Ambassador Serajul Islam's Political Blog

What is happening in the Foreign Ministry?

2012-01-29T02:31:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
Jauary 29, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

A Foreign Ministry official on conditions on anonymity recently answered a reporter’s query by saying that it is sheer negligence why the Government has failed to appoint a new High Commissioner in South Africa a year after Mr. Shahidul Islam was posted out from Pretoria to Riyadh. It is just not with Pretoria that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs showing negligence. The Ambassador from Japan was brought back after an allegation of sexual misconduct by a locally based female employee.

Both the Missions are of great importance to Bangladesh. Japan is our largest bilateral donor. The Japanese must not be amused either that the post in Tokyo has been kept vacant so long. Nor would the Japanese Gaimashu be amused at the laid back reaction of our Foreign Ministry in recalling the former Ambassador. Pretoria has in recent times become very important because there are now 50,000 to 60,000 Bangladeshis in South Africa that is fast becoming a major manpower export market for Bangladesh.

It could be very well the case that at Tokyo and Pretoria, MFA may be in the process of placing new Ambassador/High Commissioner, although the news at MFA on new postings to the Missions from the Ministry is depressing for the career diplomats. A file from MFA for posting of about a dozen officers from the Ministry to the Missions was recently returned by the PMO after lying there for 2 months without a decision. All these suggest that something is seriously amiss at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MFA official who has accused his superiors at the Ministry of sheer negligence not only made a major charge; he could not have been more correct in his accusation. In fact, he has hit the bull’s eye in what is really happening in the MFA these days.

The practice in the MFA, one that has kept it going all these years, has been to keep an Ambassador at his post for three years in case of the career diplomats. In case of those who are appointed on contract, the tenure is for 2 years in case of most and three years in case of a few. This system has fallen into the way side since this present government came to office without any new system in place.
Ambassadors appointed on contract basis are being given extensions at will without any policy. Career Ambassadors whose lot these days is to be appointed to the less important Bangladesh Embassies are more or less forgotten. Many officers have stayed beyond the customary three years and they are not sure if they would be moved to another station in the remainder of the tenure of this government. The result of the failure of this government to rotate/recall Ambassadors on a fixed tenure basis is having a negative effect at the senior officers working at the Ministry. Many of them who have been expecting that in the system of recall/rotation, they would be posted out as an Ambassador are on the verge of giving up hoping that they would be posted in the remaining years of this government’s tenure.

Even with the Foreign Secretary, this government seems to have lost track of time. He has been in his post over two years that in case of the post he is holding is the normal tenure. Rotating the post of the Foreign Secretary was also a part of the system of rotation that had been in place at MFA and had helped the Ministry function professionally although in the last BNP term this was interfered with whose impact was not a positive one. Even here, this Government seems to have no policy and inertia here too is helping complicate the gridlock in the MFA in terms of personnel management. The recent extension given to government servants’ retirement age should have allowed the Ministry to use it to straighten the rotation system for good purpose. So far that seems not to have been the case.

With not much substantive work in its hands, one has to wonder what really keeps the MFA busy these days. Nevertheless, the Foreign Ministry is constantly a topic of discussion among many because of the way the government is handling foreign affairs in general and our bilateral relations with India in particular. As former career diplomats, and there are a large number of us these days following events in the Foreign Ministry in our retirement, we often feel disappointed at the way the Ministry has been marginalized. It is this same Ministry that had been the focal point when the BDR had dealt with the BSF in a way that had made the nation proud during the Padua incident in 2001. Then Foreign Secretary Mr. Muazzem Ali had performed a national duty in a manner that made the career diplomats feel really good.

The same Ministry now watches in silence the Government making a mess of its relations with India, with little to do in dealing with our most important neighbour. We have seen how two of the Prime Minister’s Advisers preempted the Foreign Minister in arranging the failed visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka. When Bangladesh was caught with its pants down with India withdrawing the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement from the table at literally the 11th hour, the Foreign Secretary was made to call the Indian High Commissioner to inform him that Bangladesh was withdrawing the land transit agreement in retaliation. The power that ordered the FS to act must have forgotten that the land transit deal had already been signed off to India and there was nothing to take off the table in retaliation! That act only proved that MFA had been reduced to do the errands in dealing with India.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had showed the vision to take Bangladesh-India relations out of the doldrums to which successive Bangladesh regimes and Indian Governments had pushed it. She wanted a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations for mutual advantage of both. Unfortunately, by leaving dealing with India in the hands of those who has had no experience in diplomacy, we have lost on all counts whereas India holds all the cards. Politically, where handling relations with India should have given the AL a clear advantage in the next polls, its mishandling of relations with India would no doubt cost it a big way in those polls.
It is strange that India, after receiving so much from Bangladesh, has done almost nothing in reciprocity to let the ruling party face an increasing public discontent on the India factor. In the face of such discontent, the Acting Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka has said, as reported in a section of the press, that Bangladesh-India relations have never been so good in the last 80 years!! To complete the strange way India has been handling its relations with Bangladesh, it has appointed a Joint Secretary to be its next High Commissioner in Dhaka. Whereas we have someone of the rank of a State Minister in New Delhi, this is the Indian way of reciprocating. Truly, New Delhi must have downgraded us in their estimation to levels that our Government does not see and the MFA dos not dare to point out.

Nevertheless two years still remain for this government and foreign affairs, particularly our relations with India, will indeed be a major issue in the next polls. With this in view, the ruling party should focus on MFA and allow it the role that any Foreign Ministry plays in any Government elsewhere. As it stands now, MFA is not even in the periphery of foreign policy formulation and implementation and the cadre of professional diplomats languishing in despair. It is time to set things right and allow MFA to function.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

What’s wrong in the public university campuses?

2012-01-29T02:26:00.004-05:00

As I See It Column
The Independent
January 28, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

The private TV channels are doing a very good job in creating public awareness in what is happening in our public life. They are exposing the problems and underscoring the concerns in most minds these days except those who run this government that all is not well in the country. For the government, the country has never been better run than it has been since it came to power that is hardly the case.

Recently, one of these channels with a news crew spent time with the leaders of two of the man students’ parties of the country, the Chatra League that is the student wing of the ruling party and Chatra Dal with affiliations with the BNP. It was very revealing in more ways one and has been aired at a time when the country is witnessing vandalism by one of these parties that again is a major concern of everyone but the Government that sees peace in the educational institutions with the mentality of the ostrich.

The viewers saw that the Chatra League President’s job (!) is full time and much more. The program left viewers wondering whether he is full time politician for surely he did not appear to be a student. He did not reveal anything during the interview from which viewers could sense that he is in anyway assisting either himself or those coming to him with any problem related to studies that is the major reason why he and those he has been shown with are in the University in the first place.

After his morning audience with his “constituents” in his own house, he has been shown moving to the university in apparently his own car with his aides in attendance like he is a politician of stature. Next he has been shown moving from one meeting to another, meeting a sundry of people in the manner a politician does. Finally, when he was asked to speak to the TV channel, hi did what these student leaders do best; gave a good speech about the virtues of student politics! To the viewers, he appeared to have more powers than our President!

The life of the leader of the Chatra Dal is quite a contrast. He has been shown to be staying in a better house than the Chatra League leader. The interviewer did not fail to mention that he is married and has a daughter. This leader did not deny the views expressed by the interviewer that made viewers feel more disgusted with student politics. His interview however revealed what the ruling party is doing with the opposition and those who do not belong in its folds these days. The Chatra Dal leader has to spend a good part of his morning hours appearing in the court that is trying 22 cases against him!
The programme revealed a very dark side of students’ politics; that it has very little to do with welfare of the students but a lot with many things undesirable happening in Dhaka University in the name of students politics. It is all about seats in the residential halls; admission and tenders and business in the campus related to development work of the university. It has very little to nothing to do with welfare of the general students who become victims unless they toe the lines of the students’ wing of the party in power who have the entire law and administration on their side to carry on their illegitimate work on the campus.
Back in the 1960s when we were under the military dictatorship of first Ayub Khan and then Yahya Khan, there was the National Students Federation that was linked with the government led by Monem Khan for most of the decade. Yet, other students parties like the EPSU of the pro-China and pro-Moscow and the Chatra League were also an active part of the students’ politics of the campus. In fact, the NSF had only a minor hold in the unions of the University residential halls. Most of the unions were under the two leftist parties. The students parties were allowed to run their affairs almost unhindered. In fact, as the decade became more and more volatile on the question of rights of East Pakistan, it was the students’ parties that showed the way to the politicians.

Looking back to the 1960s and now, it is like comparing the good with the evil. After the recent happenings in Jahangirnagar University, it is so frustrating when one has to hear politicians on talk shows of the TV channels lauding the virtues of students’ politics. When they speak that way, don’t they even for once think of how many innocent lives have been lost due to what they call students’ politics whose virtues they laud? How can they be so blind to the absolute criminalization that has come about with students’ politics? Would any sane father knowingly allow his son to be a member of any of the students’ party?

Jahangirnagar University’s recent rise to notoriety should help the nation’s conscience to rise and answer these questions. When this university was sliding into pure and simple criminality due to the activities of the Chatra League following the change of government, the Vice-Chancellor came with an excuse that should have led to his removal. He blamed the criminality on the Chatra Dal who has said had penetrated into the Chatra League instead of dealing with it to strengthen his position with the ruling party. It has now been revealed by the media that he is an active patron of a rogue faction of the Chatra League that is not officially approved by the party’s central committee! So far, nothing has happened about the death of Zubair except 3 students have been expelled. Surely, our national conscience is dead or else the Vice Chancellor of JU would not have been in his post.

The ruling party has an election pledge and a vision of building a digital Bangladesh. That Bangladesh can only be built by an educated new generation with public universities like Dhaka and Jahangirnagar Universities providing the leaders. The criminalization going on in the educational intuitions can only lead to one logical conclusion; that digital Bangladesh will remain a political slogan as long as criminals are allowed such a free hand in the campuses. The government is silently abetting this criminalization by not doing anything with those who openly move in the campuses with machetes and other dangerous that they also have used and killed those who have not followed their criminal orders.
Students have openly said on the program with which I started this piece that their lives have been turned into hell by students’ politics. The teachers who should have played a parent-like role themselves indulge in the same politics as the students of which the VC of Jahangirnagar University is an example. Politicians on both sides of the political divide, instead of destroying the Frankenstein of students’ and teachers’ politics, sustain it for reasons that they alone can explain.

When students’ politics played its glorious role in the decade preceding our war of liberation, there were multiple causes such as the lures of international communism and the demands of Bengali nationalism to encourage and sustain it. These causes are now history and no new cause has come up for sustaining students’ politics. Instead students’ politics has fallen into hands of organized groups who terrorize the campuses for the interests of those who lead these groups. It is time to stop this immediately if we love the country. With it, let us also call for an end to the politics that the university teachers indulge at our expense only to destroy the future of our children.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and a former Ambassador to Japan.

Former President Ershad invokes the Almighty

2012-01-29T02:23:00.001-05:00

The Holiday
January 27, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said in his hey days that in politics, there is never a position of no return. What he meant was that a politician can make somersaults anytime; swing like the pendulum in taking positions on politics and political issues. Mr. Bhutto in his long career proved what he said with the life he lived. Our very own former President General HM Ershad would have made Mr. Bhutto proud for he is proving with his politics that everything is possible for him in terms of changing and taking stand on politics and politics issues.

In fact, he has gone a step forward. After calling Sheikh Hasina his sister, signing on the dotted lines to jump on the AL’s bandwagon before the next elections, he is now speaking in a manner no different from the official opposition, the BNP while remaining a part of the coalition that is running the government. In a recent speech at his party’s headquarters, he told his supporters that the Almighty has kept him alive so long so that he could come to power and deliver the country from its current misrule!

During his party’s long march to the Teesta Barrage, the former President attacked the government in the speeches he made at the Barrage site as well as in the road side meetings while going to the site on an issue that has the potentials of becoming the ruling party’s Achilles’ heel for the next elections, namely its handling of our relations with India. He claimed all the glory for construction of the Teesta Barrage at a time when water flowed on the River Teesta on our side. He went on to blame subsequent governments that came to power after his ouster for failing to receive from India an agreement for a fair share of the water of the Teesta that has been turned waterless in Bangladesh causing havoc in the lives of millions who depend on the Teesta water for irrigation and their livelihood.

The former President has clearly sensed that the India factor is fast becoming an issue in our politics. He is cashing upon it He has also sensed that public support has shifted considerably from the ruling party on the other issues of governance such as the state of the economy, corruption and the rest that had brought the BNP Government down in a disastrous way.

In fact, in a TV Talk show recently, former Prime Minister and JP leader Kazi Zafar Ahmed took the ruling party apart on the failure of the government to deliver. He also accused the AL for breaking a good number of promises it made to the JP of which one was to make Mr. HM Ershad the President. Another commitment that he AL broke on wining the elections handsomely was to deny the Jatiya party a fair share of ministerial posts instead of just one. President Ershad has stated very unequivocally that the JP would go alone in the next elections. Clearly, the Jatiya Party has its sights set for the next elections.

The sudden and unexpected activities of Mr. HM Ershad and the JP have raised in the minds of the politically conscious people quite a few questions. Why is the AL allowing the JP to carry out what it is doing while still allowing it to remain a part of the ruling coalition? The AL is not known for its generosity to those who are so openly critical of it. President Ershad is these days criticizing the AL in the same vein as the BNP. Yet while the AL is doing everything to create hurdles for the BNP in its role as an opposition political party; it is not taking any such action against the Jatiya Party. It seems weird and suspicious that Mr. HM Ershad is being able to criticize the government with such consummate ease. What President Ershad and the JP are doing is extremely unusual in the politics of coalition government in a parliamentary democracy. It is this unusual nature of Mr. HM Ershad’s role that has given rise to speculation that all that the JP is doing is part of a well thought strategy that has the approval of the ruling party.

The speculation centers on the ruling party’s desire to hold the next elections under an interim government to be headed by it. The BNP has already dismissed its participation under such a system that it thinks is a blueprint of the ruling party to return to power. The ruling party is preparing the JP as a major opposition so that it could show the critics particularly those outside the country that it is a major party fit to play the role of the opposition to give legitimacy to the proposed elections under the interim government. Such a speculation makes sense as the JP has already started behaving as the main opposition and has also announced that it has chosen 200 candidates for the elections still 2 years away and is in the process of selection the remaining 100.
The JP’s hurry to nominate candidates when even the AL has not started talking about the issue may have spilled the beans; that in all these there is collusion between it and the ruling party. Those speculating on collusion also see this strategy as a very naïve one that would go more for the benefit of the BNP than the AL and the JP. For one, the Jatiya Party is still a party on the fringe having polled only in low single digit of the votes in the last elections for the people to take it as a serious opposition to replace the BNP in the event the latter refrained from the election sunder the interim government. Then, there is the major issue of credibility of the former President. There are few who would be prepared to accept him for whatever he may have done in his decade long illegitimate rule of the country because on the trust factor; he has been the worst politicians ever in our politics. Finally, he carries the baggage of the army that the people do not want in politics in any form.

In fact, Mr. HM Ershad and some of his colleagues are creating public opinion against the Awami League on issues that a large number of people consider to be correct. However, the JP is giving itself far too much credit in believing that the people who would otherwise be voting for the BNP in the next general elections would vote for it instead and that BNP would be forgotten in the country and the rest of the world would accept a general elections without the BNP as legitimate and fair. This is a fairy tale script and to realize such a script, President Ershad would indeed need divine intervention. The AL would of course need to pray to the Almighty to come to the aid of President Ershad for that would ensure the AL’s return to power with the “loyal” JP as the opposition.

One will have to be out of one’s mind to expect that such a naïve approach to serious politics would serve any purpose. As for President HM Ershad, there could still be twist in the tale and the AL should not be surprised to see that he has become a part of the opposition coalition led by the BNP. For its own sake, the AL needs to bring President HM Ershad under control for as a coalition partner, it cannot let him act as the loose cannon without public suspicion enhancing that there is a game the two are playing.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan

On a historic chance the President missed

2012-01-22T00:27:00.001-05:00

As I See It Column
The Independent
January 21, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

I listened with rapt attention the briefing given to the TV channels by Mr. Suranjit Sen Gupta upon coming out of Bangobhavan following the Awami League’s meeting with the President as part of his dialogue with the political parties to choose the new Election Commission. The Minister has a way with words. He called the dialogue of the President as not just something unique in Bangladesh’s history; he described the President’s initiative as the first of its kind in the history of South Asia.

The Minister also quoted from the Constitution to state that the President has the power under it to choose the EC and that he has undertaken the exercise as a leader with vision and experience. Another Minister, Mr. Obaidul Quader who is currently riding very high, ridiculed the opposition while giving the ruling party all the credit for running the government effectively. He said that the opposition is doing what it is supposed to do, oppose and his party is doing what it is expected to do, deliver!

Mr. Suranjit Sen interpretation of the Constitution was not correct for Bangladesh is more than a parliamentary system; it is prime ministerial one. In such a system of government, the President has no powers except the ceremonial ones. He cannot do anything in politics and government without instructions of the Prime Minister. Hence Mr. Gupta’s credit to the President is simply his way of playing with words. Nevertheless, he has not done himself or the government any credit by trying to give an impression in the media about the President that is misleading.

Take for example the issue whether the President really has any role in choosing an EC through his dialogue with the political parties. Although it has not happened, what if the President had by some miracle come to a concrete decision on who would be in the next Election Commission? How would he go about it? What if the Prime Minister did not agree with the list? It is for politicians to play with words. For us who understand politics in simple terms, the way the dialogue has taken place has had nothing to do at all with the President’s vision or wisdom. He was simply under instructions to play a role and he carried it out obediently.

The whole matter of involving the President in selecting the new EC originated from the Prime Minister’s office. The reason is obvious. The ruling party is stuck with the opposition’s firm demand for restoration of the caretaker government that is being backed by many who are known for their leanings for the ruling party. To make matters worse, the opposition’s demand for restoration of the caretaker government for the next two general elections in line with the recommendation of the Supreme Court has steadily gathered bipartisan support across the country.

The demand for restoration of the CG system has come in the way of the ruling party’s strategy of elections under the interim government that it would lead. As part of the strategy that is aimed at ensuring its return to power, the ruling party is in the process of placing officials in the civil and police administration sympathetic to it who would play crucial roles in the conduct of the next general elections. It has already placed its party activists in the district councils as administrators. The ruling party wants the nation to ignore the strategy that it is putting into place by accepting its contention that an EC selected by consensus, or an attempt at such, would be enough for holding free and fair elections under an interim government headed by it without the necessity of restoring the CG system.

The President has been used to implement this intent of the ruling party. Those who encouraged the President to undertake the dialogue knew very well that the Constitution did not empower him to do what he undertook to do. The parties that went to Bangobhavan also knew about the President’s limitations as well as the true reason of his initiative. It was all a political game that those who participated in the dialogue played where the reason that was given for the initiative, namely the need to choose an EC, was never an issue at all.

The opposition went to the dialogue with a clear strategy of its own; to impress upon the Prime Minister through the President that she needs to restore the caretaker government. The BNP was not alone in seeking extension of the CG system. Except the ruling party, almost all other party, and there were a large number of them, favoured the extension of the CG system for 2 more terms. They were not very interested in the EC that they thought could wait till the issue of the CG was resolved. The term of the existing EC expires next month. Therefore the next EC must be selected without delay. By-election is due in the seat that has fallen vacant due to the death of Mr. Abdur Razzak. The failed dialogue undertaken by the President has pushed the ruling party to choose an EC on its own that will no doubt be rejected by the BNP and render credence to its accusation that the ruling party is working for a strategy to return to power by unfair means. Powerless as he may be in a constitutional sense, the President has an unique position by virtue of his office that places him above all legal powers in the country; a moral power. His dialogue had given him the insight to the politics of the country. He was given a clear sense that unless there is a consensus between the ruling party and the BNP on the system under which the next general elections would be held, the country would be pushed towards a deep political crisis.

Therefore a historical chance had come before Mr. Zillur Rahman to exercise his moral power to save the country from an impending political crisis that could be disastrous for everyone. He could have used his dialogue to encourage the Prime Minister to come to an understanding on the system for holding the next elections. He could also have played a role in that to earn for himself respect of all Bangladeshis. However the dialogue for selecting an EC, unsuccessful as it has been, that Mr. Suranjit Gupta has called historical, has in fact diminished his standing with his people.

Sadly, he himself has underscored how utterly powerless he is. In the end, where almost all the parties urged him to help re-establish the CG system, all the President did was recommend the formation of a search committee to form the new EC! Did he need to waste his time and those who attended his dialogue to come with this recommendation? Clearly the answer must be in the negative. Mr. Suranjit Sen Gupta could not have been more mistaken in expressing those glorious compliments to the President and his vision! In the end, the BNP has come out with some of the points; its demand for the CG has gained more public acceptance.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Are we facing external cultural aggression?

2012-01-20T01:15:00.003-05:00

The Holiday
January 20, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

A common subject of discussion these days, apart from the sad state of our politics and economy, is about our culture. More precisely, a lot of people these days are talking about our culture being subjected to an aggression from outside. Clearly, India is the main focus. One need not look very far to see this. In Dhaka and in towns around the country, this is visible in the family.

In most families that have the cable TV, and these are the families where people who decide the future of the country also live, the impact of Indian TV serials; dances and songs and the paraphernalia of TV programmes keep many hooked. While India is building barbed wire fences to keep us physically apart, it is entering our houses with consummate ease through the use of technology. Thus, in marriage ceremonies of the well to do; the impact of the Indian culture is palpably evident. The songs and dances at these marriages are scripted and choreographed or copied from India.

All these confuse me and make me apprehensive. I do not understand why and how a country that never stops in claiming such a great deal of excellence in terms of its culture, tradition and history can so easily accept to the extent of being dominated by what is most definitely no part of that culture and history. The same people in whose families such abundance of the Indian culture has penetrated come out publicly and say how different and culturally rich we the people of Bangladesh are!

It is just not this cultural aggression that is a subject of concern of many these days; it is also the sudden visibility of the members of the major minority community in public life, particularly in places where the government has a role to play. I asked a friend who recently retired from a major Commission of the government whether his replacement would be from the service he belonged to before he joined the Commission. He said that was unlikely as the government was looking to replace him by one who belonged to the Hindu community. There are words of mouth afloat in Dhaka University circles about the preponderance of the members of the minority community in terms of recruitment, promotion and other privileges in this premier institution of the country.

In recent times, the media; particularly the electronic media, has established credibility that has been one of the very few major positive developments in our otherwise bleak political environment. Even here, we are seeing that the members of the minority community are being represented in a disproportionate manner. One cannot help being suspicious that an invisible hand may be working according to a plan. In fact, such a suspicion is fairly widespread in the country these days.

We are also witnessing simultaneously resurgence of Rabindranath Tagore in a manner that is raising a lot of eyebrows. In a Ministry of the Government, a cultural function was arranged recently that was scripted and choreographed heavily on the literature of Rabindranath Tagore. The songs, the dresses and the other paraphernalia left many of us who watched this function thinking that this programme would have better fitted culturally if it were held in Paschim Bangla rather than in Bangladesh.

Without any offence to those who love and admire Rabindranath Tagore to the extent of deifying him, let this be said. Let us read the works of the great poet as we read the works of any great poet of the world; may be read him more as he has written in our language. Let us not make him and his works the foundation of our lives and our culture. Let us not deify him for in the religion of the overwhelming majority of our people, it is blasphemy to deify any individual. Sadly as well, the works of Rabindranath Tagore reflects very little of the culture of the Muslims.
Bangladesh is a predominantly Muslim country where a vast majority of our people is uneducated. Fortunately, they are not orthodox having been influenced for centuries by Sufism. Our Islam is tolerant. Nevertheless even this liberal and tolerant Islam has fundamental differences with Hinduism. We have also had bad experience of living for a century and a half under the oppressive Zamindari system that was dominated by the Hindus. Therefore, one does not need much common sense to conclude that a disproportionate resurgence of the culture of the minority or minorities in public life would bring a backlash that is totally undesirable.

To add adversely to this situation is the issue of current status of Bangladesh-India relations. Since this Government came to power, it has gone out of the way to placate the Indians. The Government gave the Indians a blank cheque on their security needs. It also gave the Indians land transit from mainland India to its fragile northeast states. Bangladesh’s hopes were that India would give it a fair share of the waters of the common rivers and also stop killings of innocent Bangladeshis on the Bangladesh-India border together with accepting Bangladesh’s demands on trade, demarcation of land and maritime boundaries.
India instead failed to sign the Teesta agreement and abandon the Tippaimukh project. The killings in the border have not stopped. In using the land transit granted to it unilaterally on a trial basis, the Indians have been insensitive in defiling the River Teesta to carry heavy vehicles with heavy equipments to go to Tripura. As a consequence, feelings in Bangladesh for India are at an all time low.

This is where my apprehension lies. Apparently, there is reason to feel uncomfortable about a well thought out plan that may be in action; to bring Indian culture and those elements of Bengali culture that represent Hindu culture ahead of our Muslim culture and heritage. In this plan, one can also see visible favours being extended to the members of the Hindu community in the Government and in government funded educational and other institutions.

Minority communities everywhere have grievances. In Bangladesh too, the minorities have their legitimate complaints. These complaints need to be dealt with overtly and not covertly. It is a reality that the major minority community in Bangladesh looks to India for a wide variety of reasons. India too has an interest in their welfare. Those who perceive that they are being given favoured treatment believe that this is so because Indian wants it this way and the Government is eager to make India happy. The change in the treatment of the minority community is thus being attributed to India with our government obliging leading the BNP to openly accuse the latter of selling out to India.

The Indian High Commission is playing a very active role in this perceived cultural aggression. On my mobile, I have a SMS on a regular basis inviting me to cultural events at the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre at Gulshan where people are treated to evenings of Indian culture free. The Indians are paying huge amounts of money in exposing us to their culture. Surely, there is a purpose behind such generosity. A local elite club in Dhaka till recently had acted as almost an extension of the Indian High Commission in its efforts to win over Bangladeshis through culture. Luckily, those who acted as conduits for this have since been removed from the Club’s leadership and their over indulgence with the Indians on cultural cooperation was one reason for their removal.

The rich culture and tradition of the Muslims of Bangladesh enriched by the glorious war of liberation leaves enough space for legitimate hopes and aspirations of the minority community to be legally and legitimately accommodated. Equally, it can accept any writer of any stature without being submerged by his work or for that matter, anything India has to offer on the cultural front that is good for us. The perceived external cultural aggression; special favours to the Hindu community and over indulgence with Rabindranath Tagore are potentially dangerous for peace in Bangladesh.
Therefore, on the issue of the public perception of official indulgence in favour of the minorities, the Government needs to be transparent. If it is indeed doing so because of past indifference to the minorities, the government has a duty to take the public into confidence as it did with annulment of the vested property act. If the government is not providing special privileges to help the minorities, let it say so openly. The perception growing to the contrary needs to be nipped in the bud if it is not correct.

Rabindra Tagore’s creations are immortal. By trying to build a cult with him and his work, the Rabindra activists are making a mistake. His works will survive in Bangladesh without the need of activists. As for the role of the Indian High Commission on the cultural front, there is need for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to supervise and put some control on its activities for there is surely over-indulgence here. As for cultural invasion from India through the TV, this is difficult to regulate. We have only ourselves to blame a great deal for the steady and negative influence of Indian culture in our lives. May be our cultural roots are not as strong as our cultural activists publicly claim it to be.

Bangladesh was created in 1971 by blood where our National Poet Nazrul Islam gave us major inspiration to fight the oppressors. We did not need to seek assistance to fight and win our liberation from any source but what was ours, politically, historically and culturally. Therefore, on the issue of culture, it is that of the majority people that must dominate in Bangladesh. On the issue of special privileges to the minority community, we have no need to do anything covertly for we have never had any public policy of discrimination. The government needs to take serious note of the public perceptions to save the country from moving towards confrontation on issues of culture and communal relations keeping in mind that on both, Bangladesh’s record is better than any nation in South Asia.

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The writer is a retired career diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan

Prime Minister’s Tripura visit

2012-01-15T07:33:00.002-05:00

Daily Sun
January 15, 2012
M. Serajul Islam

The Prime Minister’s visit to Tripura is significant in more ways than one. She has been awarded a honourary doctorate there that has enhanced her standing in that state and added to the importance of Bangladesh in Tripura. Tripura had special significance to Bangladesh in the context of our liberation war. In 1971, it looked after a large number of our compatriots who had fled to the Indian state for fear of their lives.

The Prime Minister’s visit, the first by a Bangladesh head of government not just to Tripura but to any Northeastern state, allowed her to express Bangladesh’s gratitude for 1971. However, times are different. The visit has been undertaken after three years of the Awami League government that has gone out of the way to make India happy. The steps Bangladesh had taken were to encourage India to reciprocate on Bangladesh’s long standing demands for a fair share of waters of the common rivers; on trade imbalance and a few other issues.
Unfortunately, India has done very little to match Bangladesh’s generosity from which the state of Tripura has been a major beneficiary. Immediately on assuming office, Sheikh Hasina had said that her government will not allow Bangladesh soil to be used for any acts of insurgency or terrorism aimed at India. In keeping this commitment, Bangladesh handed 7 top ULFA leaders who were in Bangladesh to the Indian security that has broken the back of the ULFA insurgency movement. To this, Bangladesh also granted India land transit on trial.

Very little has come from India for all that the Bangladesh Government did for India, At literally the 11th hour, when the entire Bangladesh was expecting to see if indeed India had the sincerity of reciprocating after accepting the concessions from Bangladesh, they reneged on Teesta. Later they did the same on Tippaimukh and they have not stopped the killings in the border that is a very sensitive issue in Bangladesh.

Importantly for Tripura, Bangladesh’s offer to India to use land transit has had a significant impact on the state. The Chief Minister of Tripura Mr. Manik Sarker gratefully acknowledged this assistance in a press conference he held in Dhaka during the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Bangladesh. In fact, it is to carry heavy equipments to his state to build a power plant that the Indians have insensitively defiled the River Teesta that has had a very negative impact on the standing of the India in Bangladesh.

It is a different Sheikh Hasina who went to Tripura. She has been very badly let down by the Indians. It is therefore quite understandable that she said that India has to be more liberal if it wants to develop relationship with Bangladesh when the Chief Minister of Tripura called on her during her visit. The Chief Minister Sen agreed with Sheikh Hasina. He said that India must come forward and sacrifice as a big neighbour.

Quite clearly Mr. Manik Sarker knows better than anyone that India has let Bangladesh down in general and a friendly government in Dhaka in particular. Nevertheless, the Chief Minister must also consider that so far, it is Bangladesh that has made the sacrifices and that as the big neighbour, it has not shown the heart. The Chief Minister must also know that the government of Bangladesh is no longer in a position to give India anymore and that it is India that must do its part. He needs to talk with the Indian centre because without pressure from people in power like him, the Indian centre will not act to encourage Bangladesh to extend land transit that is so crucial to his State.

There are a few other important issues that Sheikh Hasina’s visit has brought out into open. One criticism that was made against the Bangladesh negotiators when Ms. Mamata Banarjee refused to agree to the Teesta water sharing agreement was that our side should have discussed with the Paschim Bangla Chief Minister ahead of the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka to know her stand on the Teesta issue. In defense, the negotiators had argued that as a sovereign state, Bangladesh cannot hold discussions on bilateral matters with a state of India. In Tripura, our Prime Minister did not just receive her honourary doctorate; she held discussions of a whole range of issues that should be discussed with the Indian centre. Central leaders, for example Vice President Mr. Hamid Ansari was present in Tripura for Sheikh Hasina’s visit.

In fact, there should be more such initiatives by Bangladesh to interact with the neighbouring states of India, in particular with the Indian Northeast. Bangladesh would stand to gain better results with this strategy than by depending on the Centre and being let down almost every time. Our foreign policy leaders have failed to understand that in India, the Centre is not as strong or as dependable as they think.
The states of India these days play a significant role in maintaining the government at the Centre. The old theory that India is a quasi-federation where the Centre has the power and authority to impose its will on the states is no longer the case. The emergence of the small parties with roots in the states that play a significant role to form a government at the centre has made the states powerful these days.

We have seen state power in the way Ms. Mamata Banarjee rejected the Centre’s request to sign the Teesta deal right at the 11th hour. On the stand that water is a state subject, she dictated the Centre and opted out of the entourage of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka, leaving Mr. Manmohon Singh and the Indian Government to appear to have betrayed Bangladesh. The fact that foreign affairs is the responsibility of the Indian centre had no bearing at all to convince the PB Chief Minister that she was out of her line in refusing to sign the Teesta Agreement with Bangladesh.

It is not clear whether the foreign policy guardians of Bangladesh have taken this factor into account while organizing the Prime Minister’s visit to Tripura. If they have not, they should take this factor into consideration and interact more with the Seven Sisters and PB to build leverage so as to be able to get its voice heard in New Delhi. Sheikh Hasina’s generosity for past three years may have brought little for Bangladesh for New Delhi. It has however proven to the impoverished Northeastern States the great value of Bangladesh. It may be a good strategy if Sheikh Hasina would look at other Universities in these States for more honourary doctorates and do some diplomacy that her team in the past has failed to do.

It was a surprise to see that Dr. Gowhar Rizvi and Dr. Mashiur Rahman were not members of the Prime Minister’s delegation. They were the ones who were arguing strongly the Indian case from the perspective of its centre. Perhaps, the Prime Minister is taking charge of our relations with India. It would be good for her, Bangladesh and Bangladesh-India relations that she would because her team has let her down badly by being more Indian than the Indians, making the India factor a liability for her party looking ahead to the next general elections.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

On what our political parties need to do for the country

2012-01-15T00:46:00.002-05:00

The Independent
As I See It Column
14 January 2012
M. Serajul Islam

An Ambassador at a reception had suggested that I should write in one of my columns what the country expects of the two mainstream political parties for the good of the country. I told him I would but then had to delay for I had other topics to write on. It is good I delayed for meanwhile the ruling party has completed its third year in office. The BNP is also beginning to play its rightful role as an opposition, albeit outside the parliament.

