Archive for April, 2013
The Youth Uprising in Bangladesh – as expected, now a target of both Islamists and the government
On 28th February this year, I had written on this blog – about the Youth demonstration at Shabag in Dhaka, Bangladesh :
What should the Shabag youth be aware of ?
(1) They should remember, that Fascists always triumph when a more liberal, critical, popular movement with progressive aspirations starts and shows promise of almost nearing success, but cannot or is prevented from succeeding to gain a decisive share of power. This was how Russian Bolsheviks, French Jacobins, German Nazis gained power.
(2) Bangladeshi society as a whole is tilted towards youth – age wise – demographically. But the entire society is a continuous demographic relic of past times and social as well as religious fossils. The hold of mullahcracy runs deep – fostered by decades of dictators, sections of the army, and international Islamist forces as well as their cold-war patrons in the west.
(3) In a confrontation like this, Bangladeshi society is likely to split into roughly a 40-40-10-10 split. This is based on a rough estimate from past few elections, where, 40% go for what I dub the covert Islamists, represented within the Awami League, 40% go for the overt Islamists, represented within the BNP+Jamaat spectrum, 10% are really seculars, and 10% are undecided – who swing elections in the first past the post system.
(4) The Shabag youth probably represent around 15-20% – the more educated, more urbanized, sections of the overall youth population. This does not mean that they are going to be defeated. Determined and audacious minorities have always been the one and only harbinger of change of societies and political systems. However, the dangers they must be aware of is that of complacency. There is a portion of rural youth kept carefully away from modernization by the collaborative structure of feudal remnants, land-grabbers (the primary motivation for supporting Pakistan was the hope in the middle and upper-middle level of rural Muslim gentry to gain the land and women and wealth of Hindus), virulent Islamists, collaborators and rapists and genociders of ’71 protected under pressure subsequently by the international Islamist networks, and the network of predominantly Saudi funded (and funded by charities working from western nations like UK) dawa-madrassa net.
(5) the state structure of Bangladesh will necessarily carry Islamist elements in its armed wings, intelligence, and administration. These have been carefully nurtured from even the Liberation war times. There is a genuine possibility of a covert call to arms by the jihadists against the Shahbag movement.
(6) the youth should form an organizational structure, while keeping leadership in a group – so that individuals targeted for elimination will not stop the movement. They should remember that Islamist strategy of terror is “total terror”. From the time of the founder, verbal dissenters or critics were targeted for elimination – as in a female poetess accused of lampooning the leader of the early Islamics – and whose assassination was called for from within the early mosque. Families, loved ones, are targeted too – for the Fascist Islamist mullahcracy’s mind is a sadist one. It seeks not only to give pain, but it enjoys the very act of giving pain and that its victim is suffering mentally as well as physically.
The Egyptian youth have had trouble because they trusted the more established political parties pretending sympathy and failed to create a political structure of their own. The Shahbag youth should not make this error. They should understand that even the Awami League represents primarily an aging generation – and who therefore have greater identification with Islamist undercurrents. They will show this in signs of conciliatory tone towards Islamism, and try to prove themselves as “proper Muslims”. In turn this shows the inner ideological affiliations which even if weaker than that of BNP – is still an affiliation to the Islamists.
The Shahbag youth resistance will be sought to be controlled by both the major power elite factions in Bangladeshi politics. If they can manage to control, they will eventually dismantle this movement – for they do see it as a threat to their own established power structures.
I would suggest the possibility of underhand deal cutting going on with the Hifazat right at this moment under the overt excuse of dividing up the Islamist opposition from the government side. Awami League is most likely to come to an understanding with the Hifazat – where both sides will agree to an official “scaling down”.
Most likely that the Awami League government will offer token punishments to the bloggers already arrested, and enact more stringent mullah-appeasing laws against “cyber-defamation” of Islam – so that the Hifazat Ameer can show his followers that he has “won”. If as alleged by the government the Hifazat movement has monetary backers, then they will be able to show possible Islamist sponsors abroad – that the money has not been wasted. Awami League will then be able to claim it has contained and diffused the “communal” threat and not allowed “communal forces” to consolidate.
Both sides will find it convenient to target the “bloggers” and the “Shahbag” youth. The latter represent a political threat to both the covert and the overt Islamists. Net gain – both covert (AL) and overt (BNP+Jamaat) as well as sundry mullahcracy – all gain one more notch of taking Bangladesh further along the Islamism line by state enforced curtailing of exploration and exposure of the religions’ real totalitarian heart and agenda for the subcontinent.
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