Bangladesh in 2010: The Year in Review

The Year So Far.

Happy New Year to all.  By the time this gets posted and read, Bangladesh will have been swept into the parade of countries switching alendars to a new year, 2011, and one sincerely hopes her people will turn to a new way of viewing the world.

Bangladesh, its government and its people have much to celebrate and much else to course correct, going into this the second decade of this running millenium.  The two opposing plays, celebratory and condemnable play out, as before on two-levels. On one, macro-economic and macro-social, the country is doing well; the government is a good guardian of the interests of the people, here defined for the sake of due magnanimity, the vast majority of folk who happen to live within the borders of Bangladesh. On the other, the level of personal politics and moral doctrines, the country and its government must receive failing marks.

On the level of brute, broad conceptions of Bangladesh’s standing relative to other countries and its own past self, the current government in charge is doing well.  The government enjoys broad supports amongst Bangladeshis and has pursued a triangulational foreign policy that has brought in investment–and perhaps more importantly promises of investment–from its trading partners including but not limited to India, China, South Korea and the countries of the European Union.  Foreign investments and foreign relations promise to ratchet up Bangladesh’s standing within the community of developed and developing nations. This is good news for all Bangladeshi and Bengali far flung around the world.

The finance ministry has much to be proud of: even as every other developed country (but France) seems to have been shaven up by the Global Great Recession, Bangladesh has survived the worst of it and has managed to step into the new decade with clearly steady financial bearings, relative to the most recent accounting.  Indeed, export manufacturing has increased, as has the revenue from all those ventures.  Every economic index is on the upswing, even if rising global food prices has meant that groceries are now more expensive than has been the case recently.  Moreover the economic downturn and the immediate way in which jobs were cut across the world has meant that more international migrants, otherwise lucratively employed in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia, have returned home.  This has meant that international remittances, a major driver of the economy, has dipped dramatically.  Happily, all public and economic forecasts predict strong economic growth and greater strides in international political associations in the year to come.

The only real blotch on the country’s international reputation stood and fell when the great leader of the renowned Grameen Bank was alleged to have played fast with international development funds.  The charge fell away almost as quickly as the allegations were raised.  One hopes this episode will alert more thinkers and policy-makers to the problems of the micro-finance industry and their attendant solutions.

Given all these commendable results, one might be forgiven for thinking that the turn toward good news runs all the way down to the individual level where people enjoy their due  economic and political rights as established by the Constitution of Bangladesh. However, this is sometimes not the case.  International human rights advocates have thumped down the current government for gross negligence and subversion of individual human rights.  This, at a time when the country is running an international war crimes tribunal to adjudicate cases where the rights of individuals were subverted during the 1971 Liberation War.

Indeed, the government and its international allies have come under fire for the sponsorship and training effects of the Rapid Action Batallion (RAB), the paramilitary force that is known to do the government’s dirty deeds.  RAB answers directly to the Home Ministry without any juridical oversight and has been blamed for a large number of extrajudicial killings.  In fact, RAB has admitted as much, though it has tagged those killing a direct result of so-called crossfire with insurgents and other illicit groups of fighters.  Interestingly, at this juncture, the British government is being sued for training the RAB in tactics that have shown up in alleged acts of torture.

And this is where politics turns to torture, just short of murder.  Opposition BNP leader Salauddin Qader Chowdhury was arrested in mid December and allegedly tortured by RAB forces.  His remand in custody has become national news and serves as a template for how not to deal with one’s political enemies.  For all of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s political accomplishments it seems that she is incapable of handling her opponents in a manner consistent with legality and efficiency: the usual outcome of any political match is legal and inefficient or efficient and thoroughly illegal.  Her government’s treatment of Mr. SQ Chowdhury has been deplorable.  That he has yet to find conventionally acceptable legal recourse in the courts or social recourse in the media is testament to the brutally coercive tactics with which the government is operating against its enemies.

However, the top brass of the BNP has its own burdens to bear, faults righteously assigned.  The leader of the opposition party has forced a number of halting strikes for so-called injustices committed against her.   Though tantamount to bitter complaints over misappropriated housing, her slights have triggered public strikes that have invited equally public beatings.  Throughout this facade the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been lucky in the person of her most bitter enemy, Begum Khaleda Zia.

However, the most unjust position the government has taken has been to refuse amnesty to the Rohingya refugees of Myanmar, who for decades have sought shelter across their borderm inside Bangladesh. Now, tens upon thousands of Rohingya refugees are being forced back to Myanmar where they are nearly certain to face extremely harsh persecution. Human rights groups have campaigned on behalf of these helpless folk who have every cause to bemoan their non-status as individuals with political rights and standing in a Bangladeshi court.  To course correct and to support its stature, the government must redress the needs of the Rohingya.  Perhaps through the righteous treatment of the Rohingya, this government and its successors can begin to seek the perfectibility of the moral stances it has assumed through the Constitution of Bangladesh.

Turn of Events to Look Out for in 2011.

The big monster in the ball is the International War Crimes Tribunal that’s been set up to try individuals alleged to have committed war crimes during the 1971 Liberation War.  The politics of the country will split evenly on opposing sides of what actually transpired.  Indeed, the BNP leadership has already gone ahead to claim that the signal moment of liberation was that when Ziaur Rahman declared the country independent, unshackled from Pakistani domination.  The rightist Islamist Jamaat e-Islami recently claimed that they too were freedom fighters, quite contrary to received opinion.  Indeed, as 2011 rolls on expect the leading political parties in the country to literally rewrite their history to now reflect revisionist stances on positions various leading members of those parties took nearly 40 years ago.

Secondly as global markets pick up, look for Bangladesh to become a more attractive home for foreign investment.  This, unless politics in the country grinds to a stand-still.

Person of the Year 2010.

Last year, the adulation for this role went to the sitting Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina.  This year, for her role in sewing up Bangladesh’s ties to its neighbor to the East and the West, India, that adulation goes to Foreign Minister Dipu Moni. Let us see where else she takes the country in 2011.

There used to be a tradition in the United States that a Foreign Minister, in the role of Secretary of State, would succeed an outgoing President of the United States.  Perhaps it is high time that politicos in Bangladesh pay attention to that tendency and appoint Dr. Dipu Moni, the leader in waiting of the ruling Awami League.  Thus if and when the AL win majority in parliament in the next cycle, for once the top of the ticket will not feature one of the Battling Begums. And that, dear readers, will be all for the good.