In my discussion with this Ambassador, I had told him that Bangladesh is poised to develop faster and better than its neighbours in South Asia because it does not suffer from internal divisions and problems of the other countries in the region. I had told him that Bangladesh is a homogenous country and the divisions that are there are not as formidable obstacles to nation building as they are in other nations in South Asia.

I had told him we have no regional divide. The religious divide is there but we have historically the best inter-religious relationship among the countries of our region. Our society is egalitarian that also blunts the rich-poor divide although in recent times, the gap is extending. I told the Ambassador that it is the politics of conflict between the two mainstream parties that is not allowing the country from becoming one of the most successful countries in the region by benefitting from the natural advantages it has in nation building. I have scribed in the succeeding paragraphs a response to the Ambassador.

The Prime Minister in her speech to mark the occasion of her government’s completion of 3 years in office has given those who support her enough reasons to take heart for our future. She has said that the election promises her party had made are on course and the country has never been in a better shape that it is today. The opposition has dismissed all her claims. The problem of Bangladesh lies in these two statements. In any country that has a two party system and practices democracy, the parties often criticize each other. This is natural. However, the way it happens in Bangladesh is different from other countries because in between the opposing views of the ruling party and the opposition that extends to all issues crucial for the country, there is just nothing on which they agree. The utter lack of bipartisanship on national issues is the single most important hindrance that is keeping Bangladesh from reaching its full potentials.
The lack of bipartisanship has basis in issues that is also unique to Bangladesh. It comes from the differing views of history of our independence that the two parties take. Every nation takes serious note of its history to draw from it inspiration to give the country a sense of direction. In our case, our mainstream parties look at history to play a zero-sum game to divide the nation. The AL’s view of history is a simplistic one. It believes that its leader Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had dreamt of Bangladesh soon after Pakistan was created in 1947. He led the war of liberation with his party and hence all credit for the independence of Bangladesh must go to his vision and leadership and the Awami League. The AL dismisses with contempt the claim of anyone to take anything away from Bangabandhu. It does not believe that any other party other than AL had any role in our independence.

The BNP that did not exist in 1971 takes a different view. It is not willing to give either Bangabandhu the sole credit for the liberation of Bangladesh or willing to accept that the AL as the only party to be credited for our independence. It believes that its leader Ziaur Rahman had announced the independence of Bangladesh that started the liberation. It also emphasizes that he led the fight against the Pakistani military in the theatre of war and hence he must also be given a share of glory for the independence of Bangladesh. It is not willing to accept that the AL’s role as the only party that should get the credit for our liberation. It believes that those who fought with arms against the enemy and won has a better claim to credit for our independence.

The claim and counter claim for our liberation has divided the nation that had stood as a monolithic whole in 1971 that was the main inspiration of our liberation. Today on all issues with which our future is linked, the BNP looks at one direction, the AL in the opposite way. This difference that originates basically from the AL’s claim of all glory and BNP’s refusal to accept it has been extended by the AL to its ridiculous limit. The AL today accuses the BNP with its formidable support among the people as anti-Bangladeshi elements because of its alliance with Jamat forgetting that for 5 years when BNP was in power it shared the same platform with Jamat led then by Ghulam Azam to force the Government to accept its demands, including the introduction of the caretaker government system!

How a nation that had a handful of anti-Bangladesh elements in 1971 can have so many millions of anti-Bangladesh elements today defies common sense and logic. Sadly, such an attitude of the ruling party has divided the nation into two conflicting camps that today stands as a formidable obstacle to our future. Of course both the AL and the BNP are wrong in their interpretation of history. The only sane way to get out of it, and out of it we must to realize our full potentials, is to leave the discussion on history to the Universities and research institutions and to let politics move ahead.

These negatives have led to a mindset in the two mainstream political parties this is absolutely undesirable for democracy that was the main reason why the people of Bangladesh rose in 1971. The mindset is to cling to power at any cost; a mindset that is the anti-theses of democracy. It was this mindset that had led to the AL’s demand for a system of elections to be conducted by a non-party neutral government or the caretaker government system. Although AL’s movement was successful and the CG system was made a part of the constitution by amendment and also helped achieve fair and free elections, the loser never accepted the verdict, a mindset in which the AL’s negative manifestation was more pronounced than that of the BNP.

The CG system, despite the loser’s unwillingness to accept defeat, nevertheless helped Bangladesh achieve 3 free and fair elections and peaceful change of government. When the CG system was introduced, it was given a time limit which expired with the last general elections. The Court recommended that the CG system should be kept for 2 more general elections that the ruling party overlooked and has, using its parliamentary majority, introduced a system of interim government that would allow it to hold the next general elections. The BNP has refused to accept the interim system and is currently building up public opinion democratically against it. The deadlock has the potentials to destroy the country. The two mainstream parties have a duty towards the nation to resolve this danger.

Geopolitics places Bangladesh in a position that makes it supremely significant to India. India on its parts holds the key to Bangladesh’s survival as a country. Unfortunately, on India too, the two mainstream parties hold opposing views that has allowed India to acquire all its interests from Bangladesh without giving us our legitimate needs and rights. The two parties must come together on the issue of India for Bangladesh’s survival and its future.

A minimum faith and commitment in democracy should allow the two mainstream parties to come together on the main issues pushing Bangladesh towards marginalization, namely political partisanship, distorted versions of history, partisan system of national elections and lack of a national policy on India based on our interests. If the two mainstream parties work for these four goals with sincerity, Bangladesh’s future would be assured and sustained; if not, Bangladesh would always be in danger of becoming a failed state. It is politics not economics that is standing in the way of Bangladesh’s better future.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Mr. Chidambaram’s praises and promises

2012-01-13T12:28:00.003-05:00

The Holiday
Janauary 13, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

In the Northeastern States Business Summit held recently, India Home Minister Mr. Palaniappan Chidambaram has said a lot of good things about Bangladesh that is music for any Bangladeshi’s ear. He has complemented Sheikh Hasina for her “vision and statesmanship” that he said has brought Bangladesh and India as close as the two countries were in 1971. He has also assured Bangladesh that the Indian Government is going to grant us most preferred nation (MFN) status. He said: “It is India's responsibility to ensure that capital flows from India to Bangladesh to start businesses." to make Bangladesh the hub of business and investment in the region. One could not miss in Mr. Chidambaram’s statements the echo of what Dr. Gowhar Rizvi had been telling us before the failed visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka.

Any Bangladeshi heart would crave to believe Indian Home Minister. However, the head of the same Bangladeshi receives a different message; a message of caution. The reasons are obvious. Take for instance the Home Minister and his credibility on issues of substance to Bangladesh. He is the Home Minister of India but making promises that are not for him to make. Granting MFN status or businesses and investments are not his responsibilities. Then, this is the same Minister who came to Dhaka in July last year and promised zero tolerance on killings of innocent Bangladeshis in the border by the BSF; a commitment that has not been kept.

As the Home Minister, Mr. Chidambaram understands more than any other Indian Minister the true value of the seven ULFA terrorists that Bangladesh secretly handed to the Indian security. The Indian media had then strongly urged its Government to give Bangladesh whatever it expected from India for this security cooperation. Yet, in subsequent negotiations, there was no recognition of this major gift from Bangladesh to India. The Indian Government also failed to reciprocate of another major gift from Bangladesh, namely land transit, that former Indian Foreign Secretary Mr. Muchkund Dubey considers of “supreme significance” to Indian in general, and the Northeastern States in particular.

Instead, under Mr. Chidambaram’s watch, the Indian BSF still continues to kill innocent Bangladeshis on the border. Still, the Indian Government continues to point fingers at those who are the victims, asking questions why in the first place were they in the border. They conveniently forget while giving such explanations that it is the Home Minister who had committed his government to zero tolerance to killings of innocent Bangladeshis by the BSF. He had said that BSF would use rubber bullets in place of live ones.

One has to wonder whether these Indian Ministers realize that people in Bangladesh have memories; that on the trust factor, people in Bangladesh are no longer confident whether India can be trusted to keep promises/commitments/agreements it makes. The Indian Ministers, unlike ours, do not say anything just for the sake of saying. Their statements in public, particularly those aimed at another country, are made with good reasons. Hence, Mr. Chidambaram is well aware of feelings in Bangladesh about India because of its failure to reciprocate to the concessions made by Bangladesh on security and land transit. Yet he went ahead and made new promises to Bangladesh, renewed old ones and reiterated India’s good feelings and friendship for us for good reasons. He also chose the Business Summit for the Northeastern States for this for equally good reasons.

The Northeast States of India stands to gain in a major way from Bangladesh’s decision to grant India land transit. The trial run that Bangladesh granted to India has already shown the Northeastern States what a big role Bangladesh can play in their future. In fact, the Tripura Chief Minister was gaga talking to the media when he had accompanied the Indian Prime Minister on his visit while explaining how Bangladesh’s cooperation to build the power plant in his state has opened vast economic opportunities for Tripura.

That trial run now needs to be renewed and made long term. The Indians have officially written to the Bangladesh Government in this regard. This time, however, there is a marked change in Bangladesh’s response. Up to the visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka, Bangladesh’s negotiators were the ones excited about the benefits that Bangladesh would reap as a consequence of Indian friendship. In fact, it was Dr. Gowhar Rizvi who was telling us what Mr. Chidambaram has said in his statement in the Northeastern Summit. Dr. Rizvi, the Foreign Minister and Dr. Mashiur Rahman are no longer making the strong statements about friendship with India or the benefits such friendship would bring for Bangladesh.

India’s ability to deliver on its promises on Teesta and Tippaimukh ; continued killings in the border and insensitivity in the way the Titash River has been defiled during the trial land transit run have combined to take away the enthusiasm of the Bangladesh negotiators who were earlier showing the willingness to give the Indians anything without even being asked. This time, the reluctance to grant India extension on the land transit is coming from the bureaucracy. Legal questions are being raised at the desk levels of the Government Ministries concerned where the Ministers and Advisers are no longer in a position to favour India at will anymore. No doubt, the message has finally sunk, thanks to the role of the media, that Bangladesh should not give India one more inch till India shows it can be trusted.

The economics of land transit, that Bangladesh would become rich as the connectivity hub of the region, has thus lost its appeal in Bangladesh. The concept of connectivity hub was very cleverly articulated by the Indians to make land transit acceptable in Bangladesh. Thanks to Dr. Rizvi, Dr. Rahman and Dipu Moni, we were led to believe that we were indeed going to gain economically in a major way as the connectivity hub of the region. By doing nothing on promises and commitments made on issues such as Teesta, Tippaimukh and border killings, the Indians have just not let their friends in Bangladesh down; they have helped strengthen the perception articulated by the opposition political parties in Bangladesh led by the BNP that India is not trust worthy. From being a BNP feeling, the factor of India and trust is becoming more widely acceptable across the political divide.

In fact, in the three years of AL rule, India’s failure to reciprocate has taken the wind out of the sail of those championing the Indian cause in the Bangladesh Government. More importantly in the process, India has put into jeopardy the great window of opportunity that Sheikh Hasina had opened for Indian Northeastern States. It is not just the prospects of these states that are in jeopardy; in jeopardy too is the possibility of a paradigm shift of Bangladesh-India relations that Sheikh Hasina’s courageous decisions to unilaterally grant India land transit and security cooperation had created.

Bangladesh thus has no reason to take seriously Mr. Chidambaram’s offers of MFN, of making Bangladesh rich as the connectivity and investment hub unless it wants to be misled again. His statement was also made to send a message to the Northeastern States that it is seriously pursuing with Bangladesh for its economic future. Nevertheless, it is time for India to do its share for the gifts and concessions that it has accepted from Bangladesh. It needs to sign the Teesta agreement without any further delay and abandon the Tippaimukh project. It needs to show not by promise but by deed that it would not kill innocent Bangladeshis any more on the border. Only then it should ask for the extension of the land transit and furthers security cooperation from Bangladesh. Public opinion has significantly shifted for the Bangladesh Government to grant any further concessions/gifts to India. .

In fact, unwittingly, the ruling party has created for itself a significant baggage looking ahead into the next elections. The India factor seems likely to become major hurdle in the next elections for the ruling party because it has given to India major concessions without receiving from India what it expected. Mr. Chidambaram sugar coated statements about Bangladesh has thus been largely ignored in Bangladesh, even by those who see it our national duty to do whatever India wants. By its greed and small heartedness, India has pushed Sheikh Hasina into a corner. She cannot now allow India extension on the trial run without placing her party and her own political credibility at peril.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Dr. Amartya Sen and few questions

2012-01-10T10:04:00.002-05:00

Daily Sun

January 8th., 2011

M. Serajul Islam

One issue that has been keeping me thinking in recent days isNoble Laureate Amartya Sen’s visits to Bangladesh. We all know what a brilliant economist he is.We also take pride in the fact that he speaks our mother tongue and his earlyeducation had been in Dhaka. In fact, we have shown it openly that we considerhim very dear to us by inviting him to visit our country almost regularly. Hehas paid our gratitude back. He has spoken well of Bangladesh in his writingsand in his public speeches.

In fact, he has given Bangladesh a lot of credit for doing betterthan India on human development issues such as education, life expectancy,immunization and maternal mortality. It makes us feel very happy when he says goodthings about our economic and social development. Dr. Sen’s comments were firstmade some years ago and repeated many timesand quoted by Bangladeshi writers extensively. In an interview in a local TV channel duringhis recent visit to Dhaka, Dr. Sen has again stated his assessment onBangladesh.

In New Delhi before coming to Dhaka, Dr. Sen had this to say in aseminar: “The tragedy is that not only China, but even Bangladesh is now doingbetter on almost every one of these social indicators than India is doing ....Every country Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are ahead already.” Dr.Sen’ good comments are thus not limited to Bangladesh alone. He feels the sameway about Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal as well.

Dr. Sen’s undoubted worth as an economist notwithstanding, hisviews about Bangladesh’s progress in human development issues do not attract as much attentionthese days because these have been repeated too often. These days, Bangladesh’smain concern is with politics that is becoming more and more conflict prone.This is creating apprehensions in the public mind thatthe good achievements on human development issues would be offset by thedifficulties in politics that lie ahead for Bangladesh.

Dr. Amartya Sen’s goodwill for Bangladesh is thus no longer newsin this country. In fact his frequent visits to Bangladesh have started to makea few people think whether he is inadvertently stepping into an area that maynot be doing his good name any credit. The point was addressed in a TV talkshow recently. A Professor of a private university questioned with a great dealof humility and apology to the Noble Laureate as to why he is invited sofrequently to national events in Bangladesh.

The Professor thought that the country has a Noble Prize winner ofits own who is known around the world in a way no less honoruable than Dr. Sen.He questioned the wisdom of those who thought it wise to keep Dr. Yunus out ofthe celebrations and bring Dr. Sen in his place. One wonders whether Dr. Sen hasnot noticed the strange happenings concerning Dr. Yunus when he visits Dhakathese days after our Noble Laureate has been made controversial by theGovernment. If he has not, then someone should tell him that he has steppedinto politics that those in government are playing with Dr. Yunus. In fact,knowing the character and righteousness of Dr. Sen, a lot of his admirers inBangladesh are concerned that individuals and groups in Bangladesh are usinghim in playing politics.

The Government’s handling of Dr. Yunus and the way he was sent outof the Grameen Bank (GB) will be one of the unsolved mysteries of our time. Aman who has become synonymous with the positive image of Bangladesh abroad; onewho has achieved by his work and his personality the friendship of some of themost powerful men and women of our times has received humiliation in his own country in a mannerthat defies both logic and common sense. We are now seeing the results of theway we have dealt with our Noble Laureate. Doors abroad in the capitals whereour future lie are closing or have already closed because we have offended powerful individuals abroad who had requestedour government to deal with Dr. Yunus ina manner than does not compromise his respect and reputation.

The government’s points against Dr. Yunus were that the GM was a“blood sucking” organization under his leadership. Additionally, it had accusedthe Noble Laureate of corruption in the GB while he headed it. It is now over ayear that Dr. Yunus has been removed from GB. The Bank is now in control of theGovernment. In this period, the Government has not lowered the interest ratestructure that is still the same as it was when the Noble Laureate was theManaging Director of the Bank.

A committee was set up by the Government after Dr. Yunus had leftthe Bank to look into the affairs of the Bank. Its report found that other wellknown micro credit institutions in the country charge higher rates of intereststhan the GB! The Committee also cleared Dr. Yunus of any wrong doing on thecount of financial corruption or irregularities. In fact, these developments inGB and concerning Dr. Yunus have underscored that the Government’s accusations againsthim had little substance.

As for the Noble Laureate’s standing in the power corridors of theworld and in the western countries, his removal from GB and the way it was donehas in fact enhanced his stature. He is still being received in countries thathe visits at the highest levels and with respect that has not diminished even abit. Most recently, he has been given a honourary doctorate by the prestigiousLondon School of Economics, the 20^th individual to be so honoured inthe institution’s long history.

All these bring me back to the frequent visits of Dr. Sen toBangladesh and the mindset of those who invite him for our national occasions.It has become obvious that he is brought in order to keep out Dr. Yunus frombeing either the Chief Guest or Guest of Honour at these functions. It is highly unethical thing that those whoinvite Dr. Sen this way are doing; using one Noble Laureate to dishonor anotherNoble Laureate. It is now for Dr.Amartya Sen himself to take note of what motivates people these days to invitehim to Bangladesh. We who are his admirers only hope that before he comes toBangladesh for another visit, he would make sure about the real intentions ofthose who invite him.

The writeris a retired Secretary and a formerAmbassador to Japan and Egypt

On the President’s Dialogue

2012-01-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

The Independent

As I See It Column

January 7th., 2011

M. Serajul Islam

The President’s ongoing dialogue with the political parties forchoosing the next Election Commission (EC) suggests that the ruling party isnot comfortable with the way support is building in the country for the nextgeneral elections to be held under the abrogated caretaker Government.Individuals in public life well known for their pro-AL leanings are speakingstrongly in the media to urge the AL to give up its insistence to hold the nextelections under an interim government under Sheikh Hasina. There are few suchpeople in public life who are showing any interest in the ongoing dialogue ofthe President for selecting the EC.

The reasons encouraging these individuals to speak in favour ofthe CG system are too obvious to need explanation, only the ruling party forreasons of its own is not willing to accept, not yet. It was the Awami Leaguethat had not allowed the BNP to govern effectively in its 1991-96 term to makeit accept the caretaker government system. The argument put forward by it withJamat by its side was that the BNP could not be trusted to hold the nationalelections under an interim administration because it would use its authority tointerfere in the process and manipulate the results in its favour.

The BNP was forced to concede to the AL’s demand. The peopleheaved a sigh of relief because the 1996 elections held under the CG systemwere free and fair. In a closely fought election where no party was able tointerfere in the election process, the AL won marginally. The point was drivenhome that free and fair elections could be held only when no political partywould have any role in holding the elections. The examples of 1973 and 1986were there as nightmares to encourage the people to accept the caretakergovernment system as an answer to their prayers to hold free and fairelections.

The AL’s strong opposition towards a party having anything to dowith the national elections, whether in fact or imaginary, was brought home by their stand againstJustice KM Hasan becoming the Chief Adviser of the Caretaker Government afterthe BNP completed its tenure in end of 2006. On the ground that Justice KMHasan was in the late 1970s a member of the BNP that he gave up become a Judge,the AL took to the streets to stop him from taking up his constitutionally entitledposition. The AL came out with “lathi, shota and boita” and the ensuingpolitical crisis pushed the country towards emergency and military rule.

The AL’s championing the cause of the CG system in 1991-96 and itsprotest against Justice Hasan in 2006 pointed to one simple fact; that itbelieved that national elections cannot be free and fair if a political party had even one of itsmembers or one assumed to be so in a key position of government under which theelections were being held. The same party is now asking the BNP to go fornational elections under a system that it has now made a part of theconstitution, the system of the interim government. Under this system, theruling party will hand power to an interim government to be formed and led byit. In other words, under this system it will be Sheikh Hasina who will supervisethe next elections with her party members as the interim cabinet.

To make it worse for the BNP, the AL has meanwhile politicized thebureaucracy heavily in its favour. It is in the process of placing in key postsin civil and police administration at the field level with those who are itsactivists, posts that will play key roles in the next elections. Recently, the AwamiLeague has placed as Administrators in the District Councils, its partyloyalists. The way the AL has taken these steps has not left anyone in doubt asto what its real intentions are. Its demand in the past even not to have onesingle individual from the ruling party to have anything to do with holding thenational elections makes it strange to accept that it is the same party nowproposing to the nation to hold the next general elections with all powers atits disposal to interfere in the elections if it chooses.

The AL however believes it will be able to convince the nationthat it has no intention of interfering in the general elections to be held through the EC, its steps to thecontrary notwithstanding. It has proposed to allow the EC the authority andindependence to conduct a free and fair election. It is to help choose such anEC by consensus in place of the old one that will go out of office in Februarythat it has decided to use the President to enter into a dialogue with thepolitical parties.

Unfortunately, the palpably evident blueprint the AL has put inplace in all other structures of the government that will play crucial role inthe conduct the next elections suggest that an EC, even if chosen by consensusand given independence, will simply not be able to function in a manner whereit will be in any risk of losing. It isthis clear blueprint that has encouraged the outgoing CEC to statecategorically in the media that there is no other alternative to holding thenext general elections in a free and fair manner without re-introducing the CGsystem. It is this stand that many well known individuals who are well knownfor close connections with the AL are echoing in public these days.

Thus the President’s dialogue is in effect like treating a veryserious heart patient for leg injury. To make matters worse, the President alsohas no authority under the constitution to do what he is doing. Either he hasforgotten or those who advised him have cared not to point this out to him that he is no betterand no worse than a mere ceremonial head. His only “power” is to sign on thedotted line where the Prime Minister wants it.

The BNP that had initially summarily dismissed taking part in thedialogue has done a smart thing by reconsidering its decision. It should usethe opportunity to sit with the President to tell him to carry a simple messageto the Prime Minister that the only way to save Bangladesh is to deal with theheart of the current crisis in politics in Bangladesh which is the caretakergovernment issue. The BNP should also request the President to convey a relatedmessage to the Prime Minister that the issue of the EC is one that wouldresolve itself automatically once the heart of the crisis is treated. There isno need for the President to waste his time and those of the political partiesin trying to choose the next EC by consensus which is not going to happenanyway.

The writeris a former Ambassador to Japan and can be reached on email serajul7@gmail.com

Dialogue with the President: What dialogue?

2012-01-01T12:15:00.003-05:00

The Holiday
December 30, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

A common apprehension everywhere these days is that violence is round the corner in our politics. The ruling party and the opposition are both openly talking about the forebodings in the air but blaming each other for the violence they are suspecting will happen soon. In fact, they are saying the violence will start in February.

The President’s decision to hold talks with the political parties to choose the next Election Commission (EC) has hinted indirectly that a serious clash between the mainstream parties is very much possible because the step he has undertaken is very unusual to say the least. The opposition has underscored the unusual nature of the President’s decision stating clearly that the Constitution does not give him such a power. Under the Constitution, the Prime Minister recommends the names to the President to choose an EC who has little
power but to accept.

The President can of course request the Prime Minister to reconsider the recommendation but he must sign on the dotted lines once the Prime Minister makes up her/his mind. Normally, if here is any difference of opinion on any of the Prime Minister’s recommendations, the President has no power under the constitution to say or do anything any public. The constitution by design and purpose has made the office of the President nothing but titular.

The constitutional restriction notwithstanding, there is this little problem that the President himself has created on the issue of his acceptance to the opposition political parties. He had given an interview to a private TV channel after being elected President where he was asked what he would do if he received a recommendation from the Prime Minister with which he did not agree. He answered almost by reflex action that his “Netri” could do no wrong! The exercise upon which the President has embarked could only succeed if he had the option to be neutral. Sadly, we all know our political realities. He just does not have that sort of power, neither by the constitution nor by his position, having been put in office of the President by the ruling party that he had served loyally all his life.

Those who advised the President to call the dialogue should have considered these issues. Even in choice of the issue for the dialogue, these Advisers did not act wisely or in the interest of the nation. The choice of the next EC is not the issue that has the potential to push the country towards the dangerous conflict that many people are apprehending. The apprehension is coming from the decision of the ruling party to conduct the next national elections under an interim administration that it will conduct, in all probability with Sheikh Hasina as the interim Prime Minister.

In addition, the ruling party will also have a civil bureaucracy that it has politicized totally to assist the interim government. From these loyal bureaucrats, the ruling party is in the process of choosing those bureaucrats whom it considers as its activists for the key posts in district and police administration that would be crucial for the elections. If this is not enough, the government has recently sent its party activists to the posts of administrators in the district councils!

With such a blueprint so palpably evident the opposition could be expected to take part in entering into a dialogue with the President to choose the next EC if they are politically naïve or have some other motive. It is sad that those who advised the President did not take into account that he is one of our most senior politicians and has earned respect for himself. The exercise of the dialogue is bound to end in futility and dishonour not just the President personally but also bring disrespect to the high office he holds. The ruling party has pushed the President into the fray merely to show the nation that it is serious about choosing an EC by consensus. It is sad that in using the President’s office this way, the ruling party did not care to remember its predicament with President Biswas in 1996 when he had threatened to use his office beyond what the constitution permitted him.

By choosing the EC as the subject of his dialogue, the President has undermined the real issue on which the country could explode in violence, namely the search for acceptable formula for holding the next general election. The issue of the next general election has become everybody’s concern, except of the ruling party, because of the abolition of the caretaker government. The last four elections, three under a non-party and neutral caretaker government and another where neither of the mainstream parties had any role in the government that held the elections, were free and fair. Only the losing party was the one that raised any question of credibility of these elections. All observers, both national and overseas, gave the elections the highest marks on the issue of freeness and fairness. In fact, the caretaker government was one with which Bangladesh could have made a claim to introducing into elections of the developing countries a system that ensured a free and fair election.

After the present government came to power, the court recommended abolishing the caretaker government because the constitution had given it a limited time span. The court, however, also recommended that at least two more elections should be held under it taking into view the nature of politics in the country where the history of elections under a political party in power has been one of rigging and fraud. The ruling party used its parliamentary majority to replace the CG system with an interim government without even waiting for the full verdict of the Court which is still awaited!

The indecent hurry with which the ruling party ended the CG system for an interim administration so that it could hold the next national elections spilled the beans on its intentions. Its subsequent actions revealed a blue print for returning to power. Thus by the time the President called the dialogue for selecting the next EC, few outside the ruling party and its coalition partners felt that a new EC would be selected with views from the opposition taken into consideration or that the interim government would allow it the sort of independence that could make it an alternative to the neutral caretaker government.

It is a matter of regret that the President himself has chosen to overlook the status of current politics in Bangladesh. His dialogue with the parties in the ruling coalition has been an un-necessary exercise, a waste of both his valuable time and those of the parties that attended the dialogue. One would not have blamed the BNP if it had stayed away from the dialogue because before the President embarked on such an exercise, his aides should have sounded out the opposition. This does not seem to have been the case. In fact, it looks like those who organized the dialogue knew that the BNP would not attend and the AL would get political mileage for trying to form an EC by consensus.

By deciding to attend, the BNP has made a smart political move and has pre-empted the AL from getting the political mileage it expected. The BNP would now no doubt its participation in the dialogue to inform the President face to face that no one would be able to save the country from an impending disaster unless the ruling party relents on its decision to hold the next general elections under an interim government to be headed by the outgoing Prime Minister. The BNP would also no doubt push the President for the immediate publication of the full verdict of the court on abolition of the CG system and insist that its recommendation for the next two general elections to be held under the caretaker system should be accepted to save the country from an impending crisis.

The logic to accept the court’s recommendation to hold the next two general elections under the caretaker government is too blatantly strong for the President to miss it if he wants to save the country. The ruling party is in no power or position to impose its will on the people without pushing the country towards a disaster with less than 40% of support among the people and having failed to deliver on its major election promises.

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The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Few letters, an AGM and a Club Election

2012-01-01T07:53:00.002-05:00

The Independent
December 31, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Recently, I was involved in a Club election that to me demonstrated that with proper conditions for a free election, it is possible to achieve democratic change in an organization that had fallen into the hands of a coterie that wanted to remain in power much beyond traditions or propriety. More importantly, the coterie was using the Club for the personal interests of a few where the majority was kept ignorant through entertainment and special events.

This Club has a time honoured tradition that its members would elect its President annually who would then be given another term uncontested or would return to his/her post through election. Only three times in its many decades of history of the Club has a President remained in office for more than two terms. Of these, one who had got elected for a fourth term breaking the Club’s traditions was later dismissed from the Club’s membership because by remaining in office for four terms, he had lost his hold on reality. He had begun to think of the Club as its proprietor.

In this year’s election, the President sought a fifth term! Last year while seeking an unprecedented fourth term, he had announced at the Club’s AGM that he would not contest again. The President had also allowed a great deal of undesired activities in the Club. There were murmurs among the general members that the Club had fallen into undesirable hands. Tradition and custom that were time honoured principles of governance of the Club were sacrificed insensitively. Outsourcing was extended indiscriminately and funds from patrons were used for transparent and not transparent events and improvement of the Club’s infrastructure.

It looked like there was no way to stop the President from another term. It was then that some members rallied around one member who showed the courage to stand against the incumbent and the coterie running the Club. A few letters were written to the general members in which the failings of the incumbent and his executive committee were highlighted. The impact of the letters was dramatic. The letters touched the right chords among the general members.

They came to the AGM of the Club knowing the facts. They were further assured of their authenticity when members spoke on the issues raised in the letters to which the President had no answer. By the end of the AGM, the general members were able to establish a simple fact; that no matter how powerful a head of an elected organization may think he is or how much money he spends to get re-elected, he simply cannot have his way if the election is free and the general members have knowledge of facts.

The result of the letters and the AGM was a humiliating defeat for the incumbent who had boasted that he could only cease to be the Club’s President if he chose not to contest. Thus by very simple efforts, the Club was able to bring itself literally from the doors of doom. This Club’s election made me reflect on elections that are held on a much larger canvas. In nations around the world, political leaders everywhere are always reluctant to give up power in the same way as this Club’s President.

In a system where the country’s top political post is elected by a system of election that is neither free nor fair, the problem of overstaying is often not a good one. People under such a system have to take matters into their hands to move such a leader from making the post his proprietorship. We have all seen the consequences in the Middle East where the Arab Spring brought people together to force over-stayers out of office. In fact, a suicide of a youth in Tunisia a year ago set into motion a domino effect that brought down Ben Ali in that country, Hosne Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gadaffi in Libya, leaders who had stayed on in power for many decades and showed no intention of leaving.

Political systems with free and fair elections have also faced the problem of political leaders at the top political posts showing the human tendency of staying in power as long as possible. In USA, the Constitution initially did not set term limitation. Nevertheless, as the first President, George Washington made his intentions clear by refusing to contest a third term in order to set precedence. A few of his successors however attempted a third term but failed. Only Franklin D Roosevelt was elected for a third term and died in office in 1945. His third term encouraged the 22nd amendment to the US Constitution that prohibits a President from seeking a third term.

In a parliamentary system, setting term limitation for the top political leader is not easy. Nevertheless, such a system is also concerned with its top political leader who often than not shows the tendency to stay in power too long. In Great Britain, such political leaders are removed in the party. After Margaret Thatcher had stayed in power for 11 years and was not showing the intention to leave, she was removed as the party leader thereby stopping her from carrying on as Prime Minister.

In Bangladesh politics, all past top political leaders had shown the mindset of the Club’s President. The incumbent Prime Minister is no different. At her initiative, the ruling party has abolished the CG system that had ensured four free and fair elections. It is putting into place, in the name of holding a democratic election, a structure that would ensure its return to power. In such a situation, a lot of people are apprehending serious trouble. The opposition is beginning to show restiveness and the inclination to move from peaceful politics to politics of conflict.

One of the positive developments in Bangladesh in the midst of the politics of conflict is the emergence of a pro-active and responsible media, particularly the electronic media. A glimpse of it was shown in the Narayanganj elections. Recently, a group of well known individuals from public life have come together on bipartisan basis to highlight the negatives that dominate Bangladesh’s politics at present. They have not identified themselves as the civil society conscious of the latter’s role during the emergency when its members were caught with their pants down, hobnobbing with the military.

The private TV channels have taken politics into the doorsteps of people who matter in politics. In recent times, those who talk in these channels have shown a paradigm shift in representing the failings of the mainstream parties. Thus today, the public that matter are better informed about the strength and weaknesses of the mainstream parties. Their efforts and those of individuals who are grouping themselves on bipartisanship on political issues could play the same role as those who wrote the letters in the Club election and participated at the AGM.

Many reading this piece would of course dismiss any comparison between the Club election and the national one as fantasy. They should spare a moment and consider that the 29 years of oppressive autocracy of President Mubarak was destroyed in 2 weeks by people of all shades of opinion getting together where Twitter and Facebook played a significant role. Let us not underestimate the dramatic strides the media has made in Bangladesh in recent times and the power of technology.

To achieve the desired result, a free and fair election without interference from the incumbent must be first assured. The media and bipartisan groups without political connections could play the role the members played at the Club, bringing to the surface the facts about politics and the mainstream parties without taking sides. Their efforts could not only give the public better information on which party or candidate to vote for; such efforts could also force the parties and candidates to take the voters seriously.

The Club election reminded me of a lecture that Mr. AK Brohi had given to us at the Civil Service Academy, Lahore in Pakistan times. He had said when a society slides towards rock bottom, few in that society stand against the slide to lead a moral resurgence. Invariably, the society responds to these few to help it to regain the moral and ethical contents it had lost. It happened to the Club and one wishes it would happen to the country.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Has India benefitted from emergence of Bangladesh?

