The politics of belligerence are back in Bangladesh

By Mihir Sharma

When Bangladesh’s Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus was called back home to head its government as “chief adviser,” there were hopes that the country would finally break out of the see-sawing despotism it has endured since independence in 1971. Many of those serving in his new government were young and apparently idealistic students who had emerged from the movement that toppled the long-serving prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Perhaps a vibrant democracy would re-emerge in Bangladesh once the dust settled?

Those hopes did not survive a year. Last week, the cabinet banned Hasina’s party, the Awami League, under the country’s anti-terrorism laws. This is a depressing echo of how Hasina used to treat the opposition, though she never went as far as to shut down her main rivals in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

This ban isn’t a stand-alone event. It follows a series of attacks on Awami League members, as well as the misuse of Bangladesh’s judicial machinery against those associated with the party. While many linked to Hasina’s government may well have been connected to various crimes, most of the cases filed against League members seem blatantly political in nature. Human Rights Watch has pointed out that sometimes “complainants were not even aware of who was being named as accused.” Lawlessness took hold, and revenge killings were widespread after Hasina fled to India. The League claims that 400 of its members were killed between July and December last year.

Yunus and his government should have stepped in to stop this long ago; no reasonable democracy can be built if one of the two main parties is the subject of persecution. Trying to imprison her political rivals was, after all, Hasina’s greatest mistake.

The Awami League may be deeply unpopular at the moment, but it nevertheless can claim to represent the beliefs of a large part of the country. It has a long and storied history, and is older than the nation it helped found. The party was the primary conduit for the nationalist impulses that eventually led to East Pakistan splitting away from the autocratic rule of West Pakistan’s generals and becoming Bangladesh. Banning the Awami League is like banning Bangladesh’s history.

It is certainly true that under Hasina, the organization felt like her personal property, or that of her family. (She is the daughter of its former leader and Bangladesh’s first prime minister, Sheik Mujibur Rahman.) That isn’t uncommon in the subcontinent, unfortunately. India’s own party of freedom, the Indian National Congress, has been led by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family for most of the past 80 years.

But that’s no reason to ban it, particularly given its role in Bangladesh’s formation and evolution. This has only strengthened global worries that Yunus’s government is too dependent on Islamists determined to alter the character of the Bangladeshi state — particularly its commitment to religious freedom, a principle with which the Awami League was closely identified.

Even if those concerns are unfounded, we should worry about what this ban reveals about the approach of the new dispensation in Dhaka. The previous authorities were at least was motivated by the fear of Islamism and extremism. It’s hard to understand what drives Yunus’s government.

The restoration of real democracy doesn’t seem to be the key. The best-case scenario was always that Yunus stayed on for a couple of years to restore Bangladesh’s institutions, and then a free and fair election would be held that allowed the Awami League to participate. They would be unlikely to win, but their residual support would likely ensure that any freshly elected government was held to account in parliament.

This looks all but impossible now. With the Awami League out of the way, and the largest Islamist party restored to full legal status, the worst-case scenario seems far more plausible. Internal turbulence, attacks on members of religious minorities, and a confrontational foreign policy are a more likely outcome.

This will be a disaster for Bangladesh’s people, who had just begun to pull themselves out of grinding poverty. The country needs secure foreign markets for the garment exports that finance its development, and the internal stability that calms investors. Without these, it will descend into a spiral of degrowth and destabilization of the sort that has consumed Pakistan.

Bangladeshis are rightly proud that their country has done far better than Pakistan in the years since the two split. But now we should fear they have chosen to follow that road to ruin.