[Reader-list] NYT: Bangladeshi Premier Faces a Grim Crucible

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

NEW YORK TIMES
Bangladeshi Premier Faces a Grim Crucible
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 13, 2009

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Sheikh Hasina survived when gunmen executed her
father and extended family late one summer night in 1975. She survived
again when assassins hurled 13 grenades at her political rally in
2004, killing two dozen people.Today, about two months into her tenure
as prime minister of this fractious, poor and coup-prone country, she
confronts her greatest crucible yet: an unusually savage mutiny by
border guards last month that left soldiers buried in mass graves and
widened the gulf between her fragile administration and the military.

Altogether, 74 people were killed, mostly army officers in command of
the border force.

Two separate investigations are under way to identify those
responsible: one by the army, another by Mrs. Hasina’s government.
Whether either will yield credible results is unknown. Mrs. Hasina’s
fate and the stability of the country depend on the outcome.

In an interview this week, Mrs. Hasina called the mutiny “a big
conspiracy” against her agenda to establish a secular democracy in
this Muslim-majority nation of 150 million. She struck a note of
defiant resolve.

“No one will stop me,” she said. “I will continue.” Then she raised
her eyebrows and offered a hint of a smile. “We have to unearth all
these conspiracies.”

Mrs. Hasina, 61, has the air of a strict grandmother. She speaks
softly. She wears traditional Bengali saris that cover her head. Her
eyes are a cool gray.

She said she was keen to hunt down and punish those responsible for
the mutiny. She suggested that several factions unhappy with her
agenda could have been responsible, including Islamist militants, whom
she has vowed to crush.

“There are many elements,” she said in her first extensive interview
since the Feb. 25 siege. “These terrorist groups are very much active.
This incident gives us a lesson. It can happen again.”

After two years of army-backed rule in the country, Mrs. Hasina’s won
a resounding majority of the parliamentary seats in elections last
December, after campaigning on a slate of provocative promises. She
said she would root out Islamist guerillas, put on trial those
suspected of conspiring against Bangladesh’s independence from
Pakistan in 1971, nurture friendly relations with India and stop
anti-Indian insurgents from using Bangladeshi soil to launch attacks
against New Delhi.

The election drew a turnout of around 80 percent and was cited as
among the most credible and least violent here in recent years.

Then came the massacre.

On the last Wednesday in February, at the headquarters of the border
patrol, known as the , a guard pointed his weapon at the force
commander. Some commotion ensued, according to investigators, and then
other guards stormed the hall. Gunfire could be heard blocks away.
Hundreds of civilians who lived, worked and went to school inside the
compound were trapped.

Mrs. Hasina allowed the army to take position around the compound but
not to storm it. She negotiated with the mutineers for the next 36
hours, first directly and then through emissaries. She offered a
general amnesty and promised to address the rebels’ grievances. On the
second day, when they refused to surrender, she threatened to send in
tanks. By the time the siege ended, more than 6,000 border guards had
escaped, and an unknown quantity of weapons had been taken from the
armory.

As the bodies of the dead soldiers were discovered, the horrific
nature of the violence became evident. Some army officers had been
shot at close range and then stabbed repeatedly with bayonets. Eyes
were gouged out. A stack of 38 bodies was found in a mass grave.

No sooner did the siege end than the arguments began. Today, the
bitter points of contention are whether the army commanders were
killed before or after negotiations began (the time of death has not
yet been established for all the victims), whether Mrs. Hasina pressed
to know the scale of the killings before offering amnesty, and, most
important, why she did not permit the army to storm the compound early
on.

“The government was not in charge,” said Abdur Razzak, a leader of the
conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party. “This was an army problem. The
army should have solved it in their wisdom.”

Mr. Razzak said the mutiny was a conspiracy designed “to weaken the
army, to weaken the state.” Mr. Razzak’s party was trounced in the
last election; its share of the 300 elected seats in Parliament fell
to 2 from 17 in the December elections.

Mrs. Hasina said sending in the army would have resulted in a
bloodbath and risked a potential conflict between the 46 border guard
battalions scattered across the country and their army commanders.

In any case, few in Bangladesh say they believe that the mutiny was
what it first appeared: a rebellion of rank-and-file border guards
aggrieved by their commanders, their pay and their working conditions.
In a country where conspiracy theories are a national sport, the
mutiny has become a screen onto which many anxieties are projected.

Some point to terrorist groups and anti-Indian insurgents. Others say
that it was fueled by intelligence agencies in either India or
Pakistan — both countries have been alternately friend and foe to
Bangladesh. There are those who suggest that it could involve
politicians who lost the last election, while others blame people
within Mrs. Hasina’s party whose goal is to keep the army in check.

The truth of what happened may never be known. Bangladesh holds many
mysteries in its heart, including the question of who ordered the
killing of Mrs. Hasina’s father, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, a former prime
minister. Mrs. Hasina was spared only because she had been visiting
her husband in Europe at the time. Eighteen members of her family,
including her brothers and their wives, were executed.

Central to Mrs. Hasina’s survival today is keeping the military on her
side. Her face-off with the army came into sharp focus three days
after the mutiny ended when she confronted an unusually rowdy room of
army officers. They berated her for not allowing the army to take
charge early on. The screaming match was recorded and put up on
YouTube, shocking the nation.

This week, in the interview, Mrs. Hasina said she sympathized with the
soldiers’ grief even as she cautioned them against taking revenge — or
power. So far, the army does not seem interested.

Mrs. Hasina’s most deadly enemies have been the Islamist militant
groups that have put down roots here in recent years. They have been
implicated in assassination attempts against her, including the
grenade attack on her political meeting in August 2004. Mrs. Hasina
lost some of her hearing as a result of that attack. Sitting under a
framed portrait of her father, she said she would not be bowed.

“If I am afraid for my life, the whole nation will be afraid,” she
said. “I know some bullets, some grenades are chasing me.”