Thousands protest in Bangladesh against Islamic constitution

Thousands of protesters marched in capital Dhaka on Thursday against Bangladesh parliament adopted an Islamic constitution, steering away from a secular political culture, which was enshrined in 1972 constitution.

A half a mile long rally organized by a conglomerate of left parties and pro-secular groups, chanting anti-government slogans and waving red flags marched towards the parliament, where the ruling party and her alliance lawmakers hastily adopted several amendments to the constitution on Thursday noon.

Hundreds of riot police in flak jackets, armed with shot guns and tear gas shells blocked the marchers putting up barbed-wire fences. The protesters in summer heat and intermittent rain stopped at exit of the Dhaka University, where leaders in makeshift dais addressed the crowd and bitterly criticized the government for switching to an Islamic constitution.

In a massive constitutional reform, the non-partisan interim government has been deleted, which was practiced for 15 years to hold credible elections and ensure smooth transition to an incumbent political government. The opposition fears that the ruling party will rig the election, despite denial by the prime minister.

A set of 55 amendment proposals were incorporated in the constitution amendment bill by 289-1 division vote.

Main opposition described the abrogation of neutral caretaker government from the democratic constitution will be written in the history as a “black day”. Opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia threatened series of street protests and political agitations to undo the constitution reforms.

Prime minister Shiekh Hasina warned the opposition not to create anarchy and instead olive branches to hold parleys with the government and suggest how to hold a credible election scheduled in 2014 and also reduce military interference in state polity.

The prime minister was highly critical of the last military-backed caretaker government (2006-8), which sent the present prime minister and opposition leader to prison for corruption.

The independence war veterans, secularist and left leaning parties have came down heavily on the government for converting a secular political culture to an Islamic one.

Several lawmakers mostly from the left leaning parties have voted against the proposed amendment of the constitution, which has included Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim (in the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful), a verse from Koran in the preamble and Islam as state religion.

The ethnic minority leader Mangal Kumar Chakma in a statement protested the new constitution, which has termed the indigenous peoples as “tribals, small nationalities, ethnic groups and communities.”

What angered the indigenous peoples when the discovered that they have been bracketed as “Bangalee”, who are majoritarian Sunni Muslims. The indigenous communities divided in several sub-groups have different languages and are mostly Buddhist, Hindu and animist.

Bangladesh gained independence from Islamic Pakistan after a bloody war on the principle to establish a secular and democratic nation.

Former Justice Golam Rabbany lamented at a seminar on Thursday that from now the nation has lost its secular identity, which was gained after decades of struggle. The sacrifices of thousands of martyrs during the independence war forty years ago have been insulted, he decried.

