Ethnic Violence Grips Bangladesh

On February 23, Dhaka authority deployed troops in the south-eastern Khagrachhari district (Chittagong Hill Tracts) after clashes between ethnic tribal people and Bengali settlers left at least 15 people injured and several houses torched. Earlier, similar violence took place in Rangamati district on February 19-20.

The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) stated that at least eight Chakmas (one of the indigenous tribes of CHTs) were shot dead by the Bangladesh army personnel while dozens were injured on Feb 19-20. However the government has denied the reports so far.

Mr Suhas Chakma, Director of Asian Centre for Human Rights issued a statement to media (the author of this blog also received the statement) saying,

It is established beyond any reasonable doubt that the Bangladesh army is denying access to the sites to prevent the truth from coming out. The arrest of six Chakmas who got admitted at Baghachari army camp with bullet injuries sustained in the firing of the Bangladesh Army for alleged rioting is a direct attempt to discourage the indigenous peoples from approaching the authorities and therefore, keep the massacre under the carpet.

It is quite evident that the non-implementation of the 1997 Accord and continuing appropriation of the lands of tribal peoples are the root causes of this ongoing violence. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs) region in Bangladesh was plagued by decade long insurgency in the 1980s. In 1997 a peace accord inked between the government and the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS), a political platform of the tribal people, now known as the United Peoples Democratic Front, brought some sort of respite to the indigenous tribal people.

Fear looms large on the horizon that Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh, home to at least 12 ethnic minority groups, is bracing for another round of severe and prolong ethnic conflict. The fear is not restricted to only violence between tribal hill people, predominantly Buddhist and Bengali migrant settlers in Chittagong Hill, but the imminent return of armed vigilante movements (remember the Shanti Bahini’s armed movement) which might resurface to safeguard tribal rights and identity of the region or to secure the Jumma nation (homeland for the tribal hill people) all over again.

Meanwhile, the ACHR accused the Bangladesh government of only arresting people from the tribal communities from in and around Khagrachhari district. ACHR also calls for a judicial inquiry to be completed within 90 days into the killings and destruction of properties till now, and fully implement the CHTs Accord of 1997 within specific time frame.

Posted by Animesh Roul on February 24, 2010. Respond »

India and Bangladesh: Treating Disease Together!

For the very first time, two countries in South Asia (India and Bangladesh) have joined forces to fight common infectious diseases through mutual cooperation. The health ministers of both countries even agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding in near future for working together on different aspects in health sector. This is undoubtedly a welcome development and only with this kind of bilateral initiative countries can mitigate and contain cross-border transmission of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases (ERIDs).

However, this development (call it ‘initiative’) ironically went unnoticed by the large section of print and web media here in the region.  So I am flagging it here for the ASI Blog readers for further discussion.

Bangladesh, India to prepare MoU in health sector, New Nation, February 15, 2010

“Dhaka, Delhi agree to cut infectious diseases”, Daily Star, February 15, 2010.

“Dhaka, New Delhi to cooperate on curbing infectious diseases”, IANS, February 15, 2010

Posted by Animesh Roul on February 16, 2010. Respond »

The Other Side of Paradise

The following is an excerpt of my latest article on the Maldives, (“Jihad and Islamism in the Maldive Islands”) which appears in Terrorism Monitor.

Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed admitted in October, 2009 that hundreds of Maldivian Muslims had been recruited by Pakistan-based terrorist groups and are presently fighting against government forces in Pakistan. The revelation by Nasheed was substantiated by video footage circulated by al-Qaeda’s media wing in November 2009, which not only proved Maldivians’ participation in the global jihad movement, but also demonstrated the impact of radical Islam on the psyche of Maldivian youth. Ali Jaleel (a.k.a. Musab Sayyid), a Maldivian national who had been fighting alongside pro-Taliban forces in Pakistan, was featured in that video.  Ali Jaleel died during the suicide attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Lahore on May 27, 2009. 

