OPINION
Let's Think Again About The Burqa
The Quran does prescribe purdah. That doesn't mean women should obey it.
TASLIMA NASREEN
My mother used purdah. She wore a burqa with a net cover in front of the face. It reminded me of the meatsafes in my grandmother's house. One had a net door made of cloth, the other of metal. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe. My mother was put under a burqa by her conservative family. They told her that wearing a burqa would mean obeying Allah.
Women too have sexual urges. So why didn't Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, He treated them on unequal terms.
And if you obey Allah, He would be happy with you and not let you burn in hellfire. My mother was afraid of Allah and also of her own father. He would threaten her with grave consequences if she didn't wear the burqa. She was also afraid of the men in the neighbourhood, who could have shamed her. Even her husband was a source of fear, for he could do anything to her if she disobeyed him.
As a young girl, I used to nag her: Ma, don't you suffocate in this veil? Don't you feel all dark inside? Don't you feel breathless? Don't you feel angry? Don't you ever feel like throwing it off? My mother kept mum. She couldn't do anything about it. But I did. When I was sixteen, I was presented a burqa by one of my relatives. I threw it away.
The custom of purdah is not new. It dates back to 300 BC. The women of aristocratic Assyrian families used purdah. Ordinary women and prostitutes were not allowed purdah. In the middle ages, even Anglo-Saxon women used to cover their hair and chin and hide their faces behind a cloth or similar object. This purdah system was obviously not religious. The religious purdah is used by Catholic nuns and Mormons, though for the latter only during religious ceremonies and rituals. For Muslim women, however, such religious purdah is not limited to specific rituals but mandatory for their daily life outside the purview of religion.
A couple of months ago, at the height of the purdah controversy, Shabana Azmi asserted that the Quran doesn't say anything about wearing the burqa. She's mistaken. This is what the Quran says:
"Tell the faithful women that they must keep their gaze focused below/on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewellery on display. They must hide their breasts behind a purdah. They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children. They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed." (Sura Al Noor 24:31)
"Oh nabi, please tell your wives and daughters and faithful women to wear a covering dress on their bodies. That would be good. Then nobody can recognise them and harrass them. Allah is merciful and kind." (Sura Al Hijaab 33: 59)
Even the Hadis --a collection of the words of Prophet Mohammed, his opinion on various subjects and also about his work, written by those close to him-- talks extensively of the purdah for women. Women must cover their whole body before going out, they should not go before unknown men, they should not go to the mosque to read the namaaz, they should not go for any funeral.
There are many views on why and how the Islamic purdah started. One view has it that Prophet Mohammed became very poor after spending all the wealth of his first wife. At that time, in Arabia, the poor had to go to the open desert and plains for relieving themselves and even their sexual needs. The Prophet's wives too had to do the same. He had told his wives that "I give you permission to go out and carry out your natural work". (Bukhari Hadis first volume book 4 No. 149). And this is what his wives started doing accordingly. One day, Prophet Mohammed's disciple Uman complained to him that these women were very uncomfortable because they were instantly recognisable while relieving themselves. Umar proposed a cover but Prophet Mohammed ignored it. Then the Prophet asked Allah for advice and he laid down the Ayat (33:59) (Bukhari Hadis Book 026 No. 5397).
This is the history of the purdah, according to the Hadis. But the question is: since Arab men too relieved themselves in the open, why didn't Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, Allah doesn't treat men and women as equals, else there would be purdah for both! Men are higher than women. So women have to be made walking prisons and men can remain free birds.
Another view is that the purdah was introduced to separate women from servants. This originates from stories in the Hadis. One story in the Bukhari Hadis goes thus: After winning the Khyber War, Prophet Mohammed took over all the properties of the enemy, including their women. One of these women was called Safia. One of the Prophet's disciples sought to know her status. He replied: "If tomorrow you see that Safia is going around covered, under purdah, then she is going to be a wife. If you see her uncovered, that means I've decided to make her my servant."
The third view comes from this story. Prophet Mohammed's wife Ayesha was very beautiful. His friends were often found staring at her with fascination. This clearly upset the Prophet. So the Quran has an Ayat that says, "Oh friends of the prophet or holy men, never go to your friend's house without an invitation. And if you do go, don't go and ask anything of their wives". It is to resist the greedy eyes of friends, disciples or male guests that the purdah system came into being. First it was applicable to only the wives of the holy men, and later it was extended to all Muslim women. Purdah means covering the entire body except for the eyes, wrist and feet. Nowadays, some women practise the purdah by only covering their hair. That is not what is written in the Hadis Quran. Frankly, covering just the hair is not Islamic purdah in the strict sense.
