By Sebastian Strangio

Published by Asia Times Online, August 17, 2010

Motiur Rahman Nizami is among the accused.

DHAKA – A SPECIAL tribunal in Bangladesh has indicted four members of the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on suspicion of committing mass atrocities during the country’s 1971 Liberation War. Those arrested, including party president Motiur Rahman Nizami and his deputy Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, have been remanded in custody indefinitely and are likely to face charges of genocide, murder, rape and arson. Travel bans have been imposed on a few dozen more suspects.

The indictments, issued late last month, were the opening act of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, established in March, which is seeking to prosecute those responsible for atrocities during the bloody war that resulted in the country’s birth.

The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when the Pakistani military attempted to prevent the secession of the country’s eastern wing, led to the widespread massacre of unarmed civilians and the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals. Some sources say 3 million people perished during the 10-month conflict, while as many as 200,000 women were raped.

Although attempts at justice began after the defeat of the Pakistani army by Indian and Bangladeshi forces in December 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman four years later. For the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

For Bangladesh, the trials come four decades late, and many of those most responsible are either dead or living in the relative sanctuary of Pakistan. But Mahbub Alam, the general manager of Dhaka’s Liberation War Museum, which commemorates the 1971 atrocities, said that there was a widespread desire to see justice done. “In this country, if you go into each and every village you will find war victims,” said Alam, who lost his father in the Liberation War. “The people who did all these kinds of misdeeds are the beneficiaries of the creation of Bangladesh,” he said. “They are the beneficiaries of the country, of three million martyrs.”

But the government’s focus on razakars — internal collaborators who led, assisted and committed crimes in conjunction with the Pakistani administration then in control of the country – has whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The Awami League government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos.

Don Beachler, an associate professor of political science at New York’s Ithaca College, said the government has set up the tribunal in part to tar Jamaat-e-Islami as allies of the Pakistani army and “enemies of the Bangladeshi people”. The fact that Jamaat ruled in coalition with the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party – a key rival of the Awami League – from 2001 to 2006 has only provided an “extra motive” to pursue the Islamist movement, he added.

To be sure, Nizami and other Jamaat leaders clearly have reason to be concerned. Nizami founded and led the Badr militia, which committed numerous acts of violence against civilians in support of the Pakistani army’s campaign to repress Bengali nationalism. “Nizami was active against independence and advocated violence against Hindus who were seen as the source of Bangladeshis’ alleged betrayal of Pakistan and Islam,” he said. “On the merits and the politics Nizami has much to fear.”

Given the politically charged nature of the process, however, the relatively open-and-shut case against Nizami and his deputies could be compromised by procedural inadequacies and a perception of government heavy handedness. Some observers fear the arrests of Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid on June 29 were the first sign that the process was compromised by political manipulation.

The pair, along with top preacher Delwar Hossain Saydee, were detained on the obscure charge of “offending religious sentiment” after they compared their persecution by the Awami League government to the sufferings of the Prophet Mohammed. Only once they were in custody did the government move ahead with questioning on war crimes-related charges.

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2010

A crumbling Mughal-era mansion in Dhaka’s old city. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

ACROSS Old Dhaka, decaying and sprawling mansions are hulking reminders of the city’s 19th-century commercial boom. Majestic, wrought-iron gates slump inward. Gardens are overgrown. Squatters have taken up residence in some of these empty shells, but mostly these Mughal-era (17th-19th century) structures are now regarded as less important than the land on which they sit.

Taimur Islam, an architect who heads the Urban Study Group, a Dhaka-based organization campaigning to have the old city designated as a protected area, says the pace of development spells an uncertain fate for the city’s architectural heritage. Since 2004, the group has created an inventory of about 3,000 historically significant structures in Old Dhaka, where a handful of buildings are razed daily. Mr. Taimur says that if the government took a more integrated approach to planning, it could accommodate the preservation of old buildings and also the needs of a ballooning population. It could even help reshape perceptions of Dhaka, one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities. “If it’s possible to restore all those important monuments under certain guidelines and come up with an integrated plan, the rest of the areas could be revitalized too,” he says.

