Holding Bangladesh together: Putting people over politics

In a blog written for the Development Progress hub, Saferworld's Will Bennett explores the current political crisis in Bangladesh.

Parliamentary elections in Bangladesh in January were marred by political violence that left 21 people dead on polling day alone. The election boycott by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) handed the Awami League (AL) a landslide victory and left the country with no credible mainstream opposition – in effect disenfranchising the nearly 50% of Bangladeshis who were expected to support other parties. Few foreign governments have endorsed the election results as legitimate. But despite the political breakdown, there is a (positive) elephant in the room that merits further discussion – how Bangladesh has managed to avoid slipping into more serious civil conflict, and what to do next to ensure it stays that way.

The AL Government has tried to solidify its position since the election, in part by challenging the credibility of opposing parties, including the BNP, using the historic war crimes trials, other court cases, and debates about Bangladesh's founding history. Yet attempts to marginalise political opposition risks achieving the opposite. AL may indeed engineer the slow collapse of the BNP and its allies, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, but the half of the country that votes against the AL will not go away. Instead, the political space may be filled by new and unpredictable movements that, given the current absence of formal political representation are likely to be more radical, uncompromising and, will probably enjoy considerable support.

The country is now in a political stasis. The two great figures of Bangladeshi politics, AL’s Hasina Wazed and the BNP’s Khaleda Zia, have alternated power four times, but they barely speak. Even so, barring a brief period of military rule, an unstable democracy has held since 1991.

Poor governance can contribute to conflict, and many other drivers of violence have been visible in Bangladesh for years: political disaffection; a large population with high youth unemployment; flows of illicit goods; and horizontal inequalities, to name a few.

So how has Bangladesh avoided a descent into chaos? Perhaps these drivers of conflict are so institutionalised that Bangladesh has become resilient to shocks? Admittedly, Bangladesh has managed to avoid the economic shocks that are thought to increase the risk of conflict. From 1994 until 2013, the country’s GDP growth rate averaged 5.6%, peaking at 6.7% in June 2011. Indeed, it seems that a curious and long-standing mix of political insecurity and economic security wards off critical violence, to some extent.

But we can’t rely on this to deter violence this time. The economy is showing signs of slowing, and the gamesmanship of Wazed and Zia, who convinced their parties that January’s election was a zero-sum game, has propelled the national identity narrative more explicitly into Bangladeshi politics. Both sides are now embroiled in a political blame game to whip up public support: during pre-elections, hartals (labour strikes or collective actions) shut down the country for days and BNP and AL supporters clashed violently in the streets.

Yet despite the zero-sum mentality amongst the political elite, Bangladesh largely held at the community level. Political bifurcation did not engender the same visceral hatred amongst society, and the vast majority of people have no appetite for prolonged violence.

Take Satkhira district in Khulna, for example. This was an election ‘hotspot’, with killings, lootings, and skirmishes with police. However, it is encouraging that evidence from Saferworld community security programmes found that people worked proactively with the police and cooperated across political divides to find solutions and end the violence. Community security approaches helped ensure that public enthusiasm for peace was matched by the capacity to bring peace about, trumping divisive political messages emanating from Dhaka. Saferworld’s partner in the project, BRAC, the largest NGO in Bangladesh, refocused part of its huge network of development programmes to tackle community insecurity.

"We worked with communities to understand and address their genuine security issues," said Rita Raselin Costa, BRAC’s Community Empowerment Programme Coordinator. "This helped create an enabling environment and a ‘security shade’ for people. During the elections, many communities were proactive in peacefully dealing with their own security issues."

International actors are being cautious about what to do next and are hesitant to engage politically in Bangladesh. However there is space for non-partisan improvements that are in Bangladesh’s best and immediate interests. Now is the moment to focus on a twin track approach to prevent further conflict.

Firstly, it would pay to invest in joined-up human security and development initiatives at the grassroots and build on the resilience shown recently. There is no guarantee peace will hold, but there is a small window of opportunity and a strong network of civil society organisations and NGOs through which explicit work on peace and security could give the country a chance of retaining its uncanny knack of riding through shocks without disintegrating into chaos.

Second and simultaneously, actors should call for international justice standards to be upheld. The death penalties handed to 152 ex-border guards for a mutiny in 2009 over low wages have been criticised by Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, for poor standards amid allegations of torture. The worry is that with this case and others, such as death sentences handed to more than a dozen men (mostly leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami) for war crimes during the 1971 war of independence, and Zia’s recent arrest on corruption charges, the AL are in danger of pursuing a victor’s justice.

Justice can be a vehicle for conflict prevention but only if it is transparent, fair, and apolitical. Otherwise ‘justice’ can reinforce divisions and further undermine confidence in the state. As a first step, people need to see a clear separation between the state and judiciary.

Finally, international actors must support political representation for the entire population. Recent wins by BNP candidates in the local and upazila (district) elections show that the party remains a formidable opposition that cannot be ignored. And if Bangladesh slips towards a one-party state, the consequences for human rights, security and for the country’s hard-won development gains are likely to be disastrous. The aim must be, therefore, to put the people of Bangladesh above the country’s politics, matching their continued resilience and their rejection of all-out violence by providing security for all.

Will Bennett is a Conflict and Security Advisor at Saferworld.

Read the blog at the development progress site here.

Find out more about our community security work in Bangladesh.

“Political bifurcation did not engender the same visceral hatred amongst society, and the vast majority of people have no appetite for prolonged violence.”

Will Bennett