Bangladesh & 1971 syndrome

People's Republic of Bangladesh: গণপ্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশ  : Gônoprojatontri Bangladesh is again plunging itself into another phase of political turmoil and violence. The decision by the Dhaka-based International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) to award capital punishment to two key leaders of the Bangladeshi Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) on charges of war crimes during the March-December 1971 civil war in the former East Pakistan has triggered large-scale violent protests and clashes with police killing and injuring a large number of people.

It must be asked why the Awami League (AL) government of Sheikh Hasina decided to establish the ICT and try those whom it accused of “collaborating” with the Pakistan Army in the “genocide” of Bengali people during the military operation.

On Feb 28, the controversial ICT found JI vice-president and former member of parliament Delwar Hossain Sayedee guilty of murder, religious persecution and rape and sentenced him to death. The verdict triggered widespread protests in different parts of Bangladesh and also invited counter-demonstrations by those who supported the court’s verdict.

In Dhaka’s Shahbagh square, thousands of protesters demanded “exemplary punishment” for war criminals and a ban on the Jamaat. The tribunal is trying a total of nine JI leaders and two members of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for their alleged war crimes.

AL is blamed by its opponents, including the BNP, of transforming Bangladesh into a fascist state by using excessive force against opponents, manipulating the events of 1971 for political consumption and transforming the country’s Islamic identity into a secular one.

Because of three major reasons, Bangladesh is unable to detach itself from the events of 1971. First, anti-Pakistan rhetoric has become an integral part of Bangladesh’s political discourse. It is one thing which has been used by various regimes since 1971 to remind people of the liberation war and the value of freedom. Dec 16 in Bangladesh is celebrated as Victory Day. In fact, most of the national days celebrated in Bangladesh are based on anti-Pakistan rhetoric.

Feb 21 is celebrated as Language Day to mark the struggle launched in East Pakistan to oppose the imposition of Urdu as a national language. March 26 is celebrated as Independence Day to mark the launch of the brutal military operation by the West Pakistan-dominated regime to quell the Awami League-led civil disobedience movement.

Second, some political parties, particularly the Awami League, which fought the liberation war consider it useful to exploit 1971 for political purposes. By diverting people’s attention from ‘real issues’ like corruption, nepotism and bad governance, the AL government is targeting what it calls ‘war criminals’.

Finally, the sufferings caused to the people of Bangladesh in view of the exploitative and unequal relationship with the West Pakistan-dominated regimes have nurtured anti-Pakistan feelings, which persist even after 41 years of independence from Pakistan. The military operation of 1971 alienated the Bengali population of the former eastern wing, and became the source of Bangladesh’s national identity. It is perceived that no government in Bangladesh can detach itself from the events of 1971 and the liberation struggle because the survival of that country rests predominantly on keeping these memories alive.

The BNP and other opposition parties in Bangladesh have alleged that the AL, by pursuing a policy of vendetta, wants to eliminate political opponents before the next elections, due in December 2013. By augmenting the level of political polarisation and targeting religious parties, particularly the Jamaat, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has caused her country to plunge into a serious crisis.

There have been reported attacks on Hindu temples and two Hindu leaders of AL were recently targeted. Islamists in Bangladesh blame India for sponsoring demonstrations supporting the ICT’s verdict against JI leaders. Furthermore, the recent killing of an anti-Islam blogger by five university students and the demand made by Islamic parties to hang other bloggers on charges of blasphemy also indicate a surge of religious extremism in Bangladesh.

Steps taken by the AL government in the last few years to reverse the process of Islamisation by military dictators, generals Ziaur Rehman and Hossein Mohammad Ershad, during the late 1970s and 1980s have also deepened the conflict between Islamists and secularists.

Putting the matter in historical perspective, in 1974, as a result of Pakistan’s recognition of Bangladesh and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s visit to Lahore for the Second Islamic Summit Conference in Feb 1974, Dhaka agreed not to press for the trial of 195 Pakistani prisoners of war — detained in Indian PoW camps — on charges of war crimes.