Is a war crimes tribunal being used to settle political scores? If so, it may unleash social chaos, reports Sebastian Strangio.

Published in The Diplomat, July 22, 2010

DHAKA – BANGLADESH’S Liberation War Museum sits on a quiet street in central Dhaka, shaded by trees and fronted by an austere barbed wire fence. The small building commemorates the country’s 1971 liberation struggle, a fierce war of independence from Pakistan that cost an estimated 3 million lives. An eternal flame in the museum’s courtyard marks it out as a site of martyrdom—a reminder of the bloody star under which the country was born. Almost fittingly, dozens of small Bangladeshi flags are intertwined on the rusting barbs of the museum’s front fence.

Last week, Bangladesh’s government arrested two leading politicians from the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on charges of committing mass murder during the liberation struggle. The arrests, which followed the detention of the party’s president, Motiur Rahman Nizami, and other top Jamaat officials in late June, mark the first stage of a tribunal established in March to address war crimes committed during the 1971 conflict.

A nationalist mural in Motijheel, the commercial heart of Dhaka. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

But even though the tribunal has no scheduled start date, it has already whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos and compromising Dhaka’s relationship with Muslim allies in the Middle East.

The tribunal comes after nearly four decades of inaction in Bangladesh. The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when Pakistan attempted to prevent the secession of its eastern wing, included the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals and the rape of by some estimates 200,000 women. Although the process of putting collaborators on trial began after the defeat of the Pakistani army on December 16, 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Ahmed Ziauddin, an advisor to Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar, says that for the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

‘The current process is, if you like, unfinished business that started in 1972,’ he says.

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While the rest of the world debates climate change, Bangladesh has started living the reality of a warmer, more volatile world.

By Sebastian Strangio

Published in Foreign Policy, June 7, 2010

DHAKA—EARLIER this year, a small island in the Bay of Bengal vanished, taking with it a long-running territorial dispute between neighbors India and Bangladesh. The uninhabited sandbar, known variously as South Talpatti and New Moore Island, had been hotly contested since the 1980s. But in March, as the island was submerged by rising sea levels, the dispute quietly resolved itself. The rising waters were “definitely attributable” to climate change, oceanographer Sugata Hazra at India’s Jadavpur University, told the Associated Press. “What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking has been resolved by global warming.”

While the world’s capitals debate the reality and impact of climate change, Bangladesh is already living it. According to recent projections, the sunken island’s fate foreshadows low-lying Bangladesh’s broader future: to be overcome by rising waters. A 1-meter rise in sea levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater by 2050, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates. (The capital, Dhaka, lies at the center of a flood plain and could be engulfed by even a “slight rise” in sea level, according to another report by U.N.-Habitat.) Meanwhile, on the land that does remain, this country of 162 million will face cyclones, droughts, and floods with increasing frequency and intensity as the effects of climate change begin to bite.

But if the coming temperature rise spells disaster for Bangladesh, it has also transformed the country into the world’s biggest experiment in how to minimize the impact of climate change. The reason for preparedness, however, is less intentional than accidental. Bangladesh began preparing for climate change long before the term was ever known — simply because the country’s geography has always subjected it to frequent flooding and cyclones. No wonder this is one of the few countries that has accepted the inevitability of global warming. As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests, told a Dhaka conference in April, “For the North[ern Hemisphere], [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.”

Bangladesh’s environmental measures began in the 1970s, when the country started developing saline-resistant varieties of rice and other crops. The country built flood embankments to prevent low-lying arable land from being flooded with salt water. And as a result, grain production rose from 9 million tons in the mid-1970s to 28 million tons today, according to government figures. Today, agriculture in Bangladesh is as “climate proof” as anywhere. And more recently, the British-backed Chars Livelihood Program has funded the construction of flood-resistant infrastructure on Bangladesh’s riverine islands, or chars, where some 3.5 million people reside.

