Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Bengali Anomalies

Daily Times, May 31, 2006
COMMENT: Bengali anomalies —William B Milam

This Zia was challenged by something like 23 military mutinies in his early years as the country’s leader. He put them down, sometimes ruthlessly. Perhaps because of that experience Zia slowly moved the military out of politics. Whether he knew it or not, intended it or not, Zia ur Rahman set Bangladesh on a glide path to a civilian dominance of politics

While I was in Pakistan in March, a friend gave me the book East Pakistan — The End Game: An Onlooker’s Journal, 1969-1971 by Brigadier (r) AR Siddiqi. Written in a matter-of-fact, non-emotive style, it is a riveting but disturbing read. Those readers who are still puzzled as to how the disaster of 1971 could have happened will understand it better after reading Brigadier Siddiqi’s candid descriptions of the feckless and ethnocentric attitudes that informed the policies of the day. The author clearly had a front-row centre view of events, and appears to have recorded them faithfully in his journal, which he has reproduced 35 years later.

Reactions to the book will differ. Some readers will want to draw lessons that are applicable to today’s concerns. I suppose, even though the attitudes and behaviour seem as outdated as the Stanley Steamer, there are parallels to today’s crises — the Balochistan insurgency, for example, or even the turbulence in the Tribal Areas. But, for me, the book turned my thoughts back to happy days in Bangladesh, and to my recent study of the differences between that country and Pakistan.

I was in Bangladesh in what now must be considered its halcyon age — when the autocratic government of Ershad, a government that had come to power by military coup and tried to camouflage itself in civilian garb, was overturned by an overwhelming popular movement. For once, and almost the last time, the two major Bangladeshi political parties had agreed on one thing: to get rid of Ershad and, under an independent interim government, elect a new government freely and fairly. They even agreed in advance on who should head the interim government.

By 1990, freedom and democracy seemed on the march to triumph everywhere. The Philippines threw out Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Pakistan appeared to join the democratic ranks in 1988. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the East European countries — those ancient capitals that had fallen behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain 45 years earlier — emerged as free and independent countries, all busily preparing to be democracies. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and many of the imperialist conquests of the tsars reasserted their independence. All of this inspired a book that declared autocracy dead and democracy triumphant: Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History.

So why not Bangladesh? Its turn came on December 6, 1990, after a campaign of political pressure that had built in intensity since September. This campaign had included all the tools of an escalating political resistance — speeches, demonstrations, marches, hartals and some violence like burning cars and beating up people. (The goondas never run out of work.)

Ershad had been fending off such pressure for eight years. Up to 1990, he had been successful, primarily by keeping the opposition divided — a tactic that was relatively easy to utilise since the leaders of the two parties seemed genetically disposed to disagree. They were unsplitable, however, in 1990, which in itself was a special triumph for democracy.

Ershad had met his match this time around. As the pressure built, he grew more desperate. He declared an emergency, giving himself the powers to impose a curfew and to ban demonstrations — the usual tricks. It didn’t work; the pressure only intensified. Finally he turned to the army, and sent an emissary (a serving military officer) to seek its active support (in the streets). In what must have been one of the most interesting meetings in South Asian history, the army leaders turned him down. They did not wish to kill fellow Bengalis to save his presidency, even though he was one of their own.

When the end came for Ershad, it had the kind of special Bengali flavour that we have all come to expect. Constitutionalism was preserved at all cost. Ershad didn’t just flee the office; first his vice president, Moudud Ahmed, resigned and Chief Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed, the agreed choice of the two political parties to lead the interim government, was appointed vice president. Then Ershad resigned and, under the constitution, the vice president succeeded him.

The Bangladesh Army walked away from politics 15 years ago, and despite what must be the great temptation and provocation of dreadfully inept governance on the part of both parties since then, has not yet retraced its steps. Every succeeding day, as we read of Bangladesh governments reaching yet another level of ineptitude, we pray that the army will resist the temptation and ignore the provocation, and allow the Bangladeshi people, as they must someday, to rectify the situation through the ballot box.

This army was nurtured in the same traditions as the army of Pakistan — theoretically, at least. What explains their different paths? In fact, in the army of “united” Pakistan, the Bengali units were separated from and un-integrated with the West Pakistani units, for the most part. This certainly must account for some difference between the two armies.

In its first years as a national army of an independent state, the Bangladesh Army followed the Pakistani pattern of intervention in politics. But even this similarity soon became a difference. The army chief, Zia ur Rahman, became a political leader and ultimately president. As the leader who restored stability and promised a better future, he became a popular symbol of hope in the hard scrabble lives of Bengali peasants.

This Zia was challenged by something like 23 military mutinies in his early years as the country’s leader. He put them down, sometimes ruthlessly. Perhaps because of that experience (did he conclude that the military was no more to be trusted than the civilians?), Zia slowly moved the military out of politics. Whether he knew it or not, intended it or not, Zia ur Rahman set Bangladesh on a glide path to a civilian dominance of politics. We do not know exactly why; did he believe in democracy, or just in himself?

It wasn’t just a civilian facade, but a civilian government, led by an ex-military leader who kept his word and took his uniform off. He became a genuinely elected civilian president. His assassination in 1981, perpetrated by a general who not only was dismayed that his career was abridged, but was angry also at Zia for pushing the army out of the political limelight, interrupted the glide and Ershad’s coup in 1982 tried unsuccessfully to turn it back. But the die was cast. Or, perhaps more accurately, half cast; the civilians have yet to emulate Zia’s effective governance.

I remember that when we looked at Pakistan and Bangladesh in the late 1970s, we thought that, though separate countries, they remained quite similar in their politics — both ruled by the military, both led by a general named Zia. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

William Milam is a former US ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh. He is currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC

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