International Crisis Group Recommends Substantive Police Reform

If an asset is more productive with a policeman guarding it, then Bangladesh Police has a lot of explaining to do.  Wisdom on the street has it that if one is afraid of having something stolen, then she should notify the police of its whereabouts, and, sure enough, it will have been stolen.

So the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) new white paper on the state of the slow going police reform in Bangladesh is a welcome reminder of the hard work that remains to be done, to set the government and its security forces on a path of political and societal stability. Please find the paper here.

The first paragraph of the executive summary lays out the problem at large:

“After decades of misuse and neglect, Bangladesh’s police are a source of instability and fear rather than a key component of a democratic society. Human rights abuses are endemic and almost all Bangladeshis who interact with the police complain of corruption. With an elected government in place again, there are now opportunities to reform this dysfunctional force. But there are also significant obstacles. If the government fails to move beyond the current modest reform process, the democratic transition could falter should deteriorating security give the military another chance to intervene, using, as it has in the past, the pretext of upholding law and order to justify derailing democracy. Deep structural reforms – including a new police law – and major additional resources are necessary to create an effective and accountable service. Above all, it will take political will – which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led government is sorely lacking – and a vision of the police as something other than a tool of political control and a source of patronage.”

The political issue at play is that the police acts as an enforcer in cities and villages across the country and is therefore involved in clientelism and corruption, while the institution is charged with combatting clientelism and corruption.  The Watchmen are taking over the town, so the question “who watches the watchmen?” is, quite simply, ill-posed.  Furthermore, given its reach, the police is vying for power from the military, even though individual police officers, in contrast to their military counterparts, are paid low wages and do not enjoy the respect of the public.   Successive governments have rallied the military to take over functions that are more appropriately serviced by the police and is there is more than ample evidence of dissension within the ranks and the barracks of Bangladesh Police. Indeed the February Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) mutiny is only one instance of the stressed tension between the police and the military.

Police reform of the kind that the ICG endorses can help turn the tide around in Bangladesh’s efforts to control the growing contagion of Islamic political militancy.   Just as the police is now spread around the country wreaking havoc in communities, so in time with the proper realignment of private and public incentives the Bangladesh Police can become a strong security force that can fill crucial roles in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in Bangladesh.  Perhaps more importantly, instead of being the source of corruption in its innocent ad vicious forms,  Bangladesh Police can become a well-coordinated force to weed out private corruption and other narrowly partisan, cronyist political practices.