Soon after, another video aimed at jihadi recruitment featured a previously unknown al-Qaeda cell operating in the Maldives. The short video flashed the message, “Your brothers in the Maldives are calling you.” This brief internet footage was perhaps a declaration of sorts for the establishment of the first al-Qaeda cell in the Maldives. The image in the video shows three men sitting together on a beach while another man is standing in the foreground near a coconut tree. Later it was confirmed that the video teaser was posted by the media wing of the lesser-known Ansar al-Mujahideen.

In an earlier incident, Maldivian national Ibrahim Fauzee was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in May 2002 while living in a suspected al-Qaeda safe house. Fauzee, an Islamic cleric, was held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp until his release and repatriation to the Maldives in March 2005. These and other incidents have sparked concerns about the spread of radical Islam in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

A Paradise for Radicalism
The Maldives, a Sunni Muslim majority island nation, is sometimes described as a paradise for Islamic radicalism. The country witnessed a terrorist strike for the first time in September, 2007, when a bomb explosion in the capital Male wounded 12 foreigners, including British, Japanese and Chinese tourists (The Guardian, September 30, 2007). The blast in Sultan Park was targeted at the thriving tourism industry, which is by and large the economic lifeline of the Maldives. Despite the economic benefits, many radical Islamic groups active in the Maldives have denounced tourism’s influence on the local Islamic culture.

For complete report, “Jihad and Islamism in the Maldive Islands”, Terrorism Monitor, Volume: 8 (6), February 12, 2010. Read Here.

Posted by Animesh Roul on February 13, 2010. Respond »

Multi-track diplomacy in South Asia: Recent dialogues

Indian Express reports that there has been a spurt in dialogues and meetings recently, even as the official India-Pakistan dialogue has been stalled. Although this reporter suggests there is something dubious about this, it is actually an important development. Keeping channels of communication, official or non-official, open is really useful.

The point is made that many of these dialogues are funded by non-regional foundations. The question is: where is the funding for these initiatives in South Asia? There is plenty of money, but there is no will to fund anything remotely political. Many of these dialogues also involve South Asians resident abroad, with varying degrees of connection to their countries of origin. Where dialogue itself is a sensitive issue, the presence of foreigners (no matter their origin) who are identified with other governments creates greater resistance.

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on February 11, 2010. Respond »

Ozawa Complicates the Hatoyama Government’s Foreign Policy

A version of this post originally appeared at Observing Japan.

As Ozawa Ichiro waited for the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office to decide whether it would indict him along with his former secretaries, the Democratic Party of Japan’s secretary-general was busy meeting with Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who stopped in Japan last week along with Wallace “Chip” Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs for discussions with Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi.

Campbell and Ozawa spoke for an hour last Tuesday, with U.S. Ambassador John Roos also in attendance. Neither revealed much about the meeting, although it seems that Campbell requested that Ozawa visit Washington in May with a large number of DPJ Diet members in tow, just like his December visit to Beijing along with more than 140 DPJ members.

Ozawa’s response to what he called a “formal request” is a bit puzzling. At a press conference Monday he said that policy discussions are the job of the government, i.e. if the U.S. government thinks that it can treat with Ozawa in order to find a breakthrough on Futenma it will be disappointed. Instead Ozawa views a Washington trip as necessary to build relations between the DPJ and the Democratic Party — and accordingly he wants a guarantee that a meeting will be scheduled with President Obama. That strikes me as an odd condition considering that Ozawa stated that he will not be going to discuss policy. Why should the president meet with a party official there on party business? LDP officials may have met with the US president when they visited Washington — Abe Shinzo, for example — but if foreign policy is being made by the cabinet, what business does a party official, even the secretary-general, have making a meeting with the president a precondition of his visit?

