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THESE are extraordinary times. The caretaker government, a civilian entity based on the constitution, runs the country under a state of emergency which allows the administration to behave in an authoritarian fashion, imposing a total ban on political activities. The caretaker government, as required by the constitution, is itself politically faceless. Besides, it seems to have lost its way in the maze of the reforms programme it has undertaken with the ostensible purpose of cleansing politics. In the resulting governmental inertia and political vacuum, the army, which has been called out in aid of the civil administration, finds a space to call the shots. The chief of staff of the army, Lieutenant General Moeen U Ahmed, has, of late, become more visible and more articulate on issues of political nature.
   For the listless caretaker government, the celebration of the 36th anniversary of independence, on March 26, was a routine official affair. The president, Iajuddin Ahmed, and the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, in their messages, talked in archaic bureaucratic language. Of the two top politicians, the Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, was in the United States and the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, was advised to stay put at her Dhaka Cantonment residence on security considerations. The other political leaders dutifully obeyed the emergency rules and remained satisfied with whatever photo opportunities they found at the official functions. In the politically suffocating state of emergency, popular participation lacked usual enthusiasm.
   This insipid environ centring Independence Day turned, dramatically, into a potential politically-charged platform the next day, March 27. The catalyst was the army chief, General Moeen. At a reception for freedom fighters hosted by the army, General Moeen harked back the spirit of the unity of the whole people during the war of independence and called for such a unity now to build the country. He reiterated the accusation against the politicians that they had contributed nothing to national progress. He exhorted all to appreciate the respective roles of the great leaders of the past and chastised the nation for its failure to ‘recognise’ the ‘father of the nation’.
   The public plea by the chief of the army to recognise Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the ‘father of the nation’ constitutes a point of departure in the establishment political discourse of the past three decades. Does this indicate a tilt of the establishment towards the purportedly secular polity of pre-1975 days, albeit, in the post-9/11 geopolitical realities of the US-led campaign against Islamist forces? Or, is it a general call to develop a synthesis between the political and ideological legacies of the war of independence and liberation as defined by the pristine fundamental principles of state – Bengali nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism – and the political and ideological legacies of General Ziaur Rahman which eventually forged the Islam-pasand, capitalist and pro-West reigning polity of Bangladesh? Or, when the bipolar power struggle between the BNP and the Awami League stands stalemated, does it signal a tantalising move by the powers that be to trigger another round of political engineering as they did, on the first occasion, in the political vacuum following the collapse of the Baksal along with the mass murder of the Mujib family and, on the second occasion, in the confusion following the assassination of General Zia?
   General Moeen has not obviously placed all his cards on the table. By raising the issue of recognition of the ‘father of the nation’ he has, however, upstaged the caretaker government on its agenda of reforms. Given the politically passive nature of the caretaker government and the ground realities of a divided polity — the power as well as political struggle between the Awami League-centric and the BNP-centric forces being antagonistic in nature — Fakhruddin and his colleagues in the council of advisers are now called upon to play a highly proactive political role, far beyond their constitutional mandate. It is a test the caretaker government does not seem to be equipped to face.
   On the other hand, the prospect of ‘correcting’ history has apparently elated Sheikh Hasina and many others in politics and civil society who claim to subscribe to the spirit of ’71. For them, if it does really materialise, it will be a sort of poetic justice being meted out against the perpetrators of palpable distortion and falsification of history and the disorientation of the pristine polity of ’71. This malignant process started with the cantonment-centric changeover of 1975 that was consolidated by General Zia and carried forward by General Ershad and Khaleda Zia.
   On the other side of the political divide, Khaleda Zia and her fellow-travellers in the Islam-pasand polity uphold the current version of the official history. This skewed version of history denigrates the roles of Sheikh Mujib, Mujibnagar government and the entire political leadership of the long-drawn Bengali secular-nationalist struggle and glorifies the role of General Zia and an alternative narrative of nationhood based on the Islamic heritage of the people of Bangladesh. The votaries of the Islam-pasand polity have still remained conspicuously silent over General Moeen’s reference to the ‘father of the nation’ and the need to review the history.
