In a step that may be suicidal for Bangladesh, the Mohammed Yunus government is trying to demoralize the Bangladesh army by sending to jail 15 serving army officers for alleged serious crimes under the previous regime of Sheikh Hasina. At a time when the Jamaat-e-Islami, aided by the Inter Service Intelligence of Pakistan, is quietly spreading its influence among a section of the Bangladesh military, this step will undermine the morale of the officers and men in the army. In future the Bangladesh army may, like the Pakistan army, turn into an Islamic radical force.
The officers are now under military custody, but the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which has prosecuted these officers, is demanding that they be transferred to civilian custody. After a hearing before the ICT on October 21, the officers have been put in a sub-jail set up within the Dhaka Cantonment for the purpose, under the supervision of the prison authorities.
The prosecution has formally charged 28 individuals, including former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself, and 23 top- and mid-ranking current and former army officers. The immediate reason for these charges is two long-pending cases of enforced disappearance and torture.
Major General Mohammed Hakimuzzaman, the Bangladesh Army Adjutant General, has been quoted that 16 of the accused officers had been asked to report to the army headquarters; 15 of them did so. Under constitutional provisions and established military practices of the past 54 years, the army has taken the officers facing the charges under custody. The question of their transfer to civilian jurisdiction would come only after the verdict.
According to analysts, this prosecution is a calculated move to demoralize a professional army which, during the uprising in Bangladesh in July – August last year that led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, had played a key role in stabilizing the situation.
Students Against Discrimination which had led the movement against the Awami League government should have nothing to complain against the army. It was a call by 48 retired army officers on August 4 for the withdrawal of the armed forces from the streets that had finally sent a message to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that it might not be safe for her to stay on in Bangladesh. The next day the army arranged safe passage for her to India too. The army was also instrumental in installing the interim government led by Mohammed Yunus and in restoring order in the mayhem and killings that had followed Sheikh Hasina’s departure. Notably, the army had not made a bid to capture power by itself.
It is a different issue that former Home Minister of Bangladesh Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has been quoted in a yet-to-be published book that the Bangladesh army had acted at the behest of the CIA in not giving protection to the Prime Minister.
Analysts say that the move now to implicate senior officers of the rank of Major Generals and Brigadier Generals in two old cases is the result of a conspiracy hatched by fundamentalist groups to undermine the Bangladesh army as a professional force, so the army does not stand in the way of the spread of fundamentalist Islam in the country.
The Bangladesh army had a tiff with Chief Advisor Mohammed Yunus too on the issue of the “Rakhine corridor,” with Army Chief General Water-us-Zaman objecting to the move of Mohammed Yunus to discuss with the UN the opening of such a corridor without consulting the army. The Army Chief had said that the caretaker government should not take such policy decisions and wanted the elections to be held early, within the year 2025. This was not music to the ears of Jamaat-e-Islami and other fundamentalist Islamic groups which do not want the elections to be held till they have consolidated their position sufficiently to face the polls.
Islamists view the secular Bangladesh army, rooted in the values of the liberation war of 1971, an obstacle in the way of the spread of Islamist values in the country. They want to undermine the traditional secular democratic values of Bangladesh to help spread the hardcore Islamic agenda. When the Jamaat-e-Islami had a presence in the Bangladesh government as a partner of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, it had used the opportunity to get its cadres recruited in the armed forces. They functioned in a discreet manner and were lying low when the Sheikh Hasina government was in power; biding their time and awaiting a political transformation in the country.
The mutiny in the para-military Bangladesh Rifles in 2009 was suspected to have been influenced by the Jamaat whose leader Abdur Razzak was questioned for three hours by the CID of Bangladesh after the failed coup attempt. The attempted coup by 16 military officers and two retired officers in 2011 was also influenced by extremist religious views. The coup attempt in Bangladesh in December 2011 involved junior officers with ties to the banned Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Now under the regime of the interim government, taking advantage of the political vacuum, Islamic fundamentalists are trying to mould the Bangladesh army into an Islamic military order; following the model of the Pakistan army. In Pakistan, the relationship between the army and Islamic radicalism has been a symbiotic one. While the army has been infiltrated by radical Islamic elements, it has utilized radical Islamic outfits to achieve strategic goals. The army has leveraged Islamist terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to wage a proxy war against India in Kashmir.
The infiltration of radical Islam in the Bangladesh army will undermine the democratic institutions in the country and disturb the delicate balance of civil and military power. This will finally destroy the political stability of the country and be suicidal for Bangladesh. Besides, with the army looking the other way, Islamic forces will be encouraged to attack minority communities like the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Christians. In Pakistan, where radical Islam has a much stronger presence, the minority population has been reduced to only about three percent of the total; while in Bangladesh minorities constitute about nine percent of the total population.( Asian News Post)
