- 2 days ago
Tension gripped Bangladesh following the death of radical leader Sharif Osman Hadi, a polarising figure known for his strong anti-India rhetoric.
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00:00Let's raise the big questions then. Is the UNIS government in Bangladesh unable to control extremists? Are Islamic radicals taking over Bangladesh? And who is fanning that anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh?
00:15Joining me now, Asif bin Ali, geopolitical analyst, doctoral pharaoh at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Joins me, Veena Sikri, former Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh and Muktadir Rashid Robio. He's a journalist based in Bangladesh. Appreciate all of you joining us.
00:31I want to come to you, Muktadir, because you're on the ground where we've seen, particularly last night, vandalization of media houses, anti-India slogans outside the High Commission. Has the situation calmed down at all or has it got worse?
00:47Well, thank you for having me. And I think it's a little bit improving after the huge outcry and protest from the civil society member about the so badly and disastrous, I would say, the attack on Prathomalo and Daily Star, accusing them as pro-Indian newspaper.
01:12So, now the civil society members are...
01:15No, so was it civil society... Can I just get a... No, can I get clarity? Was it civil society members or was it radical Islamists, particularly the student groups, many of them who were involved in the July uprising last year?
01:29Let me explain. Civil society members started protesting against the attack on Prathomalo and Daily Star. That is why the situation is slightly improved.
01:40Right. But we are really worried, really worried, because those people and none of them were arrested. Only 12 people were arrested for those who tried to attack the Indian High Commission, Assistant High Commissioner office in Chittagong.
01:54But the rest of them are, you know, they are... In fact, my former editor was targeted during this very radical far-right-wing mobilization last night.
02:10And it was by, unfortunately, our big friend, the American, those people were inciting this violence against Prathomalo and Daily Star.
02:21It was by the people who are sitting in America and France. And they are inciting those places for what we know as a place where you can speak freely, but they are taking the advantage of it and inciting violence.
02:38So you're saying... Right. You're saying these were... Okay. You were saying, therefore, that there were radical elements who were responsible for the violence.
02:47Civil society then responded and tried to ensure that the situation was brought under control.
02:53But I want to understand from you, Asif bin Ali, what explains this, again, rising tide of violence, Asif?
03:00Because it seems to have followed the death of the radical leader, Sharif Usman Hadi.
03:06He had gained prominence during the student protests. Many are seeing him as a nationalist figures.
03:11Others are saying he has fueled anti-India sentiment.
03:15Why is it that this one leader's assassination has led to such kind of protests that we've seen in the last 24 hours?
03:22Thank you very much for inviting to this show. Particularly, I would not call Mr. Hadi as a radical political leader, but definitely there are elements in his speech which can be controversial and which created those controversies as well.
03:39Now, given the context in which we are operating, Mr. Hadi was a face of July uprising, and he was an independent figure.
03:50He was not associated with, at least publicly not associated with the three major political bloc, the classic two is BNP and the Jamaat, and also the newly formed NCP.
04:02So, who was Hadi? So, who was Hadi? So, Hadi was basically branding himself as an independent youth who can speak the popular language, and some of those rhetorics are very populist as well.
04:14And that's how he was gaining momentum among the people.
04:18And there is no doubt that many of his rhetoric are endorsing anti-India sentiment, considering the recent developments after 5th August.
04:29When Hadi was attacked in the daylight, so it was not how important Hadi was as a living politician, but it was also why he got targeted.
04:42So, that question became one of the dominant ones, and because already there was anti-India sentiment on the ground, an attack on Hadi considered that, okay, fine.
04:51So, that means, like, you know, since he speaks against India, so there was attack on him.
04:57So, that was the public perception.
05:00The second thing was, immediately after Hadi's attack...
05:03But who is fueling this anti-India sentiment?
05:08Who is fueling the anti-India sentiment?
05:11Is it groups loyal to Hadi?
05:14Who is fueling it?
05:15I think the anti-India sentiment was already there, and it's not about who is fueling, but it's about was it present and was it intensifying or not.
05:27Because the biggest complaint of many of the people who are supporting anti-India sentiment-based politics is that they are claiming when Sheikh Hasina fleed to India and took shelter, so they blamed India for that.
05:42Now, see, I'm not going for what is right and wrong.
05:44I'm just saying, like, this is the people's perception.
05:46And when Hadi was attacked, and when journalists came out with some of the evidences, which links that the killer is connected with the former Aumilic party, and the party didn't denounce that they have any role in that killing.
06:05And so, it created and added another layer in that public perception.
06:09And then, after the six hours of that killing, the similar journalists, they came out with some photographs which shows that the Hadi's killer has crossed the border.
06:21Now, again, these evidences need to be properly and carefully looked after in a legal process in front of a court.
06:28So, I don't want to claim anything based on that.
06:30But these informations fuel the perception, and the perception is, oh, fine, after 5th August, you give shelter Sheikh Hasina, and then after Hadi's killing, like, who is an anti-India face among the youth, the killer is also going to India.
06:45And then they are connecting the dot, and that dot intensifies the anti-India sentiments among the people.
06:54Now, then, is it like innocent, the sentiment?
