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West pushing Bangladesh to Wahhabism
Afshin Rattansi is a journalist, author of The Dream of the Decade the London Novels and an RT Contributor. He can be reached at afshinrattansi@hotmail.com.
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Published time: May 13, 2013 15:02
Tahrik e-Khatme Nabuyat Muslim supporters argue with police during a protest against Ahmadiyya Muslims in Dhaka on January 3, 2013 (AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman)
Tahrik e-Khatme Nabuyat Muslim supporters argue with police during a protest against Ahmadiyya Muslims in Dhaka on January 3, 2013 (AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman)
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Religion, Asia, EU, Obama, Human rights, USA, Saudi Arabia
Dreadful conditions for workers in factories producing goods for the West, and plans for the US Seventh Fleets relocation make fertile ground for anti-Americanism in Bangladesh, which may see the country falling into the hands of radical Islamists.
The death toll has been rising in the worlds worst garment industry tragedy. Ive been thinking about the last time I was in Bangladesh, a nation that is now the worlds second-largest clothing producer after China and one also in the news for deadly Islamist protests.
Back then, I witnessed something that had seemed emblematic of the neo-colonial status of Bangladesh. After a harrowing journey to the countryside where the poverty was sub-Sub-Saharan, I found myself on the top of an office building in the capital, Dacca. Garish U.S. pop music was blaring out of the nightclubs speakers and the lounge area was packed with U.S. military servicemen, mostly U.S. Navy. As a private went to get a Long Island Iced Tea, two giggling Bangladeshi teenagers swiped the military walkie-talkie he left on the sofa and ran off to the bathroom. Later they regaled me with the story that they had screamed All soldiers back to base! into the communication device, before dismantling it, piece by piece. They may have liked the U.S. dollar injection into the local economy but they didnt like the presence of U.S. servicemen. Americans have never really ever left Bangladesh whether their presence be through crippling Bretton Woods institutions based in Washington, multinational garment brands or covert killing.
I was in Bangladesh in the 1990s, when the demonstrations in the cities of this nation of around 150 million were held by the Communist Party and trade unions, desperately looking for social justice. Putting faces to appalling statistical human development indicators was easy. To me, the slums of Mumbai looked rich after Dacca. As for the fact that Bangladesh now beats India in some development indicators as the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has noted that fact only emphasises how badly India is run: not how well Bangladesh is doing. You can tell things are bad in Bangladesh because The Economist magazine and the World Bank have until very recently been lauding governance there.
Things have changed in Bangladesh. For a start, the Communist Party headquarters in Dacca has just been torched as a quarter of a million Bangladeshis, around the country, marched against secularism and around fifty were killed in the ensuing rioting. It used to be just the government that torched the Communist Party headquarters.
The sighs of the oppressed are getting louder and there is plenty to be angry about. It is also in the interest of unpopular Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to frighten her electorate about the advance of Islamism in Bangladesh, ahead of scheduled general elections in the next nine months. She will want to exaggerate the rise of Islamism in the country to renew support for her party - even though it was she who struck a Machiavellian deal with the Salafist bin Laden-style Khelafat-e-Majlish Party back in 2006.
The rioters from the Islamist Hefazat-e Islam coalition advocate the execution of internet bloggers, the cancellation of women's development programs and the destruction of public statues. It is all far away from the dreams of Bangladeshs founders. References to secularism in the Bangladeshi constitution were deleted a couple of years after the 1975 CIA-backed assassination of the nations founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The present prime minister is his eldest daughter and she has presided over a secular system that maintains extreme poverty to attract the sort of international investment that leads to ever-worse garment factory massacres and economic degradation. It is not a happy situation.
AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman
AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman
Bangladeshs main opposition the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has now allied with the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and they have both got into bed with statue-demolishing Hefazat-e Islam. But who is financing all the Wahhabi Takfiri ideology? Predictably, it is the backers of rebels in Syria. Not only that but some money can reputedly be traced to Britains biggest ever export agreement - Margaret Thatchers UK-Saudi Al-Yamamah arms deal. Slush funds from the BAE deal have found their way into the hands of Al Qaedasympathisers in Bangladesh. It was Tony Blair who shut down the inquiry into all the money laundering. Meanwhile, theres no sign of the U.S. Department of Justice re-opening their BAE case (it fined the weapons-seller $400m in 2010), to follow the trail of cash to Islamists in Bangladesh.
Instead, as if he wants to promote anti-U.S. sentiment in Bangladesh, President Obama is thinking of moving the HQ for the U.S. Seventh Fleet from Japan to Chittagong, Bangladeshs largest seaport. One year ago, former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed a strategic partnership deal with Sheikh Hasina. Speculation has been rising that the Seventh Fleets 70 ships, 300 aircraft and 40,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel are set to move to Bangladeshs second largest city as part of President Obamas anti-China policy. U.S. Vice Admiral Scott H Swift, Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet was in Dacca, one month ago for talks with senior Bangladeshi military officers. The base is also seen to be ideal for any U.S. bombing of Iran.
