RCSS Policy Studies 7  : Chapter  4

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Impact of Proliferation of Small Arms on Politics in Bangladesh

Linkage between Politics and Small Arms

Since the inception of Bangladesh, politics and political actorsaspiring for power have had a close relationship with the concept of force. Over the years, the nature of actors have changed and the use of violence hold a strong footage in the country’s politics. From the post-independence years to the months before the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, some outlawed parties such as the Sarbahara party were set to destabilize the regime. From the 1975 coup to the time of General Hussain Mohammad Ershad coming to power, different sections of the army used force to consolidate and later legitimize power. During the dictatorship of General Ershad, mainstream political parties of Bangladesh resorted to force through their students’ wings to oust his government. Although their mission was successful with the fall of the General Ershad regime in1990 and the introduction of parliamentary democracy, yet the price that the nation had to pay was high. The unity that political parties showed by forming a coalition movement against the autocratic government, soon showed signs of tension building up between the parties after the fall of General Ershad. Suspicion,mistrust, hatred and rivalry, enabled small arms to conveniently find a permanent place in Bangladesh politics. The only irony lay in the fact that these parties were neither outlaws nor autocrats, but parties who had the people’s support and whom the people wanted to elect to power.

If one scans any daily paper of Bangladesh, news of campusviolence by the students’ wings of major political parties, vote rigging and violence by armed cadres during election period, theft, murdercommitted by terrorist who happen to be party activist and so on,suggest that close linkage between arms and politics exists in Bangladesh. For example, there was a report in the newspapers of an oposition leader who allegedly paid for a rocket launcher¹². The proliferation of small arms has caused Bangladesh politics to be based on muscle-power, money and influence. The objective for using small arms in politics can range from so-called political idealism to personal gain. According to an octogenarian political leader, ‘the state is seen as a vehicle for personal gain.’¹³

According to the field survey, 100% of the respondents answered positively to the question as to whether arms were used in politics. The immediate question one faces is : why is there a need for arms in politics especially when Bangladesh has a representative government and the constitution has all the provisions of a democratic system? How does politics and small arms complement each other? What is theimpact on Bangladesh politics as a result of its linkage with small arms?

The history of the country shows that the use of force to gain power has been part of its political game even before the birth of this nation. The use of explosives began in this part of South Asia in the 1960s for political reasons. In the 1970s it gained momentum and it was in the 1980s that its use became widespread, From 1975 to 1981, the student wings of major political parties started to use various weapons.¹⁴However, with the power aspirations of the present political parties, arms have diffused into the political system to the extent that it is difficult to separate politics and arms from each other. Unlike its other South Asian neighbours, insurgency related terrorism in Bangladesh remains largely localized. Bangladesh is different from Sri Lanka, for example, where insurgencies have taken the form of urban terrorism. The LTTE tries to make its presence felt by bombing buildings or even by political killings, as the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi in 1985 shows. Similar situation prevails elsewhere in South Asia, where ethnicity has been the major cause for political instability. While Bangladesh does not suffer from such terrorist problems, it has its own kind of challenges.

Major political parties in Bangladesh have alleged connections with the underworld network of arms. This is evident from the hired goons political parties keep, and most importantly, from their respectivestudents’ wings that have armed cadres. According to one list that was compiled by the police, among the persons who are suspected to have illegal arms in their possession, names of influential political leaders and activists figure prominently.¹⁵

Political parties refuse to ban student politics simply becauseeducational institutions are used as a stage for proxy war of the Bangladeshi politicians. Major political parties have their own student wings that comprise of students, ex-students, and hired hooligans. The Chatra League is the student wing of Awami League, that of BNP is Chatra Dal, while Shibir is the student wing of Jamaat-i-Islam. The traditional concept of student politics has undergone radical change, largely due to the penetration of small arms into the political scenario. In the history of Bengal, students have played a glorious role in national politics. During the Language Movement of 1952 when the Pakistan government decided to make Urdu the official language of Pakistan, the main opposition came from the student front. During the War of Liberation, the students once again united to fight for independence. Unfortunately, the role of student politics has undergone drastic change. In recent times, student politics and terrorism have become synonymous. Politically active students who perhaps had commendable academicbackground when they were first admitted into unive rsities or colleges have distanced themselves from their studies. An interview with one former student activist of the Dhaka University reveals the following: Students do not always have the option to entering politics, especially for those who must live in the hostel. To avail a room in the already overpopulated hostels, affiliation with a political group, not merit, as in the old days, is necessary. Their promise to arrange a room has to be paid back in terms of becoming a student activist of that political party. In return to their favour, the students find themselves compelled to be actively involved in student politics such as attending party meetings, bringing out processions etc. gradually more time is spent on politics than studies. The young man who was in the top merit list in the Higher Secondary Exams, managed to receive a second class in the Honours examination.¹⁶

