BIGSTORY | Friday, February 27, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Is it just a BDR mutiny?
Kanchan Gupta | New Delhi
After the Awami League swept last year’s end-December general election, decimating the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and reducing the Jamaat-e-Islami to two seats in the Jatiya Sansad, there were celebrations across the country. Not only had democracy returned with a bang after being kept in a limbo for nearly two years by the military-backed caretaker Government, the Islamists, who had been on the rampage during Begum Khaleda Zia’s hugely corrupt rule, had been defanged.
As Bangladeshis danced in the streets, with women leading the celebrations, gloom descended on House No. 6, Shaheed Moinul Road, Dhaka Cantonment, the residence of Begum Zia. Meanwhile, the Jamaat-e-Islami headquarters wore a deserted look, its leaders stunned by Islamists losing their deposits in constituencies which were supposed to be Jamaati strongholds. With nearly 86 per cent turnout in an election certified by international observers and the media as absolutely free and fair, neither the BNP nor the Jamaat could claim the poll had been rigged.
The loss of power and being pushed to the margins of Bangladeshi politics meant different things to the BNP and the Jamaat. For Begum Khaleda Zia, a resurgent Awami League with Sheikh Hasina Wajed as Prime Minister meant the Government would continue to investigate the ‘business dealings’ of her sons, Tarique and Koko, and prosecute them for corruption. For the Jamaat-e-Islami, it meant the Government reopening the trial of the 1971 war criminals, among them Jamaat’s chief, Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary-general Ali Ahsan Mujahid and assistant secretaries-general Abdul Kader Molla and Qamaruzzaman. Along with other razakars, they led armed groups which joined forces with the Pakistani Army to suppress the liberation struggle of 1971, killing civilians and raping women.
The caretaker Government had virtually cleansed the administration of pro-BNP elements; the few that remained were removed by Sheikh Hasina within days of her assuming charge. Begum Zia’s hopes of warding off a robust inquiry and vigorous prosecution of her sons now rested on ‘friends’ in the Bangladeshi Army -- junior and middle-level officers whom she had actively promoted while in power, using her cantonment ‘connections’. As for the Jamaat-e-Islami, its worst fears began coming true with the new Government placing the trial of the 1971 war criminals at the top of its agenda and the Jatiya Sansad adopting a resolution for immediate action on this front. By early-February, the police began arresting those accused of helping the Pakistani Army; in Rajshahi, the daughters and son of a razakar publicly denounced their father, indicating the popular mood in Bangladesh.
On February 14, the Government formally began the process of bringing the razakars to justice by ordering an official investigation into the role of Matiur Rahman Nizami and nine others for “carrying (out a) massacre during the war of independence in 1971”. A worried Jamaat now began to panic. Any hopes the Jamaatis may have had of Islamabad bailing them out by pleading with the Awami League Government were dashed after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s special envoy, Mirza Zia Ispahani, who rushed to Dhaka last week with the message that this was “not the right time for the trial”, had to beat a hasty retreat in the face of outrage and condemnation by both MPs and civil society.
On Tuesday, Sheikh Hasina visited the headquarters of Bangladesh Rifles, popularly referred to as BDR, in Dhaka for a meeting with the top brass of the paramilitary force which is the counterpart of India’s Border Security Force. During the meeting, she made three points: First, her Government would not tolerate either extremism or terrorism within the country and the BDR had to step up its vigil along the border (especially in the south and the north-west); second, she would not allow Bangladeshi soil to be used for launching terrorist attacks on any country (implying India); and, third, she expected the BDR to put a stop to smuggling activities, possibly referring to trafficking in women and children for which Dhaka is coming under increasing pressure of global watchdog bodies. Sheikh Hasina left nobody at the meeting in any doubt that her Government meant business and she expected the BDR to deliver. The message may have been for the BDR, but the senior officers present on the occasion were all from the Army who had been deputed to the paramilitary force. In a sense, she was also putting the Army on watch.
On Wednesday, 24 hours after the Prime Minister’s visit, BDR personnel stormed their headquarters, took senior officers and students at a campus school hostage, and positioned themselves for a siege. Ostensibly, they were provoked by the officers not taking up their long-pending demand for higher wages and better service conditions with Sheikh Hasina. The mutineers ran amok, shooting at their officers and civilians. There are conflicting reports of subsequent events. Hospital sources have said 10 people, including three civilians, were killed in the firing. A junior Minister in the Government has pegged the death toll at 50. Sheikh Hasina’s first response was to take a soft line: She promised the mutineers they would be granted a general amnesty and not punished for their deed, provided they laid down their arms and surrendered.
