Why should the army feel accountable for what they do?

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 31 Oct 2010, 02:04 PM
Updated : 31 Oct 2010, 02:04 PM

The ongoing problem between the people of Rupganj and the armed forces with a camp being torched by a mob is significant showing that the interacting spaces between the army and the people have become nonexistent. We should be able to recognise that the army is not only autonomous of standard rules and laws that apply to the people but have no reason to believe that they are accountable to anyone.

* * *

In 1971, several army officers of Bangladeshi origin broke the rigid loyalty code and took up arms against the Pakistani rulers. They fought a political war which was an unprecedented task where the politicians on behalf of the people decided the path of action and not the intelligence agencies or senior brass. When the war ended, just about everyone became very senior officers, whether military or bureaucrat. It was part of the process of creating a new ruling class, the Brahmins and kshatriyas of a new land. After all, the shudras, Bangladesh's ordinary people, were already there.

* * *

The present army — style and substance — was germinated between 1972 and 1975. According to various interviews on the institutionalisation of the army, there were several factors which produced the mental frame of Bangladesh army which saw itself as an autonomous force within the state. Firstly, the army felt slighted by the treatment they received at Indian hands during the war and this made them think poorly of politicians whom they blamed for this. As it is, they had been taught to think lowly of them, a standard Pakistani army culture. It increased after 1971 with the raising of the Rakkhi Bahini, Sheikh Mujib's paramilitary which was supposed to be personally loyal to him and the party. The military feared a competitor, a contestant. Indian help in raising this paramilitary increased military's resentment even more of the people in power symbolised by Shekh Mujib.

* * *

But this period also saw retarding of civil institutions as the rule became increasingly autocratic. The famine of 1974 became an image of an administration not caring about the people or too inept to manage a crisis. It also saw a rapid decline of rule of law in governance and erosion of judiciary's power and a general free-for-us attitude of the cronies of the powerful. BKSAL or one-party rule was the apex of this process, not because it was plain undemocratic but also because it was non-consensual. Nobody cared about what the people wanted or thought. They were deliverers from the above coming to rescue the people, whether they liked it or not.

The culture of consensus and consent was killed very early on.

* * *

At least four groups tried taking over in 1975. The Faruk–Rashid group took over first in August to be dislodged by Khaled Musharraf for a few moments in November to be overtaken by Col. Taher overnight for a few hours and finally ending up with Zia in the morning for a few years after that. It wasn't about who succeeded but that each group felt they had the right to takeover and acted accordingly. It was their state.

* * *

Once power was taken over by the military, the path was inevitable as the process of endorsement follows an inevitable pattern. That there are no records of a successful military rule is not an accident yet militaries in disabled or dysfunctional states do take over. The only model the-Pakistan-trained-Bangladeshi-soldiers had was the Pakistani model so that became the ideal they copied. There was no political moral force to temper the ambition to rule with the power of gun because there was no civil institution in society to challenge such ambitions.
The military has developed into an autonomous province within the state. The army today is largely a product of its own imagination, not an imagination of the wider ideology of a nation-state or its people. Since no other state institution is accountable, the army has not felt any pressure to unlearn the Pakistani way.

* * *
The army is convinced that it is the saviour of last resort, effectively copying the Pakistani model as the "the guarantor of the state" . Bangladesh's DGFI is modelled after the ISI and the system of perks, benefits and building of a financial empire is another common trait. Taking over the state becomes a natural continuation of a culture where power has nothing to do either with public participation or legal consent.

However, it's not a full Pakistan copy because that state is overrun by external threats whether India or the Taliban but Bangladesh has no such threats. The arguments are therefore weaker to act arbitrarily though many army ideologues think that the politicians of Bangladesh are like India is to Pakistan.

* * *

No institution that can check the power of extra-constitutionality or establish rule of law has been allowed to grow in the last 40 years largely because the governance process has violated the very principles they are supposed to uphold. So if no one feels they are answerable to the people, why should the army be?

* * *
During the last caretaker regime, the army tried to establish control over the political parties once more but failed. In consequence, a politician-armed forces partnership has been set up which allows continues unhindered rule for both. This kind of brahmin-kashtrya alliance is common in South Asia and Bengal.

In that scheme of things, the shudras or ordinary can't expect senior politicians, bureaucrats or the tycoons to be punished for any offence, no matter how high their crime is. So why should they expect the army persons to be responsible?

Shouldn't such situations demand that we analyse the nature of the state? Are we a tribalised state? A caste-based state? Or a fragmented state?

———————–
Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher