Why Bangladesh is under the gun after recent terrorist attack

WASHINGTON: In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is under tremendous pressure to act and act wisely to contain the jihadi threat and steer her country out of the morass of toxic politics. While she is under scrutiny for her heavy-handed tactics against the opposition over the past years, which many believe led to a bigger playing field for the jihadis, the opposition itself is no milquetoast.
The question is: how far should she accommodate the opposition while still being true to her election promises? Far, far away from the streets of Gulshan, where terrorists killed over 20 innocent people on July 1, their nominal patrons are using slick American and British lobbyists to discredit Hasina’s efforts to battle radicalism and punish perpetrators of war crimes committed during the 1971 struggle for independence from Pakistan.
These lobbyists are essentially trying to convince the US Congress and the State Department that the trials of alleged war criminals are unfair and don’t meet international standards. They want Washington to pressure Dhaka to immediately “stay all executions” ordered by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which was established by Hasina in 2010. Five men have so far been hanged, including Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami ( JeI), who was accused of involvement in hundreds of killings and more than 30 rapes. On June 6, the Bangladesh Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another top JeI leader and media tycoon, Mir Quasem Ali.
Hasina is under pressure on multiple fronts. The spate of recent terrorist attacks, whether by the Islamic State (IS) or by elements linked to the Jamaat — the latest being an attack by gunmen on an Eid prayer meeting — has forced her to walk a fine line between her secularist ideals and the sensitivities of the majority Muslim population. India supports her stand against radicalism and her decision to bring to justice those accused of war crimes.
India has hinted broadly that it would back Bangladesh if any attempt was made to undermine the ICT and take the matter to an international or multilateral forum. Bangladesh is an important neighbour and New Delhi hasn’t shied away from locking horns with the United States in the past over policy. In 2014, India famously refused to pressure Hasina on how and when to hold elections as per US request. There is history at play too — in 1971, one country got Bangladesh right, the other horrendously wrong.
While India’s policy essentially is to help Bangladesh fight radical forces and prevent it from becoming “another Pakistan”, many American analysts, especially former diplomats, have a different view.
Last month, William Milam, former US ambassador to Bangladesh and Pakistan,went so far as to blame Hasina for the rise in extremism, calling the recent string of killings “less a terrorism issue than a governance issue”. He wrote that the “ruling Awami League’s onslaught against its political opponents” had “unleashed extremists in Bangladesh”. This is exactly what the Jamaat lobbyists also claim.
Lobby Shop of Extremists
Some experts say the views of Milam and others are influenced by Jamaat “scholars” who come through easy doors of American think tanks. They are more prone to a Pakistan-inspired version of 1971 and contemporary events. It is no surprise that Pakistan has protested the loudest at the ICT and even recruited Saudi Arabia and Turkey to add their voices.
Notably, the current US ambassador to Bangladesh, Marcia Bernicat, has the opposite view. In an interview to Associated Press on June 24, she said Hasina’s crackdown was “absolutely not” a cause of the current rise in militancy or extremism. But the US State Department still has serious policy questions on Dhaka’s treatment of the Jamaat and the manner in which the ICT trials are being conducted. It is in this space that Jamaat lobbyists have unleashed their considerable talent to sway opinions and muddy the waters.
Enter the big guns of Cassidy & Associates, an expensive lobby shop in Washington, hired by the Jamaat’s front organisation that goes by the innocuous name of the Organisation for Peace and Justice. The lobbyists are doing the rounds on Capitol Hill, the State Department, think tanks and academics working on South Asia to portray the Jamaat as an upright political party under siege. Recently, a Cassidy employee contacted Christine Fair, an academic expert on South Asia, trying to enlist her in the campaign.
Fair put the email on her Facebook page instead, calling JeI an “organization that sponsors terrorism and facilitated genocide”. But not everyone is as knowledgeable or as immune to propaganda.
Jamaat lobbyists, in essence, are asking the US government to exonerate those very forces that American soldiers are fighting in the war against terrorism. The lobbyists are succeeding to a considerable extent because their audience — especially in the US Congress — is largely unfamiliar with Bangladesh’s history, its violent birth, Pakistan army’s brutal conduct, the role of collaborators and India’s intervention.
Will DC Fail Dhaka Again?
