• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Bangladesh: Worrisome indicators

B. Raman

THE recent incidents on the Indo-Bangladeshi border are under enquiry by the Government and one has to await the results before assessing whether these were isolated incidents unlikely to have an adverse impact on the bilateral relations or if these are the first outward manifestations of a growing anti-India feeling in the Bangladesh security bureaucracy. However, certain recent negative trends in Bangladesh, which have not received the attention they deserve in India, need to be highlighted.

Ever since Sheikh Hasina came to power in 1996, independent analysts and women's rights organisations in Bangladesh have been drawing attention to her inability to reverse the process of Islamisation of the society and the administrative and security inf rastructure under the two military dictatorships which followed the assassination of her father in 1975 and to counter the increasing activities of Islamic fundamentalist organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of the pre-1971 vintage, the Islami c Oikya Jote (IOJ -- the Islamic United Front) and the followers of Bin Laden's Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami -- HUJ (Al Qaeda). They were also drawing attention to the spread of the fundamentalist virus in the Bangladesh Diaspora, particularly in the UK.

Chakma human rights groups had been highlighting the pre-1996 nexus between the JEI and the Bangladesh Army and documenting instances of their joint attacks on and destruction of Buddhist places of worship and Buddha statues in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) which, according to the Chakma groups, had continued till mid-1996.

Despite their involvement in the massacres carried out by the JEI of united Pakistan and its Al Badr militant wing, many of the pre-liberation leaders of the JEI are today in the forefront of the fundamentalist, pro-Pakistan and anti-India forces in Bang ladesh and an privileged allies of Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

A special rapporteur (SR) of the UN Human Rights Commission, Geneva, who visited Bangladesh from May 15-24, 2000, reported to the Commission as follows: ``There is a real and effective threat of religious extremism, stemming largely from such religious p arties as Jamat-e-Islami, which are very active in their efforts to train Muslims by infiltrating mosques and madrasas and engaging in political action. This extremism is notably responsible for the climate of insecurity among non-Muslim minorities, as w ell as among the Ahmadi Muslim minority community, among ethnic groups and among women, regardless of their religious confession. There have been looting and destruction of (Buddhist) temples, as well as harassment of Buddhist monks and other Buddhists b y Muslim extremist groups.''

The electoral support enjoyed by the JEI in Bangladesh is more than that of its counterpart in Pakistan, but still not substantial. It won only 18 seats in the 1996 elections, but has built up considerable street power and has important allies in the IO J and the HUJ. They have carefully retained and nursed the nexus which the JEI had built up in the military and intelligence establishment before 1991, but available evidence does not permit a quantification of the support enjoyed by them in the establis hment.

In the 1980s, many cadres of the JEI had participated in the fight against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan and, in the process, established a networking relationship with different Afghan Mujahideen groups, Pakistani jehadi organisations and the HUJ (Al Qaeda) of Osama bin Laden.

They had also played an active role in assisting and training the Rohingya Muslims of the Arakan State of Myanmar. The Bangladesh military-intelligence establishment had allowed the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) of Pakistan to run training camps for Rohingy a Muslims in Bangladesh territory.

In recent months, a Bangladeshi version of the HUJ has made its appearance and has been operating independently. Though the Bangladesh authorities claim that the HUJ came into being in 1992 when Begum Khaleda Zia was the Prime Minister, reports of its a ctivities have come to the fore only during the last two years. It has been projected as an organisation owing its inspiration to bin Laden and the Taliban. Its slogan reportedly is: ``Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban. Bangla Hobe Afghanistan'' (We all will becom e Taliban and Bangla will become Afghanistan).

The Bangladesh authorities blamed the HUJ for two alleged attempts to kill Sheikh Hasina in July 2000, when explosive devices were recovered at or near the places to be visited by her during a routine security check and, since the beginning of this year, there has been a number of violent incidents in which the involvement of the Islamic extremist elements was suspected by the Bangladesh police.

Non-governmental organisations have also been targeted by these groups as `un-Islamic'. The hundreds of NGOs working to raise living standards and the lot of women in one of the world's poorest nations have been accused of destroying Islamic culture. Whi le considerable attention has been paid in India to the activities of the Islamic fundamentalist/jehadi organisations in Pakistan, a similar attention has been lacking in respect of Bangladesh.

Sheikh Hasina's election victory in 1996 was greeted in India with lots of hope and expectation that her tenure would mark more cordial and closer relations between the two countries. The atmosphere has since then definitely improved. There are warmer vi brations between the political leaderships of the two countries than before 1996. Her words and gestures have been more sensitive to the concerns of India than those of her predecessors, but what has been wanting is meaningful action on the ground.

She has not been able to order or persuade the military-intelligence establishment to stop its involvement with Indian insurgent groups operating from Bangladesh territory and to expel them. Even if she has done so, they have disregarded her orders. She has not been able to rid sections of her security bureaucracy of their hostile mindset towards India as seen from the recent incidents. She has resisted requests from India and pressure from the US to sell the Bangladesh's surplus gas to India, lest ther e be protests from the anti-India elements.

This gap between words and actions does not appear to be due to any insincerity on her part. It is more due to her failure, even after five years in power, to get a true measure of her military and intelligence establishment and to put herself in the dri ving position in relation to them. It would take her or even Begum Khaleda Zia, if she comes back to power in the elections due shortly, considerable political skills and time to tame the security bureaucracy and make it carry out the bidding of the poli tical leadership.

At present, India has no other option but to be patient and watchful. It is in its national interest that the democratic experiment succeeds in Bangladesh, that the political leadership there, of whatever persuasion, establishes effective control over t he security bureaucracy, that lurking/budding Musharrafs in the Bangladesh security forces are detected and removed in time and that the creeping fundamentalisation of the society and the State structure is halted and reversed.

(The author is former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.)