The student leaders have ‘godfathers’ who supposedly supply them with arms, the godfathers, among others, are politicians who want to strengthen their respective political parties or personal interest through muscle-power. Student leaders, in turn, givearms to student activist for whom it is supposed to be a tool of both offense and defense. In an interview with a daily newspaper, a student activist confided that an ‘elder brother’ (meaning godfather) gave him a gun after he received death threats from the rival party.¹⁷There are different compulsions for luring students into politics. Political idealism, economic compulsions, adventurisome or social status are perhaps some of the incentives for youth between the age of 18 and 25 years to be attracted to student politics. According to a survey taken for this study, 14% of the respondents answered that political idealism worked most when the students make the decision to enter politics, while 65% said financial gains, and 27% said adventurism were the main compulsions.

Political leaders pamper student politics to the extent that thesestudent leaders and activists are portrayed as heroes. One of the reasons for the party leaders to give them so much leverage stems from their need not to alienate the student bodies as they largely depend on their votes and muscle-power to come to and remain in power. For instance, it is widely believed that the fall of General Ershad was possible due to the students’ collective effortand loss of his power base amongstudent leaders. Perhaps nowhere in South Asia are the studentorganizations as important to national political parties as is in the case of Bangladesh.

The so-called godfathers who finance armed cadres are allegedly arms dealers, or professional criminals havingpolitical links. With the change of regimes, these armed cadres change their masters. While some of them are arrested and taken under custody the main groups and their leaders remain beyond the law enforcing agencies. They have their own private forces that are known by their leaders, such as, Sweden Aslam Group, Joseph group, Hasmat group, and so on.   When out of power, Bangladeshi political parties have developed a trend to call for general strikes (Hartals) when public transportation and all other day to day activities are forcibly brought to a closure. During such strikes violence caused by firearms and hand made bombs and explosives in the streets have become a regular practice.

The Impact of the Linkage between Small Arms and Politics
In Bangladesh, mainstream politics is directly and indirectly affected by the wide proliferation of small arms. Political stability, intra-party rivalry, national and local elections, student politics are to name but a few examples in which overt and covert violence take place. But most importantly, their impact on politics has had spill-over effect on the socioeconomic life to the extent that as a result of the proliferation of small arms into mainstream politics, nation-building process is being largely effected. Following are some of the areas where arms have had negative impact on Bangladesh politics. Violence during and before elections: Due to the presence of small arms in the political environment, vote-rigging in national and local elections has become inevitable. Pre-election violence range from forcing local people to vote a preferred candidate, and also at times threatening rival candidates to withdraw his nomination. Violence is used frequently. The Magura incident is an example of how far suchincidence of alleged vote-rigging can lead the nation to. In the Magura by-elections in 1994, in which the then ruling party won, the opposition claimed that the election had been rigged by thugs and goons of the ruling party. The dispute between the ruling and opposition parties as to whether the Magura by-election was free and fair took a moreserious turn when the opposition boycotted the Parliament, calling hartals and ultimately declaring ‘non-cooperation’ with the government, and finally, demanding the government to step down before completing its five-year term. The field study showed that when the oppositionboycotted the 1996 February election, incidents of armed violencebetween political groups were the highest in the first six months of that year. There were around 62 incidents of armed violence. Of these, 40 were political. In February alone, 28 people were killed, 1100 were injured and 40 were arrested. In contrast in the June 1996 election that was held under a caretaker government, of the 56 reported incidents of armed violence were political¹⁷.

Armed politics destabilizes the regime:When an elected party forms a government, its main responsibility is to maintain order and stability in the country through smooth operation of its administration. But the task is challenged when anti-state forces set out to disrupt the normal activities of nation-building. In the case of Bangladesh, for the past several years the politics of hartals, strikes, non-cooperation, and other forms of non-cooperation and agitational politics have attempted to make the regime inoperative. On such occasions generally small arms are used. Even the armed cadres of the ruling party (whichever party may be in power) are found either to initiate or respond through armed violence. The proliferation of small arms has been catalyst in complicating political process in Bangladesh to the extent that every sector of the society is hostage to it, directly or indirectly. Political power, coupled with muscle power and financial strength, have created a political environment in which the cause of healthy democracy, economic prosperity and social welfare are the worst victims. In other words, the prolonged use of small arms in politics is a major deterrent towards affectivefunctioning of the political, social and economic order.