06:56I would say, no, of course not.
06:57This is not innocent.
06:58No sentiment is innocent.
07:00There is always political motive behind it.
07:02Now, I think the right question is, what is the political motive and what could be the political gain of pushing these kind of narratives in the public political space?
07:11Maybe that question could be discussed later on.
07:13But this is what I think to address your question.
07:15You know, therefore, Veena Sikri, from what you've heard from Asif bin Ali, this is a moment in Bangladesh's history which is clearly worrying because you've got groups fueling anti-India sentiment, whatever be their political motives.
07:35India cannot be seen to be directly interfering in the internal affairs of Bangladesh, and yet India needs to maintain a strong, normal relationship with Dhaka.
07:44How does India balance, play a balancing role at all, given what we are seeing happening on the ground?
07:53Well, I think one has to understand, to understand the situation, you have to go back to what happened in July, August of last year.
07:59And this anti-India rhetoric, the whipping up of the anti-India rhetoric, was part and parcel of the very well-planned regime change operation that took place last year,
08:11which was with Pakistan's support through the Jamaat-e-Islami, and of course backed by external powers as well.
08:17But the Pakistan intention in backing the Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamaat-e-Islami had been the A-team of Pakistan in Bangladesh for the last, I would say, 70 years, forever,
08:28ever since the formation of the Jamaat-e-Islami by Maulana Maududi, about 80, 85 years back.
08:35So I think that we have to understand that Pakistan has always been operating through them and whipping up the need for bringing Sharia law, bringing a caliphate.
08:44Now, the attack on Sheikh Hathena and linking India with that is an attack on the values of the liberation war on 1971.
08:53So actually, they're conflating these two issues because they want to forget, they want to eliminate, erase the memory of the liberation war.
09:01If you notice, if you saw the visuals last year, the moment Sheikh Hathena's aeroplane flew out of Dhaka,
09:06the first attack was on the statues of Sheikh Mujib, and the cranes, the boulders, everything was there to bring down these tall, 40-feet statues made of bronze.
09:16It was all the material available, absolutely at hand, for the demonstrators to bring it down.
09:21So obviously, very, very well pre-planned.
09:23And after that, anything that brought down, you know, brought in the name of India, brought in the name of liberation war,
09:30spoke about the economic cooperation between Bangladesh and India, and, you know, how the economy grew 6.5% a year,
09:37all that was wiped in the dust because, number one, Mohammed Yunus has not been able to control the situation in Bangladesh.
09:45The law and order was left completely because policemen were killed.
09:48As part of the uprising in the very well-planned regime change operation in July last year,
09:55400 out of 600 Bangladeshi stations were destroyed, weapons were stolen, people were killed with those weapons.
10:01So there's no law and order.
10:03And then the economy tanked.
10:05So for all of this, when the Jamaat-e-Islami thought that they will get natural popularity by being the person in power and so on,
10:14that has not happened.
10:15The people have not rallied around the Jamaat-e-Islami.
10:17They still now value more than ever the reality of the liberation war, the pluralistic society.
10:23So what does India do, ma'am?
10:25But how does, ma'am, no, no, my question, therefore, because India, you know,
10:32India cannot also whip up anti-Bangladesh or sentiment at a time like this.
10:37You have to clearly take a much more nuanced position.
10:41Yes, the position that India has taken, a very correct position to ask for free, fair and inclusive elections in Bangladesh.
10:50Participatory elections are credible.
10:51And that is what the people of Bangladesh want.
10:53Part of the reason, apart from Elias Hussain in USA, who has been exhorting everybody to attack the Daily Star and Pratha Mahalo,
11:01the reason also that Pratha Mahalo recently published a survey a few days ago,
11:05national opinion survey, showing that 70% of the people of Bangladesh want the Avami League to take part in the elections.
11:11It's not that they're going to vote for Mahalo League, but they want free, fair and inclusive elections.
11:17They want a return of democratic structure.
11:19They want stability.
11:20In the elections, if they are participatory, any party can win.
11:23It's quite OK.
11:24There can be any kind of a union to win.
11:27But they must be seen as free, fair.
11:30Yeah.
11:33Right.
11:34And let me just take that to Asif bin Ali.
11:37You've heard what Veena Sikri says.
11:39Do you believe that it is possible to hold an inclusive, free and fair election?
11:43The elections are scheduled for early February.
11:45Or do you believe that this election, in a way, is going to be hijacked as some fear by radical Islamist elements?
11:54Well, of course, before answering that question, I just want to add another point with what Veena Sikri, ma'am, was saying.
12:03That, you know, like looking Bangladesh case through the security frame and consistently using Pakistan doesn't help us to understand what was happening on the ground.
12:14And I think the Pakistan framing of the entire Bangladesh crisis is actually misleading Indians to understand what is happening on the ground.
12:23And that misleading is also impacting on the Indian foreign policy or how to deal with this situation.
12:29And based on what I understand and what my connection within the Indian journalist network, it is pretty clear that India is clueless what's going on in Bangladesh.
12:37Because it is using the age-old post-1990s, like the Pakistan security framework that, okay, they are the driving seat.