In the early Islamic period, Prophet Mohammed started the practice of covering the feet of women. Within 100 years of his death, purdah spread across the entire Middle East. Women were covered by an extra layer of clothing. They were forbidden to go out of the house, or in front of unknown men. Their lives were hemmed into a tight regime: stay at home, cook, clean the house, bear children and bring them up. In this way, one section of the people was separated by purdah, quarantined and covered.
Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that. In no religion formulated by men are women considered to have a separate existence, or as human beings having desires and opinions separate from men's. The purdah rules humiliate not only women but men too. If women walk about without purdah, it's as if men will look at them with lustful eyes, or pounce on them, or rape them. Do they lose all their senses when they see any woman without burqa?
My question to Shabana and her supporters, who argue that the Quran says nothing about purdah is: If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is, No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect. These are symbols of women's oppression. Through them, women are told that they are but the property of men, objects for their use. These coverings are used to keep women passive and submissive. Women are told to wear them so that they cannot exist with their self-respect, honour, confidence, separate identity, own opinion and ideals intact. So that they cannot stand on their own two feet and live with their head held high and their spine strong and erect.
Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it. So many old customs have died a natural death, but not purdah. Instead, of late, there has been a mad craze to revive it. Covering a woman's head means covering her brain and ensuring that it doesn't work. If women's brains worked properly, they'd have long ago thrown off these veils and burqas imposed on them by a religious and patriarchal regime.
What should women do? They should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.
(Nasrin, a Bangladeshi writer, currently lives in Calcutta)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A Second Liberation? - Hiranmay Karlekar
http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?239407
BANGLADESH
A Second Liberation?
The country now has a chance to return to the Liberation War's legacy of secularism, modernity, gender and social justice, political democracy and cultural pluralism, and friendship with neighbouring countries, particularly India. This is precisely the path the voters wanted their country to take.
HIRANMAY KARLEKAR
If one is looking for a single sentence to sum up the significance of the results of the December 29, 2008, parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, it should read: this is a second liberation. The first one, on December 16, 1971, rid it of Pakistan’s colonial rule and the nightmare of genocide and mass rape unleashed by the Pakistani Army since the night of March 25 that year. The results of the December elections have liberated Bangladesh from an inexorable descent into Talibanesque social medievalism and a reign of terror unleashed by Islamist fundamentalists. The country now has a chance to return to the Liberation War’s legacy of secularism, modernity, gender and social justice, political democracy and cultural pluralism, and friendship with neighbouring countries, particularly India. This is precisely the path the voters wanted their country to take.
The verdict has been overwhelmingly decisive. The Awami League (AL) has won 230 of the 299 seats (out of a total of 300 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad or National Parliament) to which elections were held on December 29, and 49.2 per cent of the votes polled, as against 62 seats and 40.13 per cent, respectively, in the 2001 election. The Grand Alliance it spearheaded has won 262 seats, with the Jatiya Party accounting for 27 (against 14 in 2001) seats, with five going to ‘others’ in the coalition. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Begum Khaleda Zia, which won 193 seats in 2001, now has just 29, with its share of votes declining from 40.97 per cent to 32.74 per cent. Its principal ally in the Four-Party Alliance, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JeI-B or Jamaat) has had its seats reduced from 17 to two.
The Jamaat, along with its student’s wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS or Shibir), constitute the matrix within which terrorist organizations like Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), and Ahle Hadith Andolan Bangladesh (AHAB), evolved. Leaders like Mufti Abdul Hannan and Bangla Bhai, aka Siddiqul Islam, Operations Commanders of the HuJI-B and JMJB respectively till their arrest and eventual executions, Abdur Rahman of JMB, Muhammad Asadullah al-Galib of AHAB graduated either from the Jamaat or the Shibir or both.