The question is, if Washington failed Bangladesh once in 1971 because Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon protected Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan and let the Bengalis be “collateral damage” while threatening India for intervening, will it fail Bangladesh again when the country is under attack from Islamist forces? What is unfolding in Washington is disturbing.
Despite the low bar on morality for lobbyists — South Africa’s apartheid regime maintained one for years — helping dangerous extremists sell their wares is a new low. After all, right from President Barack Obama, the Americans are said to be fighting the Islamists and terrorists incubated by them. However, right under their noses, sophisticated lobbyists are promoting a band of Islamists.
According to Fair, the Jamaat has “vast ties to various terrorist organizations”, a fact the State Department seems to recognise, but US officials prefer to see it as a “democratic party”. The thinking is that it is better to treat the Jamaat as a political party instead of shutting it down and forcing it into the shadows. The State Department also wants proof of the Jamaat’s involvement in terrorism from Hasina’s government, not just innuendo.
In the past, the State Department has invited Jamaat members on an all-expenses paid International Visitor Leadership Program, something that puzzled Fair: “Either no one had read their manifesto in which they clearly state that they wish to use the ballot box to make Bangladesh an Islamic state from the grassroots up or they are in denial.” But recasting reality is a specialty of Jamaat lobbyists. From London, Toby Cadman, a lobbyist who prefers the label of a human rights lawyer, has unleashed a ferocious torrent of op-eds against Hasina’s government.
It is more like a political campaign against the Awami League than a legal strategy to defend his Jamaat clients. He even asked the International Criminal Court to intervene against Hasina in 2014 but the prosecutor rejected the request. Cadman perpetuates the impression that Bangladesh’s current crisis began with Hasina. He raises the bogey of more “unrest” and “instability” unless the Jamaat is accommodated.
His articles conveniently omit the Jamaat’s and its student wing, Jamaat-Shibir’s well-acknowledged role in multiple violent attacks against Hindus, Christians and other minorities since 2014. He also forgets it is his clients who want restrictions on freedom of expression, especially on the bloggers whose fate he eloquently mourns on the Al Jazeera website. Those at the receiving end — young aides on Capitol Hill — can get snowed under (mis)information. Unfamiliar with the complexity of what’s unfolding in Bangladesh, they tend to believe the brief delivered by lobbyists, especially when it highlights criticism of war crimes trials by western human rights groups.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and US officials have raised questions about due process. The 2016 annual report by HRW says Bangladesh failed to address “serious procedural and substantive defects that lead to unfair trials”. Stephen Rapp, former US ambassador at large for global criminal justice, has tried to engage Dhaka to improve ICT standards but numerous shortcomings remain, according to officials.
Friends of Bangladesh in Washington worry there is a sense of “fast-food justice” in the haste shown by the ICT. In a damning 2012 expose, The Economist revealed that the tribunal chairman Mohammed Nizamul Haq was inappropriately consulting a Brusselsbased lawyer in real time as the charge sheets were being filed and appeared to be acting on his advice.
Independent observers also say that defence lawyers have been harassed and witnesses abroad were not allowed to file affidavits in favour of the accused. One official said, “This feeds into the idea of everything being cooked up. The government should go the extra mile to show everything is above board. Give defence lawyers armed guards” to avoid any impression of impropriety.
Cadman says, “I and the rest of the international community support the principal of accountability. What I do not support is its (ICT’s) current incarnation where defendants are denied the most basic of rights so as to ensure convictions and prompt executions.” Dhaka stoutly refutes these charges, stressing that the trials are public, open to the media, relatives of the accused and diplomats, and provide the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. Even the more recent international trials held for war crimes in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia allowed an appeal only to the tribunal itself, not to the apex court of the land. Bangladeshi officials say the defence lawyers have tried many tricks to discredit the ICT process. In the case of Salahuddin Chowdhury, accused of collaborating in the killing of some 200 civilians, abduction, torture and looting, the defence submitted a list of 1,153 witnesses, many of them fictitious. It was a clear attempt to delay and overwhelm the system.
