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Say ‘no’ to national security council
In countries where strong democratic institutions exist and where the military has never offered any threat to take over
the state machinery, NSC has been used to deal with external threats and coordinate defence strategies. However,
in countries where the military has been a dominant force in internal politics, NSC has been used to institutionalise
the military’s role in politics, writes Asif Saleh
Jillur Ahmed, Channel I host of Tritiyo Matra: So is National Security Council coming?
General Moeen U Ahmed: Well, we have been hearing about it since last year. Let’s see. It’s there in India and Pakistan – so why not in Bangladesh?
A SPECTRE looms large in Bangladesh, the spectre of a national security council. Hints are being dropped here and there of NSC as a coming ‘attraction’ – General Jahangir at the NRB conference in December, General Ershad at his party meeting, and General Moeen time to time on interviews. But no one is giving any details on it. Even though General Moeen said in the recent Channel I interview that the future of the country is in the hands of the drivers of that now famous train, i.e. the politicians, he promptly talked about implementing such a fundamental change as NSC in the constitution without any mandate from the people. In support for a decision for NSC, General Moeen has given the example of India and Pakistan. In countries where the military has played a guardian role historically, NSC has played an often intrusive role undermining the civil authorities. So when examples of NSC in fundamentally strong democracies are given to justify the rationale for it in our country, we need to carefully analyse the socio-political context and other implications of having such a body. In this piece we will try to look different countries of the world where NSC is in place and how it has been used and abused to show that demerits far outweigh the merits of having it in Bangladesh.
India
At the height of tension with Pakistan over the Kargil war and the nuclear tests by both countries, India formed an NSC. The goal of the council is to set strategy on defence issues to tackle various external threats. The success of the council is still being debated in India. The council has about 18 members, with only four being from the military. From its very birth India’s politicians have successfully been able to keep the army away from getting involved in the state’s internal affairs. As a result, the debate on NSC in that country is about how effective it would be or has been, rather than how much influence the army would exert upon the government through the council.
Pakistan
Pakistan’s case is, however, a much more interesting one to follow because the civil-military relationship in Bangladesh has closely resembled that of Pakistan and will likely to do so for the foreseeable future. While Pakistan has been ruled by the military on and off since 1958, it was only during the 1980s when an attempt was made by General Zia-ul-Huq to institutionalise the army’s role in governance. He, however, found a much more powerful option to control the elected government. He changed the constitution to give unabated power to the president to sack an elected government without giving the prime minister a chance to prove the cabinet’s support in the parliament. Having such a tight grip on the government using this legislation, the need for an NSC was hardly there. In the ensuing decade, even though General Zia was no longer in power, elected governments in Pakistan were dismissed for supposed corruption five times, with none of their majority being tested in the parliament. In 1998, Nawaz Sharif repealed the clause curtailing presidential power to dissolve the government.
A National Security Council was brought to life again by General Musharraf in 2004. As the military was directly establishing control over many facets of the administration, the formation of NSC institutionalised the power of the military. From offering ‘advice’ to the national assembly to forming its own laws via official gadget notification, the NSC in Pakistan has been given sweeping powers, expressed in its mission as: National Security Council to serve as a forum for consultation on matters of national security including the sovereignty, integrity, defence, security of the State and crisis management;
In a country where the military has played a dominant role in politics, this almost gives them a free reign on poking their collective nose on virtually any internal matter where they see fit.
The difference here from the Indian NSC is clear. While the Indian NSC clearly focuses on external threat, Pakistan’s NSC has been given free license to indulge in internal state affairs. Indeed, we can see such differences in the NSCs of two other countries — the United States and Turkey.
The United States
The National Security Council in the United States is considered the ideal example of how such a body should function under a democratic system. While security is the council’s area of concern, the three key features of the NSC are its restrictive role as an advisory body, its focus on external, not internal, issues, and its mechanism to assert civilian control over security affairs in a democracy.
Under the strict authority of the civilian president who is also the commander-in-chief of all armed forces of the United States and who is responsible for executing the national security policy of the country, an advisory group called the National Security Council was created in 1947 by a law passed by the US Congress. The National Security Act of 1947 was a consequence of lessons learned during the military campaigns of World War II and an anticipated need to coordinate the different dimensions of security during the Cold War. Like its economic counterpart (the National Economic Council), the NSC is part of the executive office of the president. To help coordinate the national security policy and response among the different departments of the government, the president appoints a national security adviser, who acts as the White House’s top analyst and focal point on security-related issues. Its role is to purely deal with external threats and coordinate the US’s response to various international security issues that the country has to deal with. The role is purely advisory and eventually the decision to implement the recommendations solely rest with the president and the members of Congress.