Relocating the base will obviously be good for proud urban Bangladeshi teenagers theyll be vandalizing mislaid U.S. military equipment at Chittagongs nightclubs. More seriously, it will lead to Saudi-backed clerics at Chittagongs madrassas foaming at the mouth and explaining to the poor of Bangladesh that America is Satan and salvation lies only with Wahhabism. There is fertile ground here, as economic crises in the U.S. and Europe have forced a decline in demand for clothing from the sweatshops of Bangladesh, leading to soaring unemployment. Some estimate sixty million will be out of work by 2015.
But Ayman al-Zawahiri shouldnt be booking his tickets for Bangladesh just yet. Even though President Obama, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do their best to catalyse support for creeds like those of Osama bin Ladens, the future need not look so bleak. Islamism has yet to take hold of significant sections of the urban and rural poor as it did in other countries where the U.S. has sponsored Al Qaeda-linked groups. There are flickers of light, too. Aminul Islam of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation was tortured and killed after successfully negotiating workers rights with the owners of Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Nautica, Kenneth Cole and Timberland. But there will be many others to take his place and who will take inspiration from him.
The way to curb Saudi-backed Islamism in Bangladesh is to improve the material lives of Bangladeshis. Ironically, the most courageous economic decision of recent times was made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, herself: when she ordered the World Bank out of her country over the massive Padma Bridge infrastructure project. The multi-billion dollar deal with the China Railway Engineering Corporation is estimated to one day be worth an extra 1% of GDP growth a year. Next, Sheikh Hasina should default on outstanding IMF loans. The Fund approved one of its largest loans ever offered to a member country this time last year - in return for gruesome structural adjustment.
Any attempts by the democratically-elected Bangladeshi government to take control of Bangladesh will lead to vicious Western media vituperation. You can expect a lot of Western propaganda against the country in the run-up to the next general election, including mainstream media corruption exposés. As to the future of Bangladesh, only a wholesale recalibrating of democratic systems and manufacturing ownership as well as a carefully tuned national unity government look set to be the long-term answer to the threat of a Bangladeshi caliphate.
Afshin Rattansi is a journalist, author of The Dream of the Decade the London Novels and an RT Contributor. He can be reached at afshinrattansi@hotmail.com.
Get short URL
Published time: May 13, 2013 15:02
Tahrik e-Khatme Nabuyat Muslim supporters argue with police during a protest against Ahmadiyya Muslims in Dhaka on January 3, 2013 (AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman)
Tahrik e-Khatme Nabuyat Muslim supporters argue with police during a protest against Ahmadiyya Muslims in Dhaka on January 3, 2013 (AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman)
Share on Tumblr
Tags
Religion, Asia, EU, Obama, Human rights, USA, Saudi Arabia
Dreadful conditions for workers in factories producing goods for the West, and plans for the US Seventh Fleets relocation make fertile ground for anti-Americanism in Bangladesh, which may see the country falling into the hands of radical Islamists.
The death toll has been rising in the worlds worst garment industry tragedy. Ive been thinking about the last time I was in Bangladesh, a nation that is now the worlds second-largest clothing producer after China and one also in the news for deadly Islamist protests.
Back then, I witnessed something that had seemed emblematic of the neo-colonial status of Bangladesh. After a harrowing journey to the countryside where the poverty was sub-Sub-Saharan, I found myself on the top of an office building in the capital, Dacca. Garish U.S. pop music was blaring out of the nightclubs speakers and the lounge area was packed with U.S. military servicemen, mostly U.S. Navy. As a private went to get a Long Island Iced Tea, two giggling Bangladeshi teenagers swiped the military walkie-talkie he left on the sofa and ran off to the bathroom. Later they regaled me with the story that they had screamed All soldiers back to base! into the communication device, before dismantling it, piece by piece. They may have liked the U.S. dollar injection into the local economy but they didnt like the presence of U.S. servicemen. Americans have never really ever left Bangladesh whether their presence be through crippling Bretton Woods institutions based in Washington, multinational garment brands or covert killing.
I was in Bangladesh in the 1990s, when the demonstrations in the cities of this nation of around 150 million were held by the Communist Party and trade unions, desperately looking for social justice. Putting faces to appalling statistical human development indicators was easy. To me, the slums of Mumbai looked rich after Dacca. As for the fact that Bangladesh now beats India in some development indicators as the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has noted that fact only emphasises how badly India is run: not how well Bangladesh is doing. You can tell things are bad in Bangladesh because The Economist magazine and the World Bank have until very recently been lauding governance there.