Democratic culture fails to develop:One of the long term effects resulting from the widespread use of small arms in politics is reflected in democratic practice. Constitutionally, Bangladesh is a democratic country with parliamentary system of governance. The political system including the governance of the country should be based on democratic principles practiced by both the ruling and the opposition parties. One way of assessing this would be to see the behavior of political leaders and politicians within and outside their respective parties. It is striking that there is very little democratic practice within the parties. As to the inter-party behaviour of politicians and party leaders, the parliament can be used as a witness to assess the quality of the democratic culture in Bangladesh. Since the 1990 elections, what role has the parliament played and how effective has it been? In finding the answers to these queries, one sees that most of the parliamentary sessions since 1990 were boycotted by the opposition. Rather, the political parties appear to have chosen the streets as the venue for giving their stance on national issues in lieu of the Shangshad, the parliament. It has become acommon practice for the opposition parties to settle political differences by resorting to undemocratic means such as calling nation-widegeneral strikes or hartals. To make the hartal successful, armed cadres come to their assistance and thus the link between arms and politics is further strengthened. Obviously, in the midst of hartal culture and street-politics, a democratic political culture is difficult to grow.

Student politics and violence have become synonymous:Educational institutions are perhaps the worst hit resulting from the linkage between arms and politics. According to the field survey, 27% of the respondents ranked universities and colleges as the most affected sectors of armed politics. Politics in the educational institutes has led to political and socioeconomic repercussions. Due to the linkage between arms and politics, student politics fails to attract many students and remainsconfined to a minority section of the student community. The long term impact of student politics in universities and colleges has been asyndrome known as ‘brain-drain’. Due to chronic terrorism in thecollege and university campus, students with merit prefer to go abroad for higher studies. Most Bangladeshi students are even going to neighbouring countries such as India to avoid late completion of higher education. Although the actual number of student activists is still small, their access to arms on the one hand, and the political patronage they receive on the other, enable them to hold the entire campus hostage.

The triangular relationship among students, arms and politics has resulted in the practice of occupying student hostels, referred to as halls, by student political activist for the last 20 years. This is a way to show each party’s muscle power to its opponent. Hall occupation whichinvariably results in gun-firing with the opponents cost the lives of many in the Dhaka University. Violence is such a part of life in student hostels that in the waiting rooms, instead of finding parents or relatives of the students, one will find armed cadres.¹⁸

In the name of student politics, activists engage in different kinds of activities within and outside the campus that have very little concern for student welfare. Owing to the linkage of political influence and availability of arms, one finds the emergence of preferential treatmentstowards powerful students, specially in the way they get to occupydormitories if they were members of a particular student wing of apolitical party. Such possession is a symbol of strength for a student and his party. Moreover, each hall issued for the storage of illegal arms. Yet, the main political parties in Bangladesh remain silent on the issue of banning student politics. 

As mentioned earlier, student-politics is not confined to the campus boundaries. Its influence has extended over the years beyond theeducation centres and proliferated into the society. Social Crimes such as theft, murder, location and rent seeking etc. were earlier regarded as the misdeeds of unemployed, frustrated, or illiterate youth. While these criteria still exist,student activists are a new addition to the classification of social criminals in Bangladesh.

Spill-Over Effect of Small Arms Proliferation in politics

The spread of small arms in Bangladesh politics has gradually led to the diffusion of arms in society. As a result, the nation-buildingprocess of the country is constantly facing challenges, In an environment of political instability, economic stagnancy, low literacy rare and high population, the diffusion of small arms has worsened the prospect of development. The strong linkage between small arms and politics in Bangladesh has had far-reaching effect on the economy, law and order and even foreign relations. For instance, smuggling of arms along with other contraband items has destabilized the economy. The illicit trade also promotes other social evils such as corruption leading to misuse of the limited resource that the country has. If foreignpolicy is an extension of domestic policy, then this area is also being severely affected by politics of destruction. Nowhere is it more evident as in the case of foreign investment. Party interest prevails over national interest in a field where such action is detrimental to the image and progress of an aid-dependent developing country. The image of the country to donor countries has been tarnished to the extent than at donor meetings,political stability is the dominant theme. Impact on the law and order situation has been pernicious. According to the survey, 45% of the respondents thought that the law and order situation of the society has deteriorated by the infusion of small arms in politics. According to official sources, during the period from 1989 to 1993, the number of crimes rose to 329,604.¹⁹In 1995 in Dhaka city alone, around 100 open gunfire exchanges among armed groups took place.²⁰In the monitoring of newspaper from July 1995 to 1996, total news item of arms related incident were 941, of these, 252 werepolitical while 689 were non-political. The number of deaths were 287; and number of persons injured were 5294; while number of persons arrested were 4440.