Turkey
The creation of the MGK (as NSC is known in Turkey) was an outcome of the military coup in 1960, and has been part of the constitution since 1961. In this way the 1961 constitution created what the Turkish scholar Sakallio?lu labels ‘a double headed political system: the civilian council of ministers coexisted with the National Security Council on the executive level, and the military system of justice continued to operate independently alongside the civilian justice system’ (wikipedia.org).
The MGK’s role was further strengthened with the 1982 constitution which was adopted by the military junta in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, before transferring power to civilian politicians. From then on, its recommendations had to be given priority consideration by the cabinet. Furthermore, the number and weight of senior commanders in MGK increased at the expense of its civilian members.
Turkey’s military has often seen itself as the guardian of the country and has not hesitated to interfere whenever it deemed such interference was necessary. In 1980, the National Security Council directly intervened and took over power by suspending the constitution and implementing a provisional Constitution. Currently, however, in order to get entry in the EU, the MGK is reforming to give more power to the politician and strengthen the democratic institutions.
From this discussion, a pattern is clear. In countries where strong democratic institutions exist and where the military has never offered any threat to take over the state machinery, NSC has been used to deal with external threats and coordinate defence strategies. However, in countries where the military has been a dominant force in internal politics, NSC has been used to institutionalise the military’s role in politics. The side effect of it has been disastrous. The democratic institutions, as a result, have also not prospered. In countries where institutions are weak and politicians are fearful of the armed forces, NSC is used by the military to exert its authority and parental role over the politicians. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at Bangladesh and the justification to form NSC.
Bangladesh
The main reason that is being touted for NSC is crisis management: we need coordinated strategy to encounter internal threat to stability like that of pre-1/11 reality.
This runs the risk of being a direct call to army to get involved in politics whenever they would see it fit. This risk is too high to bear if we want democracy to flourish and mature in our country. If, however, we are talking about natural disaster management, experience shows that the army is ever ready to help the civilian administration, and hardly has had an issue with coordination in the past. In cases of law enforcement issues, we can not and should not forget enforcing law enforcement in a country is the job of the police and the judiciary and not that of the armed forces. The armed forces are trained to handle external threats only.
There is another reason that is sometimes suggested which is the argument of having checks and balances in the power structure. The idea is to provide a countervailing power to that enjoyed by the elected prime minister under our constitution. While the idea of checks and balances to the power of the prime minister is important in its right, given the side effects of NSC, it’s not clear that this is a particularly good way of ensuring such checks by giving such a power to a group of unelected individuals with no mandate or accountability. In the history of military’s involvement in internal politics of a nation, there is hardly an example where the military has wanted to remain a junior partner for long. Their involvement through NSC runs the risk of undermining the civilian government.
No matter how free and fair the election, there is a risk that it will not be meaningful as the government will constantly be dictated in the name of ‘advice’ by NSC. The risk is there that democratic institutions will always remain subservient and weak, leading to prolonged de facto military rule in the country. This concern about military’s increasing role in the administration already is widely shared as the Amnesty International in its recent statement expressed its concern about the ‘the creeping role of the armed forces in a range of functions, with no clear rules of accountability, that should rightly be carried out by the civilian administration’ (www.amnesty.org).
Most importantly, such important policy decisions need to be left to be decided by the elected representatives of the parliament. Caretaker government without any mandate should not take such a major policy decision. For the sake of maintaining the army’s professionalism and image, the army needs to say no to NSC. For the sake of the growth of democracy in Bangladesh, we all must say no to National Security Council.
Asif Saleh, executive director of Drishtipat – a global human rights organisation, recently visited Bangladesh as part of a high-level mission of Amnesty International
Assassination of Gandhi and the
early signs of crisis of Muslim
nationalism in East Bengal
In the second instalment of a three-part series, Professor Ahmed Kamal analyses how, in their reactions to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, some Muslim nationalists in East Bengal started to question the long-held basis of their anti-Gandhi public stand
THE leaders of the official Muslim League in East Bengal were no different in raising Gandhi, in their condolence messages, on a pedestal overlooking the complex and at times incomprehensible nature of latter’s politics. AK Fazlul Huq, the most important among them, ousted by Jinnah in the Bengal Muslim League politics and now satisfied with the job of an attorney general in the provincial High Court, made a reference before the chief justice and other judges. He said ‘the historians of the future would place Gandhi amongst the greatest of the great men of the world.’ On the other hand Nurul Amin, the senior-most member of the East Bengal cabinet, raised a question in his statement, ‘Who could dream that this apostle of peace and true protector of rights of minorities would be the first victim of “independence”?’ Excepting Jinnah all of them highlighted the role of Gandhi in establishing communal harmony between the two communities of the Hindus and the Muslims after partition. All of them, great leaders with large political following in East Bengal, believed that in those turbulent time of barbaric communal strife Gandhi was the only saviour of the Muslims. However, they did not look back to re-examine the politics they had pursued and the outcome of which was the partition of India, so, all these hyperboles, one could argue, did not look like they went beyond being diplomatic niceties.
