Bangladesh witnesses fresh unease involving army amid political unrest

New Delhi: Army troops in Bangladesh on Saturday intensified their patrols on the streets of Dhaka as the country witnessed rising tensions with the newly formed student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) accusing the military of political interference.

The NCP staged protest rallies at the premier Dhaka University campus vowing to thwart at any cost a “military-backed plot” to rehabilitate deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League which was toppled seven months ago in a student-led violent street protest in July-August last year.

A key leader of NCP, which was floated last month with widely assumed blessings of Professor Muhammad Yunus, accused the military of “political interference” over a proposal for inclusiveness that would allow Awami League to participate in the next elections.

“Those who are supposed to discharge their work inside cantonment, should stay there . . . in the ‘post-revolution Bangladesh’ no interference in the political landscape from the cantonment will be accepted,” said Hasnat Abdullah in a press briefing at the NCP office.

Several hundred followers of Hasnat and NCP activists also chanted slogans at the rallies against Army chief General Waker Uz Zaman chanting “Waker or Hasnat; Hasnat, Hasnat” and demanded Hasina and her “cohorts” to be hanged after trial.

The military, which is now entrusted with maintaining nationwide law and order with magistracy power, however, did not enter the campus but continued their intensified patrol, particularly in the capital.

In a Facebook post two days ago, Hasnat claimed that a “conspiracy is afoot to rehabilitate the Awami League” in the name of “refined Awami League at the behest of India”.

He wrote that a proposal for the refined version of Awami League was pitched to him and two others “by the (military) cantonment” on the afternoon of March 11 and “we were asked to accept this proposal in exchange for a seat-sharing agreement.” Hasnat was a key organiser of the now-defunct Students Against Discrimination (SAD) that led the July-August violent mass uprising eventually toppling Hasina’s 16-year regime and installed Yunus as the chief adviser of the interim government as their nominee.

Yunus earlier inducted three SAD leaders as advisers or ministers in his advisory council. Of them, Nahid Islam, quit the government last month to lead the newly floated NCP as its convener.

One of the SAD leaders Asif Mahmud who still serves as the local government ministry adviser, on Friday came up with a video post alleging that the military leadership led by the army chief was reluctant to accept Yunus as the interim government head.

“With a heavy heart I am accepting the proposal,” Mahmud quoted the army chief as saying at the end of a “nearly four-hour discussion” between the generals and the SAD leaders at Bangabhaban presidential palace following the ouster of the past regime.

Hasina has been living in India since August 5 last year, when she fled Bangladesh as the fallout of the uprising. Meanwhile, most of her senior party leaders and cabinet colleagues were either arrested or on the run, both at home and abroad, facing accusations of mass murder and crimes against humanity in an effort to suppress the protesters.

Yunus, who was in a protracted dispute with the past regime for obscure reasons, was in Paris at the time of Hasina’s ouster and flew to Dhaka at the call of SAD leaders and took oath as the chief adviser on August 8.

The past government had called out army troops to tame the protestors by joining hands with police, but the military preferred to stay on the sidelines expressing their reluctance to use lethal weapons against the protestors.

Mahmud said that between August 5 and 8, the SAD leaders held discussions with Yunus when both sides agreed that the interim government must be freed from military influences.

He claimed that the army wanted to run the country keeping Yunus and his advisory council on the forefront, following the footsteps of one past such military-backed caretaker government in 2007-2008, widely called “the 1/11 government” referring to the date of its installation.

NCP convenor Nahid Islam, meanwhile, said at the Muslim fast-breaking iftar party that the army or any other state institution had no "authority to propose or make decisions" about politics.

"The matter of banning the Awami League and elections is a political decision. . . It is for the government, the people, and the existing political parties to decide," he said.

He added that in no way “we will allow installation of another 1/11 government” in the country.