Cadman claims it was because the defence was required to list witnesses and evidence before the prosecution presented its case. “This is most improper,” he said in an email response to questions. Attempts to seek comments from Cassidy & Associates failed. If the ICT falls short of international standards, the lobbyists’ attempt to discredit it completely is ludicrous. As is the attempt to blame the rise in extremist violence on Hasina and whitewash the role of the Jamaat, its links with terrorist organisations and its rise to legitimacy via the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
According to a US expert familiar with Bangladesh, US Congressional aides already feel overwhelmed dealing with Pakistan and separating its myths from reality. He described their attitude thus: “We have one Pakistan to deal with. We don’t have time to deal with another.” These aides are responsible for briefing their congressmen and senators on Bangladesh.
Price of Ignorance
The line given by the lobbyists goes something like this: JeI is a moderate political party. Yes, it is religious but it is being forced to become more extreme because of the war crimes trials. Besides, the Awami League is not living up to its secular ideals. This argument has been accepted by some key think tank experts. The Jamaat’s assistant secretary general, Abdur Razzaq, a well-spoken lawyer, apparently visits Washington on a regular basis to meet American think tankers and policymakers.
The Bangladesh government too has a lobbyist to present its point of view. The Jamaat’s lobbying campaign switched into high gear last month after Bangladesh’s Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence of Mir Quasem Ali. “He does not deserve any leniency on the question of sentence on consideration of the nature and gravity of the offence,” the judgment said. Ali is accused of murder, abduction and torture during the 1971 war when he supported the Pakistan army as a member of two militias — Al-Badr and Islami Chhatra Sangh.
He is accused of setting up camps for torture in at least three locations and preparing a list of intellectuals to be killed. Ali, a member of the Jamaat’s central executive council, is a powerful man with links to even more powerful ideological brethren beyond Bangladesh. Besides being a media magnate and marketing director for a pharmaceutical company, he is a director of the Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd. A US Senate investigation found the Islami Bank was linked to Saudi Arabia’s notorious Al-Rajhi family, an early financier of al-Qaeda.
A Senate report released on July 17, 2012, raised several questions about the Islami Bank’s involvement in transactions traced to terrorists. Bangladesh’s central bank has fined the Islami Bank at least thrice for covering up terrorists’ transactions. Abdur Rahman, chief of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was found to hold an account in the bank.
In 2005, JMB claimed responsibility for detonating more than 450 bombs across Bangladesh — in 63 of its 64 districts. It is also an accused in the most recent terrorist attack. Ali’s story is not a simple one as Jamaat lobbyists would like to portray. And funds clearly are not a problem for the Ali family. According to an investigative report by David Bergman, a journalist based in Dhaka, Ali and his US-based younger brother Masum Ali spent $310,000 on Cassidy & Associates in 2011 alone.
All said, the Ali brothers have lavished more than $700,000 on their lobbyists. That money is supposed to get enough people in Washington confused and begin questioning Hasina’s motives.
The contract with Cassidy & Associates says the lobbyists will “engage members of the US Congress to support a Congressional resolution condemning the actions of the ICT” and “pressure the government of Bangladesh to suspend ICT proceedings”. It is clear that Hasina’s critics, i.e. the Islamists, are better organised and have more firepower than her supporters.
Seth Oldmixon, a Washington-based analyst who spent time in the Peace Corps in Bangladesh and saw the Jamaat operate at the local level, says it is enough for the lobbyists to “muddy the waters, which gives them space to operate in Washington” even if they don’t achieve their ultimate goal of shutting down the ICT. They are “happy to carry out their activities without scrutiny”. He said there was little understanding of the real ideology of the Jamaat among too many US experts. They tend to think of it as a “moderate” political party, not a political movement striving to create a caliphate. They can’t distinguish between mafia-style violence between political rivals and “targeted violence against Hindus, Christians and other minorities to cleanse Bangladesh of non-Muslims” that the Jamaat indulges in.
Their information comes from people like Cadman who benefit from people’s ignorance, says Oldmixon. Cadman, incidentally, has a rogue’s gallery of clients. Apart from JeI in Bangladesh, he has worked for Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Karenzi Karake, head of Rwanda’s national intelligence and security charged with genocide and terrorism, and the government of Maldives on how to convict ousted president Mohamed Nasheed.
The Bangladesh government clearly is being outspent and out-written on aljazeera. com and huffingtonpost.com by Jamaat lobbyists who cloak their arguments in high verbiage of law and human rights. If terrorism is to be defeated, the first order of business should be clarity on who is playing what game and why.