   Those who swear by the spirit of ’71 and the Awami League, in particular, seem to be eager to gain a political mileage over their Islam-pasand rivals by commending General Moeen for his reverential mention of the ‘father of the nation’ and call for national unity. This raises two pertinent questions: first, who will act, and how, to implement the suggestions of General Moeen; and secondly, whether the Awami League and their cohorts and General Moeen can become effective partners in the bureaucratic, legal, political and constitutional process that is required to ‘correct’ history and to reorder the polity.
   All this is in the future. Meanwhile, the political parties are in total disarray and the urgent democratic tasks like the withdrawal of the state of emergency, restoration of the fundamental rights of the people, holding of the general elections and the return to constitutional normalcy with the election of a new government remain neglected.
   The new-found zeal to ‘correct’ history also obscures the failure of the putative upholders of the spirit of ’71 to press for the implementation of two judgements of the High Court – one, sentencing the accused in the Mujib murder case to death and the other, declaring the Fifth Amendment and martial law illegal and unconstitutional. Had these two judgements been implemented in time, much of the historical, political and constitutional distortions and anomalies would have been removed much earlier.
   NM Harun is contributing editor of New Age. He can be reached at: badrun123@dhaka.net

NOW it seems that the Shaikh and Bangla Bhai had been at it for some time. If word coming out of the interrogation taskforce is anything to go by (and these words often aren’t any more credible than the highly placed sources that leak them), Shaikh Abdur Rahman has been owning up to a lot more than just the 63-district-wide simultaneous blasts of August 17, 2005. His seditious acts of militancy apparently date back to many years earlier.
   But, 17/8 (if Bush can have 9/11, and Blair 7/7, why not help ourselves to 17/8?) was the watershed. Those 400-odd bombs changed the way we viewed the threat of an Islamist onslaught, and wizened us up to the activities of Rahman and his protégé Bangla Bhai. 17/8 was also the beginning of the end for Rahman and Bangla Bhai. In retrospect, they both might consider their acts rather grandiose given the circumstances. They grossly overplayed their hand, and with the West and the Big Brother next door breathing down the back of a government running out of time before the next elections, there was only ever going to be one result in the hunt for the militant kingpins.
   So, keeping to the script, caught they have been, both of them, along with many others among their ranks. The government claims that the militants’ ‘backbone’ has been broken and the blasts, despite 17/8 having been only seven months ago, are a thing of the past. Great! Islamist militancy nipped in the bud, and it’s back to life as it was pre-17/8!
   Not so easy.
   Unfortunately, the government’s response to 17/8 has been much the same as Bush’s and Blair’s was post 9/11. Each of them went about trying to tackle the situation militarily, viewing the events purely as manifestations of a culture of militancy. Messrs Bush and Blair went about looking for the ‘source of terror’ in the apparently-hidden-there-but-yet-to-be-found arsenals of Afghanistan and Iraq instead of addressing the real source of terror that is the antipathy their government policies draw from outside. Similarly, the Bangladesh government went about clamping down on the militants without once addressing the root cause of the problem: the ever-tightening grip that Islamist fundamentalists are taking over the country.
   So, like in the global war on terror, the real source goes unaddressed as political mileage is taken from achievements that are merely cosmetic in nature.
   The government’s assertion that militancy has been nipped in the bud belies the fact that in Bangladesh, the state has let go unregulated and largely unsupervised a network of madrassahs, almost countless in number, that propagate teachings that are not only obscurantist but also useless in the working world. There have been calls to shut down madrassahs because some of them have been found to be acting as training camps for militants. But these calls ignore the fact that (a) these training camp madrassahs are small in number and (b) those majority of madrassahs that are not showing VCDs of Osama’s swordfights serve a larger social purpose in rural Bangladesh in acting as orphanages, halfway houses, even free-of-charge boarding schools for children whose parents can’t afford to feed them, let alone educate them.
   The more pertinent concern about madrassahs is that they teach nothing but scripture-reading, and the hundreds of thousands who ‘graduate’ every year are entirely unemployable, their futures irredeemable to the point where blowing oneself up doesn’t seem like a bad idea if it at least guarantees a better lot in heaven. Until a more integrated curriculum is incorporated at madrassahs — teaching English, math, the sciences, etc — this largely helpless underclass will continue to grow in both numbers and resentment.
