Critics say Chief Adviser Md Yunus, who sees army as threat, wants chunk of troops sent for peacekeeping to Ukraine so that polls are swung in favour of Islamic parties
Bangladesh's interim government has formally expressed interest in deploying its troops as peacekeepers in a potential buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine. The interim government's Foreign Advisor Touhid Hossain has said Bangladesh would be interested in deploying its army for peacekeeping to man the buffer zone that may be created as part of a multilateral deal involving Russia, Ukraine, and the Western powers, especially the US and the European Union.
Why Bangladesh fits the bill
Russian President Vladimir Putin has clearly ruled out the deployment of European troops in Ukraine, because he sees it as Nato’s military presence to deter a future Russian military offensive in Ukraine. The dealmakers working behind the scenes to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which tops Donald Trump's global agenda, may have moved away from the proposed reassuring military presence to creating a buffer zone manned by soldiers of non-European nations, which both Russia and Ukraine may find agreeable.
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Troops from some countries seen as fitting the bill may already be under consideration by the powers that be.
As a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping, Bangladesh may be seen as a choice. But with so much uncertainty hanging over the country's own future, especially on the law and order front, which pushed the interim government’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus to hand over magistracy powers to the army, Dhaka's enthusiasm at sending its troops to a major war theatre seems a trifle surprising.
Battle with lawlessness, violence
Bangladesh surely does not face a perpetual war situation on its borders as India does. Its borders with both India and Myanmar have never seemed like erupting into the kind of military conflict that was witnessed between India and Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack this year, or that could have erupted after the Galwan Valley clashes with China four years ago.
But since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government last August, Bangladesh has sunk into uncontrollable lawlessness with mob attacks and targeted violence against religious minorities, secular personalities and groups and anyone critical of the present dispensation, whose soft corner for radical Islamist groups is no longer a secret.
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The Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, who took the initiative to patch together the interim government last August, has often blamed his own creation for the failure to control law and order. He has also crossed swords with Yunus to push the interim government to announce a definite electoral roadmap so that an elected government takes charge and the army can go back to the barracks.
But neither has Yunus announced a definite date for elections, nor has the army been taken off law and order duties, what with its magistracy powers very much in place.
How will Bangladesh muster troops?
Gen Waker has often explained the army's failure to control law and order properly to its limited numbers. He argued that since the police force was totally demoralised after being a target of mob fury during the July-August agitation last year, the army had to step into its shoes, but never had the numbers needed to do a job, for which it lacks specific training. Any army is trained to fight foreign enemies or domestic insurgencies, not handle law and order, which is clearly a police job.
Now, if the Bangladesh Army does not have the necessary numbers to bring back peace and tranquillity in the country, where will it find enough troops to be sent to the Russia-Ukraine border, where peacekeeping will surely be much more challenging than any other conflict zone where the Bangladesh troops have been involved in UN peacekeeping missions?
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Such a mission will surely be welcomed by the troops for the obvious financial prospects, but the priority for any army is saving the nation rather than making a fast buck somewhere else. Is peacekeeping on the Ukraine-Russia front more important now for the Bangladesh Army than controlling law and order within the country, without which no free and fair election will ever be possible?
Is Yunus planning to divert army’s focus?
Critics of the Yunus regime and his international backers in the West say the Nobel laureate sees the army as a threat to his continued tenure without facing elections. This, they say, may have led it to come up with this proposal to send a large number of troops to the Russia-Ukraine front, so that the army's focus will be completely diluted and the military leadership will no longer push and prod Yunus on any issue – be it elections or the controversial Rakhine corridor, which Waker was so unhappy about.
Yunus has feared a military takeover, if not directly, but through a presidential declaration of emergency with military backing. And if the army does not have enough troops to ensure control over law and order, the Islamic parties patronised by Yunus will clearly be able to swing any future polls their way by mobilisation of armed cadres. The Dhaka University Student Union elections, swept by the Islamic Chatra Shibir – the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami – this month, is a pointer for the shape of things to come.
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India should be alert
For Western powers, whose diplomats are daily confabulating with the Jamaat-e-Islami, and whose political preferences are no longer in doubt, tying down a large part of Bangladesh Army in some faraway troubled conflict zone suits their larger plan – of putting in power an Islamist regime in Dhaka which will beholden to it and not hesitate to fulfil their strategic and economic priorities like the Rakhine Corridor or the huge LNG deal with USA's Excelerate Energy.
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Such a prospect is surely not music to Indian ears, but there does not seem to be very much that Delhi can do.
With Islamist radicalism in Bangladesh clearly on the rise, Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir's threat to "hit India in the East" may not just be a mindless bluff and boast. In view of the newfound bonhomie between Pakistan and Bangladesh ("long lost brothers", as some Pakistanis put it), will it be far-fetched to imagine Pakistan-trained Bangladeshi jihadis crossing the border to stage a Pathankot-type attack in Bagdogra (housing elite IAF squadrons) or a Pahalgam-type hit in Darjeeling?
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