Manmohon Fears Sudden Change In Bangladesh

Ahead of his proposed visit to Dhaka, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has said Bangladesh's political landscape could 'change anytime', reports bdnews24. com. He also said 25 percent of Bangladesh's population count on anti-India Jamaat-e-Islami, which was often influenced by the Pakistani spy agency Inter Services Intelligence. "Our relations (with Bangladesh) are quite good. But we must reckon that at least 25 percent of the population of Bangladesh swear by the [Jamaat-e-Islami] and they are very anti-Indian, and they are in the clutches, many times, of the ISI. "So, a political landscape in Bangladesh can change at any time. We do not know what these terrorist elements, who have a hold on the [Jamaat-e-Islami] elements in Bangladesh, can be up to," said Singh. He made the remark while interacting with some of the senior editors of Indian newspapers on Wednesday. His office made public the full transcript of the Question and Answer session. Though India recognises that its relation with Bangladesh significantly improved after Sheikh Hasina took over as prime minister, Singh's remark apparently reflected New Delhi's concerns over vulnerability of the Awami League government in Dhaka. The Indian prime minister made the remark at a time when Dhaka is set to play host to a number of dignitaries from Delhi. India's external affairs minister S M Krishna is likely to reach Dhaka on July 6 next for a visit to Bangladesh. Water resources minister Salman Khurshid may also visit Dhaka soon for a meeting with his counterpart Ramesh Chandra Sen. Sen and Khurshid are expected to give final touches to an interim agreement on sharing of water of Teesta. President of India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, is also expected to be in Dhaka on July 25 next to attend a special conference on disabled and autistic children. Gandhi, who also chairs the ruling United Progressive Alliance, accepted an invitation from Hasina to attend the conference. Singh, who himself is also likely to go to Dhaka on a state visit to Bangladesh within the next few months, made the remark on Bangladesh, when he was asked by a senior editor to comment on the situation in the neighbourhood of India. He started his reply to the question admitting that he was worried by the situation in the neighbourhood. "Well, neighbourhood worries me a great deal, quite frankly." He lauded the Awami League government in Dhaka for going out of its way to detain the leaders of the Indian insurgent organizations from Bangladesh and hand them over to India in 2009 and 2010. "With Bangladesh, we have good relations. Bangladesh government has gone out of its way to help us in apprehending the anti-Indian insurgent groups which were operating from Bangladesh for a long time. And that is why we have been generous in dealing with Bangladesh," said Singh. He was obviously referring to the tacit cooperation between Dhaka and Delhi that led to the arrest of several top leaders of the Indian insurgent organisations like United Liberation Front of Assam and National Democratic Front of Bodoland along the border in November and December 2009 as well as in May 2010. The arrested militant leaders included ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and NDFB chief Ranjan Daimary. Neither Dhaka nor New Delhi, however, recognised the role of Bangladeshi agencies in creating the situations that led to the arrests of the top militant leaders. But, according to New Delhi's official versions, all of them were arrested after the Border Security Force personnel spotted them near the Bangladesh-India border. New Delhi has since long been alleging that insurgents active in India's North-East have bases and training facilities in Bangladesh and many leaders of its proscribed militant organisations live in its eastern neighbour. "We are not a rich country. But we offered it a line of credit of one billion dollars, when Sheikh Hasina came here (Delhi). We are also looking at ways and means of some further unilateral concessions," he added. Singh said that New Delhi and Dhaka were also "looking at ways and means of finding a practical and pragmatic solution to the sharing of water of Teesta". "I plan to go there myself," he said, referring to his proposed visit to Bangladesh. Indian prime minister's remark on the ISI's influence on Jamat-e- Islami also came at a time when the testimony of terror-plotter David Coleman Headley during the trial of his childhood friend and accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana in a court in Chicago exposed the Pakistani spy agency's role in the November 26 , 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The carnage perpetrated by 10 terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba left at least 174 killed and many others injured. Both Headley and Rana were arrested by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago in October 2009 for plotting the terror-attacks in Mumbai and Denmark.

