Bangladesh Army Chief’s Final Warning To Yunus – OpEd

Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman’s stern warning to interim government chief adviser Muhammad Yunus on a host of national issues may be a prelude to a new phase in the country’s troubled political landscape. 

Addressing ‘all available military officers ‘ at the Army headquarters on Wednesday,  General Waqar-u-Zaman shed his usual cautious stance abd  delivered an unambiguous message to Nobel laureate Yunus — hold early elections, stop interfering with military matters, and keep the military posted on key issues like the proposed Rakhine Corridor.

Describing Yunus’ proposed reforms agenda, which he seems to have used as an excuse to delay parliament polls, as a ‘ botched up exercise’ , General Waker declared that the national elections will have to be held by  December this year. 

After the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August last year, Waker  took the initiative to install the interim government  but specifically mentioned that their primary job was to hold  “a free, fair, and inclusive election”.

With the recent ban on the ruling Awami League,  the prospect of am inclusive election has dimmed and that has upset Gen Waker-uz-Zaman. 

The army chiet has repeatedly asserted that his job is to organise a free and fair election and then take the army back to the barracks after a transfer of power to the elected  government. 

He was not gone for a direct military takeover but focused on three tasks: restoring democracy, maintaining stability, and upholding the Bangladesh Army’s professional standards that made it one of the leading contributors to United Nations peacekeeping missions.

But this push has got him into a tussle with Yunus, who lambasts Hasina for rigging elections, but himself was to rule without wants to rule unelected.

Sources in the army headed say Waker also suspects Yunus is trying to oust him and install another pliant general in his place.  On Tuesday, with the Air Force and Navy chiefs by his side, Waker let Yunis know that his interference in militarymatterswill not be tolerated. Then came the blast on Wednesday at the officers meet — a show of strength meant to drive home three important messages: that the military is united behind the chief, that it will not tolerate “being kept in the dark” about important national matters related to security and defence (as Waker stressed during his speech), and that the military will no longer tolerate chaos and anarchy (hinting at the street agitations through Islamist mobs, a pet tactic of the Yunus brigade).

General Waker raised the issue of the Chittagong-to-Rakhine corridor, which Yunus was willing to create to deliver humanitarian supplies to Myanmar, but which the US is likely to use to send military supplies to the country’s rebel groups. By calling it a “bloody corridor”, the army chief made it clear he is firmly against dragging Bangladesh into the festering Burmese civil war. Senior US diplomats lobbying for this corridor met the General this week, but it seems he hasn’t changed his mind.

Yunus’s attempts to pilot this project appear aimed at pleasing the US something that could help him continue to run the country without being elected. Bangladesh’s leading political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, as well as Left parties, have all opposed the Rakhine corridor, which was seen as part of an American power play to block China’s land-to-sea access granted by the Burmese military junta.

Another sore point between the two was the appointment of former diplomat and now US citizen, Khalilur Rahman, as Bangladesh’s National Security Adviser, a position created by Yunus to, perhaps, offset the military’s control of security matters. Rahman, seen as the man behind the corridor idea, backed out on Wednesday, telling the press after the army Durbar that there was “no military dimension” to the proposed corridor.

Rahman’s appointment was followed by rumours that Yunus was promoting Lieutenant General Kamrul Hassan, the Principal Staff Officer of the Armed Forces Division in the Prime Minister’s Office, as a possible replacement for General Waker.

With no prime minister following Hasina’s ouster, Hassan reports to Yunus and has made several important overseas trips, like the one to Pakistan. Bangladesh military sources say the General will likely push Yunus to remove Hassan and a few other officers he believes are not loyal to him. Kamrul Hassan’s meeting with senior US diplomats last week, without prior clearance from the army chief, was the tipping point.

The General’s worries about an ouster attempt also stem from a recent pitch by Yunus’s student-youth brigade to finalise the July Declaration and use it to run the country in keeping with the “spirit of the July-August revolution”. The nascent National Citizens Party is already out in the streets, demanding a proclamation that will nullify the 1972 secular constitution and help Yunus run the country without holding elections.

That would surely mean the end of the current presidency, and the ouster of President Mohammed Shahabuddin Chuppu would be a prelude to a massive rejig in the military ranks and the ouster of the three service chiefs, including General Waker-Uz-Zaman. This roadmap is acceptable to the Islamist radical groups but not to the country’s major political parties. On Wednesday, military officers at the Durbar made a strong pitch for the “spirit of the 1971 Liberation War” and said that it was non-negotiable.

So, Wednesday’s Durbar at the army headquarters was meant to send out a clear message: if Yunus does not stop his manipulative games, the military will act. All it has to do is get the president to declare an emergency, dismiss the interim government, for which there is no provision in the Constitution, and get cracking with elections.