Bangladesh. It was as if the establishment had decided that Opus Dei represented British Catholicism or Shiv Sena represented British Hinduism or the most bigoted form of orthodoxy represented British Judaism. The scoundrel left led the way down this murky alley, as it leads the way into so many dark places. Ken Livingstone and George Galloway have backed the Jamaat-dominated East London mosque, and Islamic Forum Europe, the Jamaat front organisation that now controls local politics in Tower Hamlets.

But to concentrate on the dregs of the Labour movement is to miss the point. Whitehall has been as keen on dealing with the allies of war criminals. Many East Enders have noticed that the Metropolitan Police seems less than anxious to follow up reports of menacing "Muslim patrols" or threats to drinkers at gay bars.

The moderate Muslims at the Quilliam Foundation told me that the status Britain had given to Jamaat helped push British Bangladeshis away from social democratic politics and towards radical Islam.

The British-Asian feminist Gita Sahgal launched the Centre for Secular Space last week to combat such indulgence of theocratic obscurantism. She told me that Jamaat perverts traditional faith and she should know. Not only did she name alleged Jamaat war criminals living in Britain for Channel 4 in the 1990s, she is also Jawaharlal Nehru's great niece and a distant relative of the Indira Gandhi who sent the army into Bangladesh. I admire Sahgal and Quilliam hugely, but they are mistrusted, even hated by orthodox leftwingers. The feeling is reciprocated in spades and perhaps you can see why.

Many do not want to talk about Bangladesh massacres that moved liberal opinion to outrage in the 1970s, just as many did not want to talk about Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds in the run-up to the second Iraq war. These are politically inconvenient genocides they would rather forget.

The most bracing effect of the demonstrations in Dhaka and London is that the terror is not being forgotten and liberals are being forced to pick sides. Let us hope that they stop picking the wrong one.

Ban Jamat Shibir

Bangladeshi terrorist outfit Jamat-e Islam and its student front Islami Chatra Shibir should be banned immediately.  They killed a leading volunteer of Shabag Movement.  Government has already shut down jamati website Sonar Bangla that incited this killing. Read from Daily Star (16 Feb) depicting how brutally he was killed by Jamati goons:

A blogger and activist of Shahbagh movement was found stabbed dead last night, hours after the organisers decided to discontinue from today the 24-hour blockade.

The killing prompted the organisers to abandon a plan to demonstrate in front of National Museum from 3:00pm to 10:00pm every day.

The victim, Ahmed Rajib Haidar, lived with his brother Newaz Mortoza Haidar at Palash Nagar in the capital's Mirpur area. Police found the body, bearing several stabs, near his house.

Outraged, the Shahbagh protesters demanded immediate arrest of the killers and banning pro-Jamaat blog Sonarbangla that had been carrying out propaganda against Rajib over the last few days.

They also called upon the nation to resist the countrywide hartal called by Jamaat for Monday.

The protesters have also observed one-minute silence last night and they will wear black badges this morning to mourn for Rajib.

Victory is Ours!

AFP Reports on 14 February, 2013

When Ranajit Rinku heard the "Butcher of Mirpur" had been jailed for life for mass murder during Bangladesh's liberation war, he couldn't believe a man with so much blood on his hands could escape the gallows.

Like most Bangladeshis, Rinku had been taught that the nine-month conflict was one of the deadliest in history, with an estimated three million people killed by the Pakistani military and their local militia allies.

After Bangladesh's domestic war crimes tribunal ruled on February 5 that Abdul Quader Molla, a top official in the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, was responsible for more than 350 killings in a Dhaka suburb, opposition parties decried the verdict as a travesty of justice designed to settle scores.

But Rinku focused his outrage on what he saw as the leniency of the sentence -- no matter that the 31-year-old was not even born when the war broke out in March, 1971.

So he decided to head to an intersection in downtown Dhaka where hundreds of thousands of his fellow Bangladeshis have been staging round-the-clock protests with the single demand: that Molla and his fellow defendants be hanged.

"I have slept only 20 hours in the last eight days. We won't stop protesting unless all the collaborators are hanged," Rinku said.