TRANSIT : The Lose - Lose Game

It is in the interest of both Bangladesh and India to have a win-win and sustainable relationship. Global trends show economies benefit by integration of markets. The proposed transit / corridor through Bangladesh would be used for transporting goods from one part of India to the other part. A strange case of segregating economies instead of integrating -- the growth scenario promoted by global agencies such as the ADB and World Bank. The transit accord of 1973 made sense when it was formulated. Bangladesh had just attained independence and the country was in ruins. Almost everything was imported. Today it is a different reality. Bangladesh is a manufacturing hub. This year Bangladesh will export goods worth $20 billion. If we can compete globally and add value to the consumers all over the world, why should we not join hands with the people of the Indian North East (NE) and provide them with their necessities? Today, we are the most logical export partner for the people of the NE. Goods that the small traders need could be reached there in a day from Sylhet, Comilla and Chittagong. They can form partnerships with Bangladeshi business much easier than with others hundreds of miles away. Concurrently we can use the raw materials that the North East India has in abundance and use our extensive manufacturing capability for processing and re-export. This is the only way integration and the development of the region and the economic wellbeing of the peoples would be speedy, sustainable and inclusive. Instead of connecting the two parts of India economically bypassing Bangladesh, the people of the region would be best served if connectivity between Bangladesh and the NE was enhanced. Though the Indian Government has earmarked $1 billion as aid for developing our transport infrastructure geared to transit, the people of Bangladesh want trade not aid. The big question is -- why should we take the economic and dependency burden of this aid package when the foundations on which it is being promoted go squarely against all interests of Bangladesh and of the economic wellbeing of the people of the region. Transit is being promoted on myths -- the regional economic integration myth As per the present draft of the transit proposal - a. Goods will be conceptualised, designed, manufactured, packaged and put into sealed containers. b. The goods will then travel through Bangladesh territory. c. They will then be unloaded in the NE. There they will be warehoused, advertised, marketed, and distributed. The activities (a) and (c) will be taking place in India. These activities will have no contribution to our economy. As the North East develops, the growth of the region will be designed on the basis of economic integration with mainland India and complete segregation with Bangladesh. The population of the NE is approximately 55 ,000 ,000. If the potential consumption of products that are manufactured in Bangladesh are valued at only $10 /month per person than the market potential for Bangladesh is $6.5 billion annually. This market will be lost because of transit. The regional connectivity myth On the North East India shares borders with China and Myanmar. There is no onward road connectivity from the NE with Myanmar and to China. Hence the concept that the transit route would provide regional connectivity to Thailand and beyond is a distant dream. To the west the road connectivity through India, faces a dead end in Pakistan and in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Where is the regional connectivity? Where do these myths lead Bangladesh to? Strategic and Security Concerns * The contentious border of North Eastern India with China has seen armed conflict in 1962. Both sides still have claims on territory which the other controls. If there was to be military engagement or the possibility of military engagement between India and China in the NE (or for that matter in any region where the two countries are vying for influence), would India use the transit route to speedily move troops and weapons across Bangladesh? What would be China' s reactions in such a scenario? It is not for us to weigh in on the possibilities of such engagement but the view of an influential Indian politician is relevant. During recent visit to Bangladesh, the former India Minister in charge of the NE Mr. Mani Shanker Iyer stated that when the NE grows economically because of connectivity and infrastructure improvement, India would "take on China." * The NE is an area where many insurgents groups operate with separate agendas. If transit is perceived by any or all of these groups to be playing a part in the supply chain of the Indian forces it could potentially become a target for them. There would be the danger of a spillover into Bangladesh. * As a developing country, with an active and contentious political climate, the possibility of disruption of vehicular traffic due to civil or political unrest and hartals is very real. If the domestic security situation does not allow the movement of trucks for providing essentials to the people of the NE what challenges will the two governments face? * There is talk of forming a public limited company for operating the transit. Those who will buy shares of this company would like the corridor to be in full use. Against this group who will be those opposed to the use of this corridor. It could become brother fighting brother. * The transit with the massive investment required would change the development plans of Bangladesh significantly. Why should we plunge into this major digression of our national planning and spending strategy for development? Economic Concerns * Bangladesh will not only lose a potential market of $ 6 billion annually but also the job creation possibilities that would come with this. * There will be substantially increased Traffic congestion on Bangladeshi roads making the whole transport network inefficient. * There will additionally be considerable investment required for the maintenance of the road network. * There will be a negative effect on foreign investment in Bangladesh because of the lowered efficiency caused by increased traffic congestion. * There will be a negative effect on the health of the people of Bangladesh due to pollution caused by truck emissions and by diseases brought into the country. * There will be additional pressure on our foreign exchange reserves caused by the use of imported diesel by Indian trucks. Approximately 40 million tonnes of cargoes are moved from the NE to other parts of India by road. If half of this, that is 20 million tonnes, is moved through Bangladesh in trucks with an average capacity of 10 tons then approximately two million trucks may be taking this corridor. As the cost of diesel is cheaper in Bangladesh than in India, it is expected that the trucks will come empty and leave full. If the average offtake by each truck is 200 litres, an additional 400 million litres of diesel will have to be imported using our scarce foreign exchange. * The building of the transit facilities would bring about a massive increase in our national debt estimated at $ 7 billion and make us very vulnerable to externalities. The pride of self reliance that we have achieved with our blood sweat and tears and with which we are building Bangladesh will come under a new threat. Our freedom -- economic and fiscal decision making freedom, if history is to be a guide, could be eroded. The decision on whether Bangladesh should allow transit facilities to India should be made on an evaluation of the cost and benefit to both the countries. Then there are the security considerations. The basis of all negotiations must be the guarantee of our national security. This complex issue must start with the guarantee that this facility will never ever be used for transporting any military men or materiel. Bangladesh must also make 100 % inspection of all goods coming in and going out mandatory. If negotiations are carried out on the basis of transparency and fairness, on the basis of principles that clearly benefit all the people of the region, we may create a sound basis for cementing our relationship. If the gains are perceived to be one sided it is also likely to be unsustainable. And then it will become a lose-lose game.

