Opinion Fear and loathing in Dhaka
Despite increasing attacks by Islamist militants, Sheikh Hasina’s government fails to act. Lack of a credible, viable opposition in parliament makes people’s despondency deeper.
The difficulty for Bangladesh’s people today is clear and simple: A political vacuum engendered by an absence of democratic opposition exists in the country.
An air of despondency hangs low over Bangladesh. And that is only natural, given that as many as 49 citizens — Hindus, Christians, academics, bloggers, publishers and foreigners — have lost their lives at the hands of Islamist militants in the past two years. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that, except one individual being nabbed by local residents, not one of the men engaged in this orgy of murder has even been identified. It is a telling commentary on the shortcomings of the government that a threat held out to the Ramakrishna Mission in Dhaka has prompted the Indian authorities to establish contact with the Bangladesh authorities over this growing militant threat.
One ugly and undeniable truth is that the threats from the Islamists appear to be increasingly directed at Bangladesh’s Hindus — a good number of whom have been warned that Bangladesh is a homeland for Muslims and that they should go to India. This has prompted a federation of Hindus in the country, the Jatiyo Hindu Mohajote, to demand that the government of Bangladesh ensures security for the community. The Hindus, it has noted, have now been pushed into conditions where they largely stay indoors. When Hindu women move out, many of them do so wearing such conservative Muslim attire as the burka.
The embarrassment for Bangladesh, which emerged as a free, secular nation through a war of liberation in 1971, is only too obvious. The law enforcing authorities as also the various security agencies have in these past many months turned out to be woefully deficient in their ability to detect the elements planning such hate crimes or in zeroing in on the killers once they have committed such crimes.
Over the last two weeks, after the recent murder of the wife of a police officer, the police brought no fewer than 11,000 people into the security dragnet. But not many are impressed. First, the police have a history of hauling up innocent citizens. Second, the latest action was seen to target the political opposition, especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The irony in the present circumstances is that the government has kept up the refrain of a policy of zero tolerance of religious militancy. Not surprisingly, cynicism continues to grow deeper. PM Sheikh Hasina says she has written to foreign heads of government about her administration’s readiness to take action but whether it persuades foreign leaders remains a huge question.
The lack of a credible, viable opposition in parliament makes the despondency deeper. The BNP, which unwisely stayed away from the last general election in January 2014, today appears to be ruing its decision. Its earlier hope that a massive political movement on the streets would shake the government and make it collapse has fallen flat because of its own inner contradictions. Of late, though, such senior party leaders as former law minister Moudud Ahmed have offered the government a hand of cooperation in combating the militant threat. Moudud, whose political loyalties have consistently changed in the last four decades, has now publicly spoken of an international conspiracy against Bangladesh and has suggested that the Awami League-led government engage with the opposition in the task of beating back this threat.
There is little question that the offer is essentially a bipartisan acknowledgement of Bangladesh’s political realities today. But with Sheikh Hasina and her ministers regularly accusing the BNP and its ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, of being behind the rise of Islamist militancy, indeed of being involved in the recent murders, it is hard to see how, or if, the government will respond positively to the opposition demand.
The difficulty for Bangladesh’s people today is clear and simple: A political vacuum engendered by an absence of democratic opposition exists in the country. The BNP has been out of office for 10 years and has in all this time demonstrated not the slightest hint of going for a review of its policies or programmes. Besides, its traditional agenda of promoting a so-called Bangladeshi nationalism, based as it evidently is on politics underpinned by an adherence to Muslim nationalism, does little to enhance its credibility among the people .
At the other end, the presence of the Jatiyo Party of former military ruler Hussein Muhammad Ershad is curious, indeed bizarre. It defines itself as the parliamentary opposition and yet some of its lawmakers are ministers in Sheikh Hasina’s government. General Ershad, whose nine-year-long dictatorship was brought to an end by a determined push for democracy by both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda
Zia in 1990, has been a great survivor in national politics. He sits in the parliament and at the same enjoys the position of a roving ambassador for the prime minister, though it has never been clear what that position precisely entails.
Sheikh Hasina and her government have, in their years of being in power, without question, been symbolic of a positive change in Bangladesh. The economy remains steady, growth being more than 6 per cent. The health, education and agriculture sectors have been doing well.
But it is on the issue of Islamist militancy that the government has faltered, repeatedly, leading to its embarrassment internationally. Against this background, Prime Minister Hasina needs to allay the concerns of the people, both at home and abroad.
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