2012-01-01T07:48:00.004-05:00

Daily Sun
1st January 2012
M. Serajul Islam

December is a month that brings a flood of memories in the minds of all Bangladeshis about 1971. On 16th of December, 1971, the country was freed from a murderous military whose only objective was to keep the territory of what was then the eastern wing of Pakistan as a part of that country. The Pakistan military could not care less how many Bengalis they killed. In fact, in those 9 months they ended killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people of Bangladesh whose only fault was to have voted for the Awami League in an election that even the military Pakistan government of the time agreed was free and fair.

In the murderous spree, 10 million Bangladeshis fled to India for fear of their lives. In a historic documentary of the time, Bangladesh’s great film director Zahir Raihan, in his immortal documentary Stop Genocide, had captured an old lady who could walk only on her legs with support of her hands, fleeing to India walking the way she could, “walking” many a miles to safety in India. That one shot showed the world the nature of the murderous genocide that the Pakistanis had embarked upon us in 1971.

India did something unique. It opened its borders to accept those 10 million refugees and gave them food and shelter for 9 long months. India those days was in economic terms just managing to feed its huge population and was not in a position to look after such a large number of people. Yet our people were invited with open arms and looked after them. No one complained about their lives in the refugee camps because Indian hospitality was overwhelming.
The Indian government did much more. It took up Bangladesh’s cause in the field of battle where the people had risen to respond to the call of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to fight a guerilla war against Pakistan’s occupation force by helping the Mukti Bahini with fire power; training and other support. It also formed a joint command with Bangladeshi soldiers to fight the Pakistanis in frontal war. Most importantly, under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, India championed the cause of Bangladesh’s independence in the international arena where those days a people’s fight for their freedom by secession was unacceptable.

India’s efforts helped Bangladesh earn its independence in quick time. Ever since, all governments in Bangladesh and the people have unquestionably accepted India’s role in our independence and have shown gratitude for what they did for us. This year, the show of our gratitude for Indian assistance was there like every year; in fact a little more because this year marked the 40th year of our liberation.

This year, there were visitors from India; visitors invited by the government to show our gratitude for India’s assistance in 1971. I had an interesting conversation with one of them, a senior retired Indian general who played a role in training young Bangladeshis for fighting the Pakistani army in the battle field. I felt proud to have met him because it gave me the opportunity to convey to him my own personal gratitude for his role and that of his country for our independence. My meeting with him was held in the week when we were again witness to killings of Bangladeshis in the Bangladesh-India border at the hands of the BSF coming in the heels of the Teesta and Tippaimukh disappointments.

I therefore could not check my temptation to convey to the retired general the frustrations in Bangladesh over India’s failure of giving us an agreement on sharing of the waters of Teesta and going ahead with the Tippaimukh without taking Bangladesh into confidence over and above all, the continued killings on the Bangladesh-India border. I told him that we are now in a position where we cannot feel the same gratitude for India for its role in 1971 because India has accepted favours after favours from us but has so far failed to show its heart or good intent in reciprocating.

I told the general that our Prime Minister has risked her political career to give India security commitment and land transit in the hope that India would respond on issues of water that for us is the most important bilateral issue with India. I also told him that the concessions India made on issues of trade and land boundary settlement are in jeopardy as major groups within India have started opposing these agreements.

Finally, I had to tell him that people of Bangladesh are starting to look seriously on the issue of gratitude for India for their help in 1971. The question coming up in many people’s mind is should we now not ask India how much we have contributed to it by our independence. I asked the General to spare a moment and consider a hypothetical scenario where Bangladesh had not come into being and India had on its eastern border, East Pakistan instead. To refresh the General’s mind, I asked him not to forget that meantime Pakistan had become nuclear and more formidable a foe than it was in the pre-1971 period. I told him that quite naturally; Pakistan’s eastern province would also be armed to the teeth to fight India and would also have nuclear capabilities.

In such a hypothetical scenario, I asked the General to consider how much India must have saved knowing that on its eastern border it has a friendly Bangladesh that at present is willing to do simply anything to make it happy. I said that as a consequence of the emergence of Bangladesh, the savings for India on defense expenses that it would have had otherwise spent if Pakistan was still present on in its eastern front would have been in hundreds of billions of US dollars.

Then there is the psychological comfort for India of a friendly government in its eastern front because even a BNP Government in Bangladesh with its anti-Indian stance is no threat to that country. There is also the issue of India’s fragile northeast where the insurgencies would have by now perhaps severed the northeastern states from India for good. It is not just the Indian break of promises on Teesta, Tippaimukh and the killings in the border that is agitating the minds of Bangladeshis at present. The “trial run” for land transit is also doing its fair share in making India not such a popular country in Bangladesh. Recent TV footages have shown heavy Indian trucks destroying one of our rivers to carry goods to the Indian province of Tripura.

It is indeed very sad that the Indians have failed to realize the great political risks Sheikh Hasina took to move Bangladesh-India relations out of the negative state to a positive one. In doing so, they have closed a door that she had opened for the first time in many decades to build up mutually beneficial relations between two neighbours who need each other for their mutual benefit. Gratitude cannot tie relations. The irony is that even in gratitude; Bangladesh has done more for the Indians than they have done for us.

In fact, there is also a lot of merit in what many now say that even had the Indians not intervened, there was no way that Bangladesh would not have become independent for no nation had ever united for independence as the Bangladeshis had done in 1971. In fact, without Indian intervention, Bangladesh would have had a natural birth that would have taken care of many of the issues of history from which Bangladesh is still suffering as a nation.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Bangladesh-India relations: Historical perspective and current status

2011-12-23T12:49:00.004-05:00

The Independent
Liberation Day Supplement
December 16, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Morning shows the day. So goes the cliché. Sometimes, it happens that way but often it does not. In case of Bangladesh-India relations, the cliché has failed, almost completely so far because the bright and sunny morning of Bangladesh-India relations that we saw in the early days of the present government’s tenure has turned cloudy in the late afternoon with dark and ominous clouds in the horizon.

History and geo-politics places Bangladesh is a position where its full potentials as a nation can only be achieved in the context of India treating us fairly and as a friend. We are dependent on India on a few major counts of which the need to get a fair and equitable share of waters of the common rivers is of paramount importance. Equally important is the issue of a fair demarcation of the maritime boundary where we cannot exploit the rich hydro-carbon resources in the Bay of Bengal without an agreement with India.
We also need India for realizing our potentials on a host of other issues. Our position in between India’s fragile northeast and its mainland places us in a situation where we can help India profusely and ourselves gain a lot from reciprocity. We also hold the key to Indian security, an issue that could make or break India as it reaches out to become a world economic power.
Bangladesh began its journey as an independent nation by helping India fulfill a dream. A lot is said and rightly so about how much Bangladesh owes to India for looking after 10 million of our refugees in 1971 and helping our war of liberation both in the theater of the war as well as projecting our case to the international community. In that, the point what emergence of Bangladesh has meant to India, is lost.

The emergence of Bangladesh has eased for India pressures from Pakistan from the east. In terms of savings on defense, Bangladesh must have contributed to the Indian coffer a mind boggling sum of money and continuing to do so. It has given to the Indians in addition the psychological comfort and support by freeing it from any fear coming from the East. The fact that Pakistan has become nuclear since Bangladesh’s emergence only adds to the direct contributions that Bangladesh makes to the Indians in the strategic, defense and financial contexts.

Nevertheless, it is Bangladesh that has always been asked and has always paid a heavy price to India on the issue of gratitude for its support to our emergence as an independent nation. In order to serve India’s interests to resolve its problems with Pakistan, we allowed India to send back to Pakistan the 193 Pakistani soldiers who were POWs in India after they had surrendered to a Joint Indian and Bangladesh Mukti Bahini Command, soldiers we wanted to try for crimes against humanity during our war of liberation. The sacrifice we made then is more than evidently clear in Bangladesh today as the country struggles to try the war criminals of 1971.

We also allowed India a trial run for the Farakkha Barrage for 40 days that it extended unilaterally to suit its needs that has caused great damages to the environment of northern Bangladesh. We have allowed India river transit for carrying goods from mainland India to northeast. We even agreed in principle to accord India land transit in the Trade Agreement we signed with it in 1972. In 1974, we signed the agreement on land boundary under which we gave India what we agreed. India did not keep its part of the agreement.

In fact, it is Bangladesh that has been paying off to India the price for the help it gave Bangladesh in 1971. Bangladesh never asked anything for helping India break its nemesis Pakistan into two. Bangladesh just wanted from India its legitimate rights as an independent and sovereign nation on issues of water, trade, land and maritime boundaries.
On the maritime boundary, the Indian refusal to negotiate on principles of international law has forced us to go to the international tribunal to seek redress. On trade, the deficit has exploded, with India unwilling to accept agreements at multilateral forum to help our exports to enter Indian market. It has fenced off the border; yet it accuses Bangladesh of mass migration. In last one decade, Indian BSF has killed over a thousand innocent Bangladeshis; most of them killed as a result of smuggling ventures that went wrong for which the control is in the hands of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF). Yet, it sees no reason to regret where its own human rights and international human rights organizations have squarely placed the accusing fingers on India.

The only times the Indians have done something for Bangladesh was when it signed the Ganges Water Sharing Accord in 1996, 22 years after we gave it permission for 40 days’ trial run, and arm twisted the insurgents in the hill tracts that it was encouraging to sign the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord. The Ganges Accord has outlived its utility because upstream withdrawal brings very little amount of water at the point of sharing for Bangladesh to receive its equitable share. The Indians are not even sorry for our predicament and we can do nothing about it as there is no guarantee clause in the agreement. The Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord has been signed because the Indians arm twisted the insurgents that they had been training to harm Bangladesh and that to, not for the same of Bangladesh but for a political party that it thought would serve its interests.

In the BNP’s last term of office, bilateral relations stagnated with India not interested in moving relations ahead because they perceived the BNP Government as an unfriendly one. The BNP was also in no hurry to mend fences with India. Therefore, it was quite a courageous move that Sheikh Hasina made immediately upon becoming Prime Minister to sent strong signals that her government was prepared to work with India for a paradigm shift in bilateral relations. Towards that conviction, she assured India that her Government would not allow Bangladesh soil to be used as a sanctuary for attacks on India by terrorists and insurgents. As proof of her seriousness, Bangladesh handed to India 7 top ULFA insurgents, albeit secretly.

On her official visit to India in January, 2010, she made further concessions. She promised India land transit that had been meanwhile renamed by India with Bangladesh’s concurrence as connectivity for public acceptance in Bangladesh. She also offered to India the use of the Chittagong and Mongla sea ports. In exchange for Bangladesh’s offers on security, and land transit and use of the seaports, the Indians made a number of promises and a firm offer. The promises were to sell us electricity, talk with us on water sharing, trade issues and land boundary. The firm offer was a soft but tied loan of US$ 1 billion.

The visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was heralded by the Bangladesh side as a great success. The Prime Minister’s principal negotiators, Dr. Gowher Rizvi, Dr. Mashiur Rahman and the Foreign Minister undertook a media campaign in which they built up great expectations in the minds of the people. They urged the people to believe that India is a neighbour to be trusted and that India has the goodwill of Bangladesh at heart. They chided those who were critical of India or hesitant to believe in India. Our negotiators assured us that India would make us rich and important by making us the connectivity hub of the region that would not just include its northeastern states but also Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and China.

Our negotiators asked the people to wait for the visit of the Indian Prime Minister during which they told us we would see what a good friend India is. The two countries exchanged high level visits. The Indian Foreign, Finance and Home Ministers visited Bangladesh and our senior Ministers also visited India. The committees between the two countries at the official level on water, border and trade also met in the period leading up to the visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka. These positive developments lent credibility to what our negotiators were telling us, that India could be trusted as a friend and that it was ready to do serious business with us.

The Indian Prime Minister finally came to Dhaka in September amidst great expectations in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the evening before his arrival, the Indians threw cold water on our expectations by withdrawing the agreement on the Teesta and Feni rivers. They made concessions of trade by adding 46 RMG items to duty free access to India. The 6.4 miles land boundary was finalized and so was exchange of enclaves and land in adverse possession. Bangladesh was also given 24 hours’ access through Teen Bigha to the Bangladesh enclaves of Dahagram and Angorpota.

Nevertheless, the nation was deeply disappointed with the Teesta fiasco. The Indians failed to acknowledge the importance and sensitivity of the water issue to the people of Bangladesh. Our negotiators tried their best to hide people’s disappointment and acclaimed that the visit was successful. They expressed no public disappointment over Teesta. Instead they defended India and expressed firm home that the agreement on Teesta was just round the corner. A number of Ministers said that the two countries would sign the agreement on Teesta in 3 to 4 months. Our negotiators went into denial over the fact that India had betrayed us literally at the eleventh hour!

The negotiators’ efforts to defend India were surprising as it became evident that the agreements and concessions India made were met with strong disapproval from string lobbies in India. The BJP objected to the exchange of enclaves. RMG groups opposed the 46 items put on the duty free list. The 24 hours’ access through Teen Bigha is a regression on the 1974 Indira-Mujib Agreement that had given us the land as ours. The Indians were themselves apparently embarrassed that they had failed to deliver with their Prime Minister’s visit. The Indian Prime Minister expressed regrets over Teesta.

The Indian media was harsh on their Prime Minister and blamed him and his government for failing to match the strong hand of friendship offered by Bangladesh. At least two leading Indians, Kuldip Nayyar and Muchkund Dubey who are well known in both the countries, expressed anger at the “disdain and apathy” of their Government towards Bangladesh. Muchkund Dubey felt that the Indians are behaving in a manner that could turn Bangladeshis to feel the same way for India as does the Pakistanis.
If the Indian Prime Minister was embarrassed on disappointing Bangladesh by his visit, it was only in passing. The Indians however did not regret what they did to Bangladesh over Teesta. They have told us subsequently through various channels that an agreement on Teesta would be a long time in coming. The Indian Prime Minister, after assuring us in Dhaka that the Teesta agreement would be signed soon, has said recently that there is the need to build a consensus before the agreement can be signed! No one from our side asked the question what he and his team doing was doing all this while when they were taking from Bangladesh concessions that they dreamt but never expected, a total assurance on India’s security and an access from mainland to the northeast.

The Indians have now signed an agreement to build the Tippaimukh Dam. They simply did not bother that Bangladesh needed to taken on board after Bangladesh had spared no efforts to convey to the Indians that there exists in Bangladesh bipartisan fear and apprehension over the dam. That fear has been greatly enhanced following the tremors in Sikkim. When we sought information over the dam, the Indians asked us not to be concerned and to have faith that India would not harm us. The two Advisers of our Prime Minister who met the Indian Prime Minister in New Delhi were given the same assurance.

The Indians have said that they would build just the dam and have set aside the barrage that would have harmed Bangladesh. In giving the assurance, the Indians have missed a very vital point, that as a neigbour with sovereign status, Bangladesh deserves to be treated better, particularly when it has made the major concessions. It has more importantly missed the legal point that under international law and convention, a country is allowed to unilaterally build raise the water level of a cross boundary river to the height of 15 meters or thereabouts. For a level higher than that, an upper riparian of a cross boundary river is bound under international law and convention to discuss with the lower riparian about the level it proposes to rise. In case of the Tippaimukh, the level would be raise to 170 meters! By their contemptuous behaviour, the Indians have once again highlighted that they cannot be trusted.

For the first time in many decades, Sheikh Hasina showed India Bangladesh’s interest to accommodate what India wants from us the most, namely sincere assurances for its security concerns and a land transit to its fragile northeast. In doing so, our Prime Minister took great political risks. Common sense dictated, given the importance of the concessions made by Bangladesh (Muchkund Dubey called these concessions as “supremely significant” to India) to reciprocate on water as the first item and then on the other bilateral issues of trade, maritime boundary, border, and the rest. It is not that the Indians did not make the concessions towards which Bangladesh was expectantly looking; it added salt to the injury by treating us as if we did not deserve to be treated with respect. After being treated so disdainfully and disrespectfully, we had to send our Advisers to New Delhi. If the Indians were serious about us, they should have sent an envoy to Dhaka instead to take care of Bangladesh’s hurt feelings.

In retrospect, the Indian attitude was not at all unexpected. This is the way the Indians have always treated Bangladesh. What is a wonder is the attitude of our negotiators. The Foreign Minister and the Foreign Secretary saw nothing wrong with the way the Indians treated us on Tippaimukh. They demanded that the Indians must be trusted. The State Minister for Water saw politics in the agitation over the dam and absurd as it may sound, said that India has the right to build the Tippaimukh dam and any other structure on any of the rivers we share with it! The State Minister’s preposterous comments did not bring him any reprimand although by his comments, he has handed over to India the sovereign right on the rivers we share with it, rivers that are indispensible for our existence.
Between the arrogance of the Indians and the subservience of our negotiators (in case of the State Minister for Water, far worse), we have wasted a great window of opportunity that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had opened in the context of Bangladesh-India relations. The promise of our negotiators that as the connectivity hub of the region we would become rich and important seems to have vanished in the thin air. The promises of water also have evaporated and all the other agreements that we have signed since the government took office three years ago, seem to be going by the way side.

India, its arrogance notwithstanding, has achieved its goals in the short run. The security concessions on the ULFA insurgents has helped India break the many decades old ULFA insurgent movement that would help India save many times more than the much acclaimed money it has given Bangladesh as soft loan. It has also been given the go ahead on land transit on a trial basis. But by betraying on Teesta and Tippaimukh and failing to show that it has a heart to match its size on reciprocating to what Bangladesh has given, India has shown short sightedness because both the security and the transit cards are certain to be in serious jeopardy in the backdrop of rising distrust of India.
The morning sun that Sheikh Hasina brightened in Bangladesh-India relations has now paled into a cloudy late mid afternoon. Indian arrogance, short sightedness and habbit of taking Bangladesh for granted and our negotiators’ unbelievable subservience have almost wasted a historic opportunity opened by Sheikh Hasina to take Bangladesh-India relations to a new level of friendship, mutual trust and mutual benefit.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and a former Ambassador to Japan

How important are our roots?

2011-12-23T08:47:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
Liberation Day Supplement
December 16, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

A friend and I were talking on the current status of politics in the country at a gathering of friends recently. We both agreed it was in a sorry state of affairs and that the country was surely not moving in the right direction. A common friend, an active member of a political party joined us but we continued in our critical vein. He did not like our critical tone and said rather abruptly that we have to go back to our roots and those who do not believe in our roots must be dealt with.

I asked him for an explanation of our roots. He gave an instant reply. He said that our roots are Bengali nationalism and secularism. I asked him a few questions. I wanted to know more clearly what he meant by the roots because there was a threat implied in his tone that those who did not agree with his explanation of the roots would not be left alone. I also wanted to know by what mechanism he arrived so authoritatively on our roots.

My friend the politician is a straight forward guy. He did not take long to explain our roots and what would have to be done with those who did not believe in our roots. Our roots according to him are the divide that the two political parties have introduced in our politics; whether our nationalism is Bengali or Bangladeshi and secularism. His roots are, in fact, those that the Awami League explains publicly as essential forces that motivated our liberation and created Bangladesh.

I and my other friend had no problem in accepting one part of the “roots”; namely Bengali nationalism. We told him that on the face of it, no one should have any problem with Bengali nationalism. This root of ours was the prime motivator of our war of liberation, so much so that there is no point even in discussing it. Nevertheless, we also told our friend that this element of our “roots” has been made controversial by the two mainstream parties whose support among the people is roughly half and half. Therefore we told him that there is the need to take a serious look at it to arrive at some sort of a consensus because democracy demands that no one party should impose its views on another.
When the Pakistanis cracked down in that dark night of March 25th, 1971, their enemy was clear as day light; it was the AL led by Bangabandhu who showed, in the eyes of the Pakistanis, the audacity to divide Pakistan and create Bangladesh. The Pakistan Army had the easy option of going after the Awami League politicians who had taken the leadership to break Pakistan. There were 162 of these Awami Leaguers who were elected to the Pakistan National Assembly and 298 Awami Leaguers were elected to the Provincial Assembly who could have been targeted.

The Pakistanis took Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a prisoner who surrendered voluntarily. After this singularly civil act, the Pakistanis went about killing our people without consideration of political affiliation, sex, age, or whatever else distinguishes people. They killed us simply because we spoke the Bengali language that made their act the worst recorded and unanswered case of genocide in history. Out of the 450 plus parliamentarians, the Pakistanis did not target any and a few who were apprehended and/or killed were caught as Bengalis and not as Awami Leaguers.

The Constitution today identifies our nationalism as “Bengali” nationalism and our citizenship as “Bangladeshi”. The 15th amendment has been written entirely by the AL but may have opened the window to bridge the differences between the mainstream parties on the “Bengali” root. It has strengthened the AL stand that one of our roots lies in Bengali nationalism but has also accommodated the Bangladeshi character dear to the BNP in defining our citizenship. The “secular root” is divisive and more complex. My friend the MP was adamant that there could be no compromise on the secular root. He showed a definite contempt about the Islamic forces in the country. To him, the country must be secular.

We listened to our politician friend with apprehension. We told him that what he was getting at is his party’s public stand by which it has divided the country into what it calls pro-liberation and anti-liberation forces. He did not disagree with us. In fact, he underscored that those who believed that our roots are in “Bengali nationalism” and “secularism” are the pro-liberation forces and those who have doubts on these roots are anti-liberation forces.
We pleaded with him to consider that his party’s uncompromising stand on the roots is dividing the country into two conflicting groups and that the conflict is now destroying the country. We wanted to know from him how we have come to a stage where today there are 75 million or more people in the country who are so-called “anti-liberation” force according to his party when during our war of liberation; there were only a handful of such anti liberation elements.

My friend did not have any explanation but he did have an answer on what should be done to those who are “anti liberation” forces who do not believe in our roots the way he and his party believes. He simply said they had no right to live in Bangladesh. This friend had on an earlier occasion told me and a few other friends that dealing with these “anti-liberation” forces meant “sizing” them up and when asked to clarify what he meant by “sizing”, he said without batting an eyelid that these forces should be eliminated! Afterwards at home, my friend’s strong views had me thinking very seriously. If it had been just his views then I would have been able to lay it at rest even though his views were very discomforting to merely set these aside. I was alarmed because there are many in his party who do think the way he does and they are as compromising with our roots as he is.

Many of us have lived through 1971 without being an Awami Leaguer. It was Bangabandhu’s 7th March, 1971 speech that boiled the blood in all of us and brought us all together under his leadership in believing in Bangladesh. It did not matter for us whether we were Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Christians. It did not matter whether or not we voted or supported the Awami League. Barring a handful of collaborators and Islamic parties that had little support amongst us, we all united under Bangabandhu’s clarion call. The need to explain that the basis of our nationalism in those 9 months was we were Bengalis was irrelevant even to consider because it was as obvious as saying it is daylight when we are at mid-day and the sun is shining brightly on us. It was 25 years’ of deprivation as Bengalis as a part of Pakistan that made this factor irrelevant. Pakistan’s decision to commit genocide on us simply because we spoke the Bengali language was what has brought us together as a nation in 1971.

Nevertheless, since we achieved our independence, there have been good reasons for extending this Bengali nationalism to Bangladeshi nationalism to make complete sense of what we are. First, without a Bangladeshi content to Bengali nationalism, there will be little to set us apart from the people of West Bengal who by the definition that our nationalism is determined solely by the language will have as much right to Bangladeshi nationality as we have. It is like the claim to Israel citizenship. Any Jew anywhere on the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen based on the right of return for the Jewish Diaspora. Second, by making the Bengali language as the sole basis of our nationalism, we will logically exclude the minority in the country who do not speak Bengali as a mother tongue to be a part of Bangladesh as a matter of right. Third, the many centuries of influence of Islam that majority of Bangladeshis follow will be lost by restricting our nationalism to language alone.

The issue of secularism during our war of liberation was far removed from the minds of the people because we were united by a fear of genocide that for us was the litmus test that transformed us from being Pakistanis to Bangladeshis. In the nine months of liberation, there was no force on earth that could not have divided us nor was any necessary to unite us. We were not bothered whether we were a Hindu, Muslim or a Buddhist or a Christian. Religion was no factor; it was the Bengali language that brought us together and kept us united as a monolith.

The claim of the two mainstream parties leaves a lot to be desired to be a conclusive explanation of our nationalism . It is a matter on which we can debate as long as we want to. Yet we will not come out with a consensus on it. But then is this an issue that should hold us back and make us fight and divide? One way of looking at this could be by asking ourselves why we needed to be independent. Here there no division of opinion. We needed to be independent to build a democratic state. Pakistan was a dictatorship that we did not want. Our attempt to make it democratic when we voted the AL to power was met with genocide. We created Bangladesh so that whatever differences there existed amongst us would be discussed in the democratic way; by listening to all shades of opinion and then deciding on the basis of majority verdict. The very thought of imposing an opinion without discussion and on pre-conceived notions is anathema to the very dream that gave birth to Bangladesh, to reject a dictatorship and live in a democratic country.

My friend the politician reflected to me the same mindset that the Pakistanis had when they tried to destroy our spirit and keep us under their domination. If a large number of people of Bangladesh believe that our nationalism is “Bangladesh nationalism” and that our Islamic belief must not be lost in our emphasis on secularism, then the only way to deal with it for the group that differs with it is political. The way is not by calling those who differ with both our roots as my friend described it as views of anti-liberation forces and most definitely not by sizing them up. Even the thought that any person or group, 40 years after we have liberated ourselves for our democratic convictions and beliefs, could believe that there could be a solution of a political problem by force is taking a stand against the very basis that united our people in 1971 to fight and liberate Bangladesh.

The roots are important no doubt. Nevertheless, we need to consider how it is possible that a nation that was united as a monolith in 1971 on the issue of independence and freedom, can now be, as the ruling party suggests, divided into half so called pro-liberation forces and half so called anti-liberation elements. The thought that it is possible that there are 75 million people in this country is absurd.

In the 15th amendment, while the secular root has been restored, the Islamic character of the society has also been retained. And, on the issue of nationalism, while the 15th amendment has underscored the fundamental importance of language it has also given space to the view of the BNP that we are Bangladeshi in defining our citizenship. The official stance of the ruling party on the roots therefore differs from the uncompromising stance of its members and activists like my friend. The difference provides the hope that despite the rhetoric, the AL may not eventually pursue our roots in a manner that would destroy the tree.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

Foreign Policy Issues: Coordination and consistency is the name of the game

2011-12-23T08:40:00.008-05:00

Daily Sun
December 18, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

If democracy is the freedom of speech, then our Government is the most democratic by a long stretch in the context of allowing its Ministers/Advisers absolute freedom to speak as they like. Take the Padma Bridge as an example. We all know that the World Bank stopped funding the mega project worth US$ 2.7 billion on charges of corruption in the Ministry of Communications. It had specific charges against the Minister in charge of the Ministry and asked for his removal. JICA and ADB also followed the WB.

The Government initially refused to accept the WB request and made a few proposals to it. Nothing worked. Finally, the Minister was removed to another Ministry. Yet the WB did not relent, at least not yet. This angered the Prime Minister who blasted at the WB and other international financial agencies. She vowed she would build not just the Padma Bridge but another over the Padma River and many other bridges with fund from private international financial agencies. She also referred to interest of certain countries to build the Padma Bridge.

The new Communications Minister does not seem to be on the same wave length with the Prime Minister. He has already started talking with the WB local office for a favourable response to the removal of his predecessor. He seems to feel that the WB would withdraw its objection and start funding the Padma Bridge. At the official level, it is being said that the ball is now in WB court and that it would have no option but to withdraw its objection.

More of “democracy Bangladesh style” is evident on the issue of Tippaimukh. The Prime Minister has said that she would not allow India to do anything that would harm Bangladesh over Tippaimukh. Her Adviser has very recently scribed a piece in a local English Daily stating firm conviction that India would not do anything to harm Bangladesh. His belief in India and its Prime Minister is quintessential. He just cannot understand the concerns in Bangladesh over Tippaimukh.

It is not just that there is discrepancy between the Prime Minister and her Adviser over Tippaimukh. There are serious differences between the ruling party and its principal ally, the Jatiya Party over it. The Government’s official position, despite the Prime Minister suggesting some concern, is one of total trust in India. Between the Prime Minister’s Adviser Gowhar Rizvi and the Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, the Government’s case has been stated unequivocally that there is not even the reason to ask India questions over Tippaimukh.

Nevertheless, General Ershad believes that all work of the Government must stop till we succeed in forcing India to abandon the Tippaimukh project. His party is an important coalition partner of the ruling party and hence is a part of the Government. Therefore President Ershad’s strong public stance against the ruling party’s stand is either a sign of democracy of a peculiar type or rumblings within the coalition. It however underscores the fact that the frustration and the opposition on the Tippaimukh project is one that the ruling party cannot simply wish away as the Adviser to the Prime Minister seems to be doing.

Even if one is to accept Dr. Rizvi’s arguments that the Tippaimukh will not harm us in anyway, there is a lot to be said about the matter. It is still the Indian Government and Dr. Rizvi and a few others in and around the Prime Minister who are saying the good things about Tippaimukh. What do these individuals want to do for the anger, fear and frustration among the people of Bangladesh over Tippaimukh? For one, no matter what arguments the Prime Minister’s aides bring to explain the Tippaimukh, the Indians have destroyed their credibility by withdrawing the Teesta deal and going ahead with Tippaimukh without taking Bangladesh into confidence after they had so strongly argued the Indian interests.

The other issue is one that has always been there, only the Prime Minister’s men (and woman) for some unexplained reason did not notice. This is the way India has treated us over Teesta and Tippaimukh that fits a pattern. In the history of Bangladesh-India relations, India has treated us as a big brother to decide what is in our interest when an AL Government is in office. When the BNP is in power that India perceives as unfriendly, it acts as the bully. With Tippaimukh, the Prime Minister’s aides are telling us to believe that our big brother cannot harm us. The aides could not have been further removed from ground reality if what the people of Bangladesh thinks are of any consequence to them.

The handling of Padma Bridge and Tippaimukh are examples of what is wrong in the way Bangladesh conducts its foreign relations. Although there is need to be democratic in any activity of the government, the sort of democracy we are seeing under this government on foreign relations is one leading us to disaster. Someone with sense from among the Prime Minister’s closest circle should flag for her to show her that on both these issues, her Ministers and aides have spoken in a manner that has suggested than the hand does not where the glove is. Many in Government have spoken on these issues who have no business or authority to speak on these issues at all. Many have spoken on India in a manner that the Indians themselves would have been embarrassed to speak.

The Prime Minister often has spoken strongly on for example the WB in a manner that would have been better done out of the media. Sending such salvos does not help her own image or the country’s interests. It will only make the efforts of her officials difficult in negotiating WB funds that her government, her salvos notwithstanding, is no doubt pursuing. Then again, WB is crucial for funding other development projects in the country. Creating bad blood with it would only hamper the smooth flow of these funds. Getting funds for future development projects from private sources would be difficult and costly that economists in the country have already flagged following the Prime Minister’s strong words against the WB.

In case of Tippaimukh and generally with leading Bangladesh’s talks with India, the lack of coordination among those negotiating has been palpably evident. The team has ended up negotiating India’s case more strongly than the Indians. In fact, while it is the responsibility of the Indian Government to explain the fears in minds of most Bangladeshis on the proposed Tippaimukh Dam given the concessions and commitments Bangladesh made since the present government came to power, it is our negotiators who are instead being seen acting as lobbyists of the Indian Government.
It is time for the Government to get its house in order on foreign policy issues if it is already not too late. With such lack of coordination with no known leader, it does not need a crystal ball to predict that we would not be able to achieve our foreign policy goals, as we have not. With such way of conducting foreign policy it is not just that we are failing to achieve our national interests; even our respect as a sovereign nation is being jeopardized.
The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

Our Cricketing Misfortunes

2011-12-23T08:04:00.005-05:00

As I See It
The Independent
M. Serajul Islam
December 17, 2011

The loss of the first test against Pakistan in Chittagong by a humiliating margin of an innings and 184 runs is really bad. However, even the best of teams at certain occasions have lost tests by innings. In case of Bangladesh though, the humiliation of losses by an innings is more the pattern than the exception. In 72 tests that we have played, we have lost 34 by an innings. Of the 72, tests, we have lost 62!

Sports scribes writing about test cricket in foreign newspapers and in the internet are now writing with no holds barred. They are asking seriously whether Bangladesh is fit to play test cricket. The condescending attitude of one Pakistani commentator who was on air during the Chittagong Test was too much to bear.

Yet there is such a lot to be said about Bangladesh cricket. One of its test batsmen, Tamim Iqbal, was the Wisden Test Cricketer of the Year in 2010. Another test player, Saqib Al Hasan, is currently the number one all rounder of the world in limited overs cricket. There are a few others who have acknowledged class. Yet when they play together, the results are more often than not, disastrous.

What is sad is in addition to some good talent, we spend a great deal of money for our cricket team. Our cricketers get more or less the same level of coaching and other privileges that cricketers from other countries get.. In fact, the package our national cricketers get is better than some of the countries playing test cricket these days. They also receive public adoration that should have been an added incentive to perform. Cricket has replaced football by a long margin in the context of popularity among the public. Yet our team continues to perform miserably and is on the declining scale.

After the disappointing performance in Zimbabwe where we thought we would win both the test and one-day series comfortably but lost, there was talk of an official inquiry into the state of affairs of our cricket. I am not sure what happened to that. I guess like all inquiries in our country, the call was merely for appeasing the public. Nothing was expected to come out of it and nothing has.