The JeI has suffered major blows in the recent election. Its Amir (chief), Matiur Rahman Nizami, General Secretary, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, and fire-eating stalwart, Delwar Hussain Saydee, have lost. It will, however, be foolish to believe that the party has been wiped out, or that the BNP has been hobbled permanently. Though the Jamaat has won only two seats, its share of votes polled has actually increased from 4.28 per cent in 2001 to 4.55 per cent in 2008. Besides, it has never been a dominant electoral force. Its strength lies in its huge economic empire which, as Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University has shown, yields an annual net profit of Taka 12 billion, at least 10 per cent of which is spent on organizational matters like holding regular party activity, running military training centres and maintaining about 500,000 party workers. As long as this empire, built with funds received from abroad during the 1970s and 1980s, remains intact, the JeI will continue to have the ability to make waves in Bangladesh’s politics as a highly-organised marginal force, which can tilt the balance whenever the AL’s popularity wanes.
Some of the entrepreneurial ventures linked to the Jamaat have also been funding terrorist activity. On April 5, 2006, Bangladesh Bank (the country’s Central Bank) had fined the Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd., which is joined at the hip with the Jamaat, Taka 100,000 for hiding suspicious transactions by terrorists violating money-laundering laws. According to the report, this was the third time that the Islami Bank had been penalized for covering up terrorist activity. Many in Bangladesh believe that a thorough investigation into its functioning — as also that of other Jamaat enterprises — is bound to reveal the party’s, as well as the Shibir’s, umbilical ties with organizations like the HuJI-B, JMB, JMJB and AHAB, which, though banned, continue to be active.
JeI leaders’ denials of ties with Islamist terrorist outfits have always lacked credibility. Referring to the notorious terrorist, Bangla Bhai aka Siddiqul Islam, Operations Commander of JMJB, Motiur Rahman Nizami, then Bangladesh’s Industries Minister, had said at a Press Conference in Dhaka on July 22, 2004, that Bangla Bhai was "created by some newspapers as the Government has found no existence of him". Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid, on the same occasion, stated that the Government would certainly take legal action against Bangla Bhai ‘if he was traced out’. Among others present at the Press Conference were the Jamaat’s Assistant Secretary General Kamaruzzaman, and leaders like Abdul Kader Mollah, ATM Azharul Islam and Nayeb-e-Ameer Maqbul Ahmed.
That Bangla Bhai was not a media creation was proved beyond doubt after he was arrested and, following a trial, hanged with six others, including Abdur Rahman, on March 29, 2007.
However, it is useful to note, also, that Sheikh Hasina did not take any significant action against the Jamaat during her previous tenure as Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001. In fact, she had even allied with the Jamaat in 1994 and 1995 to launch an agitation against Begum Khaleda Zia’s Government, demanding the establishment of a caretaker Government to hold parliamentary elections.
It is, perhaps, different now. Under relentless and often murderous attack, during the regime of the BNP-led coalition Government, of which Jamaat was a assertive partner, the AL now has reason to demand stringent action. Sheikh Hasina too is likely to listen.
She will also be under pressure to act against Jamaat leaders like Matiur Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, on another count — the promise in the Awami League’s manifesto for the parliamentary election to bring Bangladesh’s war criminals to justice. Both have been accused of war crimes along with several other leaders of the party. It will not be easy to bring them to book. Supporters of war criminals have become firmly entrenched in Bangladesh’s premier intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces’ Intelligence (DGFI), which has close links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. They, as well as their fellow travelers, who have infiltrated into the armed forces and civilian administration, will fight bitterly to frustrate the new Government’s efforts.
On her part, Sheikh Hasina will not be without support. The Sector Commanders’ Forum, an organization spearheaded by the sector commanders of the Mukti Bahini, during the 1971 Liberation War, has sustained an intense campaign for the trial and punishment of war criminals over the last two years. Thanks to them and efforts by the Muktijuddher Chetana Bastabayan O Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Jatiya Samanyay Committee (National Coordination Committee for the Realisation of the Consciousness of the Liberation War and the Eradication of the Killers and Agents of ‘Seventy One’), popularly known as Nirmul Committee, evidence will not be difficult to come by. Besides, Ian Martin, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy, has promised Sheikh Hasina, whom he met on January 1, 2009, to congratulate her on her victory, all help in bringing the war criminals to justice.
The question is of political will. Sheikh Hasina’s and the AL’s credibility will be severely dented if they are seen to be unable and/or unwilling to act firmly. Besides, war criminals, left alone, will try to stage a comeback and resume the campaign of murder and terror they had unleashed in Bangladesh between 2001 and 2006. Sheikh Hasina, who has survived several attempts on her life, including the grenade attack on a rally she was addressing in Dhaka on August 21, 2004, which left 24 persons dead, should have no illusion on the score. Besides acting against war criminals, she will also have to dismantle the Jamaat’s economic empire, which sustains the party’s activities and openly promotes a jihadi mindset.