If Ozawa is serious about not interfering with the Hatoyama government’s foreign policy making, he should make a point of having only brief, perfunctory meetings with administration officials, especially considering that sometime around Golden Week the government will presumably have reached a decision regarding the 2006 realignment plan. Indeed, if Ozawa really wanted to help the alliance he would travel with up-and-coming DPJ members whose foreign policy views are in the party mainstream and give US officials a better sense of the party’s thinking.

While Ozawa caused considerable distress in Washington with his grand tour to Beijing — to which US officials overreacted to seeing as how symbolic visits by a politician outside of the government, no matter how powerful, will not resolve the thorny issues in the Sino-Japanese relationship — not going to Washington after having been explicitly invited would no doubt be another source of agitation.

But perhaps it would even be better off if an Ozawa visit to Washington fell through. Even as Ozawa claims that policy discussions are a matter for the government, his actions undoubtedly have consequences for the government’s efforts, as his China trip showed. And once in Washington, would Ozawa be able to control himself and refrain from saying anything that might undermine the government’s work?

This might be a good occasion for Prime Minister Hatoyama to exercise his authority and order the secretary-general to stay home to focus on the impending upper house election campaign. For the moment, the government has given no indication that it will stand in Ozawa’s way. Hirano Hirofumi, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, has said only that his trip would have nothing to do with the Futenma dispute. And Foreign Minister Okada offered his support for the trip and dismissed concerns that Ozawa could undermine his and his ministry’s work.

Meanwhile, while it may be tempting to reach out to the politician that the Japanese media treats as the power behind the throne, the US government should probably get out of the habit of maintaining anything but perfunctory ties with ruling party officials outside of the government.

Ultimately, however, the responsible for keeping the U.S. from turning to back channels as a way to get things done in Tokyo rests with the Hatoyama government.

I find the idea of what is known as Diet members’ diplomacy — giin gaiko, the idea that backbenchers can play an independent role in diplomatic problem solving — a pernicious notion left over from LDP rule, the foreign policy equivalent of backbencher policy intervention to secure pork-barrel projects. (not least in the case of Suzuki Muneo, now a DPJ ally as head of his New Party DAICHI). In a Westminster-style political system, foreign policy ought to be the sole province of the cabinet. Backbenchers, no matter how senior, ought to respect that or be reprimanded for interfering with government business. Ozawa has been tightening controls on the role that backbenchers can play in policymaking. Why should he be exempt? How can the government conduct a coherent foreign policy if ruling party politicians outside the government are traveling to foreign capitals and potentially sending signals at odds with the government’s own policies?

Naturally the Hatoyama government should be doing a better job articulating the national interest and deserves at least some blame for creating a vacuum that has to some extent been filled by Ozawa. Michael Cucek, author of the blog Shisaku, offers an explanation for what Ozawa is thinking in his response to my original post. Cucek sees the visit to Washington and the lengthy, publicized meeting with Obama as showing a certain equality between Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had a lengthy meeting with Ozawa back in December. Cucek adds: “The Chinese trust Ozawa, possibly even like him…and it has taken him 25 years to cultivate this relationship. Ozawa is also concerned most of all with defending that which he has already achieved.” He is right, but in some way this is the problem. Having been at the pinnacle of politics and policy, Ozawa’s aspirations have not been limited to changing how the Japanese government works. He wants to “normalize” Japan’s foreign relations, changing the terms of the relationships with both China and the U.S., a project he pursued even in opposition. (For example, when he was DPJ president 2006-2009, he worked to deepen ties between the party and the Chinese Communist Party through visits and exchanges.) Insofar as his projects coincide with the government’s aims, they are unproblematic. But what happens if and when they diverge from the government’s plans? Ozawa, who played an indispensable role in winning last year’s election for the DPJ, nevertheless presents a challenge to a cabinet struggling to articulate its foreign policy thinking while keeping the ruling party’s powerful chief from dominating the government despite not having a government post.

As such, the prime minister and his cabinet ministers should think hard about how to keep Ozawa’s personal diplomacy from undermining the government’s own foreign policy.

Posted by Tobias Harris on February 10, 2010. Respond »