Some of the problems in our cricket are so obvious that one wonders how those in charge can overlook them. Take the Chittagong Test for instance and there were two glaring examples there for seeing the big faults in our cricket. The first example was from the performance of the opening batsmen Nazimuddin. He was a debutant; yet in both innings he showed what our batsmen lacked and what type of experience a Test cricketer should bring to his game. First, he played Test cricket as Test cricket should be played; that it is over 5 days, where a batsman should concentrate on pitch occupation and most definitely not on striking rate. Second, he brought with him experience of playing the longer version of the game that his colleagues did not. Our batsmen play Test cricket in one-day mode that has been the primary cause of their dismal performance

The second example was provided by including Ashraful in the side. After playing nearly 60 Tests and achieving an average of less than 23, it is simply absurd that our sports scribes talk of him as a “legend”. He has been in and out of the Test side on many occasions and was not in the squad for the one-dayers against Pakistan. Yet he was brought into the Test side because there was no one waiting in the wings to replace him. The country simply does not have that system of three days or longer competitions where teams from all over the country would take part so as to provide the selectors with the option to choose test cricketers from a wide selection of players.

The Bangladesh team has one advantage that no other test team at present has. Its cricketers are all very young and have the experience to build the core of an excellent test team. This has not happened for a few reasons. First, the cricketers themselves are responsible for this not happening. Second, an equal responsibility lies with the team management. It has failed the team badly. Finally, there is a responsibility that the country’s sports scribes could have played. They too have failed.

On the issue of the cricketers failing themselves, take the example of Tamim and Saqib, two cricketers who have outstanding class. The way Tamim has played in the Chittagong Test suggests that he lacks cricketing brains. On a first day of a Test match , when the opponents have asked his team to bat, simple common sense dictated that he would hold on to his shots at least for the firsts session. Yet in both innings, he batted like it was a T20 and not a Test! Saquib did better but then he has one atrocious shot called the slog sweep that he has not been able to disband from his array of strokes although he has been out to this stupid shot time and again!

Not long ago, I had written in this column that an infant must first learn to walk before running. Our batsmen are running when they have not learnt to stand properly. They need to learn to defend first before trying to hit the 4s and the 6s. There was a message that Pakistanis wrote large in the Chittagong Test that in test cricket crease occupation is the name of the game. Yet, Saquib came and scored a quick fire 50 where the way Sunny Ilyas played hinted that a score of close to 400 could have been on cards if he, and the senor batsmen played like for example Pakistan’s Asad Shafiq, Taufiq Omar and the others.

The management has singularly failed to inculcate in the minds of our batsmen that Test cricket needs a mindset different from one day version. The attitude problem in the players is unacceptable. They behave like they are “stars” but forget the fact that in a team that loses thy way that the Bangladesh team does, the thought of a star in such a team is absurd. Instead of showing a star like attitude, they should show signs of shame. It is this message that the management has failed to communicate to the players. Their more serious failure is to create the infrastructure required to let a regular supply of players for place in a team that has test playing status. One seriously wonders how many of those who don important positions in our cricket administration really understand cricket in order to give it leadership.

The same goes for our cricket scribes. Like our cricket administrators, many of them have funny ideas of cricket like viewing Ashraful as a “legend.” Between the cricket administrators and scribes , a misperception is often created in the public mind about the ability of our team , like the one before the World Cup, that we had a serious chance in that competition only to have that day dream destroyed by a far below par West Indian team that bowled us for 58!

Bangladesh team has talents. It is quite possible that in the Dhaka Test it may show a glimpse of it or a lot of it. However, unless the mindset of the players, the knowledge and vision of the administrators and the poor knowledge of the cricket scribes show a paradigm shift, even an unexpected show in Dhaka Test would be a mere flash at a pan and would not be sustainable. Without the paradigm shift in each of the above, what would be true is what some frustrated cricket fans had displayed in a large placard to the Bangladesh Team upon their arrival at Dhaka Airport after their disappointing Zimbabwe tour. The placard read: “You cannot plough the field with the goats in place of the bulls”! That is the truth about our current cricketing woes.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Four decades of liberation and need of bipartisanship on national issues to save the country

2011-12-23T07:59:00.001-05:00

The Holiday
December 16, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

As a diplomat abroad, I remember how my Sri Lankan friends regretted their ethnic division that took their country to the doors of doom. Although it has since returned from that predicament, it has been pushed back by many decades from reaching its fullest potentials due to its ethnic problem and division.

These Sri Lankan friends looked at Bangladesh from a perspective that we have not, at great national costs. They would tell me that as a nation, Bangladesh is indeed a creation of God because it has no inbuilt divisions to cause the type of problems that nations like Sri Lanka have faced in their development efforts. Bangladesh has no regional divide. Although there is a religious one where we have nearly 10% of our population who are different from majority 90%, historically there has never been serious communal or inter-religious strife in Bangladesh between the majority Muslims and the minority Hindus.

Our strongest God gifted asset is our ethnicity. We are all Bengalis, an ethnicity we derive from our language of which we are all very proud. We have a few additional advantages too. Of these, the egalitarian nature of our society is one. In Bangladesh, the rich poor divide is not class based as it is in India to a large extent. It is not at all that there are no poor people in Bangladesh. In fact, the vast majority of our people are poor. Nevertheless, the richest man in Dhaka has poor relatives living in the villages. The Zamindari system established after the Permanent Settlement of 1793 that ended in 1950 in the then East Pakistan did create a feudal class in undivided Bengal but the overwhelming majority of the Zamindars were from the Hindus religion.
These strengths came together to unite us in 1971 under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In the history of nations that have fought for freedom, Bangladesh would easily head the list for the quality of the unity we showed in 1971 in fighting for our independence following the clarion call of Bangabandhu. The great and successful revolutions of the last century, like the Russian, the Chinese and the Vietnamese, have all suffered from inner divisions. In our case, barring a handful of misguided Islamists and collaborators of the Pakistani military, 75 million people came together like a monolith that no force then had the power to divide.

Yet four decades down the road, as the nation celebrates the 40th anniversary of its liberation, it is anything but united. The unity that the nation showed the world in 1971 seems to be a dream of a distant past. Today Bangladesh stands broadly but clearly divided between two antagonistic camps, one led by the ruling Awami League and the other by the opposition BNP. The scattering of other smaller parties are allied with one of these two and often show the same antagonism that the members of the two mainstream parties show in public. The division permeates just not to all aspects of our politics but also to all the institutions of the government such as the bureaucracy, and under the present government, even the judiciary.

The main basis of the division is unbelievable and absurd. It is based in the first place on two individuals who in their lifetimes would not have even thought that after they were gone, their names and contributions to Bangladesh’s emergence would cause the nation they helped to create to be divided the way it has. It is our great misfortunes that a nation that was born in fire with such unity has chosen after Bangabandhu and President Ziaur Rahman were killed to divide itself on who was more important in the emergence of Bangladesh and in the process has wasted the opportunity of turning Bangladesh into one of the great success stories in modern nation building. While the two leaders were alive, President Ziaur Rahman had no reason but to accept Bangabandhu as the architect of Bangladesh for it was in his name and direction that he took up arms against Pakistan to liberate the country.

In a post-Mujib and post-Zia Bangladesh, the Awami League is uncompromising on the issue of leadership. It accepts no role for anyone except Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for the emergence of Bangladesh. It is not willing to give any space to any other leader. For the AL, it is a zero-sum game; all credit must go to Sheikh Mujib and none for anyone else. This stance has pushed the BNP to present President Ziaur Rahman, who declared the independence over the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, to claim part of the credit for the emergence of Bangladesh. However unlike the AL stance, the BNP does not claim all credit for emergence of Bangladesh for its leader alone.
If it was left to just claiming credit for their respective leader for emergence of Bangladesh, then perhaps the damage of this conflict could have been contained. Unfortunately, the two parties have allowed this division based on Bangabandhu and President Ziaur Rahman to affect all aspects of political and public life of the country. In creating this division, it has been the Awami League that has taken the lead with the BNP in a reactive role. From the same mindset of the zero-sum game in the context of leadership, the AL has claimed that it alone has contributed to the fight for Bangladesh’s independence and no other party could claim for itself any role in the emergence of Bangladesh.

It did not stop at that. The Awami League has followed this claim to reach at an illogical conclusion. It has claimed that as the party of Sheikh Mujib, the Awami League, its supporters and followers are the pro-liberation forces and those who oppose the Awami League are the anti-liberation elements. The Awami League has used the BNP’s alliance with the Jamat that had opposed the war of liberation to further nail the accusation that it is anti-liberation. In this accusation, the AL has set aside the fact that while opposing the BNP in its 1991-96 term of office; it had shared the same political platform with Jamat led in those days by Gholam Azam.

The Awami League has failed to acknowledge the meaning of its uncompromising stand. First, it makes roughly over half of the voters of the country who are not Awami Leaguers, anti-Bangladeshis! Second, the stand has destroyed the greatest asset we were given by our glorious war of liberation, namely our unity. Finally, it has created the politics of conflict that is now our most formidable obstacle to our development. The most illogical manifestation of this politics of disunity and conflict that is an anathema to the spirit of our liberation is the provision in the constitution it has made recently by being in government by which it is an act of treason to criticize the constitution! The ruling party has not bothered to find out that our constitution written by men is the only one in the world with such a provision, a sanctity given in some countries to books authored only by God!

Newton’s third law of motion says that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The BNP is now following that law, claiming loudly that it is the pro-liberation force and not the AL for which there is ample justification. They are saying that their leader President Ziaur Rahman led the war in the battle field and their supporters stayed in the country to battle it out to win the independence that their opponents cannot claim. This could be for a new dimension to the politics of conflict and could further disunite the country. In the midst of these conflicts, it is just not the unity critical for the country’s welfare that is being destroyed; the contribution of the people of the country for the success of the war of liberation without which or independence would not have been achieved, is being ignored.

Thus as we celebrate the 40th year of our liberation, we need to ask our mainstream parties to end their politics of dividing the country on issues of leadership and so-called pro-liberation and anti-liberation forces. Let these issues be discussed and conclusions reached in the four walls of the academic institutions. Let sanity return to politics where at the minimum, the two mainstream parties should make sincere efforts to achieve bipartisanship on issues of national development and foreign affairs.

The ball for this is in the court of the ruling party. This is the minimum the country expects of them for showing respect to the millions who laid down their lives for our independence. Our martyrs are turning in their graves over the ugly partisanship now being seen in our politics.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan

Bonn Meeting on Afghanistan: Pakistan-US Relations on the brink

2011-12-11T12:15:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
December 11th., 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Pakistan has stayed out of the international conference on Afghanistan’s security and development in Bonn held on 5th of December. The meeting was called to discuss course of action to facilitate the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 to an Afghan Government that would be able to bring peace to the country after US and NATO efforts to eliminate the Taliban and the Al Qaeda that had not just brought the country to ruins but also made the country the headquarter from where to launch terrorist attacks on the US and the West.

The friendship between President George Bush and General Pervez Mosharaff and between the US and Pakistan in the days after 9/11 when Pakistan became the US’ most strategic partner in the war on terror were the best in history of Pakistan-US relations. It is not always that a Pakistani President gets invited to the White House and more especially to a US President’s vacation home as often as was President Moshraff.

President Moshraff, in those hay days of US-Pakistan relationship, was treated in the same level by the US President as world leaders from the most important of the developed world. President Moshraff became a member of the inner circle of friends in the President’s list of close buddies. Pakistan and its military establishment benefitted most from the friendship of the two Presidents and their countries.

A little over a decade from when it all began, those days of warmth in US-Pakistan relationship seems to be events of the distant past. US-Pakistan relations have been on sharp decline ever since the US in obvious distrust of the Pakistan Government, particularly its military and intelligence, took unilateral action and killed Osama Ben Laden in a quarter literally inside Pakistan’s most secure military establishment; its elite military academy at Kakul.

All Pakistan, particularly the military establishment, erupted in anger and shame that the US, its most trusted ally, had infringed in the most blatant way upon the country’s sovereignty. The US, true to its way of conducting diplomacy where interests alone determine diplomatic and military action, did not mince words in accusing Pakistan’s military and intelligence of complicity in hiding Osama Ben Laden. .

The action against Osama Ben Laden took years of skillful and super secret planning and was successful because no one in Pakistan’s military was informed about it. After the initial tough stance in defending its action, President Obama, aware of Pakistan’s importance in bringing peace to Afghanistan and assisting in the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from there by end of 2014, made conciliatory gestures towards Pakistan. He said that no one in Pakistan top military and intelligence brass was involved in hiding Osama Ben Laden. Nevertheless, the way Osama Ben Laden was nabbed left the trust factor between the two hitherto partners in the war on terror almost totally in array.

To make matters worse, US-Pakistan authorities were involved in the case of CIA contractor Raymond Davis who had killed two Pakistanis in Lahore, apparently in self-defense. The Pakistanis tried him for murder and sentenced him to death by refusing to accept him as a diplomatic staff of the US Embassy staff in Islamabad. The case of Raymond Davis caused widespread uproar both in the government and military circles as well as among the public because it underscored the fact that the US spies were operating inside Pakistan at will.

The fallout from the Osama Ben Laden’s killing operation and that of Raymond Davis heightened the tension between the civil and the military in Pakistan. The depth of the tension has been revealed in the memo allegedly written by Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington Hussain Haqqani to the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen to intervene in Pakistan’s politics against the military that it said was conspiring to attempt a military coup to over throw the civilian government.

Admiral Mullen admitted receiving the memo but did not take any action on it on the ground of credibility. The Ambassador has since resigned to save President Asif Zardari embarrassment. Nevertheless, the memo (the incident having been named “memo gate”) highlighted the deep rooted tension in Pakistan between the civil and the military that US’ unilateral actions in Pakistan is only accentuating.

The fragile nature of internal conflict in Islamabad involving the US has been further enhanced when 24 Pakistani soldiers, including 2 officers, were killed by ISAF/NATO air strike attack on November 28th. The US described as an accident which the Pakistan military dismissed with contempt. The Pakistan army described the attack as “an unprovoked attack of blatant aggression.” In retaliation, Pakistan has withdrawn the permission given to NATO to move logistic supplies across the border to Afghanistan. It also gave CIA notice to withdraw from Shamsi air base in Pakistan northwest from where the US was sending the drones into Pakistan’s tribal areas in attempts at eliminating the Taliban elements.

All these developments coincided in encouraging Pakistan to stay out of the Bonn international conference on Afghanistan’s security and development. US Secretary of State expressed regret at Pakistan’s decision to stay out of the Bonn meeting, stating that the meeting had been planned much ahead of the NATO airstrikes and that Pakistan was aware of the importance of the meeting.

In the exchanges on the NATO airstrikes, the military was clearly visible taking the decisions on critical issues on Pakistan’s cooperation with the US not as partners on the war on terror but as antagonists. In the weeks and months leading to the present state of Pakistan-US relations, the US had left no doubt what it thought of Pakistan. It had openly accused Pakistan’s military and intelligence of helping the enemy with intelligence in the efforts of US and ISAF/NATO troops in taking out Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan’s impregnable northwest. Pakistan’s patronization of the Haqqani network in Afghanistan is an open secret. Clearly, the element of trust between the two countries is today all but gone.

The decision of Pakistan to stay out of Bonn has brought to surface not just deep fissures in Pakistan’s partnership in the US led war on terror but few other negatives as well. It has started the process of the parting of ways between the Pakistan’s military and intelligence and their US and NATO counterparts at a very inconvenient time for the United States. The situation in Afghanistan is hardly the way the US and its allies would have liked with the Taliban in resurgence and President Hamid Karzai hardly in control. The US and NATO forces have just till the end of 2014 to withdraw. Because of Pakistan’s undeniable importance in any eventual peaceful resolution of the US led war on terror, the rupture of US-Pakistan security and intelligence cooperation can only put into jeopardy an acceptable exit of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Hence, Pakistan’s decision to stay out of Bonn has put the US in a difficult predicament.

Pakistan’s civilian government was nevertheless relieved to have stayed out of the Bonn meeting where they would have been subjected to severe criticism for their active support of Taliban forces in Afghanistan and for an explanation about Osama Ben Laden being found inside Pakistan’s security clad military academy at Kakul. It has also saved the civilian government of Pakistan the need to take a stand in an international gathering against allies led by the United States who violated Pakistan’s sovereignty with the killing of the 24 Pakistani soldiers but instead of being apologetic about it would have been critical of Pakistan for its covert support to the Taliban.

These developments do not augur well for US-Pakistan relationship and for US and western involvement in Afghanistan. It seems like the dog’s crooked tail, Afghanistan is going back to what it was before it all began after 9/11. Events are also highlighting the historical truth about the country that foreign forces never succeed in that country.

The writer is a retired diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan

Four minutes ends 400 years of united Dhaka

2011-12-11T12:12:00.001-05:00

As I See It
The Independent
December 10th., 2011
M. Serajul Islam

The Prime Minister has said if the Government had money, it would have split Dhaka city into four. Her concerns are to give the people the best service and splitting is the best way to provide this service. She believes that splitting an organization such as a municipality or a corporation that provides public service is the best way to increase its effectiveness.

Coming from the Prime Minister, there is no reason to think of the contrary as far as her concerns go. Nevertheless, there are a few issues that the Prime Minister has not considered before the decision to split Dhaka. In the first place, this decision has lacked transparency. Dhaka is after all the capital city of the country. Everybody in the city and the country has a legitimate stake in what happens to it.

For the city to be divided in consultations limited only between the Prime Minister and the Ministry of LGRD by taking the people of Dhaka for granted is to say the least, highly improper and un-democratic. For the Prime Minister and her Minister for LGRD to tell them that they know what is better for Dhaka and they should accept that without question is not right.

There are people and groups living in Dhaka who have expert knowledge about city matters. There are people and groups here who know the legal implications of dividing a city. Then there are people and groups too in Dhaka who know about environmental issues. The opinion of these people has not been taken. Then there are some members of parliament from Dhaka city who have not spoken; nor were they consulted, at least not in public knowledge.

From a common individual’s point of view, the first obvious question that comes to mind is how do you divide Dhaka? From a physical point of view, certain world capitals have a natural advantage. Cairo for instance is naturally divided by the River Nile. Seoul is divided by the River Hangang. Yet those in power to decide never thought of doing to these cities, that are much bigger than Dhaka, what we have done to ours because there are so many better ways of providing the service that the Prime Minister has given as the main cause for the division.

One very simple way would have been to re-organize the wards. The 56 wards of Dhaka City Corporation could have been grouped into 4 divisions (to suit the Prime Minister’s fond wish!). Each could have been placed under a Vice-Mayor and given enough powers and money to provide the services that is the Prime Minister’s major concern and retain them under the Dhaka City Corporation under a Dhaka City Mayor. In this way, the Prime Minister’s concerns could have been met and Dhaka could have been kept united. Tokyo City Government could have been an ideal example to emulate. Tokyo too has a 400 years’ history. The city government works under an elected Governor and the city’s large number of wards are each placed under a mayor.

Yet the Government of Japan has not split Tokyo into two or four or whatever. In fact, in 1943, the Tokyo city and the Tokyo prefecture came together to form Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) under a Governor with an Assembly whose members are elected directly by the citizens of Tokyo. TMG has under it 23 wards, cities and villages that make up Tokyo with adequate manpower and resources to provide services to the people of Tokyo at their door steps. At the same time, it has made the elected Governor of TMG very powerful to be able to coordinate with all Mayors in the city of Tokyo effectively and with adequate muscles to get from the Government of Japan all the resources it needs for the services it provides. By dividing Dhaka, a weak Dhaka City Corporation has been made weaker and the divided structures would have more difficulty getting from the Government resources and hence more difficulty in providing the services the citizens need.

The Government’s stance that it has divided Dhaka for better services is a palpably weak one. Even a weaker argument is the one that says it would save people travelling a long distance to the present Nagar Bhavan from the northern locations of the city. On the issue of services, the main ones the citizen of Dhaka need are water, electricity and law and order. Not one of these is given by the City Corporation. If they have any role in such services, it is only on paper. On the issue of saving citizens travelling hassles, none of us or may be a few have gone inside the Nagar Bhavan ever. The need to go there is limited. Only those who own a house or property in Dhaka have the need to go there. When that need arises, most citizens of Dhaka use someone who works for them to do the needful, often by paying bribes.

Dividing Dhaka would not help in solution of problems in anyway whatever. The problems it would create are so obvious that it is strange why and how the government has turned a blind eye to these problems. Apart from one problem mentioned earlier in this piece, namely where to draw the line of division, other problems are which Dhaka would own the present Nagar Bhavan? Where would be the new Nagar Bhavan for the new Dhaka? Where would the present manpower of Dhaka City Corporation go? Would it not mean creating a similar structure with the same manpower for the new city corporation? Has anybody estimated the extra costs that could be a huge?

It is no doubt that these questions must have come up in the minds of those who divided Dhaka. Yet they sidetracked these problems. This raises the obvious question: why have they? The answer to this question is also obvious: politics. The AL is looking at the next elections. What they see cannot be at all promising. Its failure to deliver on the election promises and all round poor governance is causing widespread criticism from its own ranks while helping strengthen opposition ranks. The failures of AL candidates in city elections in Chittagong and Naryangang have sent warning signals to the party. A failure in a united Dhaka mayoral election, that looked very likely, would have been politically disastrous.

Dividing Dhaka and having administrators sympathetic to the party in place would allow the ruling party the advantage it needs to win. Further, a divided Dhaka would give the AL a much better chance of winning in the part where old Dhaka with its Hindu citizens would fall. To assure a 100% commitment of Hindu voters, Suranjit Sen Gupta who had spoken for annulment of the Vested Property Act has been made a Minister and the Act has been annulled.

In a hurry to divide Dhaka, the Government has weakened its own argument against the caretaker government. The Government has argued that the unelected nature of the caretaker government make elections under it un-democratic. Yet it has now opted to hold elections for the two Dhakas under unelected administrators in place of the elected Mayor. The Government has unwittingly also got caught in practicing double standard. What is worse, it seems not to care!

United Dhaka’s demise defies logic. It is also frustrating. Nevertheless, the resilient citizens in Dhaka are dealing with this strange decision with a bit of humour and a premonition. In a talk show, one participant said if Dhaka had become too big in the four decades of independence to make its division under two Mayors necessary for better service then the country should also be divided into two and placed under two Prime Ministers for it has grown two times in the last forty years to govern effectively! The premonition is on the time it took to adopt the bill dividing Dhaka in parliament and another bill in 1974. The fourth amendment or the BAKSAL bill was passed in 9 minutes and the bill on Dhaka, 4 minutes!

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

Should Dhaka trust Delhi on Tipaimukh?

2011-12-11T12:05:00.002-05:00

The Holiday
December 9th, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Two Advisers of the Prime Minister, Dr. Mashiur Rahman and Dr. Gowher Rizvi have been assured by the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh when they met him in New Delhi that India would not harm Bangladesh with the proposed Tippaimukh Dam. He said that the agreement signed between the National Hydro Power Corporation, Manipur Government and Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam on October 22 is to build a hydro-electricity project.

The Indian Prime Minister also offered Bangladesh a stake in the proposed project under cross border power cooperation among SAARC countries to draw electricity from the project. Dr. Singh said that there would be consultations between the two sides so that Bangladesh would know that the proposed dam would not harm it.

The assurances are convincing but only on face value. However the Indians had assured Bangladesh twice in the past at the highest political level that it would do nothing at Tippaimukh that would harm it. This assurance was first given to Sheikh Hasina when she visited New Delhi in January, 2010.

Dr. Manmohon Singh reiterated this assurance more forcefully when he visited Dhaka in September this year. The spirit of the assurances was clear. India would take Bangladesh on board for whatever it did at Tippaimukh. This the Indians did not translate into reality. It went ahead and signed the agreement to construct the Tippaimukh Dam without informing Bangladesh. It was only when the news was broken in the Indian media did Bangladesh come to know that India had gone ahead and signed the agreement.

Slow to get confirmed

Bangladesh’s efforts to gain confirmation of media reports in India were slow in coming. When it came, the Indians saw no fault in signing the agreement without informing Bangladesh. Bangladesh was asked to look at the website of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for details. A spokesman of MEA gave a written response to Bangladesh’s concern later in which it was said that India would not harm Bangladesh.

Thus before the Advisers visited India, the Indians did not feel that there was any reason to keep Bangladesh informed over it. As a consequence, the news took Bangladesh by surprise. It is not just the opposition but the civil society and environmental groups came together to oppose the dam because serious bipartisan concerns remain in the minds of majority of Bangladeshis over the dam. Sheikh Hasina herself expressed concern when she said in parliament that she would not allow any harm to come to Bangladesh.

There are a few serious issues that make it difficult to feel the comfort that Dr. Gowher Rizvi has express in the media on Indian assurance after returning from New Delhi. The first worrying point is why the Indians did not keep Bangladesh in the picture and why it had to send two Advisers and a Special Envoy waiting to go to New Delhi. It is not that the Indians are not aware about Bangladesh’s concerns. No matter how convincingly the Indian Prime Minister tries to assure Bangladesh now, the way they have dealt with it on the latest situation over the Tippaimukh issue tends to suggest that Delhi takes Dhaka for granted and treats it condescendingly – a major irritant that has stood in the way of sustainable friendly relations between the two countries.

Unequal partners
The India treatment of Bangladesh has actually angered people like noted newsman Kuldip Nayyar and formed Indian foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey. In fact, the latter has put it on record that “the attitude of most Indian political leaders, senior officials, business magnates and strategic thinkers towards Bangladesh has been one of disdain and apathy.” One cannot help feeling the same attitude in what the Indian Prime Minister has said to the two Advisers. If the Indians respected Bangladesh then in the first place they would not have gone ahead and decided on the construction of the dam keeping Bangladesh out of the loop and in the second place, they would have sent a Special Envoy to Bangladesh instead of Dhaka’s sending two Advisers and waiting to send a Special Envoy! At the least, the Indian Prime Minister could have expressed regret for not informing Bangladesh before signing the agreement.

The Indian Prime Minister’s assurances now do not do anything to the element of trust that his government has broken with Bangladesh. He of all persons should know what the Indians have done to Bangladesh by withdrawing the Teesta Agreement off the table after giving us assurances that it would be signed in Dhaka during his visit. Then why should he forget his major faux pas and then an official apology with his insensitive and absurd statement that 25% of Bangladeshis are anti-Indian and under influence of Pakistan’s ISI?

It is just not the Indian Prime Minister who has been insensitive and disdainful towards Bangladesh in recent times. It has been so all along in the relations between the two countries. As the much smaller neighbour, the record shows quite clearly that it is Bangladesh that has always gone ahead first and made concessions to India. The Indians either did not match Bangladesh’s concessions or in other instances, promised to match the concessions and then reneged.

Broken promises

Take for instance the 1974 India-Bangladesh border agreement. Bangladesh kept its part of the agreement within months of signing the agreement. The Indians did not, on one pretext or another. Teen Bigha corridor was agreement bound to be handed to Bangladesh under the 1974 agreement in exchange of Berubari. Bangladesh has now been given 24 hours access through it to its enclaves of Dahagram and Angorpota but not the right to own it. Absurdly, Bangladesh negotiators have acclaimed this 24 hours’ access as a mark of success of their negotiations!

Bangladesh allowed the Indians trial run for 40 days on the Farakkha Barrage. Indians perpetuated that unilaterally till Bangladesh was able to reach an agreement in 1996. For 22 years, the Indians dried the northern part of Bangladesh by holding back the water of the Ganges illegally. In 1992, Bangladesh withdrew tariffs against Indian goods under the SAPTA Agreement. The Indians, who were supposed to reciprocate, did not. Bangladesh has been pleading for India to do since then without much success. In fact, there is a litany of such broken promises by India in the history of Bangladesh-India relations.

Even in the backdrop of such a history, Sheikh Hasina risked her political career and gave India unilateral concessions on two critical areas to Indian interests, namely security and land transit. Instead of feeling embarrassed that Bangladesh again gave the concessions expecting to see the Indian heart for its legitimate rights on water, trade and a host of other bilateral issue. Instead it was shown the same face by India, that it could not be trusted. India did what is a pattern in Bangladesh-India relations. It reneged on the Teesta and now on Tippaimukh.
The Indian Prime Minister, after his latest “assurance” to Bangladesh, has said in Manipur that the project has been accorded environmental clearance and he has asked concerned Ministries to pursue World Bank funding for it. So what is India going to discuss with Bangladesh on Tippaimukh except re-iterating that it knows what is best for Bangladesh, a view that the Bangladesh government has accepted obligingly?

The BSF betrayal

For another Indian “assurance”, it is the same story; the same pattern. Only two weeks ago, the BSF beat to death another Bangladeshi and kept his body in a field for all to watch. Yet in the Joint Statement of the recently concluded Bangladesh-India Home Secretary level talks, it was the Indian concern that Bangladesh Border Guards should refrain from indiscriminate firing that was reflected ahead of ours! Bangladesh’s policy on India cannot any longer be called subservient. It is worse.
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The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

Egypt goes to polls: Is democracy near?

2011-12-04T10:23:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
December 4th., 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Egyptians have started the process to elect 444 members of their lower house in parliament through a complicated system of election that is partly under the single constituency system (44 seats) but mostly under the proportional system (400 seats). The mathematics involved is complicated that most Egyptians do not fully understand.

Nevertheless, they have gone excitedly into it, at least the majority of them. The elections for the lower house first and then for the upper house would be staggered over the next three months. It would then be followed in the middle of next year with the Presidential elections to elect the successor of ousted President Hosne Mubarak’s successor whose 29 years’ absolute rule ended last February as part of what has been named Arab Spring that has seen dictators in Lebanon, Libya and Yemen also fall and others like Syria’s Bashir Asad in extreme pressure to relinquish power or be ousted.

The Egyptians have gone to a free and fair election for the first time in living memory. In fact the last free election was in 1952! Three decades under President Mubarak left Egyptians believing their deliverance from dictatorship would never end. It was the suicide of an unknown youth in Tunisia that set into motion forces to bring down dictatorships in the region with a domino effect that has sent President Mubarak to jail and opened great possibilities for Egypt.

However, the Egyptians are not sure, nor are outsiders watching the changes in Egypt, what shape the new political system emerging in Egypt would take as the military junta that assumed power after the fall of President Mubarak seem to have a few cards up their sleeve. The movement that brought down President Mubarak was a genuine one where people of all walks of life and profession, young and old, came together. Tahrir Square became synonymous with the desire of 80 million Egyptians to be free at last.

Just before the elections began, the military junta killed 42 people who had started a new round of movement, with Tahrir Square as their meeting point, to push the military junta out. The reason was the attitude of the military that wanted to have a major role in the system to replace the one left by President Mubarak. They have openly talking of the Turkish model or a new one in the new Egyptian political order to evolve.

The desires of those who gathered in the Arab streets in the days of the Arab Spring no doubt had the notions of replacing their dictatorial orders by democratic ones. Unfortunately for them, the dictators that they sought to replace had been in power too long who had systematically destroyed all the institutions except those that they needed to retain their power.

Thus when President Mubarak fell, all institutions except the military and security had been weakened and compromised. The parliament had been turned into a rubber stamp. The official political party of the President, the National Democratic Alliance, consisted of sycophants whose main duty was to sing the praise of the President. All other political parties and all forms of opposition were either disbanded or under constant threat of the security forces. Many Egyptians over the last 3 decades of Mubarak’s rule simply vanished into thin air after being nabbed by the security.

Thus after President Mubarak was removed, there were no political leaders or institutions except the military to take over the political mantle. Those who led the movement in Tahrir came together as individuals or loosely knit groups. The only political party that had succeeded in keeping itself together under President Mubarak, the Freedom and Democratic Party of the Muslim Brotherhood, knew that although they had roughly 20% of support among the Egyptians, they needed time and space to come to power because of the essential secular character of the majority of the Egyptians.

For these reasons, the military junta has managed to not just retain power but have maneuvered their position to be able to choose the time and date for the parliamentary and presidential elections. The military in Egypt has an advantage in addition to their strong organization against weak political groups/parties now vying for power. The Egyptian military has acceptability among the people. In fact, some of the heroes of modern Egypt have emerged from the military. The builder of modern Egypt Gamal Nasser for instance was a Colonel of the Egyptian Army. Hosne Mubarak too was an Egyptian hero having led his country’s Air Force in the 1973 war with Israel. So was Anwar Sadat but although he won a Noble Peace Prize, he lost credibility to Egyptians by signing the peace accord with Israel.

At this stage, it appears like in the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra conservative Salafis would emerge as the largest winners. The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to have a taste of political power. In anticipation of that, it stayed away from the latest agitation at Tahrir Square to overthrow the military just before the elections to keep the military happy because the latter’s credibility and future role in Egyptian politics would depend on successful transfer of power to an elected government.

The US has no doubt lost badly in Egypt as a consequence of the Arab Spring. There is little to no likelihood of another Hosne Mubarak emerging who would take up US’ and Israel’s case in the Arab world. Nevertheless, the US still provides the Egyptian military US$ 1.5 billion a year in aid and hence has great influence over it. The US’ has a few options to come into reckoning in the new political system in the process of emerging. First, it could back the military and encourage a major role for it in the new Egypt. Given the fact that the Egyptian military is almost completely pro-American in terms of its equipments and training of its officers cadre, a major role for the military in future politics of Egypt would serve US interests the best.

A second option for the US could be to work with the Islamic parties and mould them to consider the US as their best ally for developing the new Egypt. The US has accepted the recent elections in Tunisia where the moderate Islamic party Ennahda has won. The problem in backing the Islamic parties in Egypt who are like Ennahda would be in two areas. First, these parties are overtly anti-Israeli that they would project more if they come to power because it is also the sentiment in Egyptian and Arab streets. Second, the Islamic parties of Egypt have already offered the olive branch to Tehran that would run against the US’ strategy in the region.

The first option would be difficult to implement because the common Egyptians have come very strongly against the military. A predominant political role for the military in Egypt is a dream from the past that the Arab Spring has made irrelevant. The second option would align the US with the current mood in the Arab world and could earn back for the US the acceptance it lost under President Bush and with the pro-US dictators being pushed out of office by the Arab Spring. A solution of the Palestinian problem could take care of the anti-Israel stance and give the US renewed standing in the Arab world to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat in the second option.