Things have changed in Bangladesh. For a start, the Communist Party headquarters in Dacca has just been torched as a quarter of a million Bangladeshis, around the country, marched against secularism and around fifty were killed in the ensuing rioting. It used to be just the government that torched the Communist Party headquarters.
The sighs of the oppressed are getting louder and there is plenty to be angry about. It is also in the interest of unpopular Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to frighten her electorate about the advance of Islamism in Bangladesh, ahead of scheduled general elections in the next nine months. She will want to exaggerate the rise of Islamism in the country to renew support for her party - even though it was she who struck a Machiavellian deal with the Salafist bin Laden-style Khelafat-e-Majlish Party back in 2006.
The rioters from the Islamist Hefazat-e Islam coalition advocate the execution of internet bloggers, the cancellation of women's development programs and the destruction of public statues. It is all far away from the dreams of Bangladeshs founders. References to secularism in the Bangladeshi constitution were deleted a couple of years after the 1975 CIA-backed assassination of the nations founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The present prime minister is his eldest daughter and she has presided over a secular system that maintains extreme poverty to attract the sort of international investment that leads to ever-worse garment factory massacres and economic degradation. It is not a happy situation.
AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman
AFP Photo / Munir uz Zaman
Bangladeshs main opposition the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has now allied with the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and they have both got into bed with statue-demolishing Hefazat-e Islam. But who is financing all the Wahhabi Takfiri ideology? Predictably, it is the backers of rebels in Syria. Not only that but some money can reputedly be traced to Britains biggest ever export agreement - Margaret Thatchers UK-Saudi Al-Yamamah arms deal. Slush funds from the BAE deal have found their way into the hands of Al Qaedasympathisers in Bangladesh. It was Tony Blair who shut down the inquiry into all the money laundering. Meanwhile, theres no sign of the U.S. Department of Justice re-opening their BAE case (it fined the weapons-seller $400m in 2010), to follow the trail of cash to Islamists in Bangladesh.
Instead, as if he wants to promote anti-U.S. sentiment in Bangladesh, President Obama is thinking of moving the HQ for the U.S. Seventh Fleet from Japan to Chittagong, Bangladeshs largest seaport. One year ago, former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed a strategic partnership deal with Sheikh Hasina. Speculation has been rising that the Seventh Fleets 70 ships, 300 aircraft and 40,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel are set to move to Bangladeshs second largest city as part of President Obamas anti-China policy. U.S. Vice Admiral Scott H Swift, Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet was in Dacca, one month ago for talks with senior Bangladeshi military officers. The base is also seen to be ideal for any U.S. bombing of Iran.
Relocating the base will obviously be good for proud urban Bangladeshi teenagers theyll be vandalizing mislaid U.S. military equipment at Chittagongs nightclubs. More seriously, it will lead to Saudi-backed clerics at Chittagongs madrassas foaming at the mouth and explaining to the poor of Bangladesh that America is Satan and salvation lies only with Wahhabism. There is fertile ground here, as economic crises in the U.S. and Europe have forced a decline in demand for clothing from the sweatshops of Bangladesh, leading to soaring unemployment. Some estimate sixty million will be out of work by 2015.
But Ayman al-Zawahiri shouldnt be booking his tickets for Bangladesh just yet. Even though President Obama, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do their best to catalyse support for creeds like those of Osama bin Ladens, the future need not look so bleak. Islamism has yet to take hold of significant sections of the urban and rural poor as it did in other countries where the U.S. has sponsored Al Qaeda-linked groups. There are flickers of light, too. Aminul Islam of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation was tortured and killed after successfully negotiating workers rights with the owners of Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Nautica, Kenneth Cole and Timberland. But there will be many others to take his place and who will take inspiration from him.
The way to curb Saudi-backed Islamism in Bangladesh is to improve the material lives of Bangladeshis. Ironically, the most courageous economic decision of recent times was made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, herself: when she ordered the World Bank out of her country over the massive Padma Bridge infrastructure project. The multi-billion dollar deal with the China Railway Engineering Corporation is estimated to one day be worth an extra 1% of GDP growth a year. Next, Sheikh Hasina should default on outstanding IMF loans. The Fund approved one of its largest loans ever offered to a member country this time last year - in return for gruesome structural adjustment.
Any attempts by the democratically-elected Bangladeshi government to take control of Bangladesh will lead to vicious Western media vituperation. You can expect a lot of Western propaganda against the country in the run-up to the next general election, including mainstream media corruption exposés. As to the future of Bangladesh, only a wholesale recalibrating of democratic systems and manufacturing ownership as well as a carefully tuned national unity government look set to be the long-term answer to the threat of a Bangladeshi caliphate.
?
RT sure knows how to troll. Any way US have serious interest in BD and still have the most influence in BD. Most likely listening post in Chittagong and St.martins IS and also lure us to the asian pivot contain china thing.
