BANGLADESH: A BENGALI ABBASI LURKING SOMEWHERE?
by B.Raman
In an assessment on Bangladesh disseminated in January,
1997, this writer had observed as follows: " There are individual
officers in the Bangladesh intelligence community and in its security
forces, who feel positively towards Sheikh Hasina (Prime Minister) and her
father, but one cannot say the same thing of these organisations as
institutions. Institutionally, they may not share with her the same
enthusiasm for closer relations with India and for assisting it in dealing
with the insurgency (in the North-East). It would take her and her party
considerable time to understand and assess the intricacies of their
working and the labyrinthine relationships which they have built up with
their Pakistani counterparts during the last 21 years. She, therefore, has
to move with caution."
The savage manner in which 15 members of India's Border
Security Force (BSF) were reportedly abducted, tortured, killed and their
bodies mutilated beyond recognition last week shows that even after almost
five years in power, Sheikh Hasina is apparently not in total command of
her military and intelligence establishment, which like its counterpart in
Pakistan, has been infected by the fundamentalist virus of Afghan vintage
and is probably developing an agenda of its own vis-à-vis India.
Last week's savage incident uncomfortably brings to mind
three other incidents of the past:
* The brutal massacre of Bengali intellectuals by the Al
Badr, the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of the united
Pakistan in 1971.
* The savagery to which some captured Indian soldiers
in the Kargil sector in 1999 were subjected by the Al Badr of the
present Pakistan and the Al Qaeda ,also known as the
Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HUJ), of Osma bin Laden, before their bodies
were returned by the Pakistan Army in a similarly mutilated condition.
* The attack on the Indian army in the Siachen sector
launched in the early 1990s by Maj-Gen. Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi, the
station chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan in
New Delhi in the late 1980s, along with some other fundamentalist
officers without the authorisation of the GHQ and the then Government of
Mr. Nawaz Sharif. The attack was repulsed by the Indian Army after
inflicting heavy casualties on the rogue elements in the Pakistan Army.
The late Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS),
removed Abbasi and other officers and punished them. Subsequently, in
1995, they joined hands with the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which was
declared by the US as an international terrorist organisation in
October,1997, and plotted to have Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime
Minister, and Gen. Abdul Wahid Kakkar, the then COAS, assassinated and
to proclaim the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan.
Lt.Gen. Jehangir Karamat, the then Director-General of Military
Operations (DGMO), detected the plot in time and crushed it. The
dramatis personae were court-martialled and jailed.
Ever since Sheikh Hasina came to power in 1996,
independent analysts and women's rights organisations in Bangladesh (BD)
had been drawing attention to her inability or to the difficulties faced
by her in reversing the process of Islamisation of the society and the
administrative and security infrastructure 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 Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ- the Islamic United Front)) and the followers
of bin Laden's HUJ (Al Qaeda). They were also drawing attention to the
spread of the fundamentalist virus in the BD 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 the middle of 1996.
In a paper on the "State of Minorities in
Bangladesh: From Secular to Islamic Hegemony", Mr. Saleem Samad, an
analyst of the BD scene, points out how the trend towards the Islamisation
of the civil society and the State apparatus in Bangladesh started even
under the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first President of Bangladesh.
Shiekh Mujibur Rahman revived the Islamic Academy (which
was banned in 1972) and upgraded it to a Foundation in March 1975 and
increasingly attended Islamic gatherings. He also banned sale and
consumption of liquor, though production of liquor continued and betting
in horse-race. He sought membership of the Organisation of Islamic
Conference (OIC) in February 1974, attended the OIC conference at Lahore
the same year, established diplomatic ties with Pakistan after granting
unconditional pardon of the occupational forces of Pakistan involved in
war crimes on innocent people, especially women, and allowed their
subsequent safe repatriation, and secured the founder membership of the
Islamic Development Bank in 1975.
Towards the end of his rule, Mujib made frequent
references to Islam in his speeches and public utterances by using terms
and idioms which were peculiar mainly to the Islam-oriented Bangladeshi -
like Allah (the Almighty God),Insha Allah (God willing), Bismillah (in the
name of God), Tawaba (Penitence) and Imam (religious leader). He even
dropped his symbolic valedictory expression Joy Bangla (Glory to Bengal)
and ended his speeches with Khuda Hafez (May God protect you), the
traditional Indo-Islamic phrase for bidding farewell. In his later day
speeches, he also highlighted his efforts to establish cordial relations
with the Muslim countries in the Middle East.
According to Mr.Saleem Samad, the process of using Islam
for leadership legitimisation purposes gathered momentum during the
military regimes of General Ziaur Rahman (1975-1981) and General H.M.
Ershad (1982-1990). During the regime of Zia, the Constitution was amended
to delete secularism as one of the four state principles and insert "Bismillahir
Rahmanir Rahim" (in the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful).
The principle of secularism was replaced by the words, "Absolute
trust and faith in the Almighty Allah shall be the basis of all
action."
"Islamiyat" was introduced as compulsory from
classes I to VIII in schools with the option for minority students to take
similar religious courses of their own.
Between 1982 and 1990, Ershad made systematic efforts to
continue the policy of Zia, rehabilitating anti-liberation elements and
the parallel Islamisation culminating in the Eighth amendment to the
Constitution declaring "Islam" as a state religion. Earlier, the
short-lived government of Mustaque Ahmed (August 1975 - November 1975)
brought to power at the behest of young military officers, had declared
the People's Republic of Bangladesh as the"Islamic Republic of
Bangladesh" over the state radio.
Mr.Samad points out that the subsequent regimes of
Khaleda Zia and Shiekh Hasina, which came to power through popular mandate
through a free and fair election process under two consecutive neutral
governments (in 1991 and 1996), too continued the Islamic policies of the
previous governments. They did not try to reverse the Islamisation
measures taken by Ershad. The Constitution of Bangladesh, despite the
Awami League being in power today, remains an Islamic one.
In mid -1993, the Khaleda Zia Government, under pressure
from Islamic fundamentalist elements, asked the commercial banks to
disallow the withdrawal of substantial cash money by Hindu account holders
and to stop the disbursement of business loans to Hindus living in the
districts adjoining the India-Bangladesh border.
None of these Governments took action to restore to the
Hindus their properties seized by the Ayub Government in 1965 under the
Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order under the "Defence of
Pakistan Rules Ordinance" which has since been replaced by the Vested
Property Act.
In a study titled "Resistance to Fundamentalism in
Bangladesh and Britain", an organisation called Women Against
Fundamentalism (WAF) has pointed out as follows:
"In 1971,there was widespread collaboration (with
the Pakistani rulers) by government officers at local and national level.
Unable to visualise a Bengali victory, they wished to protect their jobs
and sided with the rulers who they expected to be the victors.
"More ideologically based was the enthusiastic
collaboration of the Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and its student
wing who formed the active service units of the Al-Badr to defend Pakistan
and wipe out Bengali intellectuals. These 'razakars' (collaborators) are
held responsible for perpetrating thousands of rapes and massacres in the
name of Islam and for guiding the Pakistani army to the resistance bases.
"In the middle of the war, the Pakistani rulers
established national and regional 'Peace Committees' whose task, in their
own words, was to 'seek out miscreants and Indian agents and to assist the
armed forces in destroying them'. A leading member of the national Peace
Committee was Professor Golam Azam who repeatedly exhorted the razakars to
rid the country of anti-Pakistani dissidents.
"After the Liberation, there was an expectation of
war crimes trials. A Collaborators' Ordinance was passed but it was used
patchily and apparently more as an excuse to pay off old scores than to
put on trial the leading collaborators and murderers although their
identity was very well known. The civil servants who had collaborated were
very soon rehabilitated to serve the new government and in 1973, in a
changing political climate, a General Pardon was declared (for
collaborators other than murderers and rapists). The extent of this
politically motivated rehabilitation was demonstrated by the appointment
of a former regional Peace Committee chairman as the President of
Bangladesh.
"Most of the leading collaborators went abroad to
work against Bangladesh in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the West. A leading
figure among them was Golam Azam who along with other former collaborators
played a key role in the expansion of Jamaat-e-Islami and its
establishment in Britain. In 1978,Golam Azam returned to Bangladesh,
ostensibly to visit his sick mother. Despite his having no citizenship and
being widely held to have been a major collaborator, he has lived there
ever since with the protection of successive governments and his own
'Islamic Guards'.
"In 1991, Golam Azam was declared the Amir (leader)
of the Jamaat, now an active and increasingly successful political party
working to establish Islamic rule in Bangladesh. Their argument in
Bangladesh, as in Egypt and Algeria, is that democracy is un-Islamic
because laws can only come from Islam. Nationalism is also regarded as
un-Islamic and Bangladesh 's whole existence and secession from Pakistan
is therefore disapproved of. Jamaat is believed to have political links
with Iran and financial support from Saudi Arabia. The student wing of
Jamaat has gained control of the campus of the Chittagong University,
through a combination of ideology and guns, and has near control over
other campuses. Fights and shootings take place very frequently in the
universities, many students and teachers have been killed and teaching and
examinations disrupted or suspended.
"The Jamaat's activities have been tolerated and
encouraged to a greater or lesser extent by successive ruling regimes and
governments in Bangladesh who have relied on their support. Islamisation
has come a long way in Bangladesh with Islam now the official religion and
agitation led by the Jamaat for an Islamic Republic.
"The Islamic movement has prospered for a number of
reasons. Many people have a nostalgic attachment to Pakistan and a
mistrust of India. In the depth of the economic and social problems of
Bangladesh, and disillusionment with both the capitalist and communist
nations which are seen as having failed to support the country, the
promise of a renaissance through internationalist Islam seems attractive
not only to the very religious rural poor but also to educated young
people who can see no other positive future. The extent of corruption and
the general lack of confidence in the government and bureaucracy makes the
concept of a 'pure' corruption-free society ruled by Islam an appealing
option to many people."
Alarmed by the return and rehabilitation of Golam Azam,
the secular forces in Bangladesh started a number of movements to identify
the collaborators of Pakistan and the Al Badr in the 1971 massacres and to
have them tried. In a report released in March, 1994, a People's Enquiry
Commission, consisting of prominent personalities,identified, in addition
to Golam Azam, eight others as the collaborators of the Al Badr in the
massacres--Abbas Ali Khan, Maulana Matiur Rehman Nizami, Mohammed
Kamruzzaman, Maulana Dilawar Hussain Sayeedi, Maulana Abdul Mannan, Abdul
Kader Molla and Abdul Alim.
Abbas Ali Khan held the No.2 position in the Jamaat and
members of the Razakar force (who were given short courses in military
training) were, under his leadership, given powers equal to those of the
regular armed forces, and they allegedly carried out widespread killings,
rapes and looting in villages.
Maulana Matiur Rahman Nizami, who was the Secretary-
General of the JEI, used to exhort them to "carry out [their]
national duty to eliminate those who are engaged in war against Pakistan
and Islam," and to finish off Awami League supporters. After one such
meeting, Al-Badr forces, in cooperation with the Razakars, surrounded the
village of Brishlika and burnt it to the ground. He has since taken over
as the Amir of the JEI in December last and has not suffered any penal
consequences. On the contrary, he is now an important political ally of
Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).
Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, the Assistant Secretary-General
of the JEI, was in charge of recruiting members for and organising the Al-Badr
in Mymensingh.
A member of the Jamaat-e-Islami's Majlis-e -Shoora,
Maulana Dilawar Hussain Sayeedi took active part in the organisation of
the Razakars, Al-Badr and Al-Shams forces. He was also accused of
involvement along with Pakistani army troops in the killing of
sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Faizur Rahman,father of Humayun
Ahmad, a renowned writer and professor of chemistry at the University of
Dacca.
Maulana Abdul Mannan, the president of the
Jamiat-e-Mudarresin, an organisation of teachers of madrassas and the
owner of the daily "Dainik Inquilab," the country's
second-highest circulated newspaper, was one of the key collaborators of
the Yahya regime during 1971. A Minister under General Ziaur Rahman after
1976 and subsequently in President H M Ershad's cabinet, Mannan was also
associated with the killing of intellectuals, specifically eminent
physician Alim Chowdhury.
Abdul Kader Molla, the publicity secretary of the JEI,
was known as a 'butcher' in the Dacca suburb of Mirpur, mainly populated
by non-Bengali Muslim migrants in 1971. An eyewitness to Molla's criminal
activities in 1971 told the commission that Razakar men, under the command
of Kader Molla, brutally murdered the poet Meherunnessa .
According to the commission's report, Abdul Alim himself
carried out executions of Bengalis by lining them up and shooting them
dead.
Despite their involvement in the massacres carried out
by the JEI of united Pakistan and its Al Badr, many of these personalities
of the JEI are today in the forefront of the fundamentalist, pro-Pakistan
and anti-India forces in BD and privileged allies of the BNP.
A Special Rapporteur (SR) of the UN Human Rights
Commission, Geneva, who visited Bangladesh from May 15 to 24,2000,
reported to the Commission as follows: "The 1972 Constitution
(articles 39 and 41) guarantees freedom of religion and conscience and
their manifestations, while defining certain limits e.g. in the interest
of the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states,
public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court,
defamation or incitement to an offence. The principle of
non-discrimination is also guaranteed. The Constitution accords a special
role to Islam, which is defined as the state religion; the Amendment of
1977 defines the Muslim faith as one of the nation's guiding principles.
The sharia does not constitute the basis of the country's legislation.
"Most of the officials with whom the SR met stated
that the government was in favour of secularism. Non-governmental
representatives and independent experts said that state policies generally
respected freedom of religion and belief, in the strictest sense of those
terms, and also respected their manifestations, within the framework of
the limitations provided by the law. However, religious communities - more
particularly minorities and ethnic groups, but also Muslims - encounter
serious problems. These problems arise in two main contexts: (a) relations
between the state and religious communities (e.g. restricted access for
non-Muslims to public-sector employment) and between the state and ethnic
communities (e.g. the delays in the implementation of the peace accord
concerning the CHT); and (b) relations between the state and non-ethnic
communities, particularly extremist religious parties.
"There is a real and effective threat of religious
extremism, stemming largely from such religious parties 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 well 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 by Muslim extremist groups; Buddhists have suffered
discrimination with respect to public sector jobs.
"There is discrimination against Christians with
respect to access to public sector employment, including access to police
and army jobs; there are stereotypes representing Christians as
anti-Muslim (because of the Crusades); there is an absence of any real
interchange between the Christian and Muslim communities, especially in
urban environments. The authorities do not, in practice, recruit Christian
teachers, even though there are enough Christian students to justify such
recruitment; extremist Muslim groups often oppose the use of bells and
loudspeakers for hymns in places of worship; there is a strong current of
anti-Christian activism and the police largely remain passive when
incidents occur; legal decisions in favour of the Catholic Church,
concerning the use of their property, have not been applied because
extremist Muslims have opposed their application on a variety of grounds.
"There is no interference by the authorities in the
religious activities of Hindus; there is a feeling of insecurity, however,
due partly to the Vested Property Act; Hindu women are often victims of
harassment and rape carried out by criminal elements of society. "
The electoral support enjoyed by the JEI in BD is more
than that of its counterpart in Pakistan, but still not substantial.
It
won only 18 seats in the 1996 elections, but it has built up considerable
street power and has important allies in the IOJ 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 establishment .
During 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, with Pakistani jehadi organisations and with the HUJ
(Al Qaeda) of bin Laden. They had also played an active role in assisting
and training the Rohingya Muslims of the Arakan State of Myanmar. The BD
military-intelligence establishment had allowed the HUM of Pakistan to run
training camps for Rohingya Muslims in BD territory.
In recent months, a Bangladeshi version of the HUJ has
made its appearance and has been operating independently. Though the BD
authorities claim that the HUJ came into being in 1992 when Begum Khaleda
Zia was the Prime Minister, reports of its activities 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 of
Afghanistan. Their slogan reportedly is: "Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban.
Bangla Hobe Afghanistan'(We all will become Taliban and Bangla will become
Afghanistan).
After the arrest and interrogation of a South African
citizen of Indian origin Ahmed Sadeq Ahmed,a Pakistani citizen Mohammad
Sajed and two Bangladeshis- Maulana Nazrul Islam and Sardar Bokhtiar-- in
1999, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the BD Police
projected them as members of bin Laden's organisation and gave the
following details of the HUJ as gathered by them during the interrogation:
* Bin Laden had sanctioned taka 20 million (US $ 0.40
million) for recruiting and training cadres and organising terrorist and
subversive activities in Bangladesh. He had handed over the money to
Mohammad Sajed, who is the coordinator of the pro-bin Laden militants
working in Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh.
* Mohammad Sajed told the investigators that he had
handed over the money to Sardar Bokhtiar.
* Bokhtiar confessed to having received this amount
and said that he had distributed it to 421 madrasas which were helping
the HUJ in recruiting and training its cadres.
* Maulana Nazrul Islam, who was arrested in Sirajganj
district, is said to be the Amir of the HUJ in BD.
These claims of the CID were strongly refuted by the JEI
of BD and its counterpart in South Africa. Despite this, the US Secret
Service took them seriously enough to advise President Clinton to cancel a
visit to a village outside Dacca during his visit to BD in March,2000.
The BD authorities also 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.
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 BD Police. The more important of
these incidents were:
* On January 20, 2001, six persons were killed and 50
others injured in two separate bomb blasts in Dhaka. Home Minister
Mohammad Nasism held the JEI and its affiliates responsible for the
attack. Water Resources Minister Abdur Razzak accused Pakistan's ISI of
having instigated the incidents.
* On February 6, seven persons were killed and 100
injured in a clash between Islamic fundamentalists and the security
forces at Brahanbaria, bordering the Indian State of Tripura. These
incidents were a sequel to the arrests of two top leaders of the IOJ for
having threatened two judges who had banned the issue of fatwas by
clerics and killed a police constable.
* On April 14,a bomb exploded at an open-air concert
in Dacca, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 50. The
concert was part of celebrations marking the Bengali new year. Sheikh
Hasina blamed the blasts on "forces who opposed Bangladesh's
independence (from Pakistan) and want to destroy Bengali culture".
The JEI had been campaigning against the celebration of the Bengali new
year on the ground that it was unIslamic.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 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.
With reference to the attack on the BSF personnel, the
BD Press has quoted the BD Foreign Secretary, Syed Muazzem Ali, as telling
journalists at Dacca on April 20,2001, as follows: "The border force
has standing responsibility of protecting the frontier from any external
attacks. BDR are there to repulse any attack on the country’s frontier.
There are some situations when decisions are taken instantly. It does not
require to send file to Dhaka, get order and then start firing. It is the
charter duty of BDR to protect our frontier from any attack on our border.
If question of war comes, then the orders from top level may come."
He thus tried to justify any action by the BDR without
the orders of Dacca.
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 vibrations 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 been unable to order or persuade the
military-intelligence establishment to stop its involvement with Indian
insurgent groups operating from BD 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 BD's surplus gas to India,
lest there 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 driving 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 political leadership.
At present, India has no other option but to be patient
and watchful. It is in India's national interest that the democratic
experiment succeeds in BD, that the political leadership there, of
whatever persuasion, establishes effective control over the security
bureaucracy, that lurking/budding Abbassis and Musharrafs in the BD
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 writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
