As dusk falls on the mango orchards in northern Bangladesh, Zem Ali and about a dozen other men leave their mud-thatched homes to sleep under the stars.
The nightly ritual began in January when the body of Motiur Rahman, Ali’s 25-year-old brother, was found riddled with bullets in a pool of blood. He was last seen alive in the hands of the Rapid Action Battalion, an anti-terrorism squad that reports to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
“Anybody can be arrested, anytime,” Ali said from his village of Bajitpur, which has about 2,000 people. “We hate the government, we hate the security forces more than ever before.”
Wajed’s foes see the strong-arm tactics as evidence she wants to destroy opposition leader Khaleda Zia, who was declared a “fugitive” on Wednesday, and prolong one-party rule in Asia’s fifth-most-populous country. Her supporters say forceful measures are needed to fight opponents who boycotted an election 13 months ago and want to use violence to force a fresh vote.
The widening polarization in Bangladesh threatens to hobble an economy that is now the world’s second-biggest exporter of garments after China. It also may swell the ranks of Islamic militant groups in the predominately Muslim country, where a U.S. blogger who wrote about religious tolerance was hacked to death with a machete last week in Dhaka, the capital.
Coup Risk
“As the stability of the country continues to deteriorate, it will be exploited even more by the radical groups,” said Sajjan M. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation think-tank. “This may force the hand of the military who have in the past usurped Bangladesh’s democracy, and if that were to happen it would be a major retrograde step back into the abyss.”
More than 100 people have died in political violence so far this year, including citizens burned alive in arson attacks and those like Rahman killed in the custody of security forces. If this pace continues, 2015 would be Bangladesh’s deadliest year since its founding in a civil war in 1971, when about 3 million died.
Bangladesh’s political fight largely comes down to two women, Wajed and Zia, who are both family members of former national leaders who were assassinated. The army has seized power at least four times, most recently in 2007, when the generals tried unsuccessfully to oust them both from politics.
Wajed’s father founded the ruling Awami League, which took power after independence and promotes a secular democracy. Zia’s husband, the country’s first military ruler, started the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, which has called itself the “Islamic consciousness” of the Muslim majority.
‘Survival Battle’
When democracy was restored in 2008, the Awami League won more than two-thirds of parliamentary seats. It then started war-crime trials against leaders of the BNP-linked Jamaat-e-Islami for atrocities committed during the country’s founding, when it sided with Pakistan, and scrapped a system that saw a neutral body oversee elections.
Zia’s BNP then boycotted the last vote in 2014, arguing that it wouldn’t be fair without a new election body. She has stepped up her protests and called for a nationwide strike that has triggered violence.
“It’s a survival battle for both the leaders and it’s a destructive battle,” Ahsan H. Mansur, executive director of Dhaka-based Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, said by phone. “None would want to give up, no matter what.”
On Wednesday, a court in Dhaka upheld an arrest warrant for Zia on corruption charges that date back a decade and declared her a fugitive from the law. She has remained confined to her office since Jan. 3.
Economic Fallout
“Khaleda Zia is the leader of militants,” Wajed told lawmakers on Wednesday. “Her only job is to kill people in arson, harm the economy and show off militant power.”
Zia’s party said the arrest warrant wouldn’t stop their movement.
“It only proves the government’s bankruptcy,” Salahuddin Ahmed, the BNP’s joint secretary general, said in a statement on Wednesday. “All opposition leaders are victims of the ruling party’s blind vengeance, hate-filled politics and extreme lust for power.”
Zia’s call to block roads and ports has hurt the economy, jeopardizing the jobs of thousands who stitch clothes that end up in stores owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Gap Inc. and Hennes & Mauritz AB. The government plans to lower its economic growth target of 7.3 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30, contributing to a 3.7 percent drop this year in an index of Bangladeshi stocks.
Islamic Extremists
“For some foreign investors, this period of renewed violence could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, leading them to take their business elsewhere,” Thomas Rookmaaker, director of sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings, said in an e-mail.
Bangladesh has made it difficult for transnational terrorist groups to establish safe havens, according to the U.S. State Department. It has banned several groups, including Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which wants to impose Islamic law through force, and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh, a group founded in the 1990s with assistance from Osama bin Laden.
Still, the recent political stalemate may threaten that progress. Zia’s BNP is relying on violence to boost its negotiating power with the government, while Hasina also risks building resentment with a heavy handed response, the International Crisis Group wrote in a February report.
“Both should understand that failure to compromise is eroding their legitimacy among citizens who are the most affected by economic and physical insecurity,” the report said. “If the stalemate continues, the economic fallout could fuel more unrest, which would be exploited by Islamist extremists to gain recruits.”
‘Everyone Is Scared’
Security forces on March 2 arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman over the death of Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin who blogged about atheism and religious freedom. Rahman had strong connections with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a militant group founded in Jerusalem in the 1950s that is now in dozens of countries, Mufti Mahmud Khan, a spokesman for Rapid Action Battalion that made the arrest, said in Dhaka on March 2.
Rahman, who died in northern Bangladesh after being taken by the Rapid Action Battalion, was a member of Zia’s BNP. He was arrested on suspicion of participating in arson attacks against government supporters and died in a shootout when authorities took him to raid a hideout of his accomplices, according to Major Kamruzzaman Pavel, a commander in Chapainawabganj district.
Ali, Rahman’s brother, doesn’t accept the official story. He now comes back only in the daylight to shower and eat lunch, fearful and angry at his own government.
“It’s a murder,” Ali said. “Everyone is scared. We are always on the alert.”
– Bloomberg