   The curriculum needs to be looked into at the regular school- and university-level as well. Recent years have seen the phenomenal rise of Islamist study groups at our universities, and at the forefront of this movement is the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organisation that claims not to be comfortable with militancy, but whose guiding tenets clearly states a time when democracy (or any other form of governance that isn’t their own) is ‘toppled’ to establish Islamic laws where God and not the people is sovereign.
   For now, Hizb-ut-Tahrir is just happy to take advantage of our fragmented education system that separates the sciences and commerce from the arts and social sciences so early in school life that we churn out engineers, doctors and MBAs with no grounding in any kind of philosophical, ideological or even cultural dialogues who fall an easy prey to Tahrir’s ways of indoctrination.
   Private universities have become the latest breeding grounds for organisations like Tahrir, because under the guise of being ‘religious’ and ‘social’ forums and not ‘political’ activists (who are banned at private universities), Tahrir gets to hold official meetings on campus. So while protests against the WTO and a rally marking International Women’s Day were disallowed at a leading private university, Danish flags were allowed to be desecrated at will. Because the Tahrir is kosher.
   This is a loophole, in the laws and our mindset, that most Islamist outfits thrive on. Political mobilisation is off-limits for any NGO that is funded from overseas — but many an Islamist ‘party’ is really an NGO. In the guise of spreading Islam, they indoctrinate people politically. So, again, while human rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights are civil society movements, sneered at in political circles, Islam — or rather obscurantist Islam — is a political movement.
   The movement, in fact, is now so all-pervasive that the mainstream political arena is itself under threat of an Islamist upheaval. And for this, more than anything else, the current government bears most of the blame.
   Enough cannot be said about the murderous past, the manipulative present and the ominous future of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, the BNP’s main alliance partner. Jamaat, with its cold-blooded, quietly-scheming ways, poses the greatest danger to our polity than any other. The Jamaat is willing to play the waiting game, for years and decades if necessary, before springing an Islamist revolution on a nation that has been made too numb to react or resist. And the BNP is acting as abettor-in-chief.
   The entire political class, in fact, will have to be held responsible. Because it is them, on both sides of the current political divide, who refuse to consider separation of religion from the state, reforms in the education system, an overhaul of the madrassah curriculum, and a rationalisation of NGO regulations bringing Islamists under its purview.
   These issues are only but some of the causes of the spread of fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Decades of indifference and even encouragement from the profiteering political classes have allowed Islamists to become too embedded in the system for any quick-fix solution to succeed in driving them out.
   For certain, the arrest of a militant leader or two does not point to an end of fundamentalism — it is not even the end of militancy. For as long as the obscurantists are given a free hand in infiltrating our minds and our youth ranks, they will be able to regroup, again and again. That is where the real source of terror lies.

WITH competition rising over participation in the United Nations peacekeeping missions in different parts of the world, the Bangladesh armed forces need to go through some drastic changes in their perception and designing the operations if it intends to live up to its reputation of being one of the highest contributors of peacekeepers.
   It is not a piecemeal job anymore and all the aspects of peacekeeping operations should be seen as a whole. A committee comprising representatives from the army, navy, air force, different ministries including defence, foreign affairs, home affairs, establishment and finance, can be formed to draw up a comprehensive plan of operation to reduce the bureaucratic tangle in getting things done faster which in many cases make the Bangladeshi contingent vulnerable to
   criticism.
   When it comes to remittance, the finance ministry forgets the contribution of the Bangladeshi forces in the UN mission, which annually stands at nearly Tk 1,600 crore.
   The number of contribution in the UN missions do not matter anymore as the total operative system has changed with the introduction of modern equipment by the more advanced armies from countries like China and India.
   Only 10 per cent of the total expenditure in any mission goes to the salary account while the rest to food, transport, fuel, rehabilitation and other things which are supplied mostly by other countries even in places where Bangladesh is in command.