But till Thursday morning, the mutineers remained unmoved, prompting Sheikh Hasina to toughen her stand, demand that the men should immediately surrender, and threaten that she would be “bound to take any step in the interest of the country”. Simultaneously, she ordered the Army to move into the BDR headquarters. By late Thursday evening, the mutineers had laid down arms and surrendered, and the police had taken control of the BDR headquarters.
It is not yet known how many of the BDR’s 42,000 men in 64 camps across Bangladesh actually joined the mutiny and turned on their officers. But such details are really not relevant. What is of import is that the Government should have been caught unawares by the revolt, which brings us to two questions. First, why is it that a demand that has been around for years reached flashpoint in less than a fortnight of the Awami League regime formally launching the prosecution of razakars? It is a fact that BDR salaries and service conditions are appalling — average wages are pegged at Taka 5,000 a month; the men are given three months’ free rations (those in the Army get free rations throughout the year); and, there are no promotion prospects as all senior posts are filled by Army officers on deputation. But this has been so for decades. Second, if the mutiny was at all planned, how come the intelligence agencies, especially the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (fashioned after Pakistan’s ISI) failed to warn the Government? It would seem that the conspirators were aiming for something more than better wages and extra free rations; it would also appear that the real conspirators may not be from the BDR.
Here are the reasons why. As part of her programme to cleanse the Government, its agencies and the security forces of BNP partisans and pro-Jamaat elements, Sheikh Hasina sacked the DGFI chief, Maj Gen Golam Mohammed, who is believed to have helped convert his organisation into an extension counter of the ISI at the behest of the Jamaat and whose proximity to Begum Zia was no secret, and replaced him with Maj Gen Mollah Fazle Akbar. This could have unnerved pro-Jamaat elements still embedded in the DGFI and they may have either collaborated with the mutineers or killed crucial information. If true, this suggests that the Jamaat’s infiltration of, and the ISI’s hold over, the DGFI are far deeper and stronger than believed till now.
There’s a second possibility: A faction within the Army, which either owes allegiance to Begum Khaleda Zia or subscribes to Islamism, if not both, conspired with elements in the BDR and the DGFI to plot and execute Wednesday’s mutiny. Perhaps the conspirators had hoped that the killing of Army officers by the BDR mutineers would provoke a backlash by way of the military rising in revolt against the Awami League Government, in a replay of the terrible events of August 15, 1975. The BDR, in any event, is heavily embedded with Islamists who were appointed to the organisation during the five years when the BNP-Jamaat alliance was in power. The Jamaat-e-Islami skilfully exploited the grievances of the BDR men to sell them its ideology of hate, directing their anger and resentment against ‘Hindu India’. It is this which has facilitated the easy cross-border passage of HuJI activists and bombers, cattle-smuggling, trafficking in women and drugs, and illegal migration. The ‘fees’ paid to BDR men compensated their poor wages; if Sheikh Hasina were to insist on putting an end to these crimes, there would be no more money to be made. It is entirely possible that the Jamaat played on this fear of BDR men to push them into rising in revolt.
Linking the various possibilities is the ISI factor: With Dhaka spinning out of Islamabad’s orbit after the return of Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladeshi Army chief, Gen Moeen U Ahmed, making his dislike for both the BNP and the Jamaat clear (he used the caretaker Government to crack down on sympathisers of both organisations in every arm of the state) while subtly pushing for a pro-India, pro-secular line, it is understandable that Rawalpindi would not take kindly to him. There have been reports of the Pakistani Army/ISI trying to instigate pro-BNP generals in the Bangladeshi Army to plot a coup, but nothing much came of that move with Gen Ahmed moving swiftly against potential plotters and relieving them of their posts. In sheer desperation, the ISI may have used ‘friends’ in the Bangladeshi Army and ‘agents’ in the BDR to organise Wednesday’s mutiny.
After all, if Sheikh Hasina were to succeed in reviving the spirit of 1971, which has caught the popular imagination as never before, and steer her country away from debilitating Islamism, apart from crushing the Jamaat-e-Islami ruthlessly, Pakistan would lose its eastern flank, which it regained by proxy during Begum Khaleda Zia’s rule, once again. That’s not a very happy thought in either Rawalpindi or Islamabad.
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