Arms are possessed by terrorist, miscreants and political activists. According to a source, most of the sophisticated arms are in the hands of “activists of four political parties who have separate hideouts atdifferent places in the city of Chittagong.” The hide-outs are CityCollege area, Chittagong Medical hostel and Chittagong Collegehostel. Leaders of these political parties finance the purchase of the illegal arms by their activists. In exchange for huge sum of money, the illegal arms are purchased from the Shanti Bahini and the Rohingya insurgents in Myanmar.²¹Thus, the law and order as a result of ‘armed’ politics has been affected in two ways:

(1) Directly when law and order situation deteriorates due topolitical violence during strikes, hartals, campus violence and so on;

(2) Indirectly, crimes such as theft, murder, extortion, rent-seeking etc., committed by the armed cadres who have political patronage.

The impact of the proliferation of small arms in Bangladesh politics appears to be profound. In a country where parliamentary democracy has been constitutionally established, allowing present pattern ofstudent politics in the universities can only mean a tacit support toviolence and terrorism. In a poverty-stricken third world country like Bangladesh, the democratic process mingling with party-orientedstudent politics canonly lead to opening doors to rent-seeking, muscle power, and terrorism.²²

As the finding of a study shows, arms have become an integral part of South Asian politics. In Bangladesh, a new dimension has been added with the mainstream political parties maintaining armed cadres to help individuals take to power and retain their positions. The result of the field work shows that politically motivated violence is on the rise and constitute a major portion of the total number of violence caused by arms. Unless a third force driven by the silent majority, the media, the academia, the NGOs challenge the existing politics of the country,democracy that is already limping, cannot develop in Bangladesh.
 

Reported Incidents of Armed Violence in Bangladesh
CauseJuly’94 -AverageJuly ’95 -AverageIncrease June’95per monthJune ’96per month Political179132522173 Non-Political5013968957188 Total6805294178261 Source : The figures have been compiled from news items on armed violence that were reported in The Inquilab. ^1.Iftekharuzzaman & Mahbuber Rahman, “Transition to Democracy in Bangladesh: Issues and Outlook,” BIISS Journal, Vol. 12. No. 1. 1991, p.96. ^2.Ibid., p.108. ^3.Emajuddin Ahmed, “Military and Democracy,” presented at the South Asian Political Science Conference on Democracy in South Asia: Challenges and Prospects, Nepal, 1992, p.17. ^4.Far Eastern Economic Review, Yearbook, 1997, p.86. ^5.Rounaq Jahan, Bangladesh Politics: Problems and Issues, University PressLimited, 1987, p.117. ^6.Ibid. ^7.Abdul Latif Molla, “Political Legacy - Denial of Proletariat Interest,” The Daily Star, December 11, 1996. ^8.Iftekharuzzaman, “Good Governance and Reduction of Defence Spending in South Asia: Developmental and Security goals “paper presented in the InternationalSeminar on Governance and Development : South Asia in the Twenty-FirstCentury, organized by BIISS, December 21 - 23, 1996, p.10. ^9.Talukder Maniruzzaman, “Arms Transfer, Military Coups, and Military Rule in Developing States,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, December 1992, p.747. ^10.Monirul Islam Khan, “Violence in Bangladesh Society; Fallout on Democratic Transition,” in Iftekharuzzuman and A.K.M. Abdus Sabur (eds), Bangladesh, Society, Polity and Economy, Protgoti Prokashoni, Dhaka 1993, p.9. ^11.Ibid. ^12.The Daily Star, 27 August 1997. ^13.Cited in Md. Asadullah Khan’s “Terrorism: How Long Should the SocietySuffer?”, The Daily Star, 27 October, 1997. ^14.Bhorer Kagoj, 10 March 1994. ^15.Janakantha, 10 August 1996. ^16.Interview with one former student leader. ^17.Bhorer Kagoj, op.cit. ^18.Janakantha 29 August 1996. ^19.Inquilab, 10 January 1996. ^20.Ibid. ^21.The Daily Star, 11 January 1997. ^22.M. Shahiduzzaman, “Student Politics,” Bhorer Kagoj, 10 September 1996.