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Although it is heartening that Pakistani media is concerned about the recent upsurge in 'Islamic' militancy in Bangladesh, as reflected in an editorial of the prestigious Daily Times (February 27, 2005), entitled 'Bangladesh terrorism is flip-side of Pakistani terrorism', I have strong reservations about some of the comments made innuendo in the editorial referring to my recent article, published unauthorised by the Dawn (February 15, 2005) albeit with amateurish doctoring of the original. My original piece, 'Bangladesh: The Next Taliban State?' (New Age, January 30, 2005) was a rebuttal to the malicious New York Times article by Eliza Griswold published on January 23, 2005. In this sketchy article, 'The Next Islamist Revolution?' Griswold has not only raised the "Muslims-are-coming" alarm, but in doing so she has also concocted facts and has not separated facts from fiction.
   It is a bit puzzling as to why the Daily Times editorial criticises a 'Bangladeshi journalist' by paraphrasing sections of his article, without naming the 'journalist' or the Karachi daily, Dawn. Actually the so-called journalist is the present writer who has been an academic for the last thirty odd-years having taught at universities in Bangladesh, Australia, Singapore and Canada - Islam, Pakistan and Bangladesh history, anthropology and politics being the main areas of his research, publication and teaching. The Daily Times editorial has taken me to task for challenging Griswold's sweeping assertion that Bangladesh was soon going to experience an 'Islamic revolution'. By citing the news item about the recent arrest of eleven militant followers of an Islamist charlatan, known as Bangla Bhai in northern Bangladesh, the editor rejects my 'denial' of the truth in the following manner:
   'After violence and coercion by Bangla Bhai were reported in the international press, a Bangladeshi journalist writing in a Karachi daily strongly condemned the 'international conspiracy' to malign Bangladesh. He described the Bangla Bhai phenomenon like this: 'What is going on in some parts of north-western Bangladesh does not bear any semblance of an Islamic revolution but looks like gang warfare for dominance and extortion, common in many unruly pockets in the Third World.' One assumes that he would similarly describe the shenanigans of another violent gang run by one Jangi Bhai in south Bangladesh."
   The above assertion smacks of one's total ignorance about the prevailing regional/sub-regional conflicts among various godfathers and quasi-political leaders-cum-extortionists in Bangladesh, who change colour and political allegiance with the passage of time. The various Islamic groups, both with substantial power and influence and the ones without much support and clout, are not that different in this regard. Griswold in her controversial article cited a few of them as "precursors" to an Islamic revolution. I simply rejected her thesis by drawing a line between sporadic and organized terrorist acts (not very dissimilar from jaqueries or pre-political peasant rebellions) and revolutionary warfare.
   It seems, the Daily Times suffers from the same inadequacy vis-à-vis its understanding of 'revolutions'. Otherwise it would not have criticized me for my differentiating violence and killing with an 'Islamic revolution':
   'The journalist did not deny violence and extortion and killing in the name of Islam but protested strongly against the labelling of this phenomenon as 'Islamic revolution'. In his mind there is a pristine image of 'Islamic revolution' which he wants to save against pollution of foreign comment.'
   The editorial has also misconstrued my text. It asserts that:
   'In his anger the Bangladeshi journalist addressed a warning to the 'secular' rulers masquerading as Islamic leaders against fascism on the lines of what happened in Europe before the World War II.'
   Actually what I wrote to conclude my article was as follows:
   'Although the vast majority of Bengali Muslims do not believe in theocracy and terror, unless the lower middle classes and the poor get a sense of belonging to the state, which so far is only looking after the interests of the rich and powerful, the most corrupt elements in Bangladesh, extremism with a tinge of fascism (both secular and religious) would continue to dog the polity. We have lessons to learn from the rise of fascism in Europe in this regard.'