The Sector Commander’s Forum has urged the incoming Government to begin the trial of the war criminals as soon as possible. In a statement on January 2, congratulating the AL-led Grand Alliance on their landslide victory, it said that the soul of the martyrs would remain unsatisfied and the sovereignty of the country insecure until the war criminals were tried.
The issue of the trial of war criminals has a significance that goes far beyond bringing to book people who have been involved in genocidal violence that cost the lives of three million people and involved the rape of 425,000 women, though that is monstrous enough. Those designated war criminals are also leaders of the Jamaat, the spawning ground and ideological fountainhead of Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh. Their trial and punishment will, consequently, help to neutralize the threat of a regression into near-anarchical violence and medievalism that still hangs over Bangladesh.
It will also, perhaps, help relations with India, which the Jamaat leaders have designated as Bangladesh’s enemy. This is clear from the Jamaat’s view on Bangladesh’s defence articulated by Abbas Ali Khan, who became its officiating Amir after it was revived in May 1979, after being banned in the wake of the country’s liberation. Khan writes in the party’s official website:
The very word defence raises the pertinent question, ‘defence against whom?’ Had there been several states around Bangladesh, the answer to this question might not be permanently the same. But as she is almost surrounded by one state, the answer can’t be but one. Whenever any kind of aggression comes it shall come from India alone. Consequently the psychology of the defence forces of Bangladesh must be anti-Indian. But only a negative feeling is not sufficient for developing this psychology to the spirit of highest sacrifice for the country. Nobody can deny that the Muslim sentiment or the Islamic spirit is the only positive element necessary for building up the correct and effective psychology of the defence forces. It is the spirit of jihad which can inspire them to sacrifice their life with the hope that they will be amply rewarded after death.
Understandably, relations between India and Bangladesh were tense during the entire period of the four-party coalition Government headed by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is also bitterly hostile toward India and has never been averse to resorting to communal politics. A week before the elections, she had urged voters campaigning in Sylhet, to vote for her alliance to "save Islam and the country", adding, further, "You will have to decide whether to cast your vote for setting up a puppet government for serving certain quarters at home and abroad, who had been conspiring against Bangladesh."
During Begum Zia’s second innings as Prime Minister, Bangladesh continued to provide sanctuary, training, and assistance to terrorist outfits of northeastern India, prominently including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the All-Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF). Her Government had arbitrarily rejected lists of terrorist camps provided by India, stating that the latter did not exist, and had allowed wanted terrorists like Anup Chetia, Arabinda Rajkhowa and Paresh Baruah of the ULFA to move about freely and acquire massive business interests in Bangladesh. The country had also emerged, during her second tenure as Prime Minister, as a major staging ground for cross-border terrorist strikes in India, with the HuJI-B having a hand in most attacks since 2002.
In response to a question from an Indian journalist, Sheikh Hasina stated, at a Press Conference on December 31, that Bangladesh would not allow any terrorist outfit to use its soil (for attacks) against any country, including India. She also proposed the establishment of a joint task force by South Asian countries for combined action against terrorism. While nobody will question her intentions, her ability to deliver remains to be seen. She had closed down some camps of North-East Indian insurgent groups in Bangladesh after taking over as Prime Minister in 1996. But these had reopened not long thereafter, while she remained in power. Sources close to her had told this writer at that time that her hand was forced by a section of the Army and the DGFI – which may well have been the case. Both had acquired a very sizeable component of pro-Pakistan fundamentalist Islamist elements during the 15 years of thinly-disguised military rule in Bangladesh, from the end of 1975 to the beginning of 1991, when Khaleda Zia became Prime Minister for the first time. The latter’s tenure as Prime Minister, from 1991 to 1996, had seen a further consolidation of these elements, which Sheikh Hasina could only contain up to a point, and not fully curb, when she was Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001.
A part of the reason lay in the fact that the ISI was riding high. Having coordinated the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union on behalf of the United States, it had, in cooperation with the CIA and the transport mafia of Quetta, set up the Taliban in 1994. Given the background of the murder of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and her entire family in 1975, barring her and her sister Rehana, who were not then in Bangladesh, Shiekh Hasina might well have hesitated to take on Pakistani elements in the Army and the DGFI, which were closely linked to Pakistan.