12:45No, in Bangladesh, it was not the Pakistan who is in the driving seat.
12:48It was the Bangladeshi people be good or bad in the driving seat.
12:51Now, coming back to the July, there are, you know, concepts regarding whether regime change or other things.
12:58But one thing we do not understand that July, of course, there might be some internal or external influences.
13:05But it was also a public participation, an outrage against a government which didn't allow the election in 2014, 2018, and 2024.
13:16And that created a situation which, you know, bottled up people's grievance.
13:21And that grievance brusted.
13:23Now, this is something that we need to understand what that brust happened.
13:28Now, in that brust, there are segments of the society which are endorsing to the far-right elements.
13:35And now coming back to the question, you have asked, now, what this far-right group is going to do?
13:41Just to give you a context, right now in Bangladesh, there is four major political players.
13:46One is BNP, they claim themselves as a, like, centrist party, but it's a combination of centrist left and right.
13:54They decide based on the need.
13:55The other one is the Jamaat-Islami, which is the rightist party.
13:59The third one that came out of the July uprising, which is NCP, they are still confused, but it's likely they are walking towards the centrist right and also right-leaning.
14:10Now, there is the fourth element, and this is where I think the Pakistan frame of looking at Bangladesh crisis is doing injustice.
14:18The fourth is the far-right Islamist group, which has two subgroups.
14:23One is Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that want to convert Bangladesh into Islamic state.
14:29And the process that they want to use is to infiltrate within the military and then do a revolution and take over the country.
14:36The other group is more political group, and that is Al-Qaeda and pro-Taliban group.
14:44And this is more political group.
14:46They have the same goal like Hizb ut-Tahrir, but they want to politicize, convert people in their followings, and then take over the country through revolution.
14:54Now, whatever the problem right now we are facing, the violence and others, of course, the political conditions are getting prepared to some extent by Jama'at and others.
15:04But the on-ground violence are getting led by Al-Qaeda, pro-Al-Qaeda, and pro-Taliban group.
15:10Now, this is a fringe group, but extremely powerful.
15:13They do not have any chance to come to the power if there is an election.
15:16Now, coming back to the question you have asked, will the election be free and fair?
15:22There would be challenges regarding the free and fair elections.
15:28You know, I have run out of time, but I will try and carry this forward because this will be an issue we will continue to track.
15:37Clearly, what has happened is...
15:39Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yes, Veena ji.
15:43Go ahead.
15:43I just want to have 30 seconds to respond.
15:46You know, a very detailed explanation has been given just now.
15:49But I want to say quite clearly, everyone knows, even the people in Bangladesh know, where the support for all these groups is coming from.
15:56Please don't make it out as though the people of Bangladesh have evolved ideologically in different directions.
16:01Where is the Hizbut Tahrir money coming from?
16:03Where is the Al-Qaeda money coming from?
16:04We know that on Al-Qaeda, there's a difference even between Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
16:09And secondly, please look at...
16:12I am not bringing Pakistan in unnecessarily.
16:15Please look at the situation in Bangladesh today.
16:18In the last 54 years, the role of Pakistan has not changed as much as it has in the last 18 months.
16:25Pakistan is embedding itself with the Bangladesh army.
16:27They have said that the state-pointed groups, Jaish-e-Mohamed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, are already present in Bangladesh.
16:33They have reversed all the regulations of the last 54 years.
16:37Visa restrictions, trade, cargo inspection, you know, ability to study in each other, all that.
16:43Right.
16:43This is not a coincidence.
16:44This is not a coincidence.
16:45So please understand that if I'm talking about it, it's with a certain reason.
16:49And the incitement to these groups, we know that someone is coming from Pakistan, someone is coming from the USA.
16:55Ilyas Hussain's name has been taken by many people that he actually incited people to go and attack the Prasam Al-Qaeda.
17:02And the people know about all these social media posts.
17:04So putting it in a theoretical context of the political development in Bangladesh is different
17:09because we know where the money is coming from for these parties to flourish.
17:14Just I want to add two facts very shortly.
17:18One case, if you look at the Pakistan case, you know, this Al-Qaeda group, the pro-Taliban group,
17:24they had sent, at least like we got these evidences now in the newspaper,
17:2819 individuals to fight against the Pakistan army in Pakistan with Pakistan-Tarik Taliban.
17:36Now, this clearly shows that there is a confusion and contradictions in the narrative is there.
17:41And also like follow the money, the old, this political economy model is not going to help to understand the situation.
17:50I am not denying that there was an Islamization happened in Bangladesh,
17:54but that is the outcome of the misgovernance of the former government.
17:58Until or unless you accept that fact, it would not be possible for you to move ahead.
18:02For 15 years, what about before that?
18:05I mean, this is...
18:06Okay, when Sheikh Hasidah came into power, there was 200 percent of this in the Madrasa education.
18:11We've heard, I've heard both of you.
18:14I've heard both of you.
18:16We will do a longer debate in the days ahead on this issue.
18:19I also thank my journalist friend for joining me there on the spot in Dhaka.
18:24It is extremely worrying what's happening in Bangladesh at the moment.
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