However in an election year in the USA with President Obama under serious pressure as he seeks a second term, the chances of the US aligning with the Islamic forces are not good at all. The Israeli lobby and the Republicans would tie a knot around President Obama over it and drag him out of the White House. At the same time, a clear political alignment in Egypt would take the whole of 2010 to emerge. Till that happens, the US and the world would be looking at Egypt for answers.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

On Long March and Democracy

2011-12-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

As I See It
The Independent
December 3rd., 2011
M. Serajul Islam
The BNP has just completed the third of its Long Marches. This one was in Khulna and has passed by peacefully. The two previous ones at Rajshahi and Sylhet too were peaceful.

There were widespread speculations before the BNP came out with its decision on the Long Marches that the country would slide to a long period of political instability when the dreaded hartals would again return to make our lives hell. The fear of the return of the hartal was encouraged by a series of actions of the government that were to say the least, provocative. Among these was the annulment of the system of caretaker government and the introduction of the system of interim government to hold the next elections.

The introduction of the interim government as the mechanism to replace the caretaker government has been put in the Constitution through the 15th amendment. Under this new system, the incumbent Prime Minister would be heading the administration as head of an interim government under which the next elections would be held. The interim Prime Minister would have a smaller cabinet but the Ministers of that small cabinet would be chosen by him/her and obviously would be from his/her party.

The fact that the first interim government under the 15th amendment would be an Awami League administration under Sheikh Hasina is not all of the bad news for the BNP. The administration has been turned into an institution meanwhile where it is now headed by bureaucrats loyal to the Awami League. The blue print of a district and police administration at the district level and below headed by those loyal to the ruling party has already been laid.

The Election Commission (EC) upon which a major part of the hopes of a free and fair election has been placed, in theory of course, is about to be changed at the top level of its administration. The incumbent Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and his two Commissioners would be completing their terms early next year. There is news in the media that the choice of appointing new faces in their places would not be taken in consultation with the Opposition. Thus soon, the EC would also be manned, in all probability, by those whose loyalty to the ruling party would be above any doubt.

The implications of all these have recently been laid out clearly by the CEC. In a recent speech he made at the American Chamber of Commerce, the CEC felt that a free and fair election would be impossible under the system that has been put into place by the 15th amendment. He very clearly and unequivocally put it on record that the next general election must be held under a system of neutral, non-party caretaker government for it to be free and fair.

The CEC, by what he said in the speech, destroyed the arguments that the ruling party has been making in favour of the next election under the interim government. He did not feel that the free and fair elections of the local government under the EC were enough for a free and fair general election by it under the interim government. He felt that the element of distrust in the mainstream parties for one another ruled out the possibility of a national election under a government where one of the mainstream parties would have the control of the entire administration and in a position to influence the EC. He felt that the culture of accepting defeat in the elections has not evolved in our politics. A party in a position to influence results in its favour cannot be expected to do otherwise.

The CEC’s assessment of the mainstream parties, of the ruling party and the opposition BNP in particular, is extremely pessimistic. Nevertheless, he may not be entirely correct in his sweeping assessment. If he was fully correct, then the BNP would not be acting as it has so far in opposing the interim government for holding the next general elections. The BNP has said categorically that it would not go for elections under an interim government headed by the ruling party.

Yet the BNP has not gone for hartal that would have been natural from the assessment of the CEC to be correct and the way the mainstream parties have done politics. It has instead held meetings and demonstrations for opposing the Interim Government. It has arranged the Long Marches for articulating their opposition and public support against the Interim Government and in favour of the Caretaker Government.

In the past, the BNP as well as the AL have both resorted to hartals for flimsy reasons. In fact, in the past BNP Government, the AL had resorted to hartals for trivial reasons on so many days that no one was counting. During the final days of the last BNP Government, the AL added to the hartals, mahashamabesh and brought to a standstill not just the political life of the country but also the day to day lives of the people. They did so as they felt that as the BNP was conspiring to return to office by having a Chief Justice of its liking as the Head of the caretaker government. In the end, the AL succeeded in its objective but the hartals and the mahashamabesh eventually led to the emergency that pushed back the country decades in its development efforts.

To stop Justice MA Hassan from becoming the head of the caretaker government for which the AL indulged in “lagatar hartals” and mahashamabesh, the BNP is being asked to go to next elections under an administration where not just the head of the interim government would be an Awami Leaguer; everyone in the election process would be Awami Leaguers, AL supporters, activists and loyalists. Against such an eventuality that at this stage looks assured as it has been enshrined in the Constitution, the BNP’s decision to opt for demonstrations and the Long March must be welcomed as a sign of victory for democracy. In this context, the Prime Minister’s statement that she would ask the law enforcing agencies to find out the owners of the cars who participated in the Long March is unfortunate. As a champion of democracy, she should have welcomed the BNP’s option for the peaceful Long March instead of hartal.

The BNP’s decision to go for Long March is a victory for democracy. However, it would be not entirely correct to give the BNP all the credit for it. The BNP has simply taken note and paid heed to the sentiments of the people who have finally succeeded in communicating to at least the BNP in opposition that they consider hartal as anti-democratic and harmful for the people and the country. Only when we see the Awami League acting the same way with hartal when it goes to the opposition can we the people feel that we have been able to bury hartal for good. The country has paid too heavy a price with hartal. The BNP’s option for the Long March in place of hartal is at the moment the only bright spot in a dark political sky.

There is a postscript to the Long March. A major political faux pas by the government on dividing Dhaka city has created widespread and bipartisan anger and anguish in the capital and the country that has tempted the BNP to call a hartal in Dhaka on Sunday, the 6th. This is a hartal that the people of Dhaka may not entirely disapprove because the decision to divide Dhaka has been taken arrogantly and without consultation. It just took just 4 minutes to pass the bill in parliament where none of the representatives the people of Dhaka elected to parliament, numbering close to a dozen, even spoke! The 4 minutes to divide the 400 year old city reminded people that the BAKSAL amendment had taken the same time to adopt in the parliament!

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

Delhi’s betrayal and Dhaka’s incredible reaction over Tipai

2011-12-02T00:48:00.001-05:00

HOLIDAY
December 2nd, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Well known and acclaimed Indian journalist Kuldip Nayyar called the Indian decision to construct the Tippaimukh Dam a break of trust. He then wrote a scathing article in one of the leading newspapers of Dhaka where he blamed India for failing to match Bangladesh on the major concessions that Prime Minster Sheikh Hasina made to India. Teesta to him was a major disappointment and now the decision on Tippaimukh is a letdown of major significance.

The Indian journalist also wrote that Sheikh Hasina’s popularity is on a sharp decline. Indian letdown is adding to her current predicament. He however felt that despite the Indian letdown, the anti-Indian feelings in Bangladesh have not increased. He gave high marks to Sheikh Hasina for her firm commitment to secularism.

Hasina’s political risk
Sheikh Hasina had taken great political risks by giving India assurances from day one of her tenure against terrorism and insurgency and subsequently by handing over the ULFA terrorists to India, albeit secretly. Bangladesh also offered India land transit early in Sheikh Hasina’s present tenure that has gone to operation on a trial basis recently. At literally the 11th hour, indeed the evening before the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka, the Indians withdrew from the table the agreement on the Teesta after assuring Bangladesh that the deal would be the icing on the cake for celebrating the success of the Indian Prime Minister’s visit. Thus the visit of the Indian Prime Minister ended disappointingly.

Now the news about the Tippaimukh Dam and the manner in which the Indians have treated Bangladesh when it sought news on the Dam has added salt to the injury. It is not that the Indians did not know the bipartisan feelings in Bangladesh against the Tippaimukh Dam or fears about it. The recent earthquake of major significance in Sikkim close to Bangladesh has only enhanced public concerns and fears over the Tippaimukh Dam.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had more than convincingly communicated this to the Indian Government during her official visit to New Delhi in January, 2010. Her concerns and those of Bangladesh were duly reflected in the Joint Communiqué of that visit. The Indian Prime Minister again acknowledged the concerns of Bangladesh when he spoke to a cross section of Bangladesh’s intelligentsia in Dhaka University.

Thus the news that India would build the dam has caused widespread concern and anger in Bangladesh. The Prime Minister herself vowed that she and her government would not allow the Indians to do anything that would harm Bangladesh. She announced in parliament that she would send a Special Envoy to India to discuss with the Indians the concerns of Bangladesh on the Tippaimukh Dam.

Unbelievable Govt. stance
Yet against the Prime Minister’s stand, strange as it may seem, there have been some unbelievable statements in the press from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Water Resources. The State Minister of Water Resources in an interview to a local TV station said that it is India’s internal matter whether or not it decides to construct a dam at Tippaimukh. He then went to say something absolutely incredible. He said that India has the right to do whatever it pleases with any of the international rivers we share with it as the lower riparian. By his incredible stand he gave away Bangladesh’s rights under international laws and conventions of waters of all rivers flowing to Bangladesh from India! He said that the opposition is playing politics with the issue of Tippaimukh.

The Foreign Ministry, instead of contradicting the suicidal comments of the State Minister, backed him instead. In a press interview at the MFA, the Foreign Minister thought that the hue and cry raised over the Tippaimukh Dam are unwarranted and that it is part of the opposition ploy to fiddle in troubled waters. She assured the nation that there is no reason to doubt Indian intentions. India, she has no doubt, would not harm Bangladesh. The Foreign Secretary also joined his Minister and addressed the media to assure that India can and must be trusted!

There is clearly a major disconnect between the Prime Minister and her team. By implication, her team is telling her that she too should have full trust in India! They are not bothered that India has dismissed our concern over Tippaimukh by a curt reply to go to the MEA’s website for details about the dam. To them, trusting India is more important than finding out, first why India chose to go ahead with the dam without informing Bangladesh and second, whether or not the dam when eventually built would harm Bangladesh!

The Indian arrogance has infuriated many well known Indians like Kuldip Nayyar. Yet such arrogance has not had any impact on our team that is currently dealing with India. In fact, they are, accepting each act of Indian betrayal as proof of Indian friendship and concern for us. They have given to India the guardianship to decide our interests and have written our rights off even to question Indian intent.

The outcome of all these are going to take Bangladesh and India at directions of conflict instead of friendship. Kuldip Nayyar is right in expressing his concerns at Indian attitude that is causing Bangladesh-India relations to fall apart and pushing the ruling party on a steep decline politically. . He is however mistaken in thinking that it is not causing anti-Indian feelings to grow. In fact, today, the anti-Indian feelings are growing faster than Kuldip Nayyar may be willing to admit.
Indian arrogance is rendering justification to the BNP’s anti-Indian stance in politics that could have been contained if the Indians had not been as insensible and insensitive as they have been. Many in the AL camp are also beginning to question Indian intentions. In the process, a great widow of opportunity opened by Sheikh Hasina upon assuming power for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations is also being wasted.

Hidden agenda
A former colleague with first hand experience about Bangladesh-India relations asked me bluntly why India first aborted the Teesta agreement and now unilaterally went ahead with Tippaimukh fully aware that it would place a government both covertly and overtly out to please it in political trouble. I had no answer except blame it upon the dynamics of domestic politics in India. He disagreed. He said firmly that the Indians have some hidden agenda for which they are subjecting the Bangladesh Government to pressure. He had me thinking. Is India changing sides aware that the Government, as Kuldip Nayyar has written, has made a mess of governance? Or is India trying to force this government to sign some agreement with which it could hold the next government responsible to serve its interests?

There is a postscript to Bangladesh’s absurd ways of negotiating with India. The Minister for Water Ramesh Chandra Sen has said Bangladesh would take India to the international court for protecting its interests! Does he know what his Deputy has said in public or the trust that the Foreign Minister and the Foreign Secretary has in India? Perhaps not. Our negotiators are behaving like children lost in a maze without grasp of reality in their pursuit to please India at any cost.
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The writer is a retired career diplomat and former Ambassador to Japan.

65 million collaborators? An immortal piece

2011-11-27T12:57:00.001-05:00

The Holiday
Enayetullah Khan Memorial issue
November 25, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Time is incredible. It passes fast, the good times too fast. Memories compensate part of it. It helps us remember those good times that have passed so fast that we were not able to enjoy those times as we would have liked. As we observe the sixth death anniversary of Mr. Enayetullah Khan’s and record our memories about him, it is hard to convince ourselves that; in fact he left us for his eternal home six years ago.

There are too many memories about him that he has left behind among his friends and admirers. He lived a good and full life but sadly he was taken away from our midst at a time when he could have contributed so much more. But then the ways of the Almighty are mysterious. It is not for us ordinary mortals to understand His ways, let alone question them.

I knew Mr. Enayetulllah Khan or Mintu Bhai but mostly as an admirer. My last conversation with him was when I was Ambassador to Japan. He had gone there on a visit. I guess it was in 2004 or 2005. I came to know he was in town only the day before he was leaving. I could not invite him to dinner but only spoke with him over the phone. He was very happy that I called and regretted that we could not meet.

As a student and a teacher in Dhaka University in the 1960s, Holiday was a weekly that was a must reading for us. I don’t remember I missed any issue during those tumultuous years leading to the uprising of the students in 1969 and the liberation war in 1971. Holiday played a great role in preparing us for the liberation of our country.

Mr. Enayetulllah Khan’s editorials and the way he guided his weekly was a credit to the man. But then those days, there were many other newspapers that played significant roles in our fight for our rights, many more than the Holiday. His role to eternal fame was because of one article that he dared to write in the days after our independence when the dream for which many millions had willingly accepted martyrdom was being betrayed.

That article that he had poignantly titled “Sixty Five Million Collaborators?” was written at a time when the credit for our heroic war of liberation was hijacked by those who fled to India and had taken sanctuary there for fear of the genocide to which the people of Bangladesh were subjected by a Pakistani army that wanted to instill the fear of God amongst us not to think again of independence or right of self determination.

Bangladesh’s war of liberation was one that stands qualitatively in a class of its own among the many such wars and movements that were carried out in the years after the end of the Second World War as part of the process of decolonization across the world. Pakistan military government’s refusal to accept the electoral verdict and hand power to the Awami League was one of the worst recorded betrayals of democracy that has never been answered. When the military junta declared the AL’s electoral victory null and void, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took over the mantle of leadership of 75 million Bengalis and was catapulted from a Pakistani politician to the level of a world leader.

He united 75 million people of Bangladesh with his speech on 7th March, 1971 with his speech at the historical Course Maidan of Dhaka, like few other leaders in history. Great revolutions of our times, like the Chinese, the Russian, the Cuban and the Vietnamese, to name a few, were successful and owed a great deal to those who led them, like Mao Tse Tung, Lenin, Castro and Ho Chi Min. Yet none of these leaders were able to unite their peoples as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had with his own. After his March 7th speech, there were just handful of collaborators and misguided Islamists who were not with him. He instilled in the hearts of his people the courage to rise above the fear of life to fight for freedom.

Then came the genocidal crackdown of the Pakistani army beginning on midnight of March 25th, 1971. Such was the savagery of their attack that 10 million of our people were forced to flee the country and seek sanctuary in India. Of those who remained, hundreds of thousands were killed. Those lucky to survive were literally prisoners on death row. The Pakistani military raped many thousands of our women who remained in the country.

Yet, the 65 million who remained were inspired by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s call of independence. They were also inspired by the Mukti Bahini that was led among others by great freedom fighters like Major Ziaur Rahman who had declared independce of Bangladesh on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman over Swadhin Bangla Radio on the night of 25th March after the Pakistani genocide had started. The freedom fighters were joined by defectors from Pakistani army, police and other para military forces and ordinary folks who chose to remain inside Bangladesh and face the marauding Pakistani army and fight them.

The support the freedom fighters received from the people who remained is stuff that make up fairy tales that speaks of their love for their motherland. There is the story in Newsweek that I still remember that reported an action of the Pakistani army. A unit of the Pakistan Army had hauled a few dozen old and middle aged men (the young had joined the freedom movement) and had asked them for information of freedom fighters who had the previous day carried out a guerilla attack that had killed a Pakistani soldier. Those who were hauled were shot one after another. Yet no one revealed the name of one freedom fighter although they knew who the freedom fighters were and embraced death as martyrs.

When the country was liberated, the 10 million who had crossed into India returned. They were insensitive. They pointed fingers at those who stayed back. They used the excuse of the few who had collaborated with the Pakistan army to accuse the 65 million people that they had left behind to face the Pakistan military. The infamous phrase “16th Division” was coined then, a phrase that described those who fled to India to save their lives and who came back to claim the honour of the liberators. The action of these 16 divisioners were not confronted; rather the government of the time credited them and to many of them, gave the certificate of a freedom fighter that they converted into lucrative government jobs from which most of them retired at the highest level of the civil bureaucracy. The present government has extended that privilege to their children!

Mr. Enayetullah Khan’s article “65 million collaborators?” was written to articulate the frustration of people whose sufferings during the 9 months were just not acknowledged; people who were accused for lack of patriotism by those who fled on the first sight of danger. Unique as has our war of independence been in terms of courage and leadership; it has been equally unique in terms of the way the dividends of independence have been distributed. Those who faced death but never betrayed their faith in the liberation of the country have been questioned for lack of patriotism and those who decided that their lives were more important and crossed into Indian sanctuary have been given the fruits of independence.

Mr. Enayetullah Khan’s great article caused quite a sensation those days. Sadly, the government took no note of it. In fact, it was the government’s failure to acknowledge the sufferings of the people who faced the Pakistanis in 1971 by remaining inside Bangladesh that was a major factor that divided Bangladesh after our liberation; a division that has hindered Bangladesh in major way from realizing the fruits of independence. If we had remained united after liberation the way we were in 1971 under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then we could have achieved incredible heights. Perhaps, history would also have been otherwise and not as tragic as it has been.

It is so unbelievable that a nation that so proudly faced one of the worst genocides in history as a nation as united as very few nations have and came out winner is today divided the way it is, the division going back to the issues Mr. Enayetullah Khan penned in his immortal piece. There were people who were against our independence in 1971. They were so few however that they did not matter in the context of our victory except for the fact that they committed crimes against humanity and the need to punish them.

When we won our liberation, it should have been very easy for the Government to catch these betrayers of our independence; betrayers who collaborated with the Pakistani army and committed crimes against humanity. Yet in more than three years of absolute power, the government was unable to lay hands on any one of them. The reason is a simple one. By pointing fingers at all the 65 million people who remained in Bangladesh, the collaborators were given the reprieve.

The failure of the government of the day to pay heed to the message that Mintu Bhai so clearly and so brilliantly articulated did not just allow reprieve to the collaborators of 1971; it permanently divided the country into so called pro-liberation forces and those that these so-called pro-liberation forces have identified as an anti-liberation forces. Thus, in the so-called anti-liberation forces today, there are millions who remained in Bangladesh and faced death every moment and yet did not betray the call for independence given by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In the so-called anti-liberation forces today are hundreds of thousands who did not cross into India and took up arms against the Pakistani occupation force. The insanity of this viewpoint was taken to its illogical conclusion when a Minister of this government not too long ago identified Major Ziaur Rahman as an agent of the Pakistanis!

Mr. Enayetulllah Khan’s piece “65 million collaborators?” is something that will place him among the greats of journalism across national frontiers despite the fact that the message in it was ignored at great costs to the nation. It will also remain as an example of what went wrong in the days immediately after our liberation and why 40 years into our independence, we are still chasing the dreams for which millions had sacrificed their lives in 1971.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Tippaimukh: Indian disdain and apathy towards Bangladesh

2011-11-27T12:55:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
November 27., 2011
M. Serajul Islam

The Indian decision, taken unilaterally, to construct the Tippaimukh Dam has caused indignation in Bangladesh. Critical statements have come out from the environmental groups as well as the civil society condemning the Indian decision. The opposition has of course come out as strongly as expected and has called a hartal in Sylhet, the district that is at the forefront of the expected environmental and other hazards that people in Bangladesh, across the political divide believe would accrue if the dam is constructed.

When this Government came to office in January, 2009, the issue of the Tippaimukh dam was at the top of the list of issues that had to be resolved in order for Bangladesh-India relations to move ahead. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina communicated the seriousness of building the Tippaimukh dam unilaterally in the context of Bangladesh-India relations during her official visit to India in January, 2010. The Indians accepted Bangladesh’s concern and it was duly reflected in the Joint Communiqué. In paragraph 21 of the Communiqué, the Prime Minister of India “reiterated the assurance that India would not take steps on the Tippaimukh project that would adversely impact Bangladesh.”

During his visit to Dhaka in September, 2011 that ended disappointingly on the failure to sign the Teesta deal, the Indian Prime Minister again assured Bangladesh on the Tippaimukh issue. This time, he did it in an audience that comprised a cross section of the intelligentsia of the country at a speech in the Dhaka University. He said “India will not, I repeat and assure you, India will not take steps that will adversely affect Bangladesh.”

These strong assurances convinced Bangladesh that on the Tippaimukh dam, the Indians were prepared to consider the sentiments of Bangladesh. Therefore, the unilateral decision first announced on October 22nd was totally unexpected. Noted Indian journalist Kuldip Nayyar who was in Dhaka for an event, said that the Indian decision is a “violation of trust.” He asked: “If a country like India has no respect for the word it has given, then what happens to small nations?”

Nevertheless, astute as the Indians are in the art of diplomacy, they had in both the Joint Communiqué and their Prime Minister’s speech in Dhaka the exit strategy so as not to be caught on the wrong foot. They did not commit to Bangladesh that it would not build the Tippaimukh Dam. It did not commit either that if they decided to build the dam, they would consult Bangladesh. The Indian commitment was that India would do nothing to “harm Bangladesh.”

That is exactly the message Bangladesh has been delivered from New Delhi when it sought clarification on the Tippaimukh dam. The Indians have told Bangladesh after being urged that the dam would not divert water from the river for any purpose and that it would be constructed to control floods and produce electricity. They have assured Bangladesh, true to their commitment, that the dam would not harm Bangladesh.

The Indians have not considered it necessary to discuss the issue with Bangladesh because they know what is good or harmful for us. They feel the dam would not harm Bangladesh. Therefore to them what the people of Bangladesh think of it or what experts and environmentalists in the country fear about it are not important. .

The chain of events now places the Bangladesh government, thanks to its naïve way of conducting business with the Indians, in a position where the Indians have been given the right to decide what is good or harmful for Bangladesh. Nowhere has it been put in writing nor have our negotiators pointed out in their negotiations that India would need to consult Bangladesh before building a dam on an international river.

In failing to do so, the Bangladesh negotiators have by implication accepted Indian “guardianship” ; they have also written off Bangladesh’s rights under the international law and convention related to the rights of a lower riparian of an international river. Unbelievably, , when the government has literally been caught with its pants down over an issue that has the potential to blow up as a major issue in our politics, the Bangladesh State Minister for Water Resources has said that India is fully within its rights to build the Tippaimukh Dam. Unsolicited, he handed to Bangladesh’s rights on all other cross border rivers, saying that India could do whatever it pleases with these rivers as internal matters of India!!

The Foreign Minister and the Foreign Secretary have both backed India on the trust factor. They dismissed as political all the misgivings being raised over the Tippaimukh Dam. The Foreign Minister said that the Government trusts completely that India would not harm Bangladesh by the Tippaimukh Dam. She said that those who criticize the Dam “turn a blind eye to reality.” The Foreign Secretary has been more forceful in dismissing India on the trust factor.

It would therefore be futile to appeal to our negotiators to be cautious about dealing with India. Never in the history of negotiations between the two countries have we shown the subservient attitude towards India as have those who are negotiating on our behalf with the Indians now. Indian analysts have blamed their country so critically over the way India has treated Bangladesh under the present government that one has to wonder how our negotiators can be in such of state of denial about the intentions of India.

Our negotiators should spare themselves time and think seriously why after giving India support on the crucial issues of security and land transit, both invaluable concessions, they have not signed the Teesta deal and now gone ahead and decided to construct the Tippaimukh Dam by taking us for granted. Such is their arrogance that they asked our government to read the details of the proposed dam in the website of the External Affairs Ministry! With some honest soul searching, they may realize their mistake in believing in India blindly instead of looking at how India has broken promises and agreements and betrayed us in the past.

India too should do some honest soul searching of its own. Sheikh Hasina had opened a great opportunity for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations by unilateral concessions on security and land transit. If India had reciprocated, it could have helped build sustainable friendship. The Indian mindset of taking its neighbours such as Bangladesh for granted has brought Bangladesh to a stage where the anti-Indian feeling has enhanced since the present government assumed office, thanks to the Felani incident, Teesta debacle and now Tippaimukh Dam. By its arrogant mindset, India has put at jeopardy both the security assurances and the land transit privilege given to it by Bangladesh. The unbelievably strong pro-Indian attitude of our key negotiators has also helped enhance the anti-Indian attitude in Bangladesh.

The current status of Bangladesh-India is certainly a poor testament to the skills of our negotiators. It is also a testament to the arrogance and lack of common sense on the part of the Indian negotiators. The decision of sending a Special Envoy to India will not help rationalize Bangladesh-India relations, not when the key negotiators see nothing wrong in what India is doing.

The decision to send the Special Envoy to New Delhi has no doubt been influenced to tackle the opposition from the lead it has taken in building public opinion on Tippaimukh. If the Government is conscious of public opinion and national interest and wants India to listen, it should take up the opposition offer for bipartisan Bangladesh stand against the Tippaimukh Dam. The Special Envoy would perhaps be told politely to look at the MEA website again!

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

On Didi, Jamdani sari and Tippaimukh

2011-11-27T12:53:00.000-05:00

As I See It
The Independent
November 25.,2011
An aide of our Foreign Minister seeking anonymity had leaked to the media that the Minister would present a Jamdani sari to the Chief Minister of Paschim Bangla when she met her in Kolkata on way back from attending an international conference in Bangalore last week. I was wondering what Didi would do with a Jamdani sari knowing that she does not wear one. The leaking of the gift to the media reflects poor judgment. Our Foreign Minister still does not seem to realize what she and Bangladesh are up to while negotiating with India. Weeks before she met Didi, the Indian Government announced it would build the Tippaimukh!

On the subject of Didi, the Foreign Secretary was caught on the wrong foot when he faced the journalists at the Foreign Ministry. When asked about this visit of the Foreign Minister to Kolkata, he stammered and ended giving an astounding reply. He said he did not know where the Foreign Minister was!

Our Foreign Minister received the same disappointing news from Didi that our Prime Minister was given by the Indian Prime Minister in Maldives. Didi informed her that her government would form a committee to find out how much water would be available at Teesta during the dry season and how much of it her State would be able to share with Bangladesh.

Before her meeting with Didi, our Foreign Minister had met the Indian Foreign Minister in Bangalore during the IOR/ARC meeting. SM Krishnan assured her that a deal on the Teesta is” round the corner”. How much of what SM Krishnan said should be taken seriously is not difficult to assess. Against his assurance, Dr. Manmohn Singh has stressed the need to build consensus among the stakeholders and Didi, upon the need to see the findings of the committee. In diplomatic parlance, “round the corner” could therefore also be an indefinite wait.

Nevertheless, our Foreign Minister, showing the same optimism she did late in the evening of September 6th on a Teesta deal even after the Indians had officially taken it off the table just hours before their Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka, has told a news media upon returning to Bangladesh that India is hopeful that a deal on Teesta would be signed “soon.” Neither Didi nor our Foreign Minister spoke to the media after their meeting in Kolkata that lasted for half an hour. If a deal is imminent, then Didi, who otherwise has good feelings for our Prime Minister and Bangladesh , would have said something positive about Teesta knowing Bangladesh ‘s impatience for a deal.

The Teesta apart, the Indians are breaking other commitments too. The news that the Indians are going to build the Tippaimukh Dam has caused uproar in Bangladesh among bipartisan non-government and environmental groups as well as the opposition political parties. The news comes after firm commitment given by the Indian Prime Minister during his recent visit to Bangladesh that India would not harm Bangladesh’s interest by constructing the Tippaimukh dam. The same commitment was given to our Prime Minister during her visit to Indian in January, 2010. In deciding to go ahead with Tippaimukh Dam, the Indians would also be violating international conventions and laws as well that require consultation with a lower riparian in construction a dam on an international river.

The Teesta debacle and breaking the commitment on Tippaimukh are examples of India lacking on the element of trust. These broken promises and commitments are nothing new though for India has a history of breaking promises, commitments and agreements. What is amazing is the fact that our negotiators for some mysterious reasons simply refuse to acknowledge the history and see the pattern.

This time, our State Minister for Water Resources has beaten all others in our negotiating team in backing India. He has called any concern of Bangladesh on Tippaimukh and whatever else India does on our common rivers unwarranted because such actions are internal matters of India! He has blamed the opposition of trying to play politics with what he thinks is none of our business. Kuldip Nayyar, a noted Indian journalist, reacted sharply, in contrast to our Minister and for that matter our government, and accused India of betraying a trust.

Indian Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey had said after the disappointing end to the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Bangladesh that the attitude of Indian politicians, bureaucrats and analysts towards Bangladesh is one of “disdain and apathy.” The decision to go ahead with Tippaimukh underscores the fact that the attitude of the Indians towards Bangladesh is exactly what Muchkund Dubey has said; India just takes Bangladesh for granted!

And why not? We have those negotiating for us with India telling us that we have made a historical mistake in the past by not trusting India. They have highlighted the US$ 1 billion soft but tied loan by India as a show of Indian generosity. They thanked India profusely for its promise to make us the regional connectivity hub that they said would make us rich and important. They bargained away our security and land transit cards for the loan most of which would be spent for India’s and for its promise on connectivity hub. In the process, they have made our position more vulnerable than ever before and have placed us at India’s mercy. And now, there is a Minister who thinks it is India’s right to do as it pleases with all our common rivers!

Amidst growing public concern in Bangladesh, a spokesman of the Indian External Affairs Ministry confirmed that India has decided to build the Tippaimukh Dam and advised Bangladesh to look for details in the website of the MEA Ministry! India, it seems, did not feel the need to even inform Bangladesh through the normal diplomatic channel about the matter. It is not that India is not aware of the importance of Tippaimukh to Bangladesh; their attitude can be explained simply as arrogance. Perhaps, it has been afflicted by amnesia and thus forgot the commitment of its Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, our government, hopeful that the Jamdani to Didi would get it the Teesta deal, could not find the courage to question the Indian decision, let alone demand its annulment. Or perhaps those authorized to speak over the issue have also been afflicted by amnesia to recollect the assurance the Indian Prime Minister has given to Bangladesh a few times. There is one difference though in the type of amnesia of the two sides. The Indian amnesia is one of convenience and arrogance; ours is one of subservience.

At time of filing this piece, the Prime Minister announced in parliament that she would send a Special Envoy to New Delhi to seek “information” on the Tippaimukh Dam in the face of mounting public opinion consolidating against India on the issue. A Special Envoy will serve little purpose for the government has demonstrated to the Indians its subservience by some naïve and poor diplomacy of its chief negotiators to be taken seriously. The only way to show India we are serious about the Tippaimukh Dam is to face the Indians unitedly. The BNP has offered to work with the government over Tippaimukh; it is now for the ruling party to unite the nation on a grave national issue against Indian designs.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

Bangladesh-India relations: astrology versus diplomacy

2011-11-26T12:21:00.001-05:00

The Independent
Anniversary Issue
November, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni is certain that the agreement on the Teesta will be signed while the present Government is in office. When pressed for a specific date at the press conference where she expressed her view, she said she is not an astrologer. It appeared like she was feeling sorry for herself that she was not one because if she was one, she would have predicted the timing correctly. In the evening before the Indian Prime Minister arrived in Dhaka, she was more confident about the Teesta agreement and had predicted confidently like an astrologer that it would be signed during the visit.

It was not. That led Bangladesh to “withdraw” the offer of land transit. Like a pack of cards, the great expectations that the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister’s Advisers had built since the visit of Sheikh Hasina to New Delhi in January, 2010, fell apart. In the heat of the moment, the FM’s categorical statement about the Teesta agreement was forgotten. It was also forgotten that few hours before her surprising statement; the Indian FS had told the media that as Mamata Banarjee was unhappy, New Delhi was withdrawing the Teesta deal from the table.

Quite clearly, the FM did not appear to know how the Indians negotiate for after Ranjan Mathai statement to the media, the issue of Teesta was closed. If she needed to hear from the horse’s mouth, she should have called the Indian Foreign Minister that would have saved her and the Government serious embarrassment.

Our FM would have no regrets about not being an astrologer if she only knew about the Ministry she heads. She heads a Ministry where trained diplomats can often predict events almost like an astrologer. In fact diplomacy is the art of predicting future course of events, sometimes with more certainty than the astrologer. If our negotiators had conducted negotiations with India professionally with trained diplomats showing the way, they would have achieved the results they predicted after our Prime Minister had taken great political risks to make the first moves for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations.

Ironically, the negotiators who led our talks with India by largely ignoring the Foreign Ministry came back to the latter when the Indians withdrew the Teesta agreement. The Foreign Secretary was given the task to call the Indian High Commissioner to the Foreign Ministry to communicate to the Indians that Bangladesh would take back the land transit agreement in retaliation for India’s withdrawal of the Teesta deal.

The summoning of the Indian High Commissioner was a showdown of sorts. It was also a diplomatic faux pas as it was done while the Indian Prime Minister was in the city for a visit that we trumpeted would move our bilateral relations to a new level with India making the reciprocal gestures to Sheikh Hasina’s support on security, grant of land transit and offer of our sea ports.

The Teesta-land transit showdown notwithstanding, our side claimed the visit of Manmohon Singh was a “big success”. Dipu Moni claimed so and so did Dr. Gowhar Rizvi. Against their claims, Indian media blamed its leaders for not doing enough for the visit to end on a disappointing note. One of India’s most respected retired diplomats Muchkund Dubey, former Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner to Bangladesh, wrote an article in The Daily Star headlined “India-Bangladesh relations: failure of leadership on the Indian side” where the title itself suggests that the visit of the Indian Prime Minister was a failure.