   Although it is very problematic, yet I have no problem in partially agreeing with the Daily Times that by neglecting the growing menace of Islamic fanaticism in Pakistan, the Nawaz Sharif government gave fillip to Islamism in Pakistan. The editorial also informs us how various Islamic militants in Pakistan and Bangladesh are mutually connected with each other. So far so good. However, it seems the editor has forgotten the inherent differences in the political culture, norms and values of the Muslims of Bangladesh and Pakistan, especially with regard to Islamic theocracy, Shariah and mullah. Bangladeshi Islam has been syncretistic, tolerant and Bangladeshi Muslims in general are proud of their Bengali heritage and identity. Unlike the average Pakistani Muslims, their Bangladeshi counterparts do not regard plunderers and marauders like Muhammad Bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghaznavi or Muhammad Ghauri as their heroes and ancestors.
   In short, had Bangladesh been part of Pakistan, as it used to be during the Pakistani colonial rule, Islamisation of the polity, beginning with the sad 'minoritisation' of the Ahmadiyya community under Bhutto, culminating into the introduction of the brutal, un-Islamic Shariah and barbaric Hudood laws under Zia, would not have been possible. As it happened the other day, Pakistani lawmakers outvoted the proposed scrapping of the inhuman Honour Killing (Karo Kari), will never happen in Bangladesh. And despite their trying and wishful thinking ('We are all Taliban, Bangla will be Afghan'), the various Islamic militant groups will never come to power in Bangladesh. Had wishful thinking been materialized, Bangladesh would have been a pro-Soviet communist country in the late 1970s after 'Comrade' Farhad, a leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, had publicly proclaimed to stage an 'Afghan-style revolution' in the country.
   Contrary to what Lenin envisaged as the necessary preconditions for a revolution
   a) mass discontent; b) gradual infiltration of ideas and c) a revolutionary party other than mass discontent among a sizeable minority, neither the process of gradual infiltration of ideas have crystallized nor is there one single revolutionary party in Bangladesh. The bulk of the Muslims being devotional-cum-fatalist with smaller sections of 'Anglo-Mohammedans' and liberal democrats, a handful of Muslim fanatics under a dozen or so disorganized Islamic parties under confused, megalomaniac leaders cannot stage an Islamic revolution in Bangladesh. They may, however, go on rampaging, killing people right and left in public rallies or movie-theatres to terrorise people. What Griswold and many others have failed to grasp is that terrorism alone does not stage revolutions. Otherwise the Tamil Tigers, the Iraqi Baathists and scores of other militant groups would have staged their cherished revolutions.
   An Islamic revolution in Bangladesh, even if it could materialize under the leadership of a bitterly fractious mullahs without mass support like Khomeini had in Iran, would be crushed by the US 7th Fleet in collaboration with India. So, the prospect of any Muslim country going the Taliban way is least likely. Parts of Pakistan might remain medieval and tribal, clinging to the obsolete Shariah, Hudood and Blasphemy code for an indefinite period. However, poorer Bangladesh, which is much richer than Pakistan in secular and democratic culture, will remain different from Pakistan.
   Finally, it is amazing that the editor, who has read my book, Women and Islam in Bangladesh (Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, New York 2000), which highlights my designation as a professor (no journalist would write 254 pages in four years) laments: 'It is ironic that the same Bangladeshi journalist who is in denial about 'Islamist' terrorism wrote a book some years ago recording the death sentences passed on women in the Bangladeshi countryside through fatwas. According to the book, the number of women subjected to cruel illegal fatwas began after 1994 and rose to over 3,000 annually. During the period from 1990 to 1995, over 10,000 victims of rape, murder, abduction, forcible marriage and arbitrary divorce, were poor rural women with no social support. In 1993 alone, 6,000 women committed suicide after being trapped in fatwa situations [p.97]. The obsession with sharia law was always present in Bangladesh but received a fillip through the Islamisation processes unleashed by General Ziaur Rehman and General Ershad, reaching a new furore after the 'Taslima Nasreen incident' in 1994.'