The regional and international canvas is different now. Post 9/11, the United States has declared war on al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ISI, which has spawned Islamist terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and which has close links with al Qaeda and Taliban, is no longer the CIA’s blue-eyed boy. Sheikh Hasina will have extensive global support if she takes on Islamist terrorist organizations in Bangladesh linked to al Qaeda and Taliban. Indeed, it was pressure from the United States and the European Union countries which had forced Begum Zia to act against the JMJB, JMB and AHAB in February 2005 and the HuJI-B several months later. Also, but for international pressure the Army-backed Caretaker Government would not have come into being on January 11, 2007; nor would it, perhaps, have held the elections on December 29.
Sheikh Hasina is now clearly in a position not only to act against Islamist terrorists but even to cleanse the Army and the DGFI of elements favouring the Taliban, al Qaeda and their local franchise holders, and who are linked with the ISI. Many in Bangladesh have lauded Sheikh Hasina’s holding out the proverbial olive branch to the BNP by offering it the post of Deputy Speaker and a share in ministerial appointments; others advocate, albeit sotto voce, caution, recalling the general amnesty Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had proclaimed on November 30, 1973, which had enabled war criminals, including those convicted and sentenced, to come out from jails and the woodwork, to work surreptitiously for a revival of pro-Pakistan and fundamentalist politics. History rarely forgives those who fail to be firm when they need to.
A stern approach toward jihadi groups that use Bangladesh’s territory to mount terrorist attacks against India, and send agents and arms across the porous India-Bangladesh border, will go a long way in creating a climate in which all outstanding issues between the two countries can be sorted out; so will the withdrawal of sanctuary and assistance so long given to Indian insurgent groups. This applies particularly to the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh which has acquired a sharp and bitter edge because of the cover it provides to infiltration by terrorists and smuggling of arms and money, and because of the ISI’s known plan to carve out a Muslim-majority state comprising parts of north-eastern India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Of course, it will not be easy to resolve these issues. But a beginning can be made with Bangladesh’s recognition of the existence of the problems, which it has been denying so far. This will require extraordinary political will. But so will effectively dealing with the terrorist groups and their patrons, cleansing the administration of corruption and worse, coping with continuing price rise, and the global meltdown that can hit the country particularly hard because of its dependence on the export of ready-made garments to the West and remittances from non-resident Bangladeshis. Accelerated economic cooperation with India, which is likely to be hurt far less, can provide Bangladesh with a much-needed cushion.
There is no reason why this should not come about, given the huge reservoir of goodwill that exists for Sheikh Hasina in India. But she must address New Delhi’s concerns as well, particularly since most of these affect her own and Bangladesh’s well-being as well. The stage is now set for scripting a new scenario of friendship and cooperation between India and Bangladesh. It will be great pity if the play turns into a tragedy.
Hiranmay Karlekar is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
BANGLADESH
A Second Liberation?
The country now has a chance to return to the Liberation War's legacy of secularism, modernity, gender and social justice, political democracy and cultural pluralism, and friendship with neighbouring countries, particularly India. This is precisely the path the voters wanted their country to take.
HIRANMAY KARLEKAR
If one is looking for a single sentence to sum up the significance of the results of the December 29, 2008, parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, it should read: this is a second liberation. The first one, on December 16, 1971, rid it of Pakistan’s colonial rule and the nightmare of genocide and mass rape unleashed by the Pakistani Army since the night of March 25 that year. The results of the December elections have liberated Bangladesh from an inexorable descent into Talibanesque social medievalism and a reign of terror unleashed by Islamist fundamentalists. The country now has a chance to return to the Liberation War’s legacy of secularism, modernity, gender and social justice, political democracy and cultural pluralism, and friendship with neighbouring countries, particularly India. This is precisely the path the voters wanted their country to take.
The verdict has been overwhelmingly decisive. The Awami League (AL) has won 230 of the 299 seats (out of a total of 300 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad or National Parliament) to which elections were held on December 29, and 49.2 per cent of the votes polled, as against 62 seats and 40.13 per cent, respectively, in the 2001 election. The Grand Alliance it spearheaded has won 262 seats, with the Jatiya Party accounting for 27 (against 14 in 2001) seats, with five going to ‘others’ in the coalition. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Begum Khaleda Zia, which won 193 seats in 2001, now has just 29, with its share of votes declining from 40.97 per cent to 32.74 per cent. Its principal ally in the Four-Party Alliance, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JeI-B or Jamaat) has had its seats reduced from 17 to two.