Now I will try to develop my argument by quoting the reactions of young Muslim nationalists of East Bengal. First, I am going to cite the reaction on Gandhi’s death by young Tajuddin Ahmed, who as a Muslim nationalist took active part in the Pakistan movement since 1943 and little over two decades later after partition became the first prime minister of the exile government of Bangladesh in 1971. One does not know if Tajuddin had ever met Gandhi who stayed in Noakhali, an East Bengal district, from November 7 to March 2 in 1947. Walking barefoot Gandhi covered 116 miles, visiting 47 villages ‘cursed by blood and bitterness,’ during the communal carnage there which followed the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946. Politicians of various stature, newspaper correspondents, Gandhi’s disciples and Congress volunteers, Muslim League supporters rushed to Noakhali. But none of the young Muslim nationalists, including Tajuddin, whom we mention in this essay, visited Gandhi in Noakhali. But there was an instant and extensive reaction that we read in Tajuddin’s diary written hours after he received the news of Gandhi’s assassination. Grief overwhelmed him and abundantly flowed in the pages of his diary.
Expression of grief has no necessary correspondence with language. Silence, crying, hurting oneself, even hitting others are the known modes of expression of grief among the people. Expression of grief often is loud and episodic remembrance, interrupted by outbursts of cries, of all the lost moments of happiness and unfulfilled desires involving the deceased. The reason and subject of grief often determine the mode of expression of mourning. But when grief is expressed through writing, the subject and object of grief merge in a text that opens up multiple possibilities of interpretations. Thus a written text expressing grief is always both private and public with the potentiality of entering into the domain of historical discourse. Through mourning Tajuddin was not only connecting with his political past, he, in fact, questioned the long-held basis of his anti-Gandhi public stand. Tajuddin’s grief thus opens up the possibility of reversing or re-establishing his relationship with a martyred Gandhi in a fresh review of politics. To do this, the only mode he adopts which is sustainable is to express his grief in writing. Thus inscribed in the pages of his diary, his grief transcends the boundary of the private and enters into the domain of the public where politics determines the language of his grief, especially so, when it is all about Gandhi.
Tajuddin’s diary entry on Gandhi’s death, which was about three and half pages, was much longer than his entry of any other day including even August 15, the day of independence from the British. From this the intensity of pain that Gandhi’s death inflicted on him becomes clear. He titled his diary page on January 30 as ‘Sad day (Friday) Sad news.’ His first reaction after hearing the news was, ‘I was puzzled for about 3 minutes I remained in nervousness – at the first utterance of news a peculiar harsh cry-like voice came out...’ To make sense of the impact of Gandhi’s death, Tajuddin mentioned that he took his father’s and brother’s death very normally, but he became very much heartbroken with Gandhi’s death. He further wrote that ‘for the first time I got shock from human death which I always take for very usual thing to happen. To me death is a common and natural thing. I never mourn anybody’s death.’ When his father died in 1947, only a few days short of a year before Gandhi’s death, Tajuddin was in Calcutta and had his ‘normal’ dinner after receiving his father’s death news. The following night he went on to have a ‘sound sleep’ at his village home ‘in the very place where [his father] breathed his last.’ But he could not sleep after receiving the news of Gandhi’s death. He mentioned his calmness after his father’s death and wrote that he ate four paratas and one bowl of meat only fifteen minutes after receiving his father’s death news. ‘But the case is different with me at the death of Gandhiji. I wanted to shake off the melancholy in me as weakness. I took my night meal at 12 pm...But I could not sleep well against my will. While I was awake I was [absorbed] in Gandhiji, when slumber caught me due to numbness it took me to Gandhiji.’ Tajuddin uses the examples of personal loss to measure the intensity of his mourning in the absence of any other measure. In his diary he mentions Gandhi as a ‘great sage.’
