Bangladeshi victims in
the war on terror
by Turaj Ahmad
Each day, hundreds of Bangladeshi workers flock out of the country in search of various jobs to provide a stable earning to their families. These migrant workers provide necessary manpower for various purposes in the nations - mainly in the Middle East, and more recently in South East Asian countries, that recruit them. There have also been notable contributions on humanitarian fronts by various Bangladeshi aid workers in many war-torn nations across the world.
However, their presence and security in such places has started to seem increasingly perilous following the recent series of developments in Afghanistan where the kidnapping of local and foreign aid workers are turning into an ominous phenomenon. On September 16, Nurul Islam, who has been working in the war plagued nation as an area manager for BRAC since 2005, was abducted from his office from his office at Pul-i-Alam, about 50 kilometres south of Kabul.
His family were met with the news of this grevious incident just days after another ill-fated incident involving another aid worker for BRAC in Afghanistan. Abdul Alim, an area manager of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) was shot dead on September 13. BRAC have taken the necessary steps and retrieved his body from Afghanistan, as Anwarul Haq, director, communications of BRAC in Dhaka informs.
These though, are not the first instances in which a Bangladeshi worker has been found susceptible to the surroundings of a war ravaged country. In 2005, Abul Kashem Faruk, a Bangladeshi truck driver, was abducted by Iraqi guerrillas. Kashem, an employee of a private Kuwaiti transport company, was taken hostage along with another driver from Sri Lanka while carrying supplies to Iraq from Kuwait before being released after about a month and a half.
Rono Kumar, a resident of Manikganj, is one of the thirteen Bangladeshi workers, recruited by Damat, a foreign-based agency, to have returned from Iraq last week, after spending nearly two and a half years in Baghdad. ‘I used to work in the bakery store of a small hotel in Baghdad but I had to return as my employers would not permit my stay to prolong two and a half years,’ says Rono who was transferred to Iraq upon his visit to Kuwait by his company.
Another such Bangladeshi worker to have plied his trade Iraq is Ranjit Rosario, spending a year and half. Amidst the tumult and turmoil, Rosario had performed kitchen work in an army camp, occupied by US and British coalition forces. ‘We were never allowed to leave the camp premises and although the situation around the country was bad, we were fortunate to have salvaged our well being even as we heard of others dying around us,’ says Rosario, who was accompanied by 83 other Bangladeshi workers in the camp also transferred from Kuwait.
Although Iraq has been a prominent breeding ground for Bangladeshi workers in the past, the exchange of labour between the two countries has officially been at a stand still for the past few years, according to officials at the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Employment, the workers entering Iraq via another country in this case Kuwait, has also made it difficult to monitor their situation.
On the other front, the situation regarding Nurul Islam in Afghanistan is receiving the necessary support from government officials according to BRAC officials. ‘The government has been extending all possible collaboration to our efforts to secure Nurul Islam’s release by contacting the relevant authorities in Afghanistan. I also request the authorities in Afghanistan to do all they can to secure Nurul’s release as early as possible. BRAC will cooperate fully with the Afghan authorities and provide all the necessary support,’ said BRAC’s founder and chairperson, Fazle Hasan Abed.
Foreign affairs adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury has sought the support and cooperation of the visiting US deputy assistant secretary, John Gastright as well as sending a letter to his Afghan counterpart, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, seeking the support of the Afghan authorities in effecting the release of Nurul Islam, said a foreign ministry release. ‘We fervently appeal to those who have abducted the BRAC official to release him. His mission in Afghanistan is purely humanitarian—he is there only to help Afghan people,’ says foreign adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.
While the fate of Nurul Islam still hangs in the balance, his mother, Johora Khatun, has pleaded to her son’s abductors to release the sole earning member of the family with regard to his religious affiliations. ‘He is a Muslim. He says prayers five times a day. You are Muslims too. Please return my son,’ says Johora Khatun in her plea to the abductors.
The reasons behind the abduction of Islam have yet to be deduced although the fact that it is not the consequence of a political backlash by the Afghan rebels has been established. ‘Abdul Alim was shot in Badakshan while he was on his way to collect a loan from a remote village nearby. The two gunmen have been arrested while the Taliban have recently made an announcement on the Afghan national television claiming no responsibility for the abduction,’ tells Anwarul Haq.
BRAC have also decided upon sending a senior official to Afghanistan to determine the causes behind the abduction of Nurul Islam as well as taking the necessary steps to trigger his release, BRAC executive director Mahbubur Rahman.
‘We have already sent an official over there who is well accustomed to surroundings in Afghanistan, therefore we hope to find an end to this situation sometime soon,’ says Anwarul Haq.
Since 2002, BRAC has been working towards improving and developing roads, health care, education along with its microfinance programmes, which work largely with poor and disadvantaged women, with a network of 251 offices in 24 Afghan provinces employing around 4,300 people, including over 200 Bangladeshis. These, however, are the first scathing blows BRAC has received - in regard to the safety of its Bangladeshi workers, although some of the group’s Afghan employees had been targeted during their time and effort to achieve development in Afghanistan, according to officials of the world’s largest NGO, in Dhaka,.
The organisation has hailed the attempts the aid workers in Afghanistan have made so far, as well as informing that the work will carry on as it has done over the last five years. ‘We have represented ourselves as peace workers, working towards the betterment of Afghan people who have taken our efforts to heart. Although we have asked our aid workers to take necessary precautions, we do not expect to enforce any drastic changes to our proceedings in Afghanistan at any time in the foreseeable future,’ he concludes.
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