The parents of Rinku, a member of Bangladesh's minority Hindu community, had to flee their village in northern Rangpur district in 1971 after it was attacked by a militia allied to the Pakistani army.

"So many people died at the hands of these killers yet there was no justice for the last 42 years. Our leaders have compromised with these killers and rehabilitated them. It's our last chance to wipe out this shame," he said.

Similar reactions have been seen throughout Bangladesh after the court started delivering their verdicts on 12 alleged war criminals last month.

The protests in Dhaka have drawn poets, academics, singers, journalists, war veterans and even members of the national cricket team.

The demonstrators have renamed Shahbag intersection New Generation Roundabout, comparing it to Tahrir Square, the cradle of Egypt's 2011 revolution.

The legacy of the nine-month war has defined much of Bangladesh's post-independence politics but successive governments including the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman failed to bring the war criminals to book.

Sheikh Mujib, the father of current premier Sheikh Hasina, briefly outlawed Jamaat in the 1970s.

But after his assassination in 1975, the ban was lifted by a military regime led by the husband of Hasina's main rival Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

The scale of the carnage is the subject of huge dispute.

The government says three million were killed but independent estimates put the figure much lower, between 300,000 and 500,000.

Many Bangladeshis believe the current Jamaat leadership was behind the pro-Pakistani militias responsible for the killings of professors, doctors and journalists.

Both Jamaat and BNP say the charges are bogus while international rights groups have found gaping holes in the war crimes laws and the proceedings.

The International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic set-up with no international oversight, has also been dogged by controversy ever since its creation in 2010.

Leaked internet calls point to collusion between a presiding judge, the prosecution and government. A key defence witness was allegedly abducted by plainclothed police outside the court.

But protesters dismiss such criticism.

"Young people have had enough of these conspiracies," said Imran Sarker, a protest organiser. "They have finally taken control to oversee the end of these collaborators."

Critics regard the demonstrations as having been orchestrated by the government to mask its shortcomings, including a series of high-profile graft scandals, ahead of elections due next January.

But Shahdeen Malik, a Dhaka-based commentator, said it was a mistake to underestimate the pent-up anger of a younger generation.

"I don't think the government has a role here. There are people of every hue and colour in the protests, including even BNP supporters," he told AFP.

"They have all become united under one issue: stern punishment for war criminals," he added, comparing the protests to recent mass protests in India after a deadly gang-rape.

Massive protest movement emerges against Islamists in Bangladesh

By Joseph Zeitlyn, Contributor / February 13, 2013

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

A protest that has at times swelled into the hundreds of thousands entered its ninth day today in Bangladesh’s capital, touched off by the outcome of a war crimes trial that has awoken an astonishing struggle over this country's identity and the role that religion plays in its fractious politics.

“God is Great,” cried out Abdul Qader Mollah, as he was sentenced to life behind bars on Feb. 5 in Bangladesh’s controversial war crimes tribunal. Known as the "butcher of Mirpur," Mr. Mollah was convicted of heinous crimes committed in 1971 during the country’s blood-soaked independence struggle from Pakistan. He has also been one of the leaders of the largest Islamist party here, the Jamaat-e-Islami. 

After the sentencing, protesters gathered in downtown Dhaka, crying foul that Mollah had not received the death sentence. This soon galvanized a vibrant protest movement against the ongoing influence of conservative, politicized Islam in one of the world's most populous Muslim nations.

“The current movement is aimed very explicitly at the Jamaat's role in 1971,” says Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune. But “it was clear that the future that the youths protesting ... envision is one without Islamist politics, returning to Bangladesh's secular roots, and recognition that religion-based politics had poisoned the society.

“They don't want to see the Jamaati-style Islamism either gain further currency in the society or more power politically,” he says.

Crowds continued to grow all week after the verdict. Soon a junction previously known simply as Shahbagh had become "Shahbagh Square," in reference to Tahrir. The calls of the protest morphed from macabre lynched effigies to calls for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to be banned and associated businesses boycotted.

“Us pushing for the death sentence is the tip of the iceberg; this is a way to begin to unravel religion from politics,” says founding protester and blogger Asif Moihuddin, who was recently stabbed by Islamist thugs because of the content of his blog.