He recorded a detailed description of Gandhi’s last journey: ‘At 11:45am (IST) Mahatma’s body was taken out from Birla Bhaban in procession. The cortege was carried by military personnel because the funeral was declared a “state funeral.” At 4:20pm the bier reached Rajghat on Jamuna. At 4:30pm the body was placed on the pyre with head at the north. Devadas Gandhi placed over his body a pile of sandal wood. Ramdas Gandhi lit the pyre at 4:55pm. At 5:00pm Mahatma’s remains became ashes. Pandit Ramdhan Sharma read mantras...’ Tajuddin’s attention to details of the last rites is not only striking but is a testimony to his emotional involvement with Gandhi. He further recorded, ‘Pyre was provided with 15 maunds of Sandal wood, 4 maunds of ghee [clarified butter], 2 maunds of incense, 1 maund [of] coconut and 15 seers [of] camphor.’
His emotional state comes out strikingly when he writes about himself. This Tajuddin who even used cosmetics on Muharram Day (a day of mourning for the Muslims) because he ‘did not believe in that sort of expression of grief,’ but after Gandhi’s death his only luxury which was to comb his hair, which he did not do properly for two days and he ‘did not take bath for 48 hours.’ These he did ‘from [an] inner urge and out of forgetfulness.’ All these suggest that he was deeply grief-stricken, but why? He himself explained.
Though he opposed Gandhi for political reasons, Gandhi’s great personality diminished his opposition and produced a sense of guilt in Tajuddin. Affected by excessive guilt, he wrote that with the death of Gandhi the ‘sun declined and the beacon light of humanity declined too.’ He compared Gandhi with the Pole Star and took resolution to follow the ‘foot prints’ of this great man and sought for his ‘guidance.’ Tajuddin could not withhold his reaction like Jinnah by saying only that he was ‘the greatest Hindu’. Indeed, Tajuddin expressed his overwhelming grief through the pages of his diary.
Was Tajuddin the only person who reacted like this? Another Muslim nationalist, Kamruddin Ahmad wrote, ‘that night (30 January) I dreamt of Gandhiji – in his Asram (hermitage), he was smiling showing his toothless gum and said “future history will decide whether I am a hypocrite or not. I will certainly not stop going to Noakhali persuaded by you. When I decided to go there, at that time there was no riot in Bihar.” We were dissatisfied and came out disgusted. But after waking up I realised that I did not apologise to him while he was alive. I will suffer and my conscience will bite me rest of my life.’ This he wrote in his vernacular autobiography more than two decades and a half later.
Kamruddin Ahmad’s immediate reaction had been recorded by Tajuddin in his diary, ‘Kamruddin sb [shaheb] came down at 8:30pm – he was very much upset,’ wrote Tajuddin on the same day. While showing respect to Gandhi in his book Amar Dhekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhar, Abul Mansur Ahmad, the Muslim nationalist from Mymensingh, also criticised Jinnah’s narrow-mindedness. He wrote that ‘before that day I myself could not realise how much I loved Mahatma.’ Badruddin Umar, then a young Muslim nationalist, was still in Calcutta at the time of Gandhi’s death, and recorded his feelings in his recent autobiography. He documented how Gandhi’s death generated fears and sadness amongst the minority Muslims of West Bengal. Soon after, Umar’s family left India to live in East Bengal.
To be continued
Ahmed Kamal teaches history at the University of Dhaka
Mosque-cum-cyclone centres
I welcome the idea of building mosque-cum-cyclone centres in disaster-prone areas of Bangladesh, as declared by the chief of army staff General Moeen U Ahmed.
However, I would like the government to make it clear from the beginning that these centres will have equal access to everybody, irrespective of their religion or gender.
Mushtaq Ahmad
Shropshire, UK.
Unnamed benefactor
It is interesting news for poor Bangladesh that a benefactor donated $130 million as Sidr aid.
The benefactor donated this amount of money anonymously but it certainly raises a question: what is the source of income of the donator?
Wakilur Rahman
Manchester, UK
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Tk.1,000 crore individual and anonymous donation through the Islamic Development Bank to Sidr-devasted areas of Bangladesh is highly appreciable. May the Almighty take his/her donation and give best return.
Saif Tinku
On e-mail
Suharto’s death
This man was responsible for the massacre of at least 400,000 Liberals progressives and socialists just to keep the country ‘onside’ in the Cold War. Suharto reminds me of another dictator, yes, Pinochet.
Shubho
On e-mail
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Because of this ruthless murderer, thousands of people were killed in East Timor (he exterminated 1/3 of the East Timorese population in 24 years). Indonesia invaded illegally East Timor in 1975 –– a US and Australian approved invasion which was never recognised by the UN. This tragedy was completely overlooked by the UN. Who gives a toss about economic growth in Indonesia? Suharto was nothing but a common criminal and murderer. His legacy is blood on his hands. Shame he will not pay for his crimes.
Sonia Sharmin
On e-mail
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