Pakistan has expressed regret to Bangladesh about the excesses committed during 1971 but has so far refused to tender a full apology. Therefore, one way to keep the issue of 1971 alive was to try the Bengali nationals, termed collaborators, who primarily belonged to the Al Badr and Al Shams wings of Jamaat-i-Islami.

One plausible way to deal with the 1971 syndrome is to start the process of reconciliation by forming an independent commission to thoroughly investigate excesses committed during the military operation of 1971 by the Pakistan Army as well as the killings of non-Bengalis in East Pakistan by armed Bengalis and the Mukti Bahini.

The proposed commission, which can be called the Bangladesh-Pakistan Truth and Reconciliation Commission, will help heal the wounds of 1971 in Bangladesh and in Pakistan and will also help improve relations between the two South Asian countries.

The writer is professor of International Relations, University of Karachi and has authored a study titled Bangladesh and Pakistan: From Conflict to Cooperation.

By Moonis Ahmar; http://dawn.com/2013/03/05/bangladesh-1971-syndrome/

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Bangladesh violence

BANGLADESH seems to be headed towards a major political crisis as the fatality toll in three days of violence, following Thursday’s sentencing to death of a Jamaat-i-Islami leader, has crossed 50. The widespread violence resulted from clashes not only between the police and Jamaat workers but also between the latter and supporters of the ruling Awami League. A disturbing development for the government is the decision by the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, to join the protests. Reacting to the death sentence passed on Jamaat vice president Delwar Hossain Sayedee and using strong language, BNP leader Khaleda Zia denounced what she called “brutality” and “mass killing” by the government and asked the people to “come out on the streets”. Bangladesh can expect more violence as Ms Zia has called for a strike on Tuesday, in addition to the one given by the Jamaat for today and Monday. Mr Sayedee is the third Jamaat leader to be convicted for alleged war crimes. The prosecution had accused him of crimes ranging from arson and torture to rape and murder. However, the tribunal that decreed the ultimate punishment is controversial. Rights groups say the court’s procedures do not conform to international standards, and the opposition accuses Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed of using war crimes allegations to persecute opponents — two BNP members are also being tried.

We know that crimes were indeed committed during those dark and painful days when the army was trying to crush popular resistance. Among those who helped the army in the civil war were the Jamaat’s Al Shams and Al Badr militias. But trying alleged war criminals more than four decades after the event smacks of vindictiveness and a political witch-hunt. The AL had been in power earlier, too, so it must explain, first and foremost to its own people, why it has chosen to start this judicial drama now. All sides should realise that the violence could snowball and perhaps pose a threat to Bangladesh’s democracy. The better alternative would be to embark on an exercise of reconciliation and forgiveness to put the past behind and move on.

Source:  http://dawn.com/2013/03/03/bangladesh-violence

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Atrocities in East Pakistan now Bangladesh- Violent Ghosts of past

Violent Ghosts

Ever since 2009, the secular Awami League government in Bangladesh has been moving the country’s law enforcing institutions and courts against various members of the Bangladeshi Jamat-i-Islami and other rightist groups. The League accuses their members of taking part in the genocide that took place against Bengali nationalists in 1971.

Thousands of men, women and children were said to have been slaughtered and disgraced in what was then East Pakistan. Pakistanis have mostly kept quiet about its army’s violent role in what the world at large proclaimed was a systematic genocide by West Pakistani military against the Bengali-speaking majority in the former East Pakistan. Pakistan’s textbooks too are silent about the bloody episode that eventually heralded the full impact of the Bangladeshi liberation war, ripping away East Pakistan from the western wing.