The Jamaat, along with its student’s wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS or Shibir), constitute the matrix within which terrorist organizations like Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), and Ahle Hadith Andolan Bangladesh (AHAB), evolved. Leaders like Mufti Abdul Hannan and Bangla Bhai, aka Siddiqul Islam, Operations Commanders of the HuJI-B and JMJB respectively till their arrest and eventual executions, Abdur Rahman of JMB, Muhammad Asadullah al-Galib of AHAB graduated either from the Jamaat or the Shibir or both.
The JeI has suffered major blows in the recent election. Its Amir (chief), Matiur Rahman Nizami, General Secretary, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, and fire-eating stalwart, Delwar Hussain Saydee, have lost. It will, however, be foolish to believe that the party has been wiped out, or that the BNP has been hobbled permanently. Though the Jamaat has won only two seats, its share of votes polled has actually increased from 4.28 per cent in 2001 to 4.55 per cent in 2008. Besides, it has never been a dominant electoral force. Its strength lies in its huge economic empire which, as Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University has shown, yields an annual net profit of Taka 12 billion, at least 10 per cent of which is spent on organizational matters like holding regular party activity, running military training centres and maintaining about 500,000 party workers. As long as this empire, built with funds received from abroad during the 1970s and 1980s, remains intact, the JeI will continue to have the ability to make waves in Bangladesh’s politics as a highly-organised marginal force, which can tilt the balance whenever the AL’s popularity wanes.
Some of the entrepreneurial ventures linked to the Jamaat have also been funding terrorist activity. On April 5, 2006, Bangladesh Bank (the country’s Central Bank) had fined the Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd., which is joined at the hip with the Jamaat, Taka 100,000 for hiding suspicious transactions by terrorists violating money-laundering laws. According to the report, this was the third time that the Islami Bank had been penalized for covering up terrorist activity. Many in Bangladesh believe that a thorough investigation into its functioning — as also that of other Jamaat enterprises — is bound to reveal the party’s, as well as the Shibir’s, umbilical ties with organizations like the HuJI-B, JMB, JMJB and AHAB, which, though banned, continue to be active.
JeI leaders’ denials of ties with Islamist terrorist outfits have always lacked credibility. Referring to the notorious terrorist, Bangla Bhai aka Siddiqul Islam, Operations Commander of JMJB, Motiur Rahman Nizami, then Bangladesh’s Industries Minister, had said at a Press Conference in Dhaka on July 22, 2004, that Bangla Bhai was "created by some newspapers as the Government has found no existence of him". Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid, on the same occasion, stated that the Government would certainly take legal action against Bangla Bhai ‘if he was traced out’. Among others present at the Press Conference were the Jamaat’s Assistant Secretary General Kamaruzzaman, and leaders like Abdul Kader Mollah, ATM Azharul Islam and Nayeb-e-Ameer Maqbul Ahmed.
That Bangla Bhai was not a media creation was proved beyond doubt after he was arrested and, following a trial, hanged with six others, including Abdur Rahman, on March 29, 2007.
However, it is useful to note, also, that Sheikh Hasina did not take any significant action against the Jamaat during her previous tenure as Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001. In fact, she had even allied with the Jamaat in 1994 and 1995 to launch an agitation against Begum Khaleda Zia’s Government, demanding the establishment of a caretaker Government to hold parliamentary elections.
It is, perhaps, different now. Under relentless and often murderous attack, during the regime of the BNP-led coalition Government, of which Jamaat was a assertive partner, the AL now has reason to demand stringent action. Sheikh Hasina too is likely to listen.
She will also be under pressure to act against Jamaat leaders like Matiur Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, on another count — the promise in the Awami League’s manifesto for the parliamentary election to bring Bangladesh’s war criminals to justice. Both have been accused of war crimes along with several other leaders of the party. It will not be easy to bring them to book. Supporters of war criminals have become firmly entrenched in Bangladesh’s premier intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces’ Intelligence (DGFI), which has close links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. They, as well as their fellow travelers, who have infiltrated into the armed forces and civilian administration, will fight bitterly to frustrate the new Government’s efforts.
