The Economist - USA (2019-11-02)

34 Asia The EconomistNovember 2nd 2019

2 ministry of agriculture to identify suitable

land for farming and farmers to organise

the harvest. Activists and scholars worry

that, taken together, these developments

constitute a resurrection of dwifungsi.

tni’s persistent belief that it is at one with

the people—the outgoing minister of de-

fence, also a retired general, describes his

philosophy of warfare as “total people’s de-

fence”—only stokes their fears.

tni has successfully agitated to roll

back the reform that prevented serving of-

ficers from taking civilian jobs. But Evan

Laksmana of the Centre for Strategic and

International Studies, a think-tank in Ja-

karta, argues that this is motivated not so

much by a lust for power as by tni’s poor

personnel-management, which has pro-

duced more officers than there are suitable

positions. In fact it is the politicians who

are luring soldiers back out of the barracks,

argues a recent paper by Leonard Sebas-

tian, Emirza Syailendra and Keoni Marzuki

of the S. Rajaratnam School of Internation-

al Studies in Singapore. When Jokowi was

first elected president in 2014, he was new

to national politics and lacked allies. To

counter the hostile forces arrayed against

him, he turned to tni.

Politicians need tni’s help to imple-

ment their policies. Both the central and lo-

cal bureaucracies are hobbled by corrup-

tion, inertia and conflicting regulations.

tni, by contrast, is a disciplined organisa-

tion that can mobilise personnel across the

country at short notice. Mr Sebastian and

his colleagues examined a number of deals

struck by civilian institutions and tnibe-

tween 2013 and 2018. They found that these

arrangements were initiated at the behest

of civilian leaders, “often due to a lack of

confidence in their own abilities”.

Though politicians are usually pleased

with the work tni does on their behalf,

overseeing it is difficult. An incident in a

village on the island of Sumatra in 2015 il-

lustrates how badly wrong non-military

missions can go. When the local army com-

mand, charged with implementing the

government’s programme of “food self-

sufficiency”, attempted to acquire land for

cultivation, villagers protested. Soldiers

proceeded to intimidate them. The conflict

escalated, with soldiers beating up dis-

gruntled farmers on several occasions.

Members of the armed forces cannot be

tried in civilian courts, however, so no one

was ever punished.

In the years following Suharto’s down-

fall, politicians vowed to subordinate the

armed forces to civilian authority. Today

they seem to regard tnias a partner in gov-

ernment. As Mr Sebastian and his col-

leagues write: “The ongoing reliance on

military solutions for civilian problems is

symptomatic of a weak democracy.” Tell

that to the villagers of Sukawangi, who can-

not wait to use their tni-built road. 7

E

arly in octoberAbrar Fahad, a student

at Bangladesh University of Engineer-

ing and Technology (buet) was beaten to

death in his dormitory. Police have de-

tained 21 people in connection with the

murder, many of them members of the

Chhatra League, the student wing of the

ruling Awami League party. He appears to

have offended them by making critical

comments on Facebook about a water-

sharing deal the government recently

struck with India.

The death of Mr Fahad, who was 21, has

prompted protests at the university and a

public outcry across the country. Yet such

killings are quite common in Bangladesh,

where violent party politics is mirrored—

and often amplified—on university cam-

puses. “This is part of the university cul-

ture,” says Mubashar Hasan of the Univer-

sity of Oslo. “Dormitory rooms are turned

into torture rooms to quell opposition.”

The Chhatra League “basically controls

universities on behalf of the government”,

explains a 21-year-old student from Dhaka,

the capital. That is important to the au-

thorities, since universities have long been

hotbeds of political dissent. No male stu-

dent can get a room in the halls of resi-

dence without co-operating with the

League or having a political connection,

says a fellow student. “They show their ty-

ranny very publicly in these universities.”

Instead of allocating the individual

rooms, the Chhatra League puts all the

first-year students—sometimes up to

100—in one enormous dormitory, the

“public room”. Here, first-years are subject-

ed to “ragging”, meaning bullying by older

students, who report back to the League’s

leadership. The whole process is designed

to scare students into toeing the line.

“Abrar didn’t do that,” notes the student

from Dhaka. League members accused Mr

Fahad of being involved with Chhatra Shi-

bir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, an

Islamist opposition party. “Anyone who

opposes the government can be called Shi-

bir nowadays,” the Dhaka-ite continues.

“It’s an easy excuse for [the League] to beat

someone up and no one will say anything.”

The Chhatra League’s clout extends far

beyond dormitories. Earlier this year,

when the government gave funds to Jahan-

girnagar University for a development pro-

ject, the local branch of the League de-

manded a share. The vice-chancellor paid

up, and later gave yet more money to the

League’s central committee. Companies

are often forced to pay off the local branch

of the League in order to start a project or

operate in their area. A crackdown on op-

position parties before last year’s election,

which saw the Awami League re-elected in

a landslide, has made it even harder to

stand up to the Chhatra League.

Bureaucrats, mps and the police con-

nive in this system, says Mr Hasan. But

none of this is new, he points out. Before

Chhatra League, he says, there was Chhatra

Dal—the student wing of the Bangladesh

Nationalist Party, in government from 2001

to 2006. Chhatra Dal, like the Chhatra

League, operated with impunity. So did the

student front that backed Hussain Mu-

hammad Ershad, the military dictator from

1983 to 1990. The Daily Star, a newspaper,

looked at all campus killings since inde-

pendence in 1971 and found 151 murders for

which no charges had been brought.

Mr Fahad’s murder was perhaps a step

too far, however. His Facebook post echoed

widespread anti-Indian sentiment. Obai-

dul Quader, the general secretary of the

Awami League, said the government would

take action against the perpetrators “re-

gardless of [their] affiliation”, although he

did remind people of the Chhatra League’s

“good accomplishments”. Sheikh Hasina

Wajed, the prime minister, had already

seemed inclined to rein in the Chhattra

League. Before Mr Fahad’s death she had

dismissed its president and general secre-

tary and reshuffled its central committee.

buet’s vice-chancellor, meanwhile, has

promised not only to ban ragging, but also

to bar political organisations from cam-

pus. Students doubt they have seen the last

of their tormentors. “Maybe Chhatra

League will stop what they’re doing,” says

the student from Dhaka, “or at least take a

break. That would be nice.” 7

DHAKA

The ruling party’s youth wing controls

university campuses with an iron fist

Politics in Bangladesh

Learning the hard

way

Candles for Fahad