Bangladesh Struggles To Stabilise

The Interim Government of Bangladesh led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus is just over a month old. But the traumas triggered by the mass upheaval against Sheikh Hasina remain. To add to these, problems have arisen with neighbouring India. It's a double whammy for Bangladesh.

Yunus does have a galaxy of eminences in his Advisory Council. But he is struggling to ensure basic law and order. Dangerous jailed criminals have broken out, and are at large. The unrealistic demands of various sections of people are finding forceful, and sometimes violent expression on the streets of Dhaka.

The Yunus government is going after top officials suspected of wrong doings under Hasina. On the list of those summarily sacked are two Lieutenants General of the army. In 2016, one of them had dramatically stormed into the posh Holey Artisan restaurant in Dhaka and arrested a group of Islamic militants who had hacked many foreign diners to death that evening.

The Bangladesh police are yet to come back to work after having fled during the student uprising. Members of the paramilitary “Ansar”, who were paid daily wages, are now agitating for permanent employment and fighting with students on the streets.

Hundreds of factories, which mostly employ women, are yet to open. A financially strapped government is seeking US$ 5 billion as emergency aid from abroad.

An American delegation, consisting of six members and led by Deputy Under Secretary of State Brent Neiman from the Department of Treasury, will arrive in Bangladesh on Saturday on a two-day visit to discuss issues of economic recovery.

One of the delegation members, assistant secretary for South and Central Asia Donald Lu, will come to Dhaka via Delhi to discuss the political developments in Bangladesh.

Indian think tanks and media commentators see the US’ hand in the agitation to oust Sheikh Hasina, a charge US stoutly denies. At any rate, the US is the first and the only foreign country so far to offer economic aid to the beleaguered Interim Government.

In the midst of all the chaos, the Interim Government faces serious issues with neighbouring India. The main issue has been violence unleashed against the minority Hindus by Islamic radicals who had joined the students' agitation against Hasina. Hindus were targeted for supporting Hasina.

An estimated 1068 properties of the minorities were damaged and at least 20 people were killed, touching off calls for revenge in India.

Rana Dasgupta, General secretary of the Hindu, Christian Bouddha Oikya Parishad, told ‘Prothom Alo’ that if one house was attacked, people of ten other houses would panic. “The aim of these attacks is to rid Bangladesh of the minorities,” Dasgupta charged.

Attacks were launched on the Christian, and Ahmadiyya Muslim communities also. Archbishop Bejoy Nicephorus D’Cruze of the Roman Catholic Church in Dhaka said that the attackers were neither identified nor punished. The Ahmadiyya community said that 137 of their houses and 6 of their mosques were attacked.

However, from August 6 onwards, initiatives were taken by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the Jamaat-i-Islami as well as student and social organisations to guard the properties of the minorities Political parties issued statements against the attacks.

On August 13, Dr Yunus held a meeting with 40 representatives of various minority community organisations at the Dhakeshwari temple. “We want to build up a Bangladesh that is just one family. There will be no differences within this family,” he said.

Bangladeshi media charges that the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) is continuing to kill Bangladeshis indiscriminately suspecting them to be infiltrators.

According to the Bangladeshi human rights organisation Ain O Salish Kendra, between 2009 and 2022, 563 Bangladeshis were killed by the Border Security Force. In 2023, 31 Bangladeshis were killed.

Bangladesh had repeatedly questioned the need to use lethal weapons to check border crossings by petty smugglers or even innocent villagers. Boys and girls as young as 14 and 16 were shot dead, causing anti-India feelings to run high in Bangladesh.

Dhaka has been seeking investigations into all border killings and punishing the guilty but to no avail, it is said. “Killing is not a solution. There are legal avenues for dealing with border issues. Those being shot are not invaders. This is sheer callousness, and it must stop,” Dr. Yunus said.

The other critical issue in the bilateral relations is the extradition of the fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from India. The Bangladesh government’s advisers have been discussing Hasina’s extradition from India to face trial in more than a hundred cases including murder.

But India has been measured in its response because it cannot surrender Hasina without regard for her safety. She has been a trusted friend of India since 1975, when she was a refugee in India following her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination.

External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar has said that New Delhi will tackle the question of extradition diplomatically.

In an article in ‘The Diplomat’ recently, Dewan Alif Ovi points out that the extradition treaty between India and Bangladesh, initially signed in 2013 and amended in 2016, was aimed at addressing the issue of insurgency and terrorism. The treaty embodies the principle of dual criminality. That is, the crime for which extradition is requested must be recognized as a punishable offence in both countries.

The 2016 amendment lowered the threshold for extradition, eliminating the need for evidence and requiring only an arrest warrant from a competent court in the requesting country. This raises the possibility of Hasina being extradited.

However, Article 6 of the extradition treaty discusses an exception for political offences, allowing refusal of extradition if the offence is deemed to be of a political nature.

But there are strict limitations on exemption on political grounds. A detailed list of offences, including murder, terrorism-related crimes, and kidnapping, are explicitly excluded from being considered “political.”

Bangladesh may be able to make a case for extradition on these grounds as the charges against Hasina cover a variety of serious crimes.

If Bangladesh insists on Hasina’s extradition and India continues to turn a deaf ear, India-Bangladesh relations will be badly damaged, especially because, in the past, Bangladesh had extradited Indian terrorists from Assam at New Delhi’s request.

But Bangladesh could well desist from demanding Hasina’s extradition if she keeps silent, as demanded by Dr. Yunus.

In the past, Bangladesh had failed to extradite the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from countries that had given them asylum. And yet, it continued to have normal ties with these countries.

Yunus has stressed the need to resolve the longstanding issue of sharing the waters of the river Teesta with India. In an interview with ‘Press Trust of India’, Yunus said that the lower riparian Bangladesh has specific rights that must be respected. “Both sides need to sit down and settle it," Yunus added.

But the Teesta river water-sharing agreement has faced stiff opposition from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who cites water shortages in her state as the reason for her opposition.

India's Adani Group has been unsuccessfully requesting the interim government to immediately clear dues of around US$ 800 million on their electricity sales to Bangladesh, according to officials of Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB).

According to BPDP officials, the average monthly bill for the purchase of power from Adani Power Jharkhand Limited is of US$ 90 million to US$ 100 million, whereas the PDB has been able to pay only US$ 20 million to US$ 30 million. The due has been accumulating over a span of around eight months.

The 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) signed in November 2017 is to supply Bangladesh 1,496 megawatts (MW) of electricity from an Adani power plant, located in Jharkhand's Godda district. This supply accounts for around 10% of Bangladesh’s power needs.

Yunus said he would try to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York to sort out pressing bilateral problems. Modi is expected to address the UNGA on September 26.