Further changes were prompted by a 1991 cyclone that left 140,000 dead. In the wake of disaster, Bangladesh leapt at the opportunity to put in place community-based early-warning systems and emergency evacuation plans that have since saved countless lives. The Bhola Cyclone, for example, killed as many as half a million people in 1970, but the recent Cyclone Sidr was detected in the Bay of Bengal ahead of time, and as many as 2 million people were evacuated before it hit. Death tolls — cited at 3,447 by one official — were correspondingly lower.

With its massive head start, today Bangladesh is embracing its newfound role as a living laboratory. In November, the country is opening an International Center for Climate Change and Development at Dhaka’s Independent University. The aim, says the institute’s incoming director, Saleemul Huq, is to use Bangladesh as a classroom for researchers and policymakers from around the world, offering short courses (and perhaps later a master’s program) to study tactics for adapting to climate change.

Last October, the country became the first to create a National Adaptation Program of Action, a provision recommended by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005. The proposed 10-year plan includes steps for bolstering infrastructure such as flood embankments and cyclone shelters, strengthening disaster-management systems, improving food security and sanitation in vulnerable areas, and bolstering climate research. Bangladesh has even created a climate change “trust fund” to serve as a repository for donor money, and the country has put in $100 million of its own funds.

Getting these future projects off the ground may yet face hiccups, not least the country’s endemic levels of corruption and a lack of coordination between government agencies. But if the past is any test, Bangladesh will keep on adapting — by environmental imperative. As Huq told The Diplomat, “Bangladesh has always lived on the edge of an apocalypse, but somehow it doesn’t ever fall over the edge.”

This seems to be becoming something of a trend. Unhappy with depictions of the Prophet Mohammad posted on Facebook, Bangladesh has followed Pakistan in banning access to the site and protesters have taken to the street with flags and Zippo lighters. The target of ire? International Draw Mohammad Day (May 20), which encouraged web denizens to pull out their pen and paper and engage in their right poke fun at the Prophet. It seems to me that some Muslim-majority countries are taking Quit Facebook Day all too seriously, although I don’t think the  protestors are too concerned with user privacy issues.

Below, Muslim protesters shout slogans and torch a Swedish flag during an anti-Facebook protest in Dhaka on May 28. Swedish artist Lars Vilks, known for his (shall we say) piquant Mohammad caricatures, is apparently the catalyst of this recent round of flag-burning. Apparently some students in Bangladesh are now protesting the ban, saying the government is “interfering in the business of expressing opinions”. It’s good to see something pushing back against the instincts of the mob.

UPDATE: Bangladesh has now restored access to Facebook, after the site “apologised” and promised to remove the Draw Mohammad Day page from the site. I’m not sure this can really be described as a victory, especially now that Turkey has also jumped on the bandwagon, banning access to YouTube for hosting clips “insulting” national icon Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Often derided as a basket case, Bangladesh might just have a thing or two to show the world about tackling climate change.

By Sebastian Strangio

Published in The Diplomat, May 28, 2010

FROM the port of Sadarghat, the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka unfolds itself in an inclement palette of greys and browns. The Buriganga River, stretching out in each direction like a puddle of mercury, is dotted with hundreds of river craft, some dredging trash from the riverbed, others weighed down with passengers and piles of vegetables. Moored nearby, bleeding rust, sits the country’s fleet of ‘rockets’—colonial-era paddle steamers fitted with belching diesel engines that ply Bangladesh’s extensive network of waterways. The road running along the riverbank, the old Buckman Bund of the British colonial era, is today a bottlenecked mass of overladen trucks and tinkling rickshaws.

A magnet for rural migrants, low-lying Dhaka—already one of the most densely populated megacities on earth—is likely to come under increasing strain as the country comes face-to-face with the effects of global climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says Bangladesh is likely to face cyclones, drought and flood events of increasing frequency and intensity as global warming sets in. In its 2005 report, the IPCC also estimated that a one metre rise in sea-levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater and cut its food production by 30 percent by 2050. Much of Dhaka, which lies in a flood plain protected only by giant embankments along the Buriganga could be engulfed by even a ‘slight rise’ in sea level, according to another report by UN Habitat. It described the megacity—largely unplanned and lacking basic infrastructure—as a ‘recipe for disaster.’

