Bangladesh Army and the State of Emergency

So far most of the discussion in the blogosphere regarding Bangladesh’s state of emergency, and the current military government has tended to focus on the effect on our country, our population, and the state of our democracy. With this post, I’d like to turn the focus on the Bangladesh Army, which can be effectively described as the engine which is driving the current state of emergency. More precisely, I’d like to focus on the effects of the las eleven months, beginning from October 2006 till the present, on the morale and battle-readiness of our officers and soldiers.

Regarding this, my claim is simple. The last eleven months have been more detrimental to the Bangladesh Army than any previous period in our country’s thirty-six years of existence. There will need to be serious introspection inside and outside the military apparatus regarding how our army, the prime instrument in safeguarding our nation in case of a conflict, will recover from its wear and tear.

 The damages to both the army’s physical readiness as well as mental state-of-mind have been inflicted in an insidious manner. The first signs of what was in store came in October 2006, when the army traditionally goes for excercise in the field. Commanders currently serving in the army spoke of confusing and conflicting messages emanating from Army Headquarters (AHQ), calling the troops out, then telling them to stay in barracks, then telling them to prepare for deployment in distict level, then again telling them not to deploy but stay prepared, until the troops were fed-up and getting snarly about the mismanagement in Dhaka. This was done deliberately, to give our troops the same feeling of hopelessness and the centre not being able to hold, that the rest of us witnessed when we saw the logi and boitha massacres in our television sets.

For the last eleven months, our troops have been continuously deployed upto the upazila level. Given that a good part of our fighting strength is away on United Nations assignments, this deployment places a severe burden on our troops, since they have to conduct these duties in addition to their normal regimen of training, which anyone familiar to army life knows is very challenging and rigorous. Moreover, it has been continuously proven in military history that close contact with the civilian population is hugely detrimental to the fighting effectiveness of the army. A great example of this is the Pakistani Army, curently hemorrhaging in the mountains of Waziristan, and due to the foolishness of Pakistan’s several military rulers, in almost continuous contact with the civilian population since the inception of the state of Pakistan. It is thus no accident that the Pakistani Army has never won a war, and has failed to defend the territorial integrity of their country, any army’s prime mission. Theirs is an example Bangladesh and the men and women of their armed forces would do well to avoid at any costs.

But in my mind, the greatest damage done to the army, and the entire armed forces of our country, is the lie that was spread about after January 11th 2007, that our army top command agreed to dislodge a civilian, constitutional government because they did not want to lose the money and lifestyle available to them because of the UN peacekeeping postings. As an individual, I have always been proud of our armed forces; one of my fondest memories in Dhaka was driving by the Shikha Onirban, and taking pleasure in how immaculately it was maintained. I was hurt and shocked by the notion that our army would act so mercenarily as to disregard their commitment to our civilian government and our country just to ensure the cotinuous flow of money and assignment from a foreign source.

This is a listing of the perceived wrongs that have been done to our soldiers. Currenly-serving and retired commanders have beem complicit in these wrongs. It is now time to reflect on a course of healing and repair for our armed forces.