On her part, Sheikh Hasina will not be without support. The Sector Commanders’ Forum, an organization spearheaded by the sector commanders of the Mukti Bahini, during the 1971 Liberation War, has sustained an intense campaign for the trial and punishment of war criminals over the last two years. Thanks to them and efforts by the Muktijuddher Chetana Bastabayan O Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Jatiya Samanyay Committee (National Coordination Committee for the Realisation of the Consciousness of the Liberation War and the Eradication of the Killers and Agents of ‘Seventy One’), popularly known as Nirmul Committee, evidence will not be difficult to come by. Besides, Ian Martin, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy, has promised Sheikh Hasina, whom he met on January 1, 2009, to congratulate her on her victory, all help in bringing the war criminals to justice.
The question is of political will. Sheikh Hasina’s and the AL’s credibility will be severely dented if they are seen to be unable and/or unwilling to act firmly. Besides, war criminals, left alone, will try to stage a comeback and resume the campaign of murder and terror they had unleashed in Bangladesh between 2001 and 2006. Sheikh Hasina, who has survived several attempts on her life, including the grenade attack on a rally she was addressing in Dhaka on August 21, 2004, which left 24 persons dead, should have no illusion on the score. Besides acting against war criminals, she will also have to dismantle the Jamaat’s economic empire, which sustains the party’s activities and openly promotes a jihadi mindset.
The Sector Commander’s Forum has urged the incoming Government to begin the trial of the war criminals as soon as possible. In a statement on January 2, congratulating the AL-led Grand Alliance on their landslide victory, it said that the soul of the martyrs would remain unsatisfied and the sovereignty of the country insecure until the war criminals were tried.
The issue of the trial of war criminals has a significance that goes far beyond bringing to book people who have been involved in genocidal violence that cost the lives of three million people and involved the rape of 425,000 women, though that is monstrous enough. Those designated war criminals are also leaders of the Jamaat, the spawning ground and ideological fountainhead of Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh. Their trial and punishment will, consequently, help to neutralize the threat of a regression into near-anarchical violence and medievalism that still hangs over Bangladesh.
It will also, perhaps, help relations with India, which the Jamaat leaders have designated as Bangladesh’s enemy. This is clear from the Jamaat’s view on Bangladesh’s defence articulated by Abbas Ali Khan, who became its officiating Amir after it was revived in May 1979, after being banned in the wake of the country’s liberation. Khan writes in the party’s official website:
The very word defence raises the pertinent question, ‘defence against whom?’ Had there been several states around Bangladesh, the answer to this question might not be permanently the same. But as she is almost surrounded by one state, the answer can’t be but one. Whenever any kind of aggression comes it shall come from India alone. Consequently the psychology of the defence forces of Bangladesh must be anti-Indian. But only a negative feeling is not sufficient for developing this psychology to the spirit of highest sacrifice for the country. Nobody can deny that the Muslim sentiment or the Islamic spirit is the only positive element necessary for building up the correct and effective psychology of the defence forces. It is the spirit of jihad which can inspire them to sacrifice their life with the hope that they will be amply rewarded after death.
Understandably, relations between India and Bangladesh were tense during the entire period of the four-party coalition Government headed by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is also bitterly hostile toward India and has never been averse to resorting to communal politics. A week before the elections, she had urged voters campaigning in Sylhet, to vote for her alliance to "save Islam and the country", adding, further, "You will have to decide whether to cast your vote for setting up a puppet government for serving certain quarters at home and abroad, who had been conspiring against Bangladesh."
During Begum Zia’s second innings as Prime Minister, Bangladesh continued to provide sanctuary, training, and assistance to terrorist outfits of northeastern India, prominently including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the All-Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF). Her Government had arbitrarily rejected lists of terrorist camps provided by India, stating that the latter did not exist, and had allowed wanted terrorists like Anup Chetia, Arabinda Rajkhowa and Paresh Baruah of the ULFA to move about freely and acquire massive business interests in Bangladesh. The country had also emerged, during her second tenure as Prime Minister, as a major staging ground for cross-border terrorist strikes in India, with the HuJI-B having a hand in most attacks since 2002.