In May last year, Cyclone Aila lashed the southern part of the country, breaching giant embankments and flooding large tracts of low-lying farmland with salt water. Of the 900,000 families affected by the storm, about 100,000 people are still living in makeshift camps on top of the flood embankments—the only place beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Luigi Peter Ragno, a project manager at the International Organisation for Migration who is working with communities affected by Aila, says an expected spike in extreme weather events due to global warming will likely accelerate the age-old flow of rural poor to the cities.

‘Looking at the future, you can see that environmental degradation can have a cascade effect into the cities and the urban areas,’ he says. ‘Everybody will be affected.’ As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests told a conference in Dhaka last month, ‘For the north, [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.’

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One of Dhaka’s most arresting attractions is its magisterially bleak (or bleakly magisterial) national parliament, the Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban. Constructed from massive blocks of unfinished reinforced concrete bisected by simple triangles and circles, the building is perhaps the crowning work in the career of American architect Louis Khan. Although commissioned as the national parliament of Pakistan in the 1960s, the building wasn’t completed until 1982, well after Bangladesh gained its independence from “West Pakistan” and around the time that such brutal modernism began to seem a little passe. Still, Bangladeshis are justifiably proud of the building — according to Wikipedia, one of the largest legislative complexes in the world — which has since become something of a symbol of the young nation. Khan himself said of the strange, almost child-like profusion of geometric shapes that “It was not belief, not design, not pattern, but the essence from which an institution could emerge”. He also described its unique design as a “many-faceted precious stone, constructed in concrete and marble”.

Predictably, I had the privelege of seeing this greyest of grey buildings under an overcast sky. Lake Road, the wide boulevard running along the back side of the parliament, was lined with joggers, chaste young couples and posters of independence icon Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his daughter Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister. Unfortunately, access to the inside of the building is restricted to casual visitors and guards direct a friendly but determined head-waggle at anyone seeking to walk past the checkpoints along the outer edges of the complex. Taimur Islam, the head of the Urban Study Group in Dhaka, told me that 48 hours’ notice is required for journalists to gain permission to see the inside of the building, but from my limited knowledge of South Asian bureaucracy, I imagine the process is considerably more protracted. (This is a stark contrast with Cambodia, where you can pretty much walk into any building not ringed with razorwire and armed guards, including — but not limited to — ministries and foreign embassies).

Kahn died of a heart attack in 1974 at New York’s Penn Station after returning from Bangladesh, leaving behind a slew of classic brutalist structures and plans for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York, a commemoration of the late president. Kahn’s design for the park was abandoned after his death due to the city’s fiscal crisis, but was resurrected last year after an exhibition about the project’s history and a New York Times article published in 2005. It is apparently scheduled to begin construction soon. Kahn was also responsible for Yale University’s Centre for British Art, the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Several more projects, including a synagogue in Israel and a presidential palace in Islamabad, Pakistan, remained unbuilt after his death. Click here for more on Kahn and his work.

A section drawing of Kahn’s design for the parliament building.

Here are some photos from my recent sojourn in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I spent some time this month visiting friends and chasing a few stories (some of which will hopefully come to fruition in the next few weeks). The city — one of the fastest growing metropolises on earth — is so bewilderingly large that one could spend days exploring it on foot. These photos, snapped during a series of walks around Old Dhaka and surrounding areas, document fairly well the small part of the surface that I scratched during my six days in town.

01 Rickshaws ply their trade in the streets in Armanitola, the former Armenian quarter of Old Dhaka. Armenian traders put down roots here in the eighteenth century, building grand palaces along the Buriganga River waterfront and throughout the old city. Today, only a single Armenian remains in the city — the caretaker of the old Armenian Church — while many of the buildings erected by wealthy Armenians are falling into disuse or succumbing to the wrecking-ball.

02 Watching a game of cricket at a schoolhouse in Old Dhaka.

03 Misery in the Bengali press, Nayapaltan.

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