   For examples, Bangladesh, along with other troops contributing countries, is also a prime contributor to the UN Mission in Sudan. Based on the situation and terrain configuration, the southern Sudan has been divided into six sectors. Bangladesh is responsible for sector 1, which shares border with Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The area of responsibility is typical in the territory. The White Nile flows through the sector from south to north and divide the whole area of responsibility in two different parts. The terrain is open in the northern part while the southern part is full of rocky small hills. Most of the places do not have good communication and during the rainy season they become almost inaccessible.
   Since deployment, the Bangladeshi contingent is working hard to improve the security environment in their area of responsibility which is hostile in the truest sense of the term. Its responsibility includes providing force protection in the designated area where UN Military Observers are also deployed.
   Latest and workable equipment stand as the most essential part for smooth functioning of the mission as working condition vary from place to place and faced by all the odds.
   To maintain an effective role and continue to be a major troops contributing country for the UN, the Bangladesh contingent must improve their efficiency through incorporating more modern and heavy equipment including latest armoured personnel carriers, engineering plants, generators, heavy vehicles, long trailers, mine clearing vehicles and water treatment plants.
   The strength and the maintenance of the armoured personnel carriers need to be intensified, as they are at times required to support distant camps and patrols when they sometimes come under attack by the Uganda’s Lords Resistance Army or during sporadic incidents of clashes.
   The carriers need to run far more distances than in other missions as Sudan is a vast country and sector 1 alone is as one and a half times big as Bangladesh.
   ‘The roads are so bad that it takes nearly four hours for an APC to cover the 32-kilometre distance from Yambio camp to the Congo border,’ says Captain Emad, camp commander of the Bangladeshi unit which, besides other jobs, is also responsible to provide security to the UN observers who need to go to different places to monitor peace and movement of Uganda’s Lords Resistance Army.
   The de-mining contingent of the Bangladesh Army, during its ‘Rebuilding Kuwait’ mission after the Gulf War, earned quite a reputation in clearing the grounds of mines. The Bangladesh contingent was even the job to supervise the mine clearing of other contingents in Kuwait.
   In Sudan, the picture is, however, a bit different and the Bangladesh unit is conducting ‘humanitarian de-mining’ under the United Nations Mine Action Service.
   The de-mining group of the Bangladesh Engineers has undergone a number of target and tests which included ‘on-desk assessment’ and production of SOP as per International Mine Action Standard and the National Technical Standard Guideline as part of accreditation by UNMAS.
   The mine detecting and demolishing contingent is using dog squad for sweeping the grounds of Juba where the Sudan Armed Forces laid the mines during the early stages of the 22-year-long civil war, the longest war in the history of Africa.
   But the four dogs working to detect the personnel mines, are not enough to compete as other modern mine sweeping units in other UN missions are using latest mine-sweeping vehicles.
   The de-mining in Sudan is overseen by private quality assurance companies selected by the UN. Awareness programmes on mine education is also run on radio and television as thousands of dangerous areas still remain laden with mines.
   The southern Sudan has a population of around six million and a predominantly rural and subsistence economy. The region has been affected by the war for all but 10 years since independence in 1956, resulting in serious neglect, lack of infrastructural development, destruction and displacement of its people.
   More than two million people have died and more than four million people been displaced or rendered refugees as the result of the civil war.
   The Bangladesh contingent in the UNMIS is working in a very crucial transition period after 22 years of civil war that erupted following the government’s imposition of Shariah law in Sudan in 1983 and fuelled by divisions over control of oil fields and political power, as well as religious issues.
   The mediation of the UN in the peace process in the southern Sudan after the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement has not only shown lights of hope but also brought the two warring groups to sit together, at least to talk instead of just fight each other.
   Although the ‘trigger-happy’ people of Sudan still sing the song, ‘the soldiers are in the mountains’, whether be it a happy occasion or mourning or a rally, the unique agreement not only enforces a ceasefire, but also looks into the future advancement where the people of southern Sudan, dominated by 75 per cent Christian community, to decide through a referendum in 2011 whether to stay united with Sudan or secede.
