40 Asia The Economist February 13th 2021
Bangladesh’s armyWallets at the
ready
W
hen al jazeera, a Qatari television
network, accused Bangladesh’s army
chief not only of helping to hide his two fu-
gitive brothers, who are on the run from a
murder conviction, but also of steering
military procurement contracts their way,
the Bangladeshi government did not inves-
tigate the allegations. It did not even both-
er to rebut the claims in detail—including
the assertion by one of the fugitives that
Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the prime minister,
was aware of and happy with this arrange-
ment. Instead, it simply dismissed the
whole story as a “smear campaign”.
Sheikh Hasina has a peculiar relation-
ship with the armed forces. It was soldiers
who got her into politics in the first place,
by murdering her father, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president, as
well as most of her family, during a coup in- Ever since, she has pursued the two
somewhat contradictory ends of avenging
the killings and cultivating close ties with
the army, lest she be toppled herself.
Sheikh Hasina’s party, the Awami
League, used to be less popular among the
armed forces than its main opposition, the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (bnp), which
was founded by an army officer and war
hero, Ziaur Rahman, and is now led by his
wife, Khaleda Zia. Yet since Sheikh Hasina
began her second stint in power in 2009,
she has gradually purged the armed forces
of bnpsupporters and promoted loyalists
like Aziz Ahmed, the current army chief
and object of Al Jazeera’s accusations (pic-
tured, on the left). At the same time, she
has showered the armed forces with perks.
Close relatives of soldiers can receive
health care in military hospitals, which are
considered the best in the country. In 2015
she doubled pay across the armed forces,
as well as for the civil service.
The government’s spending on defence
rose by 123% between 2008 and 2017, ac-
cording to a report by the Stockholm Inter-
national Peace Research Institute, a watch-
dog, despite the lack of any obvious mili-
tary threats. The army has bought Chinese
fighter jets and tanks, and built several big
new bases, such as one of 620 hectares in
the southern district of Patuakhali that the
prime minister opened in 2018.
During Sheikh Hasina’s decade in pow-
er, the armed forces have also massively
expanded their business interests, in part
through the Bangladesh Army Welfare
Trust (awt) and Sena Kalyan Sangstha
(sks). These two foundations for the wel-
fare of soldiers and veterans are technical-
ly independent of the army, but managed
by serving officers. According to its web-
site, sksalone has assets of over 60bn taka
($700m). Among the assets of the awt,
meanwhile, are several luxury hotels and
the firm that makes the voting machines
used in national elections. There was no
tender for the contract; watchdog groups
and opposition politicians complain the
machines’ design makes vote-rigging easy.
The armed forces also manage lots of
infrastructure projects on the govern-
ment’s behalf—an alarming prospect given
the practices Al Jazeera has alleged. The na-
vy spent $300m developing a refugee camp
on a remote island, for instance. The air
force is in charge of the expansion of the
main airport in Dhaka, the capital. The ar-
my handles highway construction.
Senior officers are also handed explicit
opportunities for self-enrichment, in the
form of land in Dhaka, a cramped city of
18m. They all get plots on which they are
entitled to build a seven-floor building,
with up to seven apartments. In theory,
this is a form of housing allowance; in
practice, officers sell at least some of the
flats at a huge profit. Many serving or re-
tired officers are also given swanky govern-
ment jobs: heading the national port au-
thority, for instance, or the agency that reg-
ulates tea farming. Even the lower ranks
enjoy lucrative perks: the government pas-
ses on the roughly $10,000 it receives from
the unfor each Bangladeshi soldier de-
ployed on a peacekeeping mission.
This coddling has worked. Although the
army has seized power three times and run
the country for 15 of the 50 years since in-
dependence, it has let Sheikh Hasina be.
But in buying its loyalty, she has put it at
the heart of government. Given her lack of
a clear successor, its banishment from pol-
itics may last no longer than she does. The government has bought soldiers’
loyalty, at a high priceSheikh Hasina pays homageNoise complaints in South KoreaHell is other people
T
he loud music that his neighbours
keep playing is fairly easy to deal with,
says Yoo Seung-joo, a 21-year-old who lives
in a block of flats in Seoul. “I just call the se-
curity guard to tell them to keep it down
and that usually works.” But there is a more
delicate problem. “At least once a week I’m
woken up at 5am by loud sex noises.” The
recurring disruption to his sleep is ex-
tremely wearing, but he feels too embar-
rassed to raise it with the security guards,
let alone his parents, with whom he shares
the flat.
Mr Yoo is not the only South Korean suf-
fering from noisy neighbours. In a country
where around two-thirds of people live in
sound-carrying high-rise apartment
blocks, ”noise between floors” is such a
well-established problem that there is a
national centre dedicated to dealing with
it. The centre registers complaints and of-
fers mediation through a range of commit-
tees to prevent lawsuits and perhaps even
patch up neighbourly relations.
The pandemic has given the noise
mediators more work. Although South Ko-
rea never imposed a lockdown, the govern-
ment recommended early last year that
people work from home whenever possi-
ble and avoid going out to prevent the
spread of covid-19. For those stuck in
cramped flats at all hours, opportunities
for being bothered by loud neighbours
have proliferated. The noise centre regis-
tered 60% more complaints in 2020 than
in 2019.
Resolving them is not easy, not least be-
cause large numbers of people seem to be
driven mad by the mere existence of their
neighbours. Nearly two-thirds of the com-
plaints the centre received last year were
related to children running or adults sim-
ply walking in the flat upstairs. Total si-
lence being an unreasonable expectation,
mediation often ends with people being
told they have to put up with the noise,
says a lawyer representing those who wish
to take their complaints to court. Even if
they win, compensation is paltry.
The government, which last mandated
thicker floors in new buildings in 2013, is
considering requiring them to be thicker
still. But that will not help residents of ol-
der flats. With few options to settle mat-
ters, long-suffering apartment-dwellers
sometimes take them into their own
hands. Many websites recommend effec-
tive ways to take revenge on noisy neigh-SEOUL
The pandemic has enraged a nation of
apartment-dwellers