   Who can argue with someone who cannot or does not want to understand that poor mullahs do not call the shots in rural or urban Bangladesh with regard to the persecution and subjection of women? Patriarchy and vested interest groups are much more powerful than the mullah. And again, what was going on in rural Bangladesh in the name of dispensing "Islamic justice" to poor Muslim women, through village courts run by village elders and presided over by financially dependent mullahs in the 1990s, have almost become history because of the growing awareness among the bulk of the population.
   In sum, neither the rural nor the urban mullahs are powerful enough to stage Islamic or any form of revolutions in Bangladesh. Those who think Talibanisation of Bangladesh is a possibility should realize that Afghanistan fell prey to the mullahs after the bulk of the people in the war-ravaged country had been desperately seeking peace at any price. The Taliban provided that short-lived 'peace' or law and order under an indoctrinated military with direct military and logistical support from the neighbouring Pakistan. Has Bangladesh reached the stage where Afghanistan was in 1996?
   Taj Hashmi writes from York University, Toronto

Geopolitics has played a pivotal role in South Asian development and regional cooperation. In the first quarter century of its existence, Pakistan was divided into two geographical segments separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory.
   India was a much more compact and governable, if linguistically and culturally a more diverse, geographical entity - except for Kashmir, whose borders with Pakistan became the source of a festering dispute soon after independence. Pakistan’s eastern half and India’s north-east state required massive troop movements and eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation along these borders.
   External alliances became a necessity to assuage these abnormal geographic situations, with India and Pakistan cozying up to rival cold war camps, albeit with a distance.
   The situation became even more complicated after the Sino-Indian border dispute and the Sino-Soviet ideological split. This further precluded any meaningful economic interaction involving the two major South Asian countries in a bilateral or regional framework.
   This was clearly to the detriment of economic growth of both countries, particularly to Pakistan’s eastern wing, which eventually became independent and revived its trade and economic links with India.
   In the post-Bangladesh period, Pakistan’s geographic position became even more salient after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US military support to the Mujahideen, both directly and through the Pakistani government.
   Pakistan became an enviable geostrategic location at the crossroads of the subcontinent, the Gulf and Central Asia. Pakistan’s military rulers have become deft at putting geography to maximum political use in the short-run, an ability which has outsmarted the politicians and has kept the army in the saddle despite huge military fiascos.
   The thin strip of territory along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan became a highly strategic piece of real estate for the West, which allowed Pakistan to leverage its economic and political influence, especially over the United States. Its importance has been further enhanced since 9/11.
   However, deriving political benefits from geography has yielded diminishing returns since the end of the cold war and has only barely helped avoid an economic catastrophe.
   The events of September 11 have blunted the instruments used by Pakistan to achieve political goals, both at home and abroad - permissiveness towards, if not overt support of, religious fundamentalism and covert violence.
   The strategic importance of Pakistan’s geo-political location will be further eroded once the United States has achieved its currently perceived goals and has decided to withdraw from the region.
   Pakistan’s preoccupation with its strategic and geopolitical assets has resulted in putting the development and utilization of its natural and human assets on the back burner.
   As Professor Stephen Cohen has remarked in his recent book, “In summary, the human material is there to turn Pakistan into a modern state, but it has been systematically squandered for three generations by an elite persuaded that Pakistan’s critical strategic location would be enough to get through difficult times. Now, the distant future has arrived, with Pakistan unequipped to face a fast-changing world while coping with mounting domestic problems”.
   The temptation to cash in on this strategic asset after the 9/11 was too great for any government to resist. But it is unlikely to be a viable long-run strategy of development or modernization, “enlightened” or otherwise.
   India’s use of geopolitics to achieve political and economic objectives, is more problematic and costly. Its ambitions to be a world, not merely a regional, power may seem justifiable to itself and its increasing number of admirers in the West, but many in South Asia would consider this as premature and counterproductive to regional cooperation.
   It would be much more in the interest of India and South Asia if India concentrated more on its growing economic power, coping with its vast social and economic problems, further strengthening its democratic polity which is the envy of the rest of South Asia, and showing greater magnanimity in its relations with its neighbours - all of which would enhance its credentials as a major regional power and would help transform the region. India’s recognition as a power would then become a formality, rather than a controversy.