   Till then, the southern Sudan, undoubtedly, will be going through a lot of development work that is also likely to involve the UN forces deployed in the area since March 2005.
   At present more than 10,000 troops from 62 countries including about 1,500 from Bangladesh are involved in the peacekeeping in Sudan. As per the mandate, UNMIS will continue to work for six and a half years to help the people promote reconciliation, lasting peace and stability and to build a prosperous Sudan in which human rights are respected and the protection of all citizens are assured.
   The UN Security Council has asked UNMIS, on the basis of the CPA, to work towards making unity an attractive option for the Sudanese people.
   According to Colonel Quadrat Elahi Rahman Shafique, commander of the Bangladesh contingent at the UNMIS, the contingent is carrying out all efforts to see that the CPA is implemented.
   The sitting of the two major warring parties, Sudanese Armed Forces and the SPLA, in one table during the area joint committee meetings every fortnight to resolve minor irritants is a big achievement towards the progress of peace. These meetings are overseen by the commanders of the contingents responsible for the respective areas.
   The southern Sudan is divided into six operational sectors; sector 1 looked by the Bangladesh contingent, sector 2 by the Kenyans, sector 3 by the Indians, sector 4 by the Egyptians, sector 5 by the Pakistanis and the sector 6 by the Zambians.
   In the present circumstances, Bangladesh contingent, like others need modern vehicles and transportation facilities that stand as one of the major factors of operations in the huge country like Sudan.
   The air transport unit of sector 1, where the Bangladesh contingent is deployed, is manned by the Russian Air Force whereas Bangladesh should have thought of making it a total package equipping its contingent with appropriate number of helicopters and personnel.
   In case of any sort of emergency arising in the area, like providing additional force support to Yambio or Yei, the Bangladesh contingent has to plan and depend totally on the available facilities.
   Even if a member of the contingent needs emergency medical care, Bangladesh has to depend on other hospitals and here is where the medical level has to be upgraded so that the soldiers can get the best possible treatment in a well-equipped setup.
   Although the doctors are very qualified and can provide international standard treatment but the hospitals demand the equipment needed to be of European standard to fulfil the expectations of the multinational patient of the UN deployed in the mission areas.
   Soldiers are getting sick every day and when they need to be taken to level three hospital, the nearest such facility that UN has is in Kenya. There comes the role of the foreign affairs ministry. Senior officials of foreign missions of other countries are usually visiting the contingents of their respective countries to oversee such situation. The counsel general for Bangladesh, who is a Sudanese businessman stationed in Khartoum, is preoccupied with his office in the capital and hardly has time to look into the affairs in Juba, some 1200 kilometres away.
   The Bangladesh Army should also think of rotating its troops every six months instead of one year.
   Member countries like Pakistan and India are replacing their troops every six months. It not only provides financial advantage but also reduces logistical load gives more opportunity for quick reinforcement of supply. More importantly, the discipline of soldiers which is quite reputable will further improve during and after the missions.
   The Bangladesh authorities for economic viability should also consider owning its own aircraft to carry the troops to and from the UN missions.
   If the turnover is made by national airlines, it will financially benefit the country and reduce the coordination time and other related problems which the troops usually feel when travelling by other airlines chartered by the UN.
   The troops in the UN missions remain away from their families all through their yearlong deployment and communications with the families back home remain a major issue.
   The UN is responsible for the communication within the mission area and reimbursement is made to the government for the cost, but to establish the network from mission area to the rear, whether civil or military, is the national responsibility. However, such facilities are hardly made available for the troops.
   Sudan being a vast country and most of the places inaccessible as far is sea port is concerned, the Bangladesh Armed Forces is yet to establish its own chain of supply for maintaining its troops from rear to the mission area.
   The troops expressed their frustration when the role of foreign ministry comes. High official of foreign ministry and also other ministries of different countries are visiting their troops on ground. But in the case of Bangladesh no high official are seen even when death or serious injury take place and they are taken to a different country. Visit by the families of such victims also become impossible due to poor or no support of the concerned organisation where the army is left alone to handle all odds.
   Saiful Huda is the city editor of New Age and has recently been to Sudan