War Crimes And Uncertain Justice

When Ratko Mladic was nabbed in Serbia recently and flown to The Hague to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, it was one more sign of justice drawing a little closer for the families of those he and his forces murdered in the mid 1990 s. There is always that sense of satisfaction when criminality, localised or global, is hunted down and those who have destroyed the lives of innocent men, women and children eventually have their comeuppance. It is just too bad that Slobodan Milosevic died before judgement could be delivered on his role in the Balkan wars. But that Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are in the net reinforces the argument somewhat that men who cause misery to other men have in the end really nowhere to hide, that civilised men always have a way of bringing them to justice. Even so, you could well argue, that is not always the truth. Consider the bizarre case of the Israelis, generation upon generation, riding roughshod over legitimate Palestinian rights. Binyamin Netanyahu's arrogance is outrageous. And there have been his predecessors who have with little shame pounded away at unarmed civilians. Their targeted assassinations of Palestinian figures are clear crimes that require to be answered before an international court. By any definition of international law, a whole range of Israeli political and military leaders qualifies for trial on charges of crimes against humanity. And yet these are the very elements who have been received with much fanfare in the corridors of power in the West. Barack Obama's call for peace in the Middle East has fallen flat. Netanyahu was recently given a standing ovation by American lawmakers as many as twenty six times! There are other men, besides Israel's leading politicians, who ought to have been behind bars upon conviction for war crimes. When you go through the painstaking process of watching the murderous figures of the Khmer Rouge answer for their genocidal activities between the mid and end-1970 s, you are left somewhat satisfied that these old, doddering men are finally paying for their sins. Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan once tried to exterminate civilization in Cambodia. In a larger sense, war criminals are war criminals because they tend to believe, and reinforce that belief as they move on, that theirs is a duty to restructure society to their specifications. They end up leaving a pile of rubble where once there was a stable, perhaps a trifle flawed, social order. Yes, the Khmer Rouge men have been rubbing their noses in the dirt. And yet there are all the others who have strutted around on the stage of the world despite all the murders they have committed, despite all the rape of women they have indulged in. The proper course for the new state of Bangladesh, in the early 1970 s, should have been to bring to trial all the Pakistani army officers and lower ranking soldiers for the genocide of Bengalis they carried out between March and December 1971. Bangabandhu's government, faced as it was with multi-faceted pressure on the international front, finally zeroed in on a hundred and ninety five Pakistani officers who would stand trial in Bangladesh. That move too fizzled out, thanks to the tripartite deal involving Bangladesh, India and Pakistan on an exchange of Pakistani prisoners of war and Bengalis stranded in Pakistan. The Islamabad authorities, to assuage Bengali feelings, promised to bring the criminal officers to justice in Pakistan itself. No one believed them. That apprehension was not misplaced. Pakistan did not try its murderous military officers because of the simple reason that it did not and would not believe that its soldiers had been killing Bengalis. They were merely engaged in defending Pakistan's territorial integrity in the face of external aggression! Recall, now, how the war criminals of 1971 were rehabilitated in Pakistani society. General Tikka Khan, who left 'East Pakistan' in September 1971 -- by which time more than two million Bengalis had been murdered -- was appointed chief of staff of the Pakistan army by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Upon retirement, Tikka joined the Pakistan People's Party and at one point became its secretary general. Under Benazir Bhutto, he served as governor of Punjab. General Rao Farman Ali served happily as a minister in General Ziaul Haq's regime. General A.A.K. Niazi, for all the opprobrium brought on him through his surrender in Dhaka, went into politics and remained there till his death. Siddiq Salik, author of Witness to Surrender and the man who intimidated the media in occupied Bangladesh into toeing the Pakistani line in 1971 , served as media advisor to Ziaul Haq before crashing to death along with the dictator in 1988. General Yahya Khan lived in house arrest till 1980 without being punished for his crimes. General Omar became a frequent talk show host on Pakistani television, perennially proclaiming his innocence about 1971. Justice, then, is always a tenuous, tentative affair. You are happy that Augustin Bizimungu has been punished in Rwanda, that Mladic and Karadzic will die in prison. The happiness turns sour when you remember that no one has brought Ariel Sharon before an international tribunal; that those Pakistanis have evaded justice; that George W. Bush and Tony Blair, having committed war crimes through destroying Iraq, go around parading their self-serving memoirs. Many years ago, Japan's Admiral Tojo was hanged for war crimes. The good men in the West, forever defending the rule of law and justice, have not explained why Harry Truman was never prosecuted for sending tens of thousands of Japanese to death in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You ponder all this. And you wait to know if some men in Sri Lanka will answer for their own crimes committed in the course of the war against the Tamil Tigers.