Even though, over the years some Pakistani intellectuals and historians have begun to sincerely investigate the army’s role in the bloodshed, there’s another aspect of this unfortunate chunk of hidden history that is still to be pulled out and debated. This chunk has to do with certain groups of civilians who were part of the violence. This was also perhaps the first case in which the military establishment had used religion to explain away something that was overwhelmingly an atrocity committed against an oppressed people. Uniformed men who went about bludgeoning so-called Bengali ‘traitors’ (including women and children) claimed they were doing so to defend Islam and Pakistan.

The military was not alone. It also had active civilian backers. First in line in this respect was the Jamat-i-Islami (JI). Though the JI was kept at bay by the secular Ayub Khan dictatorship throughout the 1960s in West Pakistan, it suddenly gained rapid favour from the short-lived regime of General Yahya Khan. He began proceedings by patronising the Jamat (and a few pro-establishment parties) to help him neutralise the momentous rise of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and the secular nationalist groups in East Pakistan, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In spite of the backing the JI and some other right-wing parties received from the Yahya dictatorship, they were routed by progressive and secular parties in both East and West Pakistan during the 1970 general election. Unwilling to hand over power to the majority party (the Bengali-dominated Awami League), Yahya’s army went to war with not only the incensed Bengali nationalists (backed by India), but also against innocent and unarmed Bengali civilians.

This action also generated the first ever case of a Pakistani state institution molding an Islamist civilian militant unit, something that would become (albeit clandestine) policy of certain intelligence agencies in Pakistan during and after the Afghan civil war in the 1980s, with the backing of the CIA. Before all the vicious sectarian and Islamist groups that began cropping up during the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s, there were Al-Badar and Al-Shams.

Author Tarek Fatah in his explosive book, Chasing a Mirage, Hussain Haqqani in Between Mosque & Military and Jahangir Satti in The Ruling Enemy, all discuss in some detail these groups that were said to have been formed by the military intelligence to help the Yahya dictatorship tackle Bengali nationalists. Fatah and Satti maintain that both Al-Badar and Al-Shams were formed by General Rao Farman Ali – whom Satti describes as a ‘fanatic who was good at exploiting religious sentiments.’

The two groups were made up of militants from the Jamat-i-Islami and its student-wing, the IJT. Rao also recruited some youth who were sympathetic to the pro-establishment, Pakistan Muslim League. According to Haqqani, after a list was drawn containing a number of left-wing Bengali intellectuals, journalists, student leaders and politicians who were to be eliminated, Al-Badar and Shams went to work in March, 1971.

History outside of Pakistani textbooks accuses these groups of working like death squads — killing, looting and disgracing Bengalis whom they accused of being ‘anti-Islam’. Al-Badar was made up of educated JI and IJT recruits, while Shams was sewed together by using non-Bengali madressa students, Muslim League sympathisers and members of the Nizam-i-Islam party.

Many of those who took part in the atrocities managed to escape justice because they slipped out of East Pakistan after the military suffered defeat at the hands of Bengali nationalists and the Indian army. However, a number of former Badar and Shams members who stayed behind lost their lives in revenge killings by Bengali radicals.

Many Shams and Badar members who escaped quit their respective political parties and decided to lead low-profile lives, while others continued being part of the Jamat. However, in 2009, the Bangladesh government reopened cases of treason and genocide against the Bangladeshi amir of the Jamat-i-Islami, Maulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, who is alleged to have led Al-Badar’s notorious campaign against Bengali intellectuals, politicians and civilians in 1971.

Interestingly the Jamat-i-Islami in Pakistan, many of whose members and youth played a leading role in Badar and Shams activities, has avoided any talk of this aspect of its past. But whenever some Jamat members have decided to tackle this question, they say the party only ‘played a role in trying to save Pakistan and its Islamic character’ because — according to the Jamat — ‘Bengalis were being manipulated by Hindus (India),’ as opposed to being blatantly oppressed and discriminated against by their former West Pakistani compatriots. And so convenience hides all that is ungainly in the past.

Smokers’ Corner: Violent ghosts  by Nadeem F. Paracha:http://www.dawn.com/2011/03/13/smokers-corner-violent-ghosts.html 

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