In response to a question from an Indian journalist, Sheikh Hasina stated, at a Press Conference on December 31, that Bangladesh would not allow any terrorist outfit to use its soil (for attacks) against any country, including India. She also proposed the establishment of a joint task force by South Asian countries for combined action against terrorism. While nobody will question her intentions, her ability to deliver remains to be seen. She had closed down some camps of North-East Indian insurgent groups in Bangladesh after taking over as Prime Minister in 1996. But these had reopened not long thereafter, while she remained in power. Sources close to her had told this writer at that time that her hand was forced by a section of the Army and the DGFI – which may well have been the case. Both had acquired a very sizeable component of pro-Pakistan fundamentalist Islamist elements during the 15 years of thinly-disguised military rule in Bangladesh, from the end of 1975 to the beginning of 1991, when Khaleda Zia became Prime Minister for the first time. The latter’s tenure as Prime Minister, from 1991 to 1996, had seen a further consolidation of these elements, which Sheikh Hasina could only contain up to a point, and not fully curb, when she was Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001.
A part of the reason lay in the fact that the ISI was riding high. Having coordinated the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union on behalf of the United States, it had, in cooperation with the CIA and the transport mafia of Quetta, set up the Taliban in 1994. Given the background of the murder of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and her entire family in 1975, barring her and her sister Rehana, who were not then in Bangladesh, Shiekh Hasina might well have hesitated to take on Pakistani elements in the Army and the DGFI, which were closely linked to Pakistan.
The regional and international canvas is different now. Post 9/11, the United States has declared war on al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ISI, which has spawned Islamist terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and which has close links with al Qaeda and Taliban, is no longer the CIA’s blue-eyed boy. Sheikh Hasina will have extensive global support if she takes on Islamist terrorist organizations in Bangladesh linked to al Qaeda and Taliban. Indeed, it was pressure from the United States and the European Union countries which had forced Begum Zia to act against the JMJB, JMB and AHAB in February 2005 and the HuJI-B several months later. Also, but for international pressure the Army-backed Caretaker Government would not have come into being on January 11, 2007; nor would it, perhaps, have held the elections on December 29.
Sheikh Hasina is now clearly in a position not only to act against Islamist terrorists but even to cleanse the Army and the DGFI of elements favouring the Taliban, al Qaeda and their local franchise holders, and who are linked with the ISI. Many in Bangladesh have lauded Sheikh Hasina’s holding out the proverbial olive branch to the BNP by offering it the post of Deputy Speaker and a share in ministerial appointments; others advocate, albeit sotto voce, caution, recalling the general amnesty Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had proclaimed on November 30, 1973, which had enabled war criminals, including those convicted and sentenced, to come out from jails and the woodwork, to work surreptitiously for a revival of pro-Pakistan and fundamentalist politics. History rarely forgives those who fail to be firm when they need to.
A stern approach toward jihadi groups that use Bangladesh’s territory to mount terrorist attacks against India, and send agents and arms across the porous India-Bangladesh border, will go a long way in creating a climate in which all outstanding issues between the two countries can be sorted out; so will the withdrawal of sanctuary and assistance so long given to Indian insurgent groups. This applies particularly to the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh which has acquired a sharp and bitter edge because of the cover it provides to infiltration by terrorists and smuggling of arms and money, and because of the ISI’s known plan to carve out a Muslim-majority state comprising parts of north-eastern India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Of course, it will not be easy to resolve these issues. But a beginning can be made with Bangladesh’s recognition of the existence of the problems, which it has been denying so far. This will require extraordinary political will. But so will effectively dealing with the terrorist groups and their patrons, cleansing the administration of corruption and worse, coping with continuing price rise, and the global meltdown that can hit the country particularly hard because of its dependence on the export of ready-made garments to the West and remittances from non-resident Bangladeshis. Accelerated economic cooperation with India, which is likely to be hurt far less, can provide Bangladesh with a much-needed cushion.
There is no reason why this should not come about, given the huge reservoir of goodwill that exists for Sheikh Hasina in India. But she must address New Delhi’s concerns as well, particularly since most of these affect her own and Bangladesh’s well-being as well. The stage is now set for scripting a new scenario of friendship and cooperation between India and Bangladesh. It will be great pity if the play turns into a tragedy.
Hiranmay Karlekar is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Jessore Road (Song) - Moushumi Bhowmik on 1971 Bangla Desh
Jessore Road - Maushumi Bhaumik on 1971 Bangla Desh( Immortal song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoYkRWtqxX8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoYkRWtqxX8
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