Our negotiating should read this article to get over the state of denial over the visit. He wrote: “The attitude of most of Indian political leaders, senior officials, business magnates and strategic thinkers towards Bangladesh has been one of disdain and apathy.” He further wrote that India’s Pak-centric politicians, senior officials, journalists and analysts could, by their ineptness and negligence, force Bangladesh to become like Pakistan although it is no means anything like Pakistan yet.

Our negotiators believed in the Indians’ sincerity and showed no signs of awareness of the concerns that Muchkund Dubey expressed. In fact, they expressed anger on anyone who was critical of the Indians when they conducted the talks. They were busy highlighting the virtues of the Indians and refused to take a look at India in the context of their “disdain and apathy” to Bangladesh’s legitimate demands on water, maritime boundary, land border, trade and the rest.

In their enthusiasm to highlight Indian virtues, they made particular mention of the Indian loan of US$ 1 billion without clarifying that almost all of it would be spent on constructing roads and other facilities to integrate India’s northeast to its mainland. In the process, they totally undervalued the land transit card that Muchkund Dubey has described as one of “supreme significance” to India because, first, it is the key for Indian mainland’s integration with its strategically located but fragile northeast, and second, Bangladesh is “the pathway to the integration of our economy to those of South East and East Asian countries.”

Thus we underplayed what was a major card for us in negotiating our interests with India. We also almost totally failed to ask India value for our security card. By handing over the ULFA terrorists at our own initiative (we even refused to have done so for mysterious reasons), we have helped India break the backbone of the dangerous ULFA insurgency. If one was to put value for this favour, India’s US$ 1 billion loan would be pittance by comparison.

Instead, despite the failure to reach agreement on sharing the waters of the Teesta and Feni rivers, we have hailed the visit of the Indian Prime Minister a “big” success. Some enthusiastic people have also given the Foreign Secretary great accolades for calling the Indian High Commissioner and withdraw the land transit. Great credit was also given to our Prime Minister for this “courageous” move.

Our negotiators have claimed success for the visit based on the agreements on the 6.4 km land boundary; exchange of enclaves; 24 hours’ access to Dahagram and Angorpota ; and the 46 items in the RMG sector that we can now export to India duty free. They have however not told us that India was agreement bound to give us all they have now given many decades ago. For instance, the 24 hours’ access to Dahagram and Angorpota through the Teen Bigha corridor is a regression not a success because under the India-Mujib Accord of 1974, it was agreed that the corridor would be given to Bangladesh permanently on reciprocity. Bangladesh kept its deal soon after the Accord was signed.

Nevertheless, these are achievements and there is no way to sidestep these as insignificant. However, on each of these agreements, major groups in India have already started to put pressure on the Indian Government to backtrack. On the land boundary and exchange of enclaves, the BJP is leading the pressure. We should also be careful, going by India’s past track record of promising and reneging, to claim success before India actually delivers on the agreements.

Most recently more confusing and contradictory information have come in the media pointing to our unprofessional way of conducting negotiations with India. The most important one in this context is the issue of land transit. It has now come to light that the land transit offer that our Foreign Secretary withdrew in retaliation to Indian withdrawal of the Teesta agreement was a bluff. Recently, the Economic Adviser said in the media that the land transit and Teesta are not tied!

Subsequently, it has been revealed in the media that the land transit has already begun! The Economic Adviser called this a trial run. The NBR has gone one step further and sent instructions to Akhaura land port about goods from mainland to Tripura but did not mention in the instructions that it is a trial run. Therefore when the FS called the Indian High Commissioner and withdrew the land transit, he was bluffing for by then land transit was signed and gifted away to India.

This raises a very serious issue of ethics not to speak of the fact that by the time the India PM had arrived in Dhaka our negotiators had all but messed up the negotiations. The ethical issue is who was the FS asked to bluff; the Indians or the people of Bangladesh? Quite clearly, it was not the Indians going by the ease with which the land transit has started. Bangladesh in fact went ahead with its commitment on the land transit despite India’s betrayal with the Teesta deal.

To be fair to the FS and the Government of Bangladesh, there was no other choice available to Bangladesh when the Indians reneged on the Teesta. They had to bluff because water is too sensitive an issue in Bangladesh. The recourse to bluff was the only option to Bangladesh once the Indians pulled the Teesta off the table. However, the Government owes it to the people and to future negotiations with India to re-consider its past mistakes and carry forward negotiations with India because our future as a nation depends on it.

There were some major mistakes. First, we believed in India, almost obdiently. Second, our negotiators were not in fact a team but individuals with wrong notions of India and their brilliance as individuals notwithstanding, with little or no experience in diplomatic negotiations. Finally, in their eagerness to make India happy, they completely undervalued our two major cards, namely the land transit and security, and instead harped on how India would turn Bangladesh rich as the connectivity hub of the region.

We are making the same mistake as we did with Farakkha. We allowed a trial run of the Farakkha to eventually become our death warrant. We should reflect upon that and hold back on the land transit. It can still be held back and we must do so for our national interest. We then should seriously evaluate the security card. In both, if played deftly, there is immense value for us to interest India to give us our rights of the waters of the common rivers for which we should seriously ask India to seek a regional approach for augmentation, and a fair demarcation of the maritime boundary.

The other issues that we have with India, some of which have been agreed upon in Dhaka during the Indian Prime Minister’s visit, are to put it bluntly, the minor issues in our bilateral relations. We should also for the time being, take our minds off from the promise of rich financial gains as the connectivity hub, keeping in mind that the Indian northeast is still too poor and impoverished for such day dreaming, for the moment at least. As for China becoming a part of that connectivity hub, India in its right frame of mind would never agree to building modern roads connecting China to its fragile northeast, not yet.

We need a negotiating strategy and a new negotiating team. More than that, we need the Foreign Minister to think positively; that diplomacy is the tool that can help us achieve what we need to achieve in our bilateral relations with India. The fact that she has mentioned that she is not an astrologer and hence cannot predict the exact time of a date for signing the Teesta deal is an expression of her lack of knowledge and experience in the art of diplomacy.

Let us have negotiators who are a team. We do not need Harvard scholars or brilliant individuals negotiating on their own. Trained diplomats of the Foreign Ministry would do far better. Let that team take a look at the history of Bangladesh-India relations and then at the issues. Most important of all, let the Prime Minister herself take charge keeping in mind that we achieved the Ganges Accord and the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord because she led and directed the negotiating teams. It is a pity that between astrology and guesses and misplaced confidence in India, we have almost wasted the Prime Minister courageous initiative with India that she had taken unilaterally after becoming the Prime Minister in January 2009.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and a Director, Center for Foreign Affairs Studies.

Rajeet Mitter’s positive spin to Indo-Bangladesh relations

2011-11-24T05:11:00.002-05:00

Holiday
November 18, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

The outgoing Indian High Commissioner Rajeet Mitter endeared himself to the people of Bangladesh by his demeanour. His low profile was quite a contrast to his predecessor who had a way of upsetting us by his hard line attitude on our issues of concern with India. He will no doubt be missed and more so considering his tenure in Bangladesh was for only 2 years. He left Bangladesh because he reached the mandatory age of retirement.

Rajeet Mitter gave a farewell press interview at the India High Commission that has been carried in all the newspapers. I liked the positive spin he gave to the recently concluded visit of the Indian Prime Minister. He regretted that the failure on Teesta was a disappointment. Nevertheless, he felt that the visit achieved many positive agreements that will move our relations ahead.

Among achievements, the High Commissioner named the 24 hours’ access to Dahagram and Angorpota enclaves, 46 RMG items in the duty free list, exchange of enclaves; joint border management and sale of 250MW of electricity by 2014. Regrettably, the outgoing High Commissioner did not care to look at the issues seriously. If he did, he would not have been as upbeat as he was at the press conference.

Take for instance the 24 hours access through the Teen Bigha corridor. By the terms of the Indira-Mujib Agreement of 1974, India is bound to give Bangladesh the corridor for which Bangladesh has already given to India Berubari in reciprocity soon after the agreement was signed. India reneged on its commitment on the excuse that a case was filed against the transfer of the Teen Bigha corridor to Bangladesh. The two countries later reached an agreement during the 1980s to give Teen Bigha to Bangladesh as “lease in perpetuity” to get around the court case.

What Bangladesh has now got which Rajeet Mitter has highlighted as a success is in fact a regression on India’s commitment under the Indira-Mujib agreement of 1974. Bangladesh has just been given tenancy with India holding the rights to withdraw the privilege anytime it wishes. As for the 46 RMG items that Bangladesh
can now export to India duty free, RMG groups in India have already started putting pressure on the Indian Government against it. The BJP has told the Indian Government to cancel the agreement on exchange on enclaves.

The joint patrol of the border is controversial for many in Bangladesh. The incidents in the border where more than a thousand innocent Bangladeshis have been killed by the BSF in the last one decade have created an extremely negative image of the latter for any joint exercise with it. Many in Bangladesh do not see the usefulness or necessity of the joint exercise because India has unilaterally fenced off the border and in full control of the points of passage across the border where peace can prevail only if India is interested. Further, on this issue, a lot is still not transparent and before such a joint exercise sinks among Bangladeshis across party lines, the Bangladesh Government must come out with all the details of this issue.

That leaves the sale of electricity by India to Bangladesh that Rajeet Mitter has identified as one of the achievements of the Indian Prime Minister’s visit. In an energy starved country, such a prospect must be accepted as positive. However, between an agreement and actual delivery, there is a lot that would need to be done. When Sheikh Hasina visited India, the Indian case of land transit, use of our ports and security commitment was sold by the promise of sale of electricity to Bangladesh together with the US$ 1 billion loan. At that time, the impression given to the people of Bangladesh was that we would receive the electricity as soon as we connected our national grid with the Indian grid. That could now come on our national grid not earlier than 2014.

The outgoing High Commissioner left no doubt that India has already been granted land transit. He advised Bangladesh to set reasonable transit fees so that Indian businessmen would not get disinterested to use the privilege! That left a big question unanswered. What then did our Foreign Secretary withdraw when he met him on the morning of 6th September? From what the Foreign Secretary said that morning after his meeting with Rajeet Mitter, Bangladesh had withdrawn the land transit offer in retaliation for Indian withdrawal of the Teesta Agreement. Surely between Rajeet Mitter and our Foreign Secretary, someone has distorted the truth that must be resolved before any evaluation on where Bangladesh-India relations are going can realistically be made.

The issue has become serious because the BNP has taken a strong stand on the issue. It has said Bangladesh has given India the corridor that is against our national interest. It has vowed not to allow India to use the corridor. Given the fact that BNP carries with it at least half the country if not more, the issue of land transit has to be resolved satisfactorily. Unfortunately, our negotiators have themselves taken confusing and contradictory stand on whether we have or not have given India land transit. They have given fancy prospects of the benefits we would receive from land transit without detailing what these benefits are. More importantly, we have not been told clearly what benefits India would get out of it. Going by former Indian Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey, the land transit is of “supreme significance” to India as it would integrate mainland India with its fragile northeastern states and would provide it a pathway to Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.

On Teesta, our FM expects an agreement to be signed within the tenure of this Government. Our Water Minister who has been mysteriously absent from negotiations said it would be signed in 3 to 4 months. The Finance Minister “guessed” it would be signed in 3. All these guesses were made soon after Manmohon Singh’s visit to Dhaka. Rajeet Mitter feels it would be signed very soon. Against their guesstimates, the key player on Teesta Mamata Banarjee has said that there is not enough water at the point of sharing for India to give Bangladesh any share at all. She further said that there must first be an assessment of the water available before any agreement is reached which makes an agreement on Teesta very uncertain indeed.

Thus, Rajeet Mitter’s positive spin that the Indian Prime Minister’s visit has achieved significant results does not stand up to serious scrutiny. On one of the major issues, namely Teesta water sharing agreement, India has reneged at literally the proverbial eleventh hour leaving its credibility in serious doubt on the trust factor. On land transit, our negotiators have not yet come out with the truth on whether we have given it to India or not with India in no doubt that we have and the BNP determined to deny it to India.

On the less important issues of land boundary, exchange of enclaves, getting more items in the duty free list, access through Teen Bigha and sale of electricity, there have been agreements that could yield positive results. Unfortunately, given India’s past track record on promises and agreements and opposition in India on promises and agreements made during the Indian Prime Minister’s visit, one must wait before making a final judgment even on the less important issues. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had opened a great opportunity for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations by her courageous initiatives. For the first time in decades, India seemed inclined to match Bangladesh’s initiatives. Sadly, due to our poor negotiating skills and strategy where our negotiators were more eager for upholding Indian interests than ours and the Indian mindset towards Bangladesh aptly described by Muchkund Dubey as one of “disdain and apathy”, that opportunity has been largely wasted, Rajeet Mitter’s positive spin notwithstanding. Once again, Bangladesh has ended giving India the major concessions, like on security and land transit, and once again received a “bag full of promises” that India is not in the habit of keeping.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

On bringing charges against Ambassadors

2011-11-24T00:59:00.001-05:00

As I See It Column
The Independent
M. Serajul Islam
November 19, 2011

Yet another Ambassador has come to news for the wrong reasons. This time it is not a case of sexual harassment for which two Ambassadors were in the news not too long ago; one a career diplomat while another, a political one. The career diplomat is back in Dhaka and now working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The political one is merrily carrying on with his duties and responsibilities. No action has been taken against him.

Our Ambassador to Vietnam, a career diplomat, has been charged with corruption, allegedly committed while he was a Minister (an officer of the rank of a Joint Secretary) in our Embassy in Turkey. A case against him has been registered in the Ramna Thana by the Anti-Corruption Commission.

The Ambassador has been alleged to have misappropriated Taka 2.19 lakhs by claiming he brought a car to Dhaka from his post in Turkey while in fact, he did not. He has also been accused for siphoning Taka 12 lakhs from the Mission’s secret fund and Taka 3.18 lakhs from the Welfare Fund. The information of his alleged misconduct has been revealed in the media that the Ministry of Foreign Ministry has not contradicted. Therefore, it can be assumed that so far as the charges are concerned, the newspapers have reported correctly.

There are a number of issues here that are matters of concern. The allegations have been made public about an officer who is not in the country. He has been appointed as an Ambassador by the President, following the recommendation of the Prime Minister. He is at the moment representing the interests and more importantly, the honour of the country abroad. An Ambassador in his post represents in his person, the sovereignty of the country.

An Ambassador posted abroad, is as much subject to the laws of the land as any other citizen of the country. Nevertheless, it does not mean that the same procedure should be followed with an Ambassador as with those in the country. The reason is as much a matter of the law as one of common sense. A little explanation would be useful why this is so.

Take the case of the Ambassador in Vietnam. As soon as the case was filed against him in the Ramna Thana, the matter must have been communicated by the Embassy of Vietnam in Dhaka to its government. What will be his status in Vietnam now? Will the Vietnamese Government deal with him with honour and with respect? More importantly, what will happen to the image of Bangladesh in Vietnam? The answers are all negative that impact the country much more than the Ambassador.

This is why the case of the Ambassador in his post should not be the same as someone in the country while applying anti-corruption laws. There are various options available to the Government in dealing with Ambassadors in the same predicament as is our Ambassador in Vietnam at present. There is a critical need of delicate handling in such an allegation. If the ACC considers such a case so serious that the government cannot defer action, the Ambassador should be recalled and the matter dealt with while he/she is in the country and not in his post. It is also equally important that such a matter should be handled discreetly to protect the image of the country.

There are a few other intriguing aspects in the case of the Ambassador in Vietnam. First, the allegations date back to 2007. Our Embassies are audited regularly every two or three years by the office of Mission Audit under the CAG. Therefore the allegations against him must have been known in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time he was considered for his appointment. Why was it overlooked then? Second, some allegations against him appear to be objections raised by Mission Audit. Such objections by Mission Audit are a common fact of life for our diplomats and are settled routinely and regularly at the time he/she claims pension against the Taka 40 lakhs pension settlement to which an officer of MFA is entitled these days. It is virtually impossible for an officer to escape such objections of Mission Audit.

The allegation against the Ambassador for defrauding money from the secret fund is different. It does not appear to be one made by Mission Audit. A mission’s secret fund is handled by the Ambassador or one acting as an Ambassador, a CDA. A secret fund is given to a mission head to be spent at his discretion for which he/she is not answerable to any authority for reasons of secrecy. Such a fund is placed at the discretion of the Ambassador purely on trust.

It appears that the charge of defrauding the secret fund is based on information of intelligence. Given that Turkey has a Defense Attaché who reports to the DGFI and not to any other Ministry or department, this allegation against the Ambassador may have originated there. It is common knowledge at MFA that due to personal problem between a head of mission and his defense attaché, such allegations are widespread. In fact career Ambassadors consider themselves lucky to be posted in a mission that has no defense section.

Finally, the allegation of claiming money for transportation of a car seems a weak one because an officer returning to Dhaka from a post abroad is not entitled to such a claim. Such a claim, if the Ambassador had indeed made one, would have been detected when he settled his transfer bill. In any case, this is not a big issue at all and could have been easily settled by putting an audit objection and initiating a disciplinary action against him.

During the Caretaker Government, when the ACC was in the hands of a chief who wanted to change our characters to make us honest, our Ambassadors were subjected to such actions by the ACC. An Ambassador in his post was humiliated and almost sent to jail. The diplomat fought and has since been able to quash all allegations against him but after years of litigation. The allegations against him were proven in the court to have been wrongly and vindictively initiated. Nevertheless, the good image of the country was compromised then. The Ambassador suffered years of anguish not to speak of the amount of money he paid his lawyers.

ACC today is under much saner authority. The allegations against the Ambassador in Vietnam appear to be such that all of these could have been handled better through consultations between the MFA and the ACC without compromising the law in any way. It seems that there have been no such consultations.

At MFA, things are hardly the way it should be. One Ambassador after another is coming into news for accusations ranging from sexual harassment to corruption. It is therefore of imperative need that the matter of appointing an Ambassador should be treated seriously than has hitherto been the case. Equally important is the need of consultations between the MFA and ACC in dealing with allegations of corruption against Ambassadors not for any leniency for the Ambassadors but for sake of the country’s rather fragile image abroad.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear programme

2011-11-24T00:56:00.001-05:00

Daily Sun
November 20, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

One major item that has dominated newspapers round the world from the international scene recently was the report of the IAEA on the extent of Iran’s nuclear programme. In the days leading to the publication of the report, there was strong hint coming out of Israel that an attack on Iran was imminent to take out its nuclear capabilities. Israel was also strongly urging the US for a pre-emptive attack.

The report, when it eventually came out, indicated that Iran had built a large explosives vessel to conduct hydrodynamic experiments which are “strong indicators of possible weapon development.” There are in the report strong hints that Iran is moving surreptitiously towards a possible weapons development programme. Nevertheless it does not provide definite proof that Iran is actually pursuing a weapons development programme.

The IAEA report has given those arguing against such a pre-emptive strike the chance to calm down Israel from taking a unilateral move for attacking Iran. For the time at least the need to engage Iran diplomatically has won although Israel has not stopped from making public utterances for a military strike.

US President Barak Obama, facing a tough re-election bid, is clearly faced with a difficult situation with the question of Iran and the bomb, under pressure from the Israeli lobby and the rather large anti-Iran sentiments in the country for touch action against Iran. So far the President has spoken of tougher sanctions but has fallen way short of going along with Israel and its small group of supporters in the USA for a pre-emptive strike against Iran.

The mood in the USA, after long winters in Afghanistan and Iraq, is most definitely against any more involvement abroad. But nevertheless, Americans are eager to see their country do something with Iran in order to stop it from owning the nuclear bomb. There is no question that world opinion is against any more country possessing nuclear weapons. In this context, everybody is concerned about the possibility of Iran becoming a nuclear weapons country.

This notwithstanding, world opinion is equally against Israel or the US attacking Iran. Understanding world opinion, Israel, while trying to build up opinion in favour of a pre-emptive strike against Iran, has said that it would be able to take out Iran’s nuclear programme as effortlessly as it had done in Iraq in 1983 and in Syria in 2007. Iran has cautioned Israel that any attempt at that would be met with force that Israel would regret.

Israel’s argument that it would be able to take out Iran’s nuclear programme effortlessly is of course a very weak one. There is just no comparison between Iraq in 1983 or Syria and Iran. Iraq was under a military dictator who ruled according to his whims. Syrian is a dictatorship where a minority is in government by power of the military. Iran has a system that, despite what the West and Israel says, is run by consensus where a number of institutions both secular and religious are involved. Further, Iran has a heritage and resources that should put it on equal footing to any country in the world. Attacking Iran would be a humungous mistake whose consequences are too nightmarish even to contemplate.

There are also serious issues involved in going after a nation like Iran simply on the assumption that it is building a bomb. A nuclear programme in itself is no proof that it is being undertaken to build a bomb given the fact that a nuclear programme can be carried out for nuclear energy. Then there is the instance of Iraq where the US went without provocation on false assumption that the country was building the nuclear bomb.

Then of course there is the question of one nation’s right to deter another nation from making the nuclear bomb where the one deterring is itself in possession of one. In case of Israel, it is not that it just has a bomb; it has a stockpile of nuclear weapons. For some mysterious reasons, there seems to be a taboo even to mention this in public. Yet it is Israel that is spearheading the move to attack Iran even when the proof of its alleged nuclear programme is not clear. The cliché that those living in glass houses should not throw stones at others applies in case of Israel more than perfectly.

The recent gaffe involving the US and the French President is very indicative about the truth surrounding the state of Israel. At the recent G20 Summit, the two were in a conversation about Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Bibi as he is also known. In a mood of frustration, President Nicholas Sarkozy said: “I can’t stand him. He is a liar.” President Obama joined with his frustration by telling President Sarkozy to imagine his predicament, having to deal with Bibi on a regular basis. Unfortunately for both, the speaker was on and the intimate conversation was heard by journalists!

Yet the reality is in public, the Israeli Prime Minister is one who gets the attention and support of both without any questions asked. After Bibi had torpedoed the US initiated Israel-Palestine talks on the issue of illegal settlements that the Netanyahu government would not stop, he was received like a hero in the White House and was given the highest honour at Capitol Hill when he addressed a Joint House of Congress. Israel has that magic power where despite whether its Prime Minister is a lair or difficult and irritating to deal with, both he and Israel always has and will have fullest support and attention in Washington and Paris. That is reality.

At this stage, Israel realizes that an attack on Iran would not have much support in Israel’s traditional base of support, the West. More importantly, inside USA just coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, with tremendous costs in terms of lives and money and in economic recession that is just not going away, Americans across the political divide are against any further US military involvement overseas. In fact, in the coming Presidential elections, such an involvement would most likely cost the candidate supporting it, a certain defeat.

Therefore, the IAEA report notwithstanding, in this round of international turmoil concerning Iran, the winner is diplomacy although the chances of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations remains very much on the cards. Hopes are being pinned on a possible move inside Iran between opposing political forces to stop building the bomb or that the intelligence forces of Israel, US and the West would be able to work together to deter Iran from building the bomb. A recent bomb blast at a weapons development installation that led to the death of one of Iran’s top commander in its ballistic missile programme has been credited to Israel’s intelligence.

At this stage, the IAEA report and the President’s gaffe over Benjamin Netanyahu have not gone by without a price. That price has been paid by the poor Palestinians, as always. A White House spokesman, when asked to explain the gaffe, said that US remains committed to the settlement of the Palestinian problem through negotiations and strongly opposes its move for statehood through the United Nations.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt and a Director, Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies.

TEESTA: BANGLADESH'S GROWING IMPATIENCE

2011-11-16T01:17:00.002-05:00

Daily Sun
November 13, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

The meeting between the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and India on the sides of the SAARC Summit in Maldives has left Bangladesh disappointed again. The Indian Prime Minister was unable to give Bangladesh any time frame about the signing of the Teesta water sharing agreement. Briefing journalists after the meeting, the Indian Foreign Secretary said that the Indian side must consult all the parties, including Paschim Banga before it could sign the agreement. He said this process would take some time.
The Indian Foreign Secretary left many disappointed. The “guess” of the Finance Minister that the Teesta agreement would be ready for signature in 3 months made immediately after the visit of the Indian Prime Minister, now looks like a wild guess. The Water Resources Minister’s hope that the agreement would be ready in ¾ months time now looks like a forlorn hope. The Foreign Minister’s guess was the most realistic one when she said that only an astrologer would be able to say with certainty when the Teesta agreement would be signed.
Against the guesses of our Ministers, the Indians have got whatever we promised them and what they expected from us. The security support and commitment we gave them has already helped India break the many decades old separatist movement of ULFA in Assam. The land transit card that we withdrew from them in retaliation for the withdrawal of the Teesta agreement now seems to have been an empty threat. In the Maldives meeting, we admitted that India has been allowed land transit already on a trial basis and that at present; India is carrying goods in containers over river and land routes from mainland India to the northeastern state of Tripura free of charge. A spokesman of our Prime Minister said that the two sides would meet and work out the details such as charges for moving from trial run to a more permanent arrangement.

The meeting in Maldives has thus removed confusion in many minds over the status of land transit and Teesta. First, it cleared the confusion and contradictory statements of our negotiators on the two issues. The Maldives meeting’s clear message was that the two issues are not tied. In fact, on the Teesta, the two sides have regressed, on land transit there has been forward and positive movement in favor of India. Second, it has underlined the fact that when the Foreign Secretary informed the Indian High Commissioner about Bangladesh government’s decision to withdraw the land transit, it was only a knee jerk reaction to deal with the embarrassment into which the Indians led the Bangladesh government on the Teesta agreement. The Bangladesh side “withdrew” the land transit for domestic consumption, knowing well that land transit was a done deal already.

The Bangladesh side went to the Maldives meeting with high expectations that the Indian side would give some positive hints on the Teesta. Before the delegation went to Maldives, Foreign Ministry sources went to the extent of suggesting that unless the Indians had something concrete to inform Bangladesh on Teesta, Bangladesh would consider slowing on land transit, exposing a growing restlessness and impatience. It does not appear like our Prime Minister expressed any such strong views with her Indian counterpart in their meeting.

The Maldives meeting has thus moved the two countries further apart from the hope of the paradigm shift that our negotiators had promised us. Unless an agreement on Teesta is signed, public opinion in Bangladesh would assess the negotiations so far as one where it was Bangladesh that made all the concessions with India keeping our hopes alive with mere promises. On that note of promise too, the Indians have been less enthusiastic in Maldives. Only an astrologer could now say with any amount of certainty as to when the two sides would be able to sign the accord on Teesta after the statement of the Indian Foreign Secretary that India must first consult the interested parties before it can bring the Teesta agreement before Bangladesh.

Among the interested parties is Paschim Bangla where its Chief Minister holds the handle over the fragile Congress led coalition at the centre. Mamata Banarjee these days is upset with the Centre for a number of reasons. Accusing fingers were pointed at her following the withdrawal of the Teesta agreement from the table at the proverbial 11th hour,. At that time she had reacted strongly by stating in the media that as a friend of Bangladesh and for her personal respect for Sheikh Hasina, she could not agree to a water sharing agreement as recommended to her by New Delhi because there was not enough water in Teesta at the point of sharing during the dry season for an agreement with Bangladesh.

There is news now that upstream on the Indian side; a hydro electricity project is being contemplated. Sikkim has also come into the picture since the signing of the Teesta agreement in Dhaka was aborted. These developments have made the likelihood of an agreement in anytime in the future even more remote.

Clearly India has betrayed Bangladesh on the Teesta. Over the time that the two sides have been negotiating during which we were making the concessions on security, transit and on a number of other issues, the Indians never told the Bangladesh side of the interested parties that it would need to consult. In fact, the Indians had always hinted that the Teesta was ready for signature much earlier and that they were holding it back to be the icing on the case for the visit of the Indian Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, the view of Foreign Ministry sources that Bangladesh would hold the transit card to encourage India on the Teesta is unlikely to happen. The history of trial run is not a good one in Bangladesh-India relations. It brings back to memory the trial run we had given India on the Farakkah barrage only to regret it later. Further, India has a stranglehold on Bangladesh by controlling the waters of the common rivers and a fair demarcation of our share of the Bay of Bengal that is rich in hydro-carbon and maritime resources. Any attempt to tie the Teesta with the land transit could influence India to tighten the screws on us on our share of the waters of the common rivers and in other areas where India has the advantage.

In any case, our Prime Minister has untied the two and hence the issue is settled now. This has placed Bangladesh in a position where it can merely hope India would do the right thing having bargained off its strong playing cards of security and land transit unilaterally without demanding reciprocity.

The high hopes of not too long ago that our negotiators had raised that India would make us rich by making us the regional connectivity hub and provide us fair share of the waters of the common rivers is fast fading. India is living up to its past; an emerging world power interested in playing with its neighbors a zero-sum game. Sadly our negotiators never even suspected it. They went to Maldives with high hopes only to have those hopes dashed again.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Narayanganj elections: Mixed signals

2011-11-16T01:16:00.000-05:00

As I See It Column
The Independent
November 12, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

No election in recent memory has attracted so much attention as has the Narayanganj City Corporation (NCC) elections. The media, the visual in particular, made it a national issue. The focus was totally on the election of the Mayor. The private TV stations devoted almost all its time and energy covering the NCC elections for days leading to voting and celebrations after the dream candidate was elected.

Everybody, or almost everybody got carried away with the election of Mayor in the NCC elections, even the winner who in TV talk shows thanked everybody in the country and abroad for their support. In her excitement she made it appear as if her election was an international event. In fact, she did say so!

That minor slip notwithstanding, Selina Hayat Ivy has indeed been the candidate that we dream to see in the elections, particularly in the national elections. She is honest; dedicated and most important of all, courageous enough to stand against her party and its Chief who is not kind to those who show inclination to oppose her.

In the end, it was not Selina Hayat and her supporters alone who celebrated her victory. All and sundry came to the wining party and embraced her as their candidate; all except the opposition. The ELection Commission (EC ) that was snubbed when the government turned down its request for the army deployment in apprehension of trouble, took credit for holding a free, fair and peaceful election. It forgot to take up with the government its refusal to deploy the army in violation of the Constitution.

Shamim Osman , who was supported by the ruling party but lost, also buried his shame, anger and humiliation and welcomed the winner. His belief in Allah and confidence that only terrorism and voting fraud could rob him of a thumping victory , simply withered away. The Prime Minister, fortunately, did not let people wait too long guessing what turned SHamim Osman to into such a fine gentleman so suddenly and dramatically when she summoned him and Selina Hayat to her official residence together and patted both in the back . She claimed credit for all the good and unexpected things that happened in the NCC elections.

The Prime Minister also claimed that Selina Hayat was her candidate. It was a claim that many would not agree with. In days leading to the election, Selina Hayat expressed her disappointment and frustration before the media that she had been by-passed in favour of SHamim Osman by the party and the Prime Minister despite being an Awami Leaguer who had served Naryangang municipality honestly and faithfully for many years till it was made into city corporation and elections called to elect its fist Mayor and Councillors. She also regretted that her father was also by-passed in 1973 for a parliamentary seat by the AL that he won as an independent candidate and returned to the party. To her credit, she said that like her father, she would also not leave the Awami League.

The Prime Minister further claimed that the NCC elections went to prove that a political government is capable of holding a free and fair national election and that there would be no need anymore to go back to the caretaker government. During the BNP's first term in 1991-96, the AL backed candidates won both the Dhaka and Chittagong mayoral elections that in no way weakened the party's demand for the caretaker government. In Naryangang, once the BNP supported candidate withdrew and it became evident that Selina Hayat would win a landslide victory, there was little incentive to intervene in favour of Shamin Osman.

That became all the more un-necessary and impossible when the EC put all its efforts behind the elections to ensure that nothing untoward happened. With its credibility at stake, the EC was left with no other alternative but to work overtime for a free and fair election. The safety net for a free and fair election became full proof with the positive role of the media that was everywhere with journalists and cameras ready to catch anyone daring to use fraudulent means. Therefore the PrimeMinister's claim that the NCC elections supported her party's stand that national elections could also be held under an interim government instead of a neutral caretaker government in a free and fair manner does not stand to serious scrutiny.

The ruling party, to put it mildly, has been caught with its pants down with the victory of Selina Hayat, the Prime Minister’s claims notwithstanding. It reflected a few things that would no doubt come back to haunt the party later. First, its top leadership including the party chief backed the candidate with the corrupt image against the one with a honest one. It reminded many of the party and its chief’s backing for known terrorists in the 2001 elections that was one main cause of its debacle in that election. Second, the NCC elections also underlined serious fissures in the ruling party. Known dissidents in the party openly backed the winning candidate while senior leaders of the party backed the loser.

It would be unrealistic to imagine on a national scale what happened in the NCC elections .The EC would not be able to give even a fraction of attention to each of the 300 constituencies that it gave in Narayanganj. The media likewise would be rendered inactive on a national scale. Most important of all, the warmth shown to Shamim Osman by the ruling party does not cause optimism in most people's mind that candidates like Selina Hayat would be preferred over the likes of Shamim Osmam in the national elections.

Politics in Narayanganj under its new Mayor is not expected to be any better than in rest of the country with SHamim Osman already showing his real face and the ruling party sympathetic and supportive of him.The recent murder of the popular Mayor of Narsinghdi due to intra-party conflict is a reminder that the Narayangang phenomenon should not raise our expectations that we would be delivered anytime soon from our violence ridden and conflict prone politics that today is not just between the ruling party and the opposition but within the parties as well.