On The Line

The May 1 commando strike in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama Bin Laden demonstrated one thing conclusively: that the United States cannot rely on Pakistan to deal with the al- Qaida threat. We don’t know for sure yet if the Pakistani intelligence service, or ISI, was clueless or actively complicit in hiding the most wanted man in the world, who was living a mile down the road from the Kakul military academy, the country’s West Point. In either case the ISI is not a reliable or effective counter- terrorist partner. Now the evidence is growing that at least some part of the ISI and the Pakistani army was, in fact, actively complicit in hiding Bin Laden for the past five years. The evidence laid out Friday in the New York Times and based on cell phones found in the hideout is not a smoking gun, but it is very suggestive. Bin Laden was in regular contact with the Harakat ul Mujahedin terror group, which the ISI created in the 1980 s to fight India. The Harakat ul Mujahedin has loyally worked with the ISI for decades, and its members hijacked an Indian airliner in 1999 with al- Qaida and the ISI. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, head of Harakat ul Mujahedin, lives openly in an Islamabad suburb. If Harakat helped Bin Laden, it is not hard to imagine that someone in the ISI knew that the world’s most wanted terrorist was been hidden somewhere inside Pakistan. There is other circumstantial evidence of official Pakistani complicity in hiding Bin Laden. The commandant of the Kakul academy in 2006 was General Nadeem Taj, the right-hand man of former President Pervez Musharraf. After his service in Abbottabad, Taj became director general of the ISI in late 2007. On his watch, the ISI blew up the Indian embassy in Kabul and Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al-Qaida. The U.N. investigation of Benazir’s murder held the ISI as possibly culpable. In September 2008 , the George W. Bush Administration demanded that Taj be fired. Instead, he was promoted to corps commander. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai came a month later, and we know the ISI helped plan that. Taj had the means and access in 2006 to help Bin Laden, and he is clearly a problematic partner. Not a smoking gun by any means, but suggestive. Pakistan is home to more terrorists than any other country, many of them harbored by the Pakistani army and the ISI. Osama Bin Laden’s deputy and now heir , Ayman al-Zawahiri, is probably somewhere nearby. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the tactical maestro of the Sept. 11 attacks, was living in Pakistan’s military capital, Rawalpindi, when he was captured (albeit with the ISI’s help). Mullah Omar, Emir of Believers to al- Qaida and head of the Afghan Taliban, was trained by the ISI and commutes between Quetta and Karachi. Hafez Saed, head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist group, and mastermind of the Mumbai massacre, lives and preaches openly in Lahore. Dawood Ibrahim, who killed hundreds with bombs on Mumbai’s metro in 1993 , lives in Karachi. There are no secrets here—the south Asian press reports their hideouts on a regular basis. Pakistan’s civilian government is not implicated in any of this. Nor is Pakistan al-Qaida’s patronage akin to Iran’s role with Hezbollah. Pakistan is as much a victim of terror as its sponsor. It is a maze of contradictions. Analogies to the Cold War partnerships that matched patron state to terrorist group don’t work in Pakistan. The army sponsors some groups like Harakat and Lashkar-e-Taiba, but it is at war with others like the Pakistan Taliban. In the case of other terror groups like al-Qaida, the government is infiltrated by sympathizers. These varying relationships pose unique challenges that need tailored responses. So, what should the United States do with Pakistan? First, we should tell the Pakistani army leadership that if we learn one of their officers is involved in harboring terrorists, planning terror operations, or tipping terrorist bomb factories off to drone raids, we will make it personal. Don’t sanction the country or the ISI; sanction individuals. Hold them accountable. That officer will go on our terrorist most-wanted list, and we will seize his property if we can, arrest him if he travels, expel his kids from school here or in England, and—if he is truly dangerous enough—take direct action. We should not do this alone. We should get allies, especially the British, to help, since Pakistanis love to visit London and send their kids to school in the United Kingdom. Second, we will need a base to stage unilateral operations into Pakistan for the foreseeable future. We can hope al-Qaida will implode soon, but we cannot count on that. The Arabian Sea is too far away. So, we need a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan so we can continue to send drones and commandos over the Pakistani border. We don’t need 100 ,000 troops in Afghanistan, but we do need Afghan permission to operate in that country for the long term. That is the other hard lesson of Abbottabad.