Kevin Rafferty
Major General Ziaur Rahman, the Army Chief of Staff and Bangladesh’s “strongman”, this month gently lifted the lid off the country’s political pot by allowing political activity to restart with the promise of elections in February.
This stirred up fears among Bengalis and outsiders that he might only be tipping Bangladesh from the permanent brink of chaos towards bloody and irretrievable chaos.
His choice is unenviable—does he throw his country back to the old politicians, mostly elderly men, unimaginative except in conjuring up their own main chance, almost all tested and failed, corrupt or with vastly corrupt camp followers, pettyfoggingly greedy and squabbling; or does he openly embrace supreme power himself and risk upsetting the delicate balances between army and civilians as well as opening the corrupting prospect of having absolute power?
The 40-year-old general is an impressive man, not least because he seems immune from charges commonly brought against Third World leaders. There is no trace of corruption against him. Indeed, one person who knows General Zia well told me that after he became a general, he needed money to buy some furniture for his home so he borrowed £26 from a relation whom he insisted on paying back at a small amount a month.
“It is a trifling matter, but no one would have blamed him if he had used his position to get either the money or the furniture.” Nor does General Zia have a family that is greedy for the spoils of office or power as some other Asian leaders have; his family, I understand, have pressed him to step out of the dangerous limelight and to return to being a soldier.
He is strikingly patriotic and time after time refers to the need for his country to stand on its own feet. “We must no longer be beggars,” he told me recently, stressing the point three times.
He has launched a family planning programme including mobile sterilization clinics for both men and women.
Measures like these have had an impact, such that Bangladesh has managed to keep out of the world’s disaster headlines for months. Credit must go to the good monsoon last year diet helped to fill Bengali bellies, and Bangladesh is so poor that with a full stomach a Bengali can do wonders.
But there is also a better sense al discipline and the beginnings of an ability to cope, although any small English town with a population one thousandth the size probably has better trained officials.
General Zia’s success has led diplomats in Dacca to whisper increasingly loudly that it would be a pity if be handed over Bangladesh to the squandering politicians. They are probably right to be worried. Probably the best organized party is still the former ruling Awami League but since the murder of Shaikh Mujibur Rahman it has been an organization of nonentities.
The best known single politician is the ex-president Khondakar Mushtaque Ahmed, a canny lawyer who has grown a white beard which makes him look more Islamic and who has made pilgrimages to all the important Muslim shrines in Bangladesh since be lost power in last November’s series of coups.
He predicted: “If there is no restoration of democracy by next year the communists will be here by 1980.” Whether he has the resources to gain nationwide success is another matter.
Islamic groups in 90 per cent Muslim Bangladesh are powerful but lack unity and are liable to split over minor points of doctrine. The left is also fragmanted, frequently quarrelling with itself and much of it has been driven underground by General Zia’s various crackdowns though it would no doubt emerge if democracy were restored.
Given that murders have continued in the past nine months, in spite of nightly curfews and the strengthening of the security forces, it is unlikely that an election in Bangladesh would be a bloodless affair.
It all these circumstances it is tempting to argue that Bangladesh is not ready for elections and that it needs a few years yet of disciplined rule to get back on to its feet. Proponents of this argument would say that even Ayub Khan provided Pakistan with some years of stable government before succumbing to corrupting and nepotistic influences.
General Zia has not done anything yet to take full power and has several times belied the wild rumours of the supposed cognoscenti of Dacca who announced confidently in both February and late July that “Zia will become president tomorrow”.
That tomorrow has not yet dawned.
There are signs, however, that he is easing himself into power. His photograph is appearing more frequently on newspaper pages and recently he gave a public speech, though in terms of a public relations exercise it was a flop as he did not speak well and the crowd was small by Bengali standards.
In spite of allowing political activity again, he has tried to keep control: in the initial stages political activity can only go on indoors and a political party has to be approved by the government before it begins functioning.
All the signs are that General Zia is trying to guide democracy and if the politicians fail he may launch a guided democracy.
But if he is thinking that way General Zia has to be careful. There could well be an outburst from various frustrated interests. So far General Zia has managed to do so well by a combination of using the army, building up the numbers and morale of the police and by bolstering the bureaucrats who had become pushed aside and subject to political corruption and all sorts of jobbery during Sheikh Mujib’s time,
If any one of these groups tried to tip the system out of balance General Zia would be swallowed by one of the tigers he is riding.
Even with things going for him and the huge real GNP growth of 12 per cent last year, he has had immense problems. Rumblings within the army have occurred several times and after a resurgence of trouble at Bogra in June he disbanded the famous Bengal Lancers tank regiment (whose officers were responsible for killing Shaikh Mujib) and placed nearly half of its 500 members on charges.
Colonel Abu Taher, a war hero and the man responsible for placing General Zia back in control of Bangladesh in November, was executed for sedition and rebellion last month after a trial behind the locked doors of Dacca jail. Arrests have continued and a special watch is being kept at the university.
Both the army and the civil service are riven with dissension with a strong cleavage between officers and officials who returned. from Pakistan after independence and those who fought in the independence struggle.
If he did assume the job of president, General Zia would have to be most careful whom he appointed chief of the army. Whatever the appointment there would always be a danger from jealous men passed over. There are officers in the army ambitious for the kind of power which the military exercises in Pakistan.
The factor looming above all else is the immense poverty of Bangladesh. Poverty in the United Kingdom is homely by comparison. There are 80 million people today in Bangladesh, a land the size of England and Wales. But a third of Bangladesh is flooded each year.
Per capita income is about $70 to $80 if that means anything. Other than that there is no certainty a getting one full meal a day unless the monsoon is good. Only 20 per cent of the people are literate and there is no industry to speak of apart from jute. In the year 2000 unless something drastic happens there will be 160 million people in Bangladesh.
If a way is to be found to defeat Bangladesh’s poverty it must come through the poorest people of all—and pilot projects in a small number of Bengali villages have shown that where the people come to believe in themselves, they can make enormous strides.
One suggestion I heard in Dacca was that General Zia might begin to solve his own problems and those of Bangladesh if he offered elections in February only at the village level, building upwards, say, in five years’ time to hand over national power to the old-time politicians if they behave themselves.
Certainly the “democracy”‘ based on national elections that has grown up in much of the developing world have proved only the plaything of the elite. If General Zia were to couple village elections by offering the real powers to the newly elected village assembly and encourage them to believe in themselves, he might begin to build an answer to Bangladesh’s problems from the bottom up.
(The article was first published on The Times, on August 26, 1976)