In the hurry to embrace Selina Hayat, we have failed to congratulate SM Akram who did something unheard of in our politics. He resigned from the key post of Convenor of Narayanganj AL in protest of his party’s blessings for SO by ignoring him! One wishes that there would be more like Selina Hayat and SM Akram to deliver us from the politics of conflict that we have today, politics that is pushing Bangladesh to the edge.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

On dissent in Awami League

2011-11-16T01:14:00.001-05:00

As I See It Column
The Independent
November 5, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

One issue that came to forefront during the last Caretaker Government about politics in the country was the lack of dissent within the mainstream political parties. It was also an issue that had concerned most people because they felt that parties that did not allow dissent within their ranks could not be expected to establish democracy in the country.

At least in one of the mainstream political parties now, it is clear that there is too much dissent. It started in an uncoordinated manner when the Awami League assumed power after the last elections. We witnessed initially subdued criticisms of some Ministers by some senior members of the party. We also saw dissent in wings of the party, the student wing for instance, that refused to follow directives coming from the top.

Recently, this dissent within the Awami League seems to have taken a new turn. When the Prime Minister was away attending the Commonwealth Summit in Perth, a section within the party had a field day in parliament. They took the Ministers apart for their absence from the parliament. They had choicest words for some of the Ministers. They were furious about the role of the Advisers.

The members who led the attack were given ammunition by the Ministers by their willful absence from the parliament. Leading the way was Tofael Ahmed who noted that out of 50 Ministers; only 6 were present that day. Another AL leader Sheikh Selim said that the Ministers attend parliament only to please the Prime Minister or for fear of her. They have no respect for the parliament.

Another senior leader Suranjit Singh did not mince words, stating both sarcastically and angrily that the Ministers do not care for the Parliament and instead spend their time for retaining their jobs by sycophancy with powers that matter. The speakers were most critical on the Advisers. Sheikh Selim said that they are Advisers to the Prime Minister and not to the Government and most definitely not to the Parliament. He and others regretted that the Advisers run the Government but not answerable to it and felt indignant about it.

All who spoke left no one in doubt that they had a lot of pent up anger and frustration to get off their chest. Although they expressed their anger on the Ministers and the Advisers, they ended in criticizing the democratic foundations of the government. They ended describing the present government as one the Prime Minister runs with her un-elected Advisers where the Ministers are powerless. In fact, they ended criticizing the government so severely that the opposition would have felt proud if they were the ones criticizing the government instead.

Not long ago, when the country was engrossed with corruption in the communications sector, the Minister for Communications was subjected to harassment rather than criticism in parliament. Other Ministers, for instance the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Commerce have also been subjected to critical scrutiny by the members of their own party in the parliament in a manner that humiliated them as much as it embarrassed and humiliated the government.

Dissent and criticism of policies, decisions and leadership by its own members is no doubt a sign of democracy in a political party. Therefore, in the first instance, the critical views expressed by the members of the ruling party about the Ministers not attending parliamentary sessions and about the un-elected Advisers controlling elected Ministers are developments that must be welcomed. Likewise, criticisms of certain Ministers who have become controversial are also to be commended.

However, on deeper examination a few facts emerge that point at a different direction and not really towards growth of democratic dissent in the ruling party. In fact, it reflects a growing revolt by the senior members of the ruling party whose views have significant following within the party.
These are the leaders who have been left out of the Cabinet and other favours from the Government after the AL came to power for their attempts at reform during the Caretaker Government with encouragement of the military intelligence.

The only issue that is keeping their dissent from becoming open revolt is the fact that they are not yet ready to openly take on the Prime Minister. Their fear of the Prime Minister notwithstanding, they are nevertheless pointing fingers at the Prime Minister anyway. They have gone ahead and criticized the Ministers in full knowledge that the Prime Minister has appointed them and any criticisms of the Ministers would also fall upon her. Likewise, they know that the Advisers are closer to the Prime Minister than her Ministers. Yet, their criticism of the Advisers has been more severe.

Thus, what is happening within the Awami League does not appear to be democratic dissent but expressions of personal anger and frustration by a section of the Awami League leadership for being left out from political power. What is disturbing is the fact that the number of parliamentarians who are critical of the Ministers and Advisers is not a small one. It is also disturbing that no member of the ruling party attempted to defend the Ministers and the Advisers when they were subjected to such severe criticism in parliament although it is common knowledge in the ruling party that the Ministers and the Advisers all enjoy the confidence of the Prime Minister.

In fact, the Prime Minister defended the Ministers who were subjected to harassment and criticism by senior members of the ruling party on issue of competence and corruption very strongly, showing contempt at their critics. One therefore has to wait and see how the Prime Minister reacts to the latest show of frustration and anger of senior members of the party with more joining their ranks. Her reaction notwithstanding, the dissent in the ruling party that we are now witnessing may be growing signs of serious conflict within the party instead of emerging signs of democracy in it.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt and a Director, Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies

Bangladesh’s image and the Padma Bridge

2011-11-16T01:12:00.000-05:00

Daily Sun
November 6, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

The foreign minister thinks that our image has not been tarnished by the allegation of corruption resulting in cancellation of funding of the US$ 2.7 billion Padma Bridge (PB) project by the World Bank. Unfortunately, soon afterwards, the ADB and JICA also took similar action as co-financiers. The IMF is also not willing to give Bangladesh the support it now needs desperately. In a recent meeting of the foreign minister with the US Secretary of State in Washington, the latter raised concerns over freedom of the media in Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank. She hoped that the noble prize winning institution would be allowed to function un-hindered.

These are scathing criticisms and serious concerns coming from powerful sources. These are not just hurting our image; more importantly are hurting where it matters more, our development efforts. Therefore, the foreign minister would have done better not to have dismissed the image issue outright because going into state of denial would neither bring funds for the PB nor improve the image that Bangladesh needs desperately to attract support and foreign assistance to become a middle income country by 2021.

Addressing the WB concerns, our government must not forget that it is governed by the big powers where the US has a dominant role. Hence the Bank’s concerns are not just its concerns; the concerns are shared by our other developments partners and also by other international financial institutions such as the ADB, IMF and JICA. The goodwill of these countries and institutions are indispensable to our future.

It must also be kept in mind that the issue on which the WB has stopped funding is corruption; that is of critical significance in development aid and project financing by developed countries and international financial agencies. The WB has a strong resident office in Dhaka that has been following Bangladesh on the issue of good governance. This office and offices of other international financial agencies and embassies of developed countries have formal and informal liaison among themselves in Dhaka. They watch every day how the country is sliding on the corruption index.

In recent times, they have watched our civil society’s bipartisan moves against corruption in the ministry upon which the WB has focused. In fact, a group representing the students, professionals and university teachers have started a movement seeking the resignation of the communications minister. The media has been continuously exposing corruption in his ministry and elsewhere in the government. Therefore the concerns of these agencies and governments cannot be just pushed aside by denial for the money they provide us as aid has to be accounted for or else they would stop coming. An “ostrich mentality” on such concerns would not help any of the stakeholders.

The seriousness of the WB was communicated forcefully to our government when it sent its Vice- President for Ethics to Dhaka to meet the prime minister, a step in itself very unusual that underscores the seriousness of the concern. Our government treated the concern in an astonishingly casual way. The WB expected the government to change leadership in the Ministry of Communications. Our government stubbornly refused to do so. Instead, the relevant parliamentary committee abused the WB and recommended that the government should seek funding for the PB elsewhere! The communications minister also spoke in the media that the government would raise funds for PB privately.

However, he also wrote to the Transparency International Bangladesh for investigating corruption in his ministry, a highly unusual and desperate step that confirmed the concern raised by the WB, instead of removing any one from the ministry. When the TIB refused to take the Minister’s offer, he wrote to the ACC showing his desperation for a certificate of honesty. His strange steps convinced no one; these just underscored the government’s knee jerk approach to governance.

Recently, on the TV programme Tritio Matra, a member of parliament of the ruling party openly named the communications minister as corrupt. He said that this minister and a few like him are tarnishing the honest credentials of the prime minister, her family members and the government. He told viewers that the minister’s claim of closeness with the prime minister, her sister and her husband are baseless. The prime minister’s sister, upon hearing he was using her name, had called him to her presence and rebuked him and warned him to refrain from such malafide acts.

The MP thereafter revealed an absolutely incredible story about the minister. This minister with Obaidul Quader and Saber Hossain were in Sheikh Hasina’s delegation to China when she was in the opposition. The MP was also a part of the team. On a sight-seeing outing one day during the trip, Sheikh Hasina in fun mood asked for a whistle to pull a joke on the three. When she was given one, she told them to run a race and added that the one who won would be made a minister when the AL came to power. All three ran but two of them for mere fun knowing that Sheikh Hasina was joking. The Communications Minister was serious and ran as if his life depended on it and won.

Now readers believe this if you want. The MP told viewers that after winning the elections, Abul Hossain went to Sheikh Hasina and insisted that she must keep her promise and make him the minister for communications. The prime minister obliged as he was persistent! I am not sure how many viewers would believe this astonishing story but it is another proof that the concern about the minister of communications is not just a concern of the WB and our international friends or of the opposition in Bangladesh but also shared by important people of the ruling party.

Most people would have no problem in believing that the communications minister is using the name of the PM and her family. If the minister is guilty of corruption as the MP has said on the programme, changing him would not just save the reputation of the prime minister; it would also satisfy the WB and the other financial institutions to reconsider the financing for the PB project. Therefore, it defeats logic why the minister is being allowed to remain in his post.

This is the first instance where a mega project of Bangladesh has been stopped by an institution like the WB for concerns of corruption. Those involved in sharing this concern are crucial to our development; they could make or break our efforts to break from poverty to economic viability for the majority of our people. Therefore the cancellation of PB funding is not one that is just harming our image for it surely is; it is putting into jeopardy our overall development efforts.

The foreign minister’s denial on the image issue, the communications minister’s move for “honesty certificate” from the TIB and ACC, and the MP’s attempt to clear the PM, her family and the government on Tritio Matra are not going to convince those who are looking towards Bangladesh government to be serious.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

2011-11-04T12:36:00.002-04:00

Holiday
47 Anniversaary issue
November 4, 2011

LET PROFESSIONALS HANDLE FOREIGN POLICY

Are we losing our friends aboard?
M. Serajul Islam

When we were fighting our war of liberation in 1971, peoples everywhere supported us because of our courage and determination. Unfortunately, our liberation war did not get the support it deserved from the governments around the world except for India and the Soviet Union.

Those were the times when many countries were threatened by internal movements for self determination. Such attempts were strictly discouraged to retain the territorial integrity of the countries of the time. When we were fighting our war of liberation, there was a similar movement in Nigeria where the Biafrans had declared independence only to be crushed and the province retaken by Nigeria.

Our war of liberation was qualitatively different. It was not just a fight of self determination. We had won the national elections of Pakistan. The Awami League was poised to form the government with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The elections were declared void by the military-bureaucratic clique in Pakistan forcing Mujib to declare independence.

The Pakistan military junta’s response was genocidal where it did not go after the Awami League for declaring independence. The junta went on a killing spree against those who spoke Bangla that made their killings one of the worst recorded cases of genocide of our times. The genocide and our courageous fight for independence attracted worldwide attention. In Japan, school children saved money by skipping Tiffin so that they could contribute to the welfare of 10 million refugees who fled to India to escape the genocide.

When Bangladesh became independent on 16th December, 1971, there was a massive outpour of support for the new born country. Japan whose government did not support the war of liberation for the sake of Pakistan’s territorial integrity made up for that by putting Bangladesh on top of the list of countries receiving its development aid. Likewise, Australia made Bangladesh the second biggest receiver of its aid, after PNG to which it had special commitment as its former colonizer. USA and the developed nations came forward to assist Bangladesh generously.

The way Bangladesh was recognized as an independent country was also significant. It was received by the comity of nations with open arms. China held back on recognizing us because of strategic reasons, being indebted to Pakistan for being the conduit to normalization of Sino-US relations. In offering Bangladesh membership of the OIC, the Foreign Minister of Kuwait, the brother of the Amir of Kuwait came to Dhaka to take Sheikh Mujib to Lahore where the OIC Summit was held in which Bangladesh was admitted as a member.

Although the change of government in 1975 caused some disruption in Bangladesh’s pursuit of friends abroad, it was restored soon afterwards, although between 1975 and 1990, the country was under military rulers. In fact, under President Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh became a member of the UN Security Council, beating Japan for the Asian seat for 1979-80. Although Japan was then as it is now our largest bilateral donor, our relations with Japan was not affected for the defeat we served it.

During President Ershad’s term, then Foreign Minister Humayun Rashid Chowdhury became the President of the UN General Assembly. Bangladesh played the major role in the establishment of SAARC that came into being in the first SAARC Summit held in Dhaka in 1985. Those were also the days when any major world leader who visited India and Pakistan, also almost always visited Bangladesh.

Unfortunately, the importance of Bangladesh in world and South Asian politics started to decline with the return of democratic governments. Although we still succeeded in winning a seat in the UN Security Council in 2000-2001, one could not help noticing fewer visits of world leaders to Bangladesh and a perceptible decline of our standing in international politics. The end of the Cold War has been one major reason why a resource poor developing country like Bangladesh had been marginalized in international politics.

Another major reason for Bangladesh’s decline in international politics was the enhancement of the status of India and Pakistan in regional and world politics after they became owners of the nuclear bomb in 1998. That created a huge gap between Bangladesh and its two other neighbours where the world powers took Bangladesh for granted.

Nine eleven further pushed Bangladesh out of contention for attention by the world powers when focusing on South Asia. Pakistan became a favourite in Washington when it became US’s partner in the war on terror. India, by its emergence as a major world economic power, also went few steps up in the ladders in international politics. Nevertheless, 9/11 also held out hope for Bangladesh to come into attention of the USA and its allies who were looking for a big Muslim country with liberal democracy to underscore the fact that Islam is a peaceful religion and that those using terror in the name of Islam were in the minority.

In that context, 9/11 was a heaven sent opportunity for Bangladesh as the 3rd largest Muslim country in the world to befriend the US and the western world. Soon after 9/11, the BNP won democratic elections in Bangladesh with a 2/3rd majority to carry forward Bangladesh’s liberal traditions. With the right signals, Bangladesh would have become a close friend of the US and its allies.

Instead, the BNP squandered that heaven sent opportunity by looking the other way when its Islamic coalition partners supported by a section in the party nurtured and encouraged Islamic terrorists like Bangla Bhai. Repeated pleas by the US Ambassador Harry Thomas to crack down on these elements fell on deaf ears. Foreign Minister Morshed Khan openly ridiculed the US Ambassador for believing in what he termed as press propaganda.

As a result both Bangladesh and the BNP fell on the wrong side of the US and its allies. During the political crisis in 2006-2007, the US through its Ambassador in Dhaka did not leave anyone in doubt which party the US wanted in power. More precisely, the US, its allies and UN agencies that played an active role in politics of the time were eager to see the BNP out of power. Thus during the BNP’s 2001-2006 term, Bangladesh missed a great chance of moving closer to the US and western powers.

Upon assuming office, Sheikh Hasina created the opportunities to move closer to the US and the western powers. First, she touched the right chords with these powers by her stand against terrorism when she stated unequivocally that Bangladesh’s soil would not be allowed to be used for terrorist attacks on India. Second, in the UN Conference on Climate in Copenhagen in 2009, she became a favourite of the US, China and India although her initiatives in the Copenhagen Summit that attracted world attention also brought criticisms of the LDC countries as the three she supported are also the world’s worst polluters.

The gains were lost when the country was caught in the controversy over Dr. Mohammed Yunus. The Government took the stand that Dr. Yunus must go because he crossed the mandatory retirement age limit to remain a Managing Director of the Grameen Bank. The Prime Minister and her Ministers were also very forceful in accusing the Grameen Bank of sucking the blood of the poor by the high rate of interest it charged. A lot of their criticisms were directed at Dr. Yunus who was also accused of financial wrong doings.

Unfortunately, the arguments were lost to the US that took a major interest in both the Grameen Bank and Dr. Yunus who is a friend of the US Secretary of State and her husband, President Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton made a personal request to the Prime Minister by a telephone call and followed this by sending an Assistant Secretary of State to Dhaka for a honourable exit for Dr. Yunus that could have been done easily by making him the Chairman of the Grameen Bank.

The Prime Minister rejected the request, sighting that the laws of the country did not permit her to do so. Dr. Yunus was unceremoniously pushed out of the GB that was no doubt a personal affront to the US Secretary of State. The US government while requesting Bangladesh for a honourable exit for Dr. Yunus stressed the point that he has also been awarded the US President’s medal of honour. That was a clear hint that the US would consider it an affront to its President as well if the Bangladesh Government turned the request down. The Government of Bangladesh refused Dr. Yunus the honourable exit leading President Clinton to call it “vindictive”.

There were many who applauded the stand of Bangladesh over Dr. Yunus. They praised the Prime Minister’s courage in standing up against the US Secretary of State. Unfortunately, those who applauded the Prime Minister failed to take into account that there would be consequences for turning down such a simple request from such powerful sources. Those whose job it was to advise the Prime Minister perhaps forgot that the US is still the only remaining Super Power not to be taken lightly whose support for our development efforts is of critical importance.

We are now paying the price for our Prime Minister’s courage. It is true that the WB, the ADB and JICA have stopped funding the Padma Bridge for corruption. The IMF has also recently shown unwillingness to provide us the crucially necessary budget support. Our recent efforts for market access for our RMG products to the US market have likewise hit a brick wall. It would be naïve to believe that all these have nothing to do with upsetting the United States over Dr. Yunus.

After this Government came to office, it made no secret about its preference for India. On Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s official visit to India, the strongly worded paragraph on Bangladesh’s support for India in an expanded UN Security Council in the Joint Communiqué together with the commitment on security, grant of land transit and use of ports, all unilaterally, sent the wrong signals to China that in regional politics it is India that Dhaka is backing. In preferring India so openly, the government put at stake over 3 decades of successful diplomacy where China accepted us as a special friend. The fact that the Prime Minister had to wait a year to make her official trip to China that she had made within two months of assuming office the last time no doubt hints at China’s declining interest in Bangladesh although it continues to remain very much in its good books as a market for its products.

All of the above would not have been just bad news if we had been able to move ahead with India for which this government did so much in the nearly last 3 years in office. In the end, after promising so much, the Indians withdrew two major deals on water, on the Teesta and Feni rivers, leaving many in Bangladesh wondering why our negotiators did not take into account the fact that in the past, India had reneged many times on the trust factor. Instead, those who negotiated for us believed in India enthusiastically and almost blindly and even expressed anger at those who raised questions of trust against India.

All the above raises a serious concern, whether Bangladesh is losing its friends abroad and if so, is it simply because of the change in international politics after the Cold War? On examination, there is merit to suggest that changes in international politics have been responsible in marginalizing Bangladesh in international and regional politics. Nevertheless, Bangladesh’s failure in understanding international politics and diplomacy is the more important reason why Bangladesh is becoming friendless in international politics. For instance, if Bangladesh had maintained the warm relations with China that could have been done with a little else eagerness to sing the virtues of India, the Government could have gone to China for opening the doors closed by the WB, IMF and ADB. Today China is a power whose voice in these financial institutions is taken very seriously.
Bangladesh finds itself isolated in international politics today because of the casual way it conducts foreign relations for which all the past four elected governments must share blame. Under this government, the conduct of foreign affairs has been diluted in such a manner that one would need to research to find out where our foreign policy is formulated and who implements our foreign policy initiatives.

It is hard to believe that a country like Bangladesh that needs international support and assistance for its development would have been impulsive enough to have annoyed a powerful US Secretary of State and USA on an issue that it could have easily avoided if conduct of foreign affairs had been in the hands of those who understand international relations and diplomacy. To add to the disbelief, Dr. Yunus is not just a friend to Hillary Clinton; during the controversy, the French President had also sent a Special Envoy to plead with our Prime Minister for Dr. Yunus. There were many other world leaders who also spoke on behalf of Dr. Yunus in order to encourage our Government to provide him a honourable exit. Instead, where in our foreign policy initiatives, we could have used the Noble Laureate for opening doors; we used him for closing doors.

Thus by a combination of a number of factors, some for which we are responsible and others, the product of changes in the international relations not being in our hands, we are surely losing our friends abroad at a time when we need their support more than at any time before. It is for the sake of our future that we need to take corrective measures where we can for the mistakes we have made instead of going into denial with them or explaining these away on a false sense of confidence and misplaced sense of national pride. Most of all, we need to bring foreign affairs and diplomacy into the centre of governance instead of treating it like there is no need of expertise, experience or professional approach for conducting it and put it in charge of those with experience and competence in handling foreign affairs and diplomacy, people with courage and vision to distinguish between personal ego and national interests and not to confuse between the two.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt and Director, Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies.

2011-11-04T12:29:00.002-04:00

The Independent
As I See IT Column
October 22, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Narendra Modi: India’s next Prime Minister?

2011-11-01T12:22:00.001-04:00

Daily Sun
Sunday, 30 October, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

A significant political event has just passed in Indian politics. Gujarat’s Chief Minister has completed 10 years in office. He has won two elections, each very handsomely. Gujarat has also emerged as one of the successful states of India in economic development. Narendra Nath Modi is accepted arguably as the best CM of India.

All these have encouraged Narendra Modi’s supporters and the BJP in need of a national face to look at him to lead the BJP to power in the next national elections in 2014. Narendra Modi is himself projecting his case strongly and determinedly. Nevertheless, his past is also keeping pace with what he and his supporters and the BJP are attempting to do at the national level.

Most recently, he was in news for incarcerating Sanjiv Bhatt, an IPS officer who had accused the CM for his active role in the Gujarat riots of 2002 in which 2000 people of the state, mostly Muslims, were slaughtered in communal riots. The officer was incarcerated when a constable accused him of forcibly getting him to make statement against the CM for his involvement in the riots. The Chief Minister and his administration have been accused to have sided with the perpetrators of the riots by human rights organizations and an independent commission for which a case against him is still awaiting resolution in the Indian Supreme Court.

In fact, Narendra Modi is at the centre of these accusations. The US Embassy has refused to issue him a visa since 2007 for his role in the riots. The Supreme Court of India has compared him to the infamous character of history, the Roman Emperor Nero who “played the flute” while Rome was burning at his instance. In case of Narendra Modi, he watched while Muslims were butchered under his watch.

Narendra Modi is a champion of Hindutva, the philosophy that sees India as a land of the Hindus, where Muslims have no place except at the mercy of the Hindus. The Hindutva movement comprises all the extreme fundamentalist organizations of India such as the RSS and the Viswa Hindu Parisad. He is playing the communal card cunningly as he knows that in the power of the ballot, the Hindutva card cannot go wrong because the overwhelmingly majority of Indians are Hindus.

He has therefore repeatedly refused to be apologetic of his role in the Gujarat riots of 2002. In fact, he believes firmly as so does many in the BJP that it is his role as the champion of the Hindu religion that appeals to the people of Gujarat and it is this appeal that will take him from Gandhinagar to New Delhi as the overwhelming majority of Indians, like those of his state, are Hindus with fundamentalist leanings.

The phenomenon of Narendra Modi is an interesting one. It is putting to the litmus test India’s secular beliefs. In fact, the politics around Narendra Modi is putting to test whether India is the country built by the visions of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru or on the beliefs of the former’s assassin, Nathuram Godse.

The outcome of the tests notwithstanding, one thing must be said that till the unfortunate thing happens and Narendra Modi and Hindutva wins in India, India has been and continues to be a bastion of democratic beliefs and democratic practices. The Indian media is openly discussing the phenomenon of Narendra Modi with no holds barred and all his attributes and his defects. Among his attributes, is his clean breach from corruption. Among his many defects is his dictatorial style of doing politics.

Recently, an Indian journalist told me that the majority Hindus of India had sent the BJP out of power in 2004 mainly for Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots where even pregnant Muslim women were killed in grotesque ways. He also told me not to take seriously the prospect of Narendra Modi ever becoming the Indian Prime Minister and to rest assured that he would never have a chance at the national level. I told him that I would not want Narendra Modi to have a shot at becoming an Indian Prime Minister by a long margin and that I have too much faith in Indian secularism.

Nevertheless, I could not help flagging for this journalist the fact that Narendra Modi is being discussed as a possibility as the next Indian Prime Minister and the BJP leadership at the highest level is placating his candidature. In fact, I told the Indian journalist that on a TV talk show in one of India’s leading channels that I watched recently; BJP’s national spokeswoman praised his virtues as a potential national leader.

My interest in Narendra Modi is for a number of reasons. To me, if he ever becomes a Prime Minister for that chance cannot be dismissed off hand, his emergence will have a tremendous negative impact on Bangladesh as it will encourage Bangladesh’s still insignificant religious extremism to challenge the country’s unflinching faith in secularism.

The issue of Narendra Modi is also important for us to take lessons. Narendra Modi is the Indian face of the local collaborators of the Pakistani army during the war of liberation. Although in Bangladesh we have not yet succeeded in trying these war criminals, our resolve to do so have almost total acceptance and support among the people. These elements have been rejected politically and driven almost to the periphery of politics to the extent possible in a democratic country.

Yet the Indian media has wasted no opportunity to give us a bad name by overstating the issue of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh mostly during the tenure of the last BNP government, 2001-2006. The Indian media’s reports have harmed the image of Bangladesh where we have been viewed by the outside world in a manner we are not. These reports have twisted the fact that in the history of South Asia, where other parts have seen and continue to see communal tensions, we in Bangladesh have not been subjected to communal riots or communal tension.

The emergence of BJP with commitment to Hindutva and ties with religious extremists like the RSS and now the possibility that an arch communalist Narendra Modi with a history of hatred towards the Muslims could become India’s next Prime Minister should convince many amongst us that there is a very strong and nakedly fundamentalist face of India, not just is well acknowledged secular face. India’s secular face is strong and vibrant. However its communal face is not a pass over. It is in our national interest that we have to take into account the duality that exists in India and against that appreciate our own strength instead of believing in Indian secularism and its strength and basing our hopes upon it.

In Bangladesh, we would like to hope that Narendra Modi is an aberration and would never emerge on the national scene. However, the fact that he is receiving serious attention as a possible contender to become Manmohon Singh’s successor is not a bad thing as it should help us understand the complex and not always so secular India.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

2011-10-31T11:53:00.001-04:00

Of Bangladesh-India relations
M. Serajul Islam
Daily Sun
October 23, 2011

It is time for our negotiators to get back to the drawing board following the disappointing visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Dhaka and assess the reasons for the big gap between expectations and achievements.

Let us set aside our gains like, for example, the settling of land boundary and the 46 RMG items that we will now be able to export to India duty free. Our major concern with India is water for the 54 rivers that come from India and give Bangladesh, its life. A fair demarcation of the maritime boundary holds a major key to our economic development. In 40 years of “incremental diplomacy”, we have only one accord on water sharing and on the maritime boundary; we have been forced to go to the UN
tribunal.

We are not getting the water promised by the Ganges Accord because there is not enough water at Farakkha during the dry season due to upstream depletion. The Teesta Accord that we are now desperate to sign is even in a worse situation. Mamata Banerjee has said recently that there is no water at the point of sharing during the dry season.

Bihar Minister of Water Nitish Kumar has asked for a review of the Ganges Accord. Mamata Banerjee and Nitish Kumar are in fact asking us to look at a crucial issue that our negotiators seem oblivious about – the issue of upstream withdrawal. Over the years since our independence, the Indian states have withdrawn waters from these cross-boundary rivers without ever caring for Bangladesh’s needs, thus pushing us to a process of slow death.

A private TV channel has shown a series of documentaries recently to create public awareness on how our rivers are drying up. I wish our negotiators have seen the documentaries to know our situation and India better. Given our desperation for the Teesta Accord, it is very likely that we would sign an accord that on paper would give 50% share of Teesta waters during the dry season. If we are to believe in our common sense, objective data and Mamata Banerjee, there will be little or no water to share when the time for sharing comes!

One point that most of us missed while analysing the botched up visit of Dr. Manmohon Singh is the little emphasis that our negotiators placed on water sharing till India reneged on the Teesta deal. They were too engrossed with the magic of connectivity hub with which they wanted to launch a new era of Bangladesh-India relations. In fact, they had told us many times during the process of negotiations that Teesta Agreement was almost ready for signature when our Prime Minister visited New Delhi.

Thus our negotiators did not just set water issue aside, they sugar-coated our major playing card, land transit, by promising us great riches as the connectivity hub. In fact, they made it appear like it was in our interest to give India the land transit. Therefore, we should thank Mamata Banerjee for stopping us from signing a Teesta deal that would have been an agreement on paper. In the process, we would have given away to India land transit that holds such immense value to India.

Mamata Banerjee has also helped us hold back on the security card for without her spanner on the Teesta deal, we would have handed over Anup Chetia and also have not signed with India the extradition treaty. In fact, given the state of terrorism, both homegrown and cross-border inside India, India is in desperate need for support and assistance of Bangladesh for a handle on terrorism where they consider Bangladesh a major source of concern. Thus for them AL victory in the last elections and Sheikh Hasina’s offer on security was an answer to their prayers.

Although a lot of what has transpired between Bangladesh and India on security has been outside public knowledge, it can be safely concluded that India needs a lot more time to feel it has secured the security threat from Bangladesh. Hence there is strong reason to feel that despite the concessions we have already made on security – like for instance handing over the top ULFA terrorists – there is much more value of our security card to India. Hence in an ironic sort of way, both the transit and security cards have become stronger because the Indians reneged on the Teesta deal that botched up the visit.

When they get back to the drawing board, our negotiators should first set their priorities right. They should put water in bold letters and place it right on top. While negotiating on water, they should lay claim to a share of all cross-boundary rivers and object to any upstream withdrawal without consulting us. However, keeping in mind that augmentation is the key, our negotiators should seek a regional approach to the water issue. A regional approach has the potential to turn our region into one of the richest in terms of water resources in the world. Indian mindset in dealing with neighbours bilaterally has been the problem.

Equally important to Bangladesh, in fact much more than becoming the connectivity hub, is the need to exploit the rich potentials of hydro-carbons and marine resources in the Bay of Bengal. Where we trusted India to give it land transit and security without demanding our rights on water, trade and land boundary, it awaits explanation why we decided to go to the UN tribunal with our case. When our negotiators go back to the drawing board, they should consider a negotiated settlement on the maritime issue because going to the Tribunal does not rule out bilateral negotiations.

Of course, our present negotiating team will get nowhere with the above. This is where our Prime Minister has a historic role to play. She alone can make India change this mindset by playing the security and land transit cards in exchange. Sadly, because of our poor negotiating skills, we are rather late in playing this strategy because today Sheikh Hasina is not as strong politically as she was when she visited India nearly 2 years ago.

She could make up this weakness by talking with the BNP. It was heartening to see the BNP a lot changed vis-à-vis India. The talks between Khaleda Zia and Manmohon Singh were even followed by a letter from the latter to the former when Dr. Singh returned to New Delhi. Given the state of relationship between her and Khaleda Zia, the discussion on an India policy could be carried on at levels below them to give India the message that Bangladesh, not just the AL, is ready for a paradigm shift in relations.

Meanwhile, at the drawing board, our negotiators should decide to hold on both the security and transit cards and see what India does with the issues it has resolved. If a Teesta deal comes along, so be it but that should not lead to land transit and no more concessions on security, not without India agreeing to deal on the water issue regionally. The water sharing issue cannot be left to incremental diplomacy for Bangladesh may not last long enough to see the end of that process ofnegotiations.

Security and land transit for our water needs could eventually create the mutual trust in Bangladesh-India relations with which resolving the demarcation of the maritime boundary could be achieved effortlessly. However, the driving force for achieving the above must be political will to change the negative bureaucratic mindset that is more pronounced on the Indian side.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

Television then and now

2011-10-19T06:31:00.001-04:00

As I See it Column
The Independent
15 October, 2011
M Serajul Islam

I still remember the first programme on TV in what was then East Pakistan. The attraction that the small screen held for us in those days was something that has little comparison with what pleasure the TV gives us today, its humungous expansion in terms of numbers and technology notwithstanding.

Abdullah Abu Sayeed took viewers like me on a trip down the memory land the other day on what TV was to us growing up and now. Abdullah Abu Sayeed who needs no introduction to readers of this column for his contribution to our society as President of Bangladesh Biswa Sahityya Kendra and winner of Magsaysay Award, eloquently and in a nonchalant way described the transformation of the small screen over the decades in a TV interview on a private TV channel recently..

He said that thanks to the floodgate of private TV channels, we have banished from the TV programmes those aspects of our culture and heritage that are our strongest points. As instances, he said private TV channels almost entirely avoid programmes of classical music; on traditional music and songs of Bangladesh, etc. His sarcastic remark that Rabindra Sangeet has not yet been banished perhaps because of fear of the great man underscored the point poignantly that the private TV channels run on profit motive primarily dishing for viewers cheap programmers that needs no talent or brains to produce.

In my trip down the memory lane, I remembered a programme in which Mostafa Monwar spoke to the viewers back in the late 1960s. Those were the days when most programmes were live and the technological support was primitive. He showed the utter lack of space and equipment in the DIT Bhavan from where the TV station functioned. Yet, that station gave the viewers quality programmes in plenty that the explosion of TV stations together today cannot match.

Take for instance programmes such as “Apner Doctor” hosted by Dr. Badrudozza Chowdhury, later on to become a top politician of the country and eventually our President. That was one programme that we watched with rapt attention both for quality of production and for the brilliance of Dr. Badrudozza.

My eldest sister used to live in Islamabad in the 1960s. Those days, the regional TV stations used to air recorded programmes from one another. The Islamabad station used to show Dhaka TVs programme as the last programme of the evening, close to midnight, deliberately. One evening, as my sister waited for the programme of Dhaka TV, she was disappointed that it was a book review and that too on a book of science. Nevertheless she sat through but instead of being bored she was enthralled as the reviewer was Munir Chowdhury. My sister said that he kept the audience glued to the TV by his sheer brilliance.

There were many like Dr. Badrudozza and Munir Chowdhury who did programmes those days that were equivalent of our present day talk shows about which Abdullah Abu Sayeed had interesting comments in the programme aired on Channel 1. He called the present day talk shows as shouting contests. Those days, there were quality dramas, enough of classical music; songs and music with deep roots in our culture; dance programmes; etc. In Salimullah Muslim Hall in the late 1960s, we used to eat our dinner early to get a place in the TV room for the weekly drama. After each, we used to spend time discussing the drama and always impressed with most of what we viewed

These days, we have some artistes in drama who are comparable and perhaps better than those in the past. However, the mix of these few good artistes with a majority, in fact overwhelming majority, of below average is such that the talent of the few good ones are lost in the mix. Then again the demand of the few good ones is so much that they end up wasting their talent by spreading themselves too thin! The lack of talent in dramas is further worsened by the absence of script writers.

The poor quality of the TV programmes sunk on me as I flipped and flipped to watch a TV programme that I could enjoy during the last Eid holidays. I could not find one to hold my attention. With all fairness, I must admit that I could not concentrate on any programme long enough to make a fair assessment. Nevertheless, no one among friends or family told me that he or she had watched a programme worth mentioning.

There is a distinct downward trend in the quality of programmes then and now. This trend downward is an unacceptable one because the viewers have grown many times as has number of TV stations and most importantly, technology. In the programme in which Abdullah Abu Sayeed spoke, the interviewer interjected to mention that the TV stations say in their defense for poor quality of the programmes that they simply cater to public demand. Abdulla Abu Sayeed rejected this view. He said that it is because of the standard and taste of our viewers that our TV stations do not dare show obscenity on the small screens that we see in neighbouring countries and elsewhere.

The expertise to run private TV stations and talent for quality programmes have not matched the sudden and dramatic explosion in number of private TV channels. That explains the poor quality of programmes. The other factor for the poor quality is the greed of these stations for money. It would be better to call our TV stations advertising firms with interjection of programmes so that the viewers stay tuned. Abdullah Abu Sayeed thus pleaded that the TV stations would try and make one quality programme of an hour duration a day or a week. According to him and I agree entirely, even that is not happening.

Yet new stations are coming like mushrooms. From a business point of view, it does not make sense for there is already an over-saturation of private TV channels. Together with allowing new TV stations, the government is coming with new national broadcast policy to regulate programmes in these stations. Something is surely amiss here. One has to wonder which programmes the Government is considering regulating. The Prime Minister’s recent caustic remarks about TV talk shows suggest that the government is not happy about the often unfettered criticisms about its activities. These talk shows and news programmes could be the main reason for the need of new guidelines for the private TV channels.

The government seems poised to subject these TV stations to politics. Already, strong views have emerged against the guidelines, a draft of which has already come to the hands of the media. Thus instead of encouraging the private TV stations to change for the better by quality programmes with focus on our culture, our history and our ethos and less on money making greed, the government seems inclined to turn the private TV channels into what Bangladesh TV has become over the years, a mouthpiece for government propaganda.

The mindset here is unbelievable. When we were watching TV under the Pakistani regime, the programmes were largely above politics and quality productions with emphasis on our culture and our society. Come independence, we transformed that medium into a vehicle for government propaganda. Now we are about to see government guidelines to bring the private TV channels into the same frame!

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

Teesta deal, land transit and Bangladesh’s interests

2011-10-19T06:28:00.001-04:00

The Holiday
14 October,2011
M. Serajul Islam

Our Economic Adviser’s statement to the media that there is no link between Teesta pact and land transit was very clear, without any room for confusion. There is however a little problem, in fact a major one, for someone like me who is trying to follow our bilateral relations with India seriously, knowing that our future depends to a great extent on how we streamline our relations with our neighbour.

The problem with the Adviser’s statement on Teesta and transit arises from another very forceful statement given to the media on the day the Indian Prime Minister had arrived in Dhaka. Bangladesh had hoped that on that visit, Dr. Manmohon Singh would show India’s big heart for the concessions our Prime Minister courageously and unilaterally made on India’s security concerns and land transit needs.

In fact, we were told ever since our Prime Minister went on that historic trip to New Delhi that we just would have to wait for the Indian Prime Minister’s return visit to Dhaka to see what a magnanimous power India is. Dramatically and what can only be described as an anti-climax of historic proportions, the Indian Foreign Secretary went to the media late on the afternoon of September 5th and announced that the Teesta deal was off.

Quite clearly, our negotiators were caught off guard for the sensitivity of water in Bangladesh is something that no one can in the right mind underestimate. As a result, Bangladesh committed a diplomatic faux pas, again of historic proportions. Next day, with the Indian Prime Minister in Dhaka for his historic return visit, our Foreign Secretary summoned the Indian High Commissioner to the Foreign Ministry and clearly told him as unequivocally as the Economic Adviser now that Bangladesh was withdrawing the land transit because India had taken the Teesta deal off the table.

The Foreign Secretary explained the rather undiplomatic diplomatic move (a country does not do so when it has invited that High Commissioner’s Head of Government for a friendly official visit and that too from a country about whom our negotiators had so positively briefed us) as a part of Bangladesh’s incremental diplomacy. Thus by one act, the Foreign Secretary changed the course of our negotiators who had promised us that Manmohon Singh’s visit would result in a paradigm shift in our bilateral relations.

Of course the Foreign Secretary was dutifully carrying out an instruction in which he had no part to play. So he could not be bothered or was not allowed to bother about diplomatic dos and don’ts. Nevertheless, by what the Economic Adviser has now said, there is definitely a conflict and a serious one between his statement and that of the Foreign Secretary. The Government or whoever has the responsibility of deciding on foreign affairs must clear this confusion on whether Teesta accord and land transit are tied, as the Foreign Secretary has said, or not according to the Economic Adviser.

My own view on this controversy is that the Economic Adviser is right. There was no land transit agreement on the table during the visit of the Indian Prime Minister. In fact, land, river and rail transits were agreed between Bangladesh and India during the first Awami League Government under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Subsequently separate protocols were also signed on these transits under the government of President Ziaur Rahman. During the visit, the two sides were supposed to merely exchange letters to formalize land transit that had already been granted.

In fact, the US$ 1 billion soft loan that Bangladesh has accepted from India is already being spent to build the road and related infrastructure for land transit to India. Separately, Tripura has already been using land transit as well as rail transit from Chittagong port for its power station for which the Chief Minister of Tripura expressed great gratitude to Bangladesh as this privilege is transforming the economic future of the state.

Recently, all newspapers have carried pictures with news items of containerized cargo being carried from Paschim Bangla on river vessels for trans-shipment to heavy vehicles for the Indian northeastern states. So what was the Foreign Secretary talking about when he so “courageously” told off the Indian High Commissioner that Bangladesh was withdrawing its offer of land transit?

It is not difficult to put together a scenario of what happened in the evening of the 5th among those who negotiated with India to explain the Foreign Secretary’s action. They were expecting that the next day our Prime Minister would go before the nation with a deal on Teesta and Feni rivers and add that these two deals were prelude to sharing of the other common rivers. The deal was supposed to be the icing on the cake for the party for celebrating a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations.

When Mamata Banarjee broke the party on the Teesta, our negotiators were bamboozled. It was then that they came up with the idea of summoning the Indian High Commissioner. It was like withdrawing an item from the menu of the banquet for the Indian Prime Minister that he has already been served! The government through the poor Foreign Ministry tried to cover up in a thoroughly unprofessional manner its unprofessional handling of the botched negotiations with India.

Our negotiators messed up a golden opportunity of a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations, an opportunity that our Prime Minister had opened up by her bold but politically risky gestures to India on security and land transit. It is time to prepare for future negotiations with India for there is now way we can even think we have a future without Indian friendship and cooperation. To do that, first, we need to clarify the land transit issue. Surely, by our ineptitude, we have given it, but almost. We still hold on to it enough to make India come back to us

Begum Khaleda Zia has made a strong statement that BNP would not allow sell out of the country and it was land transit to which she was pointing. The ruling party should pay heed to it and contrary to what the Economic Adviser has said, tie land transit not just to Teesta but also to share of all other cross boundary rivers. We are under-valuing our importance to India. Our negotiators should read former Indian Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner Muchkund Dubey’s article that appeared recently in The Daily Star.

Muchkund Dubey has argued that the land transit is of “supreme significance” to India because it is the key to integration of mainland India with its fragile northeastern states and also India’s pathway to Southeast Asia and Near East. In a way Mamata Banarjee’s move may have been divine intervention for it stopped Bangladesh short of giving this supremely significant gift to India almost free. The infra-structure for land transit will take many more years. We should use this time Mamata Banarjee has given us to go slow on land transit and bring issues of water, maritime boundary and the rest on the table for solution on quid pro quo basis.

India has benefitted a great deal from our security concessions but there is still much more for India here. We should combine the partially spent security and land transit cards together and not just tie in to Teesta but to all other rivers and the rest of our legitimate demands from India. To do that, our negotiators must read MD’s article to restrain their belief on Indian magnanimity. Muchkund Dubey described the attitude of “Indian political leaders, senior officials, business magnates and strategic thinkers towards Bangladesh” as “one of disdain and apathy.”

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

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India-Afghanistan: strategic partnership or new threat to peace?

2011-10-09T02:32:00.000-04:00

Daily Sun
October 9,2011
M. Serajul Islam

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just completed an official visit to India that is significant in more ways than one. During the visit, Afghanistan and India signed a “strategic partnership”, the first Afghanistan has signed with any country. Such agreements between countries are significant. This one is significant too but this one could also be ominous for peace in Afghanistan. It could pave the way for India and Pakistan to engage in the country in proxy conflicts.

At the signing ceremony, Hamid Karzai and Manmohon Singh spoke of high objectives of peace and development that they assured would result from the agreement. It may as well accrue out of the agreement or it may even bring just the opposite results. Two important players in Afghanistan that started the war on terror as partners themselves have different views on the Afghanistan-India partnership. In fact, the agreement could start the process of their parting of ways.

The US is committed to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan and towards by 2014 and that withdrawal process has started. With withdrawal of US troops, the US led multilateral UN Security Council sponsored ISAF forces would also end their mission. As the end of US and ISAF missions in Afghanistan draws near, the country is hardly in state to make the US and UN confident that the war on terror would be won by the time they left Afghanistan.

In fact, the Taliban against whom the war was started for hosting Al Qaeda is far from being obliterated. Its resurgence has been acknowledged even by the United States itself that has encouraged the Karzai administration to engage in negotiations with the Taliban to isolate the moderates from the extremists and bring the former into the mainstream of the future political process in Afghanistan.

That process has apparently ended in failure. The recent assassination by the Taliban of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani who was leading the negotiations has led the National Security Adviser to Hamid Karzai to state in New Delhi that the process “was a bad joke.” Burhanuddin Rabbani was in New Delhi in July. The Indian Prime Minister said that India was greatly encouraged “by his vision” and that his death has increased the resolve of the two countries to jointly fight terrorism.

The end of Hamid Karzai Government’s efforts at US insistence to negotiate with Taliban is a loss for Pakistan because of the latter’s closeness with the Taliban. The strategic partnership between Afghanistan and India that has come in the wake of the apparent abandonment of engagement with the Taliban could signal the weakening of Pakistan’s position in Afghanistan that has considered the country as its backyard. What is worse for Pakistan is that it is losing out in Afghanistan to its nemesis India. The umbrella of the strategic partnership will now allow India that has already pledged US$ 2 billion to Afghanistan in aid since 2002 to assist Afghanistan in “capacity building” that will include areas of education and overall economic development. India would also train Afghan police and security forces but this was not mentioned by either leader at the press conference in New Delhi.

The Afghan-India strategic partnership could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan. In recent times, particularly following the death of Osama Ben Laden, Pakistan-USA relations have been declining very fast. Outgoing Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen threw some major salvos at Pakistan before handing charge. He accused Pakistan of “exporting” extremism to Afghanistan through proxies and called the Haqqani network as a “veritable arm” of the ISI. Although President Obama watered down the scathing views of Admiral Mullen , the latter’s remarks no doubt point to Pakistan-USA partnership in the war on terror hitting rock bottom.

The entry of India at this critical juncture in Afghanistan no doubt has the support of the United States that is desperate to see Afghanistan in some shape in security terms before it leaves, a desperation that had led it earlier to encourage Hamid Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban. By all accounts, the situation in Afghanistan is hardly encouraging. It is not just that the Taliban is far from being defeated; there are enough indications to suggest that it is in fairly good shape to challenge the Karzai Government once foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

Therefore, the strategic partnership between India and Afghanistan may not be good for the future of Afghanistan. It may not be good for India either. For Afghanistan, India’s entry will only change the course of the war on terror there. As long as the US and allied troops are there, the Taliban and other groups would be targeting these troops while trying to bring down the Karzai Government. Once the US and its allies leave, the target would change but not the war. The Indians would not be sending to Afghanistan any fighting troops yet although Manmohon Singh’s commitment “to stand by Afghanistan” once US and ISAF troops leave does not rule out that either. Meanwhile, their trainers and other experts who would be working there would become the new targets of the Taliban and the Haqqanis.

Pakistan would feel more than justified to provide whatever support these groups need now that President Karzai has made the clear preference for India over Pakistan that India has accepted by moving into its backyard. His reference to Pakistan upon returning to Kabul from New Delhi that India is a fried while Pakistan is a “twin brother” has not been taken seriously by anyone, least of all Pakistan.
The Indians have not shown much common sense in deciding to extend to Afghanistan “strategic assistance” in addition to financial aid and other expertise because the temptation to fiddle with Pakistan was perhaps too much for it to check. In doing so, the Indians have forgotten to take a look at history. The British entered Afghanistan and came back totally defeated. The Soviets met the same fate. The US would not be leaving Afghanistan in 2014 as victors either.

In all these politics of external powers Afghanistan will become the ultimate victim as it has in the past. External politics, this time with Hamid Karzai as a willing accomplice, is preparing the stage for Afghanistan to become the theatre of proxy wars of two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan once the US and its allies leave. The possible engagement of Pakistan and India in proxy wars in Afghanistan could have ominous consequences on South Asia where peace is what is holding the region from emerging on the world scene with its full potentials.

The writer is a retired career diplomat and a former Ambassador to Japan

Right of Information: Theory and reality

2011-10-09T02:27:00.001-04:00

As I See It
The Independent
October 8, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

Every morning, I pass by my own former place of employment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then the office of the Director-General of Education and the Bangladesh Secretariat. I see how serious all these three places are to keep their distance from the public. In fact, in recent times, the Bangladesh Secretariat has fortified its compound more so as to make access of the public even more difficult.

It is not just perceptions that I draw from what I see from the outside. My own experience in gathering information in the Froeign Ministry is a mixed one. From one senior officer, I received both cooperation and courtesy for information I sought and from another, neither. In fact, the latter was downright rude. He neither heard of RTI nor cared about it.

The observations are to put the RTI with which the Government is making some loud noises, in proper context. As the government, or more precisely, the National Information Commission, is projecting the RTI, one could be led to believe that a revolution in democracy has been achieved in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, like most developing countries that were colonies of western powers, has faced tremendous difficulties in transforming its government from its role in the colonial days as an oppressor of people’s rights to its upholder. RTI is the end of the process of that transformation with other elements such as right to vote freely and fairly, guarantee of all forms of freedom being those that have come earlier and achieved more easily.

RTI has been the most difficult to achieve because it challenges the government directly in governance. Under such issues as “official secrecy” and security, most former colonies in reality did not behave like their peoples’ tryst with colonial power was over. In fact, many governments started behaving like new colonial masters. India, considered as a role model in conversion from colony to democracy, is a case in point.

The constitution of India has guaranteed its people all rights no less than the advanced democracies when it was adopted after India became independent in 1947. Yet, it was only in the year 2002, that India adopted the Freedom of Information Act that never came into effective force because of complications. Separately, in the 1990s, the Mazdoor Kissan Shakti Sanghatana (MKSS) carried out a RTI movement seeking transparency in government’s action in the grass roots level in village accounts.

MKSS’ efforts were so successful that it inspired national level civil society activists and groups to seek a national RTI Act. In the late 1990s, the Congress became interested in the movement. Sonia Gandhi herself took interest and made it a part of Congress’ election promises. Upon replacing the BJP, the Congress led Government enacted the RTI Act in 2005.

In India, the RTI has been assisted by the strength of its parliamentary democracy and politics; strong and independent media; and independent courts not subjected to government or party influence. Above all, the RTI Act has been complemented by a mindset in India where even the members of the ruling party know that they are not above the law when caught in act of corruption or acting against the interest of the people.

The force of the RTI was brought to focus in India recently when it netted top government functionaries in a manner that had the Congress led Government in deep crisis. A document secured under RTI written by an officer of the Ministry of Finance suggested that P. Chidambaram as Finance Minister could have interfered to get the telecommunications Minister A Raja to cancel the 2G licenses that eventually became as the “2G spectrum scam” involving a loss of 22 billion British pounds, the biggest corruption case ever in Indian history for which A Raja could spend his life in jail.

Our RTI Act has all the potentials and possibilities of the Indian RTI but in theory only. No serious civil society movement went into the enactment of the Act. It has been Government sponsored. Although we have a press capable of supporting the RTI to become a strong force in our democracy; we do not have the quality of parliamentary politics and strength of the courts that India and other countries have where RTI has taken roots.

Under the RTI, all our Ministries are supposed to have a Public Information Officer modeled after India to whom the public can apply for information and documents. I have no idea if our Ministries have such an officer. If they have, the fortresses that our Ministries are, I am not so sure how they would access the officer to get their rights under the RTI. Quite often, we see the Information Commissioner, a former colleague; speak eloquently at seminars and talk shows. I am afraid he faces a humungous task for on his shoulders, the nation has placed the task that in India is being carried out with the support of its quality politics; its media; its courts; its active civil society and a mindset in government and politics that has changed to make space for citizen’s RTI.

In Bangladesh, it is the quality of our politics that imposes the most difficult challenge for a RTI Act ever to become an important element of establishing democracy in the country. Even if we have the PIO in every Ministry, it is absurd to even think that he would release any document to the public that could embarrass a Minister or anyone with links to the ruling party. The reader should spare a moment and consider his chances of seeking information or documents from the PMO concerning the actions of the Prime Minister and her officials that could be source of embarrassment or political trouble.

There are numerous ways in the hands of the bureaucracy if it wants to or existing conditions compel it, to avoid what has happened in Indian politics recently with the Home Minister P Chidambaram. It is politics and mindset that are the most important factors for RTI to be successful. In Bangladesh, politics and mindset that are the two important impediments to RTI are not likely to change, not at any time in the near future. What we are likely to get for the time being is information and document under RTI to hang opposition when they were in power and innocuous and benign information and documents related to the ruling party.

The civil society that in India has been the prime force for the successful RTI movement is divided in Bangladesh on party lines, almost completely. Hence, it too cannot help in establishing RTI. Therefore, the government sponsored RTI in Bangladesh will be little more than an exercise in theory until the quality of politics achieves a paradigm shift. Meanwhile, government offices will continue to find physical ways too to keep the public out.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

BGB- BSF talks: Deaths at border continue

2011-10-09T02:25:00.000-04:00

Holiday
October 7, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

During the recently concluded meeting of chiefs of BGB and BSF, there was disagreement on how many people were killed by the BSF on the Bangladesh-India border this year. The figure of 7 given by the Director-General of BSF has been contested by the leader of the Bangladesh side who put the number at 12. Odhikar, a human rights organization, put the number at 21 adding that the BSF has not yet abandoned its policy of “shoot at sight” that was assured by the Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram.

The deaths are a contentious issue in Bangladesh-India relations. So far, over a 1000 Bangladeshis have been killed in the last one decade; deaths that have been documented in reports by human rights organizations including the New York based Human Rights Watch. These reports show that the Bangladeshis were shot to kill simply, as a former Indian Foreign Secretary had said, for being in a wrong place at a wrong time.

Nirupoma Rao was right when she said on her official visit to Dhaka last year that our citizens who were killed should not have where they were shot. Except this one, she missed or ignored a host of other points for a correct perspective of an extremely serious problem. In fact, she distorted the problem. The major point she missed was that the Bangladeshis could have easily been apprehended and their lives spared. They were unarmed, not terrorists and killed from behind while running away.

There were other points she missed. She missed acknowledging that India has the border fenced by barbed wire where these deaths occur and thus impenetrable except through check posts for legal trade and legal human traffic. The Indian BSF controls the check posts. Nevertheless, illegal trade and human trafficking, or smuggling, worth over US$ 2-3 billion a year occurs between Bangladesh and India mainly through these gates and check points.

New York Times writing on the fencing not too long ago reported that an entire village in Bangladesh can cross the border by paying the right amount of money to the BSF. The same goes for illegal trade. In fact, well organized smuggling groups on the Indian side control the illegal trade and human trafficking where complicity of the BSF is self-evident. The depth and extent of collaboration of other government agencies is palpably evident from the case of phensedyl smuggling. Phensedyl has no market in the Indian state of Paschim Banga (PB). In Bangladesh, it is a widely used addictive drug. In PB close to Bangladesh-India border, with full knowledge of the Indian authorities, phensedyl factories have been set up so that their products can be smuggled to Bangladesh!

The case of cattle smuggling from India to Bangladesh is another example of deep complicity and/or knowledge of the Indian authorities in sustaining smuggling because of the sheer financial gains that is worth in billions of US $ . Secular India does not allow beef to be marketed locally except in Kolkata and Kerala. Nevertheless it looks the other way as cattle are bought as far away from Bangladesh-India border as Punjab to be smuggled to Bangladesh where it has a huge market.

The deaths of Bangladeshis and also Indians occur on the border mainly when deals through which such illegal trade is carried out, goes foul. The Bangladeshis who are used as human shields by the smugglers are then caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. When the deals are smooth on human trafficking, the Bangladeshis cross the border more smoothly than those who cross the border with valid visa. Likewise, when deals on goods are smooth, these are allowed to cross the border without any barrier where legal goods are subjected on the Indian side to all sorts of tariff and non-tariff barriers.

The saddest part of all these is that Indian actions on the border just not ends killing innocent Bangladeshis; it also results in victimizing the victim. We get a bad name internationally as the fence on our border by India gives the rest of the world the impression that Bangladeshis are migrating illegally to India in millions because of unbearable economic hardships. The Indians, when the BJP was in power, came up with an absurd number of 20 million Bangladeshis in India. They have never told us how they arrived at the absurd figure.

Instead, the BJP Government had threatened to “round up” these alleged Bangladeshis to force them across the border! India that is making claims of becoming a world power, must behave in a manner that goes with the status it seeks in world politics. It must provide Bangladesh with a list of the 20 million illegal Bangladeshis. In preparing the list, it must bear in mind that anyone speaking Bangla in other parts of India is not necessarily a Bangladeshi for there are 130 million people of PB whose mother tongue is Bangla too.

India must also keep in mind that its economic development notwithstanding, India is no USA or Canada for Bangladeshis to risk their lives, bribe the BSF and seek a livelihood in the slums of India. People of PB have more compelling reasons to do so for as a sovereign country, Bangladeshis can seek what they are accused of seeking in India, in the ME and other parts of the world where 7 million Bangladeshis have already migrated.

There are of course Bangladeshis in India illegally but the number of 20 million is absurd to be true. The Bangladeshis who land up in other parts of India are in fact victims of smuggling rackets on the Indian side of Bangladesh-India border. Many of them are promised jobs in the ME and land up in India and even in Pakistan where these human traffickers abandon them.

It is time for Bangladesh to flag to India the instances where its own governmental agencies are involved in acts that are illegal, affecting Bangladesh-India relations adversely and giving Bangladesh a bad name internationally. We are the victims; subjected to indiscriminate shootings leading to deaths; fenced; being cheated of revenue due to smuggling rackets who operate with full knowledge of the authorities and in case of the BSF, its patronage. Yet, we are projected by the Indian government and its media not as offenders!

Coming back to DG, BSF’s claim of 7 deaths, not even one is acceptable to Bangladesh for it is murder in cold blood and brings back the memories of the thousand innocent victims killed so far. The hypocrisy with the illegal trade of cattle should end and the trade should be made legal. Bangladesh is losing huge revenue to the Indian smugglers and their official patrons. The Indian Government should take immediate steps to destroy the smuggling network whose roots are on its side and sustained the BSF that is the cause of deaths of the innocent Bangladeshis for which the Government of India owes Bangladesh an official apology.

As the victim, Bangladesh should be vocal on what happens on the Bangladesh-India border not just at border related talks but at all other bilateral forums for we are allowing India to literally get away with murder.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

Foreign Policy, research and pursuance of our national interests

2011-10-04T00:24:00.001-04:00

Daily Sun
October 2, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

I often wonder how our Government copes with the task of foreign policy formulation in the current international situation where the task of dealing with this subject is one of the most difficult for any government as a consequence of the breakdown of the bipolar world. In the Cold War period, foreign policy was either pro-US or pro-Soviet with little maneuvering ground or the need for it in between. Foreign policy issues for countries such as ours were either pro- America or pro- Soviet.

Since the end of the bipolar world, the need for permutation and combination in foreign policy issues have become so complex that for determining national interest, any foreign policy topic has to be researched and analyzed before a policy can be reached. In most countries, in fact in all except our own, it is the Foreign Ministry that leads in formulation of foreign policy out of a myriad of complex issues so that the best interest of the country is served. In the Foreign Ministry of these countries, research is a very important and integral part of its work, so as to arm the policy makers with all the options so that the best policy can be formulated.

To cope with the increasing complexity of foreign policy formulation, the Foreign Ministry in most countries uses think tanks and research institutions because alone it cannot cope up with the work load. In my own experience in Tokyo, I have seen the Japanese Foreign Ministry work closely with the think tanks in its effort to arrive at the best policy on respective foreign policy issues.

In our Foreign Ministry, we are almost totally oblivious to the need of research in pursuit of our foreign policy. In the 1960s, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry had recruited Dr. GW Chowdhury as the Director-General of Research in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a time when his renown as a scholar was internationally acclaimed. In fact, he went on from the post to become a Federal Minister in the Government of Pakistan.

In our Foreign Ministry, an apology of an attempt was made in the late 1970s to follow the tradition that Pakistan had set in recruiting a scholar for research. The attempt was made at the level of a Director than ended in a fruitless exercise. I guess there is a post of a Director for Research still in the organogram of our Foreign Ministry in which no one is interested as it has never been filled up. At least, I am not aware if it has ever been occupied.

We thus have a Foreign Ministry that does not feel the need of research in pursuit of its work in matters of foreign policy formulation. It is incredible that it does not because even the thought that a country can formulate foreign policy without research is in itself irrational. In theory, the Foreign Ministry funds two think tanks or call them research institutes in you want but I am not sure if the former makes any use of either.

The two institutes are the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) and the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA). The Ministry funds the former with the Ministry of Defense and the latter with the Ministry of Law. In BIISS, the tradition has been to have one of the two key posts of Chairman and the Director-General from MOFA. As a mark of the Ministry lack of inclination for research, both posts at BIISS today are held by members of the armed forces.

In the days after independence, BILIA was an institute of international repute. In fact the institution had a key role to play in the development of laws related to crimes against humanity. At a time when the country is united on the need to try those who committed crimes against humanity in 1971, BILIA could have played a major supporting role that it has failed to do. The Foreign Ministry that has long ago ceased taking active interest in BILLIA has thus failed to contribute to policy formulation on an issue of great importance to the nation because of its strange lack of interest in issues of research and research institutions.

The Ministry has also failed to use BIISS as a research institution that was palpably visible in its role or the lack of it in connection with the Government’s efforts to improve relations with India. In the nearly two years between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India and the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka, BIISS could have been used significantly in research and enhancing public awareness, two areas where our side fell well short that caught us unprepared to negotiate with India to secure our national interest.

Meanwhile, significant developments are taking place in our region. Chinese Prime Minister has recently visited New Delhi, following President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Sarkozy, underlying India’s emergence as a world power. Despite Wen Jiabao’s efforts to win Indian friendship, the two sides are locking horns in the region and abroad. The two countries that together make up 40% of world’s population are fighting hard for oil that is becoming increasingly worse with China ahead in the race.

We seem unaware and unconcerned about these developments that are crucial for our foreign policy formulation as we are strategically located for both. After decades of developing excellent relations with China, we have shown our preference for India in our aborted attempt to make a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations. As a sovereign country, it is our right to pursue our interests with any country we decide. Nevertheless, we could have handled the options in a better way if our foreign policy makers had the benefit of research or awareness for the need of it.

The Foreign Ministry, unfortunately, is not really in charge fully of either formulation of foreign policy or its implementation. Hence it would be unfair to put the blame on MOFA for its lack of interest in research. In fact, its primary responsibility to conduct our bilateral relations with India for instance has been taken away from it and placed with the Prime Minister’s Advisers. This is a main reason why Bangladesh has faltered in achieving its interests in the disappointing initiatives in Bangladesh-India relations. There were gaping flaws in research on the issues our side negotiated.

It is therefore an urgent need to place foreign policy formulation and implementation in charge of MOFA. The latter in turn must put the utmost emphasis on research in foreign policy formulation and to that end, build its research division and give it as much importance as it gives to its other divisions. In acknowledgement of the fact that even after a fully fledged research division in created in MOFA there would be additional need of research, the potentials of both BISSS and BILIA should be fully exploited to the fullest extent.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

On belief in divinity

2011-10-04T00:22:00.001-04:00

As I See It
The Independent
October 1, 2011
M. Serajul Islam

As a young Lecturer of Dhaka University, I went to Bhola when the island was struck by one of the worst natural disasters in history as a member of a relief team of DU teachers. The tidal wave and storm that struck the southern coast of then East Pakistan on November 11, 1970, killed nearly half a million people.

In one week we stayed in the island, we visited hundreds of households. Those days, every household in rural Bangladesh housed joint families and the average number of people in each household was in dozens. There was not one household that we visited that did not lose many lives to the disaster. Yet there was no wailing among those who lived to mourn. They accepted the deaths as a will of Allah with patience.

Those were also the days when many of our friends in Dhaka University and students in the other educational institutions were motivated by the lures of communism. They took pride in decrying religion and believed in Marx’s dictum that religion is the opium of the masses and an instrument of oppression of the ruling class.

My tryst with the disaster victims in Bhola left me convinced that it is religion that is our savior, then and now. Those that the disaster spared in Bhola in November, 1970, could stand up and face their personal tragedy because of their belief in the divine power. Their faith in religion helped them keep the tragedy aside and move ahead with their lives.

In later years, when I saw people in poverty and there have always been tens of millions of them, I understood the value of religion in a poor, impoverished country like ours. It is religion that keeps people from going crazy and accepting their fate as a will of Allah. It is religion that tells them that in the life hereafter, their sufferings will be compensated. In my younger days, I remember arguing with my friends about the importance of religion in our lives though I was then by no means religious.

I have not grown any more religious over the years but my faith in religion has grown stronger. I think often that if there is no divine power, how then is Bangladesh surviving? A look at our governance shows a Prime Minister ruling with a well acknowledged weak council of ministers; a weak and highly politicized bureaucracy; a non-functioning parliament and a politics where ruling party and the opposition are at each other’s throats. Without a diving power looking at us, there is no reason for our country to move forward. Yet it is and in economic indicators of growth, doing very well!

Our population has doubled since we became independent and growing. The density is so high that it is incredible how so many people are living in so little space. It is perhaps the only country in the world where rivers are being filled to make space for habitation and business! In filling up rivers, it is not just a section of greedy people in the game; even government’s civil and military establishments have been exposed in the act.

With such being the state of affairs, a section amongst us are pushing hard to make Bangladesh secular. A few are asking Jamat be banned. Those pushing for secular Bangladesh are not taking into consideration the fact that it made little difference when we had secularism as a state principle in our constitution from 1972-1975 and it was deleted from the constitution from 1975 till being restored again recently . It did not matter either way to the people who behaved as Bangladeshis always have; with the minimum of communal bias. In fact, in history of South Asia, where all parts have suffered communal tensions and continue to do so, we in what constitutes Bangladesh have seen the minimum of communal violence.

As for those seeking to ban Jamat, they are making a major mistake. If we believe that democracy is consensus politics, then one issue upon which we have a consensus is rejecting Jamat because it uses religion as a political weapon. One should see Jamat’s electoral performance for proof of our rejection of Jamat. This notwithstanding, banning Jamat will hurt many people, most of whom are not literate. They may feel that Jamat has been banned because it projects Islam on which majority of the Muslims of this country has unflinching faith. Of course, for Jamat, banning it will give it the cause to do the type of politics that those trying to ban Jamat are suggesting; spread religious fundamentalism and extremism in the country.

All these bring me to the point I want to make. Faith in the Almighty in our lives is not a bad thing. For one, it is what keeps the mental balance in those who otherwise may not be able to keep that balance because of poverty; vicissitudes of life and other injustices. The number of such people in Bangladesh is huge. The other point is except the truly agnostics, everyone else in Bangladesh believes in divinity in one form or another.

Many of us who are not atheist or agnostic were given another chance to have a hard look at divinity. The two minutes that shook Dhaka and rest of the country has reminded us that if Allah or God or call Him by any other name had not been there, Dhaka would have been history had the earthquake of a few days ago hit a few hundred km south from its epicenter.

More importantly, now that we know that Dhaka could be that epicenter any day, we have no chance to save Dhaka. The greed and lack of vision of our elites have placed Dhaka on an irreversible course to an impending disaster. Either we have to bring down 40% of our high rises and build them again, which is not possible, or just pray to the Almighty and hope He is there to save us from the disaster.

Thus there are many reasons that should encourage us not to take chance with the divine power. Most important of all is a fact that goes by unacknowledged. It is religion that has served us well and it is politics that has not. Except at the hands of the Pakistanis in 1971, religion has complemented politics and never threatened it in our history. Its potential has not been fully exploited; in fact misrepresented by a section. It is time we use the force of religion to build a better society that can help us build a better country.

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.