   In the new era of globalization which South Asian countries seem keen to benefit from, geopolitics still plays a useful role in their growth and development. The present thaw in Indo-Pakistan relations which is now over a year old, did not happen suddenly, but began through a gradual realization that trade and investment, rather than arms race and military confrontation, are the ways to go for both.
   The Pakistani establishment began to realize that the country has the geographical advantage to become a “bridge state” that will link the subcontinent, the Gulf and Central Asia in beneficial flows of trade, commerce and energy, rather than being preoccupied with blocking the door to India’s entry into that region or using it as a leverage to force a solution of the Kashmir problem.
   While the two countries have agreed to adopt a long-term view on most other disputes, Pakistan seems eager to get the Kashmir issue resolved presumably within the term of the present government.
   Trade was not a basic ingredient of the national development strategies in South Asia; the limited foreign exchange requirements were augmented by external economic assistance, rather than by search for new markets abroad or for new lines of production with high export potential. In the case of Pakistan, massive aid flowed from the strategic alliances it formed with the United States and China, mainly because of its geographic location.
   Nearly a decade ago, when India launched its economic reforms, geopolitics began to be given a back seat to economics and commerce by New Delhi’s South Block. Trade began to be valued in New Delhi more than aid. The former Indian finance minister, Jaswant Singh announced he would not accept foreign aid that came in small doses.
   The former external affairs minister, Yashwant Sinha, negotiated free trade agreements with regions as far apart as Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia. Pakistan, where the foreign office still rules the roost over external economic relations in which it reflexively follows India’s lead, belatedly sent its president and prime minister on a similar mission recently.
   The search for capital, technology and markets has become an important component of Indian diplomacy over the last decade. This explains India’s keenness to form a South Asian trading bloc and a South Asian economic community and even a common currency - although it may be jumping the gun a bit.
   This was not so a couple of decades earlier. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Mrs. (Indra) Gandhi had opposed the formation of Saarc on the apprehension that it was nothing but an attempt by the smaller countries of the region to “gang up” against India, possibly under the instigation of an unfriendly Pakistan.
   It was not until later, when India had decisively changed gears of its external economic policy in favour of a more export-oriented growth, that it developed its fondness for Saarc and took some tentative measures to woo the other reginoal countries to expand the scope of the organization beyond its limited initial agenda, which included promoting exchange of visits, information and experience.
   However, Pakistan, which was always apprehensive about India taking a leading role in the region, continued to show its lack of enthusiasm about collaborating with India on South Asian economic issues. Its main interest in participating in Saarc, apart from gaining the goodwill of the smaller countries, was to use it as a forum to embarrass India on Kashmir.
   Economically, it was more interested in cultivating its relationship with the Middle East and Gulf countries, which had become a vital source of trade, remittance, foreign assistance and subventional oil supplies.
   It also used the “Islamic card” to have closer relationship with Iran, Turkey and Central Asian republics in Eco, an organization which had fallen into disuse after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.
   Pakistan has been lukewarm toward Safta and Sapta and has continued to drag its feet on the issue of MFN to India. Although, the official version has been that Pakistan would change its stance only after the Kashmir issue was solved or at least some progress was made in that direction, the real reasons are economic and its apprehension that India will sweep its markets and result in a massive trade deficit with that country.
   Other smaller countries also shared the apprehension that India being the largest economy in the region, was likely to receive a disproportionately high share of any gain accruing from regional cooperation.
   These fears are not without substance, but are often exaggerated by those industries and sectors of the economy which are likely to lose, while the potential beneficiaries, by far the more dynamic elements in the economy who have been denied patronage and access to resources, have little voice in policy formulation.
   India is keen to acquire an access to Central Asia, through Pakistan if possible and through more circuitous routes, if necessary. It is significant that recently India, Iran, Oman and Russia signed a treaty to construct a ‘north-south’ transport corridor that would allow, when completed, shipping of goods from India’s western coast to Europe via Iran and Caspian Sea ports of Russia.