The 1971 independence struggle pitted indigenous Bengali identity against those wishing to remain a part of Pakistan, a country founded with an Islamic identity.

 JI represents two things in Bangladesh, says Mr. Sobhan. “The first is their Islamist political philosophy. The second is their role, both as a party and individually, as collaborators with the Pakistan Army in 1971,” and as such, the current protests have drawn on a potent secular patriotism.

The protests “are not an antireligious movement; we are not against Islam,” says Mr. Moihuddin. “We are against intimidation in the name of Islam and religion interfering in politics.”

For their part, the JI have called the protests “fascist in nature,” in a recent press release.

"Of late we have learnt that the demonstrators are planning to attack commercial and philanthropic organizations having distant relationships with Jamaat,” says JI spokesman Abdur Razzaq. He also worries that "the judges of the tribunal will be intimidated" by the protest.

As for calls to disband his party, Mr. Razzaq sees politics at play: "This idea was first floated by a partner of the ruling coalition with communist/socialist leanings."

But there are some indications that the protesters are attempting to avoid co-option from political parties. Last Wednesday, a ruling party politician was pelted with bottles when he attempted to address the crowd. “I don't want the politicians here, they are poison,” says protester Sadab Hossein.

“This verdict gave us an opportunity to hold both the government and JI accountable to the people on an issue we can assemble round,” says Moihuddin. “If we don’t stop them now, who’s to say where it ends.”

He insists he will continue to protest at Shahbagh, despite receiving death threats.

There are already indications that the ongoing disruption could touch off violence. Counter-riots from JI's student wing, known as Shibir, have broken out, with live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, and running battles with police in other parts of the city.

BANGLADESH: External Efforts to Scuttle Genocide Trials

By Bhaskar Roy

Source: http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1121

Paper No. 5353, Dated 09-Jan-2013

Since its bloody and violent birth in 1971, Bangladesh’s history has been pronounced for political assassinations and military coups than reasons of development the country so richly deserves.  Certainly, there still remain deep religio-political differences among the people. 

The main conflict is between right wing elements who continue to strive for Sharia law, discrimination against women and minorities and spiritual regression on the one side, and the progressive and liberal section of the population especially the educated youth who want jobs, progress and development.

After 2008, there has been some forward movement.  Social indicators have improved.  Economic growth reached 7%.  International stature moved from ‘near a state sponsor of terrorism’ in early 2002 to “a frontline state against terrorism” in the last two years.  Bangladesh began to be cited internationally as an example among developing countries.  Women’s emancipation in Bangladesh under the present government is the highest in the region despite opposition from right wing political parties and groups.

Of course, everything has not been wonderful. Corruption has sapped the energy of the government in various areas and impacted development efforts.  There are many other problems.  But the country attained escape velocity to break the gravitation pull of under development.

The nation, however, remains threatened by the festering wounds of the 1971 war of liberation and the crimes against humanity committed not only by the occupying Pakistani army but by Bangladeshis who joined the Pakistanis in perpetrating  atrocities  against  their  country-men and women.  It is no longer argued that these atrocities did not happen, though no money or effort was spared by interested parties to obliterate them from living memory and history books.  The evidence is too strong.

An ingenious approach to downplay the impact of the 1971 genocide seems to be in the works.  The Economist, UK (Dec. 15th 2012) wrote “It was very late to begin the search for justice, for the accused as well as victims”, but conceded that war crimes are subject to no statute of limitation.   The weekly further said in the  same article “The main perpetrators are not in the dock, since they are either dead or living in Pakistan. But some suspects are still leading prominent lives in Bangladesh”.

In an internet posting by the Bangladesh Jamaet-e-Islami (JEI) international (Dec. 24, 2012) of which the writer is a recipient, The Economist is profusely thanked.  The posting starts with the following sentences “Initiated by The Economist, the global media have now kindly exposed the myth behind the so called free, fair, just, transparent, international standard  and not politically motivated trial  as shamelessly claimed by the government (current government in Bangladesh) and all its political and ideological agencies, allies and cohorts”  The Economist suggests that   without the exposure  it has made, the people would have remained in the dark about the machinations of the Awami League (AL) led government.

