November 04, 2007
Analysis of an analysis
http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3152150857259795212&postID=6073349928203163248
An analysis in Amader Shomoy [ http://www.amadershomoy.com/news.php?id=208652&sys=1] looks at the three-way struggle for the hearts and minds of the government, and by extension, the future of Bangladesh.
Some deshi blogs, including this one, have been speculating about Jamaat's sudden declaration that there are no war criminals in Bangladesh, and the AS article provides one plausible explanation.
The first thing to remember when reading any analysis in Amader Shomoy is that there are rumors of AS being too cozy with DGFI. We would like to stress that these are rumors only but they became so persistent, the editor and publisher actually had to defend his position in print. The same rumors often speculated that AS spreads disinformation for its financial benefactors, so stories published in AS should be taken with a grain of salt. With that disclaimer out of the way, lets take a look.
Consider this post an example of reading between the lines, ShadaKalo-style.
According to the author, the first outside power (hereinafter P-1) is the architect of the Minus-2 formula, and they are pushing for a new unity government. This faction is finally arresting the August 21 grenade attackers to gain the support of AL and the populace, and also trying to unify the nationalist parties. (does this mean the midnight coup at BNP?). While the author does not identify this faction, because they apparently have the power to arrest the bombers overnight, it would be safe to assume it is a powerful faction of the Army, backed by Gen. Moeen (where is he, BTW?) and the DGFI.
The second faction (P-2) is allegedly alarmed at this development, and is trying to sabotage this effort. They are aligned with the Khaleda Zia faction of BNP and Jamaat. To muddy the water and to permanently rehabilitate the war criminals, they revived the war criminal issue. We will come back to this later.
The third player (P-3) in this three-legged race is an amalgamation of a number of extremist parties and their friends: JMB, HUJI and the former Freedom party. Alarmed at the arrest and confession of the extremists, this third wheel is now aligning itself with the BNP+Jamaat alliance.
The article goes on to say that "a neighboring country" is upset with Bangladesh for connecting the Asian highway through Myanmar. [start rant]Are they perhaps talking about Iceland? Why are our newspapers afraid to say India when it is a negative story? Who exactly are they fooling? If they are afraid to name a country, how will they name powerful but corrupt people inside Bangladesh?[end rant] Apparently, this is the reason prices of essentials are leapfrogging.
The article ends with an alternative speculation: to keep rising consumer price index out of people's minds, the P-1 is conducting the anti-yaba raids, reviving the 1971 war-criminal issue and armed militants.
Ahem. Lets put on the ShadaKalo glasses to look at these claims.
India is unhappy about the Asian highway. Even if we ignore its big-brother aspirations, connecting to the Indian ends of the highways made economic sense for both India and Bangladesh. Not only will Bangladesh have to pay for some of the road inside Myanmar, the roads will go through a rebel-infested part of Myanmar where even the Myanmar army comes under regular attack. On a scale of fool-hardy decisions, this ranks way up there. Could India be influencing exports to Bangladesh and helping raise the price of consumables? Possible.
What is equally possible is that India is a convenient juju. Consumer price index is going crazy and the government can not control it? Lets blame India, and use Amader Shomoy to distribute this story.
But the thing that really interests us is the claim that Jamaat is using itself as a bait to destabilize the effort by the Minus-2 formula of P-1, and also to resolve the war-criminal issue once and for all through the courts.
Lets take the last one first. To understand the context, we highly recommend these two posts and comments on DhakaShohor here and here, and a brief history lesson. John Scopes, a school-teacher, was charged in 1925 with teaching the theories of evolution in school, which was a violation of Tennessee law at that time. The only way to change the law was to win a court case against it, and a local businessman encouraged his friend John Scopes to actually break the law by teaching evolution, so they could take it to court. AS seems to think that is the Jamaat strategy: force the hand of the government and the people to go to trial, where under existing laws they will be found not guilty, and be forever protected.
We have one question: why? Given the average lifespan of a typical Bangladeshi male, both the freedom-fighters and the rajakars don't have that long to live. Why would they poke a sleeping giant? The Ghatok Dalal Nirul Committee was dormant, the CTG was too busy with other priorities like election and spiraling prices. Even we are guilty of the same complacency: until Mash's excellent posts, we didn't think much about the genocide lately.
Are Jamaatis really acting as the bait to draw the CTG into this issue to detract them from the Minus-2 formula? That is even less credible. The biggest beneficiary of a Minus-2 action, apart from the bit-players in AL and BNP who came to prominence, would have been Jamaat. While party-faithful from both AL and BNP were being arrested, most Jamaatis have remained untouchable, with only one prominent Jamaat member under arrest. If anything, the CTG has been accused of being Jamaat-friendly.
So Jamaat's role of establishing legal precedence through the courts, CTG-baiting or obstructing the Minus-2 formula does not pass the ShadaKalo analysis.
Lets turn this around and look from the opposite angle. Jamaatis are old, the issue was old and dormant, and perhaps even forgotten. Jamaat had too little to gain, and potentially too much to lose, by reviving this issue. Mujahid's statement was not also an one-time slip of the tongue: Mr. Hannan promptly went on TV and called the liberation war a "civil war", and Amader Shomoy dug out a previously unpublished interview with Nizami where he claimed the lack of general diaries with the police proves there were no war criminals.
So the question is, did Jamaat suddenly wake up one fine morning and sent out a memo saying "after a long silence, lets all remind everyone what we did or did not do in 1971"? Or were they arm-twisted/bribed/coerced into this public opening of an almost dry wound?
Regardless of the answer, the public attention and energy is suddenly shifted (and rightfully so) to the trial of the war criminals and genocide deniers. AL does not benefit from this. BNP does not benefit from this. Jamaat does not benefit from this, apart from the murky prospect of a court finally giving them de-jure absolution, which they de-facto already had.
We previously questioned why Jamaat leader Shahjahan Chowdhury, hiding in the hills of Chittagong, would suddenly surrender when the police was no-where near arresting him.
Sure made the CTG look anti-Jamaati, right? Coincidentally, Army/DGFI/P-1 is also the only power-block in Bangladesh with enough clout to possibly make Jamaat do its bidding.
With the public's attention diverted to the war criminal issue, the CTG, or the P-1 faction inside/outside the CTG can carry on its own agenda, be it Minus-2 or the National Security Council/Unity Government.
The party who gained most from the recent bout of war-criminal issue was the CTG/P-1, and they also had the carrots and sticks necessary to make Jamaat do what it wanted.
This of course is the diametrical opposite of the theory postulated in Amader Shomoy, that Jamaat is doing this to destabilize P-1.
We all know this started when Mujaid answered a journalist's question. We would have loved to know the name of the journalist, or which organization s/he works for.
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