   The transit of merchandise would be faster by 15 to 20 days and cheaper by 15 to 20 per cent as compared to the traditional route through Suez Canal. Azerbaijan, a Central Asian state, and several South-East Asian nations including Singapore, have expressed their willingness to join the ‘north-south’ transport system.
   The challenge for South Asia, especially for the two largest countries of the region, is to turn geopolitical factors into a vehicle for development for the peoples of the region rather than as instruments for rent-seeking for individual countries and their elites.
   This will require not only statesmanship - which France and Germany showed at the end of World War II to bury their hatchets and embark on a new journey for a prosperous Europe but also a change in the political and economic strategy which would give elimination of poverty and the welfare of its citizens, instead of military security and superiority, the centre stage of policy-making.
   Whether the ruling elites of the two countries will have the vision to make this basic turnaround in their policies, instead of making the cosmetic adjustments they have so far made, remains a moot question.
   This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn

People who should know better are playing a very dangerous game. On Sunday, Sir John (soon to be Lord) Stevens, the outgoing metropolitan police commissioner, chose the columns of the News of the World to assert that up to 200 terrorists trained by Osama bin Laden would commit atrocities in Britain if they could. Reports that had crossed his desk, he said, ‘made my hair stand on end’.
   It was a crude intervention in an extremely important debate on the government’s latest anti-terrorism legislation. But then, had not Tony Blair and Sir Ian Blair, Stevens’ successor, warned of hundreds of terrorists in Britain plotting attacks?
   There is little doubt that MI5 and the police special branch are keeping tabs on hundreds of individuals. That does not mean to say, as Stevens implies, that they are all poised to detonate a home-made bomb. The vast majority are suspected of some kind of involvement, or potential involvement, in such activities as fundraising for terrorist groups.
   The security and intelligence agencies have always referred to different degrees of potential involvement in terrorist activities, ranging from a small hard core, through people prepared to fund groups, to sleepers who would provide safe houses.
   Anti-terrorist and intelligence officials have estimated that 30, perhaps 40, individuals are prepared to kill themselves or others. But they also say it is misleading to talk, as Stevens and Blair have done, about numbers: one bomber could slip through the net even if the security and intelligence agencies were watching thousands of suspects. There is no such thing as total security. Alarmist talk whets an appetite for more attacks on civil liberties which will have no impact on the enemy they are supposed to defeat.
   The hundreds Stevens and Blair talk about seem to be based on the number of people in Britain who are known to have gone to Afghanistan or Chechnya to fight or be trained in ‘al-Qaida’ camps. But, as one senior anti-terrorist official says: ‘Just because they have been to training camps does not mean to say they are going to be a suicide bomber.’ Most of them have been back in Britain for more than three years. If they are being watched by the security services and police, and have not been arrested, they do not present the threat Stevens and others imply.
   Statewatch, the independent group which monitors the threat to civil liberties in Europe, describes in its latest bulletin how governments across the continent are planning more and more intrusive measures and criminal sanctions in the ‘war on terror’. More and more ‘special investigative techniques’, including bugging, tapping, informers, bribes, undercover agents and access to official databases, will be deployed and the results exchanged between governments.
   In Britain, while ministers talk up the rhetoric, senior security and intelligence officials privately paint a more sober picture. They have drawn up a five-year strategy to combat terrorism which they say is beginning to bear fruit. The hope is that within two years the level of the threat - now described as “serious and sustained” - will be reduced, making it difficult for terrorists to operate a network here. The aim is to manage, rather than eliminate, risk. There will always be a residual risk of a terrorist attack, but senior officials say that media claims about the threat, of “dirty bombs” being smuggled into Britain for example, is exaggerated.
   You don’t hear this from the government because ministers are playing politics with security. As the health secretary, John Reid, said on ITV1’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme on Sunday, parties that opposed the government’s anti-terrorist plans would have to explain themselves to the British people. It’s not only politics, it smells of blackmail.
   This article first appeared in The Guardian