The current controversy is related to the conversation of Justice Mohammad Nizamul Huq, Chairman of war crimes Tribunal-I with an expatriate Bangladeshi lawyer based in Brussels, Ahmed Ziauddin.  Justice Huq was discussing  the  trial  and  revealed  that  the  government  was  pressing   for  a verdict against one of the offenders before December 16, the day the Pakistani army surrendered in Dhaka.  Judges all over the world do research, but discussing the case in hand is not ethical.  The Economist had access to these conversations as had  the Bangladeshi vernacular daily Amar Desh.  Both published the conversation between Justice Huq and Ziauddin. Justice  Nizamul Huq resigned, as he should have.  The other question, however, is whether the Huq-Ziauddin conversation was privileged?  Who hacked into the conversations over e-mail, skype, u-tube or whatever else?  This is illegal, and suggests  that a well funded network is working to illegally penetrate the internal proceedings of the court, the judges and the prosecution.

The demand that the trials of Tribunal-I start ab initio is unfounded.  The erring judge has stepped down.  The trial must go on from here according to the rules laid down.  The first accused in this trial is Dilwar Hossain Sayeedi, a top leader in the JEI, and one of the  cruellest  activists  in 1971.  Sayeedi is the dominant ideologue of the JEI who openly supports the extreme Wahabi ideology of the Al Qaeda and Taliban and has two options for minorities, that is, either convert to Islam or be prepared to be eliminated.

Those who emphasize “injustice in Bangladesh” should take a short break and examine how the minorities in Bangladesh especially  the Hindus, have suffered at the hands of the Islamists they are trying to defend, and how the minority population has declined from 18 percent in 1970 to barely 10 per cent today.

The manner in which the JEI international has presented The Economist’s contribution to their cause needs deeper research than this article can present, because of shortage of space. But the common cause made by the two raise serious questions.

It is more than obvious that efforts are afoot to scuttle the war crimes trial or shift it to after the year end general elections, in the hope that the Awami League led government would not return to power.  The arguments put forth by the anti-war crimes proponents are neither legal nor moral.  A dangerous game is being imposed on this region.

It is becoming increasingly evident that The Economist has wittingly or unwittingly become a powerful communication tool of a much larger conspiracy that aspires to subvert the secular character of Bangladesh.  The bigger concern is that the India led economic development and social stability in South Asia may be the bigger target.  This writer would like to be corrected if he is wrong.

Attention of readers is drawn to two issues of The Economist of July-August, 2011 (SAAG Paper No. 4665, 25 Aug. 2011).  India was projected as a regional thug executing negative policies towards its South Asian neighbours, shooting Bangladeshi cattle smugglers, cozying up to Myanmar’s dictators, prosecuting conflicting relations with Sri Lanka and meddling “madly” in Nepal’s internal affairs, concluding New Delhi lacked any kind of vision.

In its excitement, the weekly, perhaps, exposed its intention of going for the kill when it  alleged that the Awami League won the 2008   elections in a land slide victory with “bags of Indian money and advice”, when international observers verified that this was Bangladesh’s fairest elections ever.  The Economist went ahead to second the opinion of the Bangladeshi opposition parties campaigning against giving India land corridor facility to its North East, as it would annoy the Indian insurgents if military transportation were to take place.  Astonishing!  Was this weekly supporting Indian insurgents getting support from and sanctuary in Bangladesh as had happened openly during the BNP-JEI four party alliance rule in 2001-2006?  This weekly must answer and explain.  It even tried to ridicule the Awami League led Bangladesh government honouring the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi posthumously for her contribution to Bangladesh’s liberation.

The Economist’s approach is confounding.  It appears to condemn the independence of Bangladeshis suffocated under Islamabad; it tries to brush aside the genocide unleashed by the Pakistani army, the Bangladeshi Razakars, Al Badrs and Al Shams (together forming Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh – at least two Pakistani army officers who witnessed the genocide have written about it in their memoirs); it accuses the government of decimating the Islamic political party, the JEI, among others.  After Bangladesh attained independence, the JEI, (Pakistan army’s and ISI’s surrogate) was banned and the citizenship of its Amir, Golam Azam rescinded.  It was rehabilitated when Gen. Zia-ur-Rehman became President and formed the BNP  in 1978, and a relationship was established between the BNP and JEI.  Zia’s wife Begum Khaleda Zia became the chairperson of the BNP after Zia’s assassination in 1981.

Complicating matters further, Turkish President Abdullah Gul called on Bangladesh President Zillur Rehman for clemency for the war crimes accused.  In a letter, (Dec. 23, 2012) to the Bangladesh President, Abdullah Gul pleaded that  the  accused  Jamaat-e-Islami  leaders  were  too  old  to  stand  trial,  and apprehended that the trial may lead to civil war in the country.  A 14-member delegation from the Turkish NGO Cansuyu Aid and Solidarity Organization visited Bangladesh, met opposition leaders and visited the Tribunal-I court, accompanied by the Turkish ambassador in Dhaka.  The delegation misused visa on arrival meant for tourists and business delegations and indulged in political activities.

The Bangladesh government firmly rejected the Turkish overtures, but it was a case of gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country and, that too, in favour of criminals accused of crimes against humanity.  Most of these accused have links with Islamic terrorists in Bangladesh.

President Gul’s plea that most of the accused are old and not fit for trial is misplaced.  Only Golam Azam, former Amir of JEI, is 90 years old.  The rest who held either ministerial positions in the BNP-JEI government or high level position in the party, are very active publicly.  Although the Tribunal has the power to sentence a proven criminal to death, it is not necessary that this will be done.

The lapse of time between the acts committed and the trials is not an issue.  War crimes are not bound by the statute of limitation.  The Nuremburg trials continued till all noted Nazi war criminals were accounted for.  The  age of the criminals were considered.  In Cambodia/Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge leaders who exterminated almost a fourth of the country’s population during their bloody rule in the 1970s have not been spared either.

What is Turkey’s game plan?  It is a member of NATO and is expected to be liberal and secular.   From a once secular  state  Turkey  has  shifted to  a more Islamist orientation.  The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to which President Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan belong is generally described as Islamist rooted and of Islamic leaning.  Turkey is also the current chair of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).  But that does not mean it is part of AKP’s social, moral and religious duty to try and save criminals who committed crimes against humanity in a distant country just because the Jamaat is involved.

What made President Gul intervene in Bangladesh?  Is the AKP trying to save the JEI who want Sharia law to be introduced in Bangladesh and put women behind burkhas and within the confines of the house?  Does the AKP have such a plan for Turkey?  Or is there a much larger conspiracy to demolish the development of the region.

Both The Economist and the Turkish government seem to have conveniently avoided any consideration of the sudden spurt of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism led by groups such a Jamatul Mujahidin Bangladesh (JMB), Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HUJI), Ahle Hadis, Hizbut Tehrir and others between 2001 and 2006. There are over  120 such fundamentalist terrorist groups in Bangladesh.  Funding came to them from Islamic NGOs in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan and some other countries.  A group of Al Qaida cadres were spotted in the jungles of Chittagong Hill Tracts in December 2006, hosted by the JEI.  They fled after the BNP-JEI government fell.

It is imperative that the international community revisit the roles of the gentlemen facing war crimes trial and some BNP leaders in promoting terrorism  and  political assassination  between 2001 and 2006.  If a moral issue is being cited, then the entire series of developments must be revisited.  The last question is why involve India?

It is well known that in some capitals of the world Sk. Hasina is seen as an obstructionist to influence mongering.  India is perceived as the large neighbour which is promoting Sk. Hasina  and her government to a trans-Asia development connectivity.

This is not a case of a simple regime change in Bangladesh.  A very  serious risk is being taken by the powers and forces that be, to convert the country into a puppet of a new great game without even thinking that the strategy might blow up in their faces.

As in Alice in Wonderland, the situation is getting “curiouser and curiouser”.

_______________________

(The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst.  He can be reached at  grouchohart@yahoo.com.)