Bangladesh mutiny is test of Sheikh Hasina's government

Long running complaints between branches of Bangladesh’s military has broken out into full scale mutiny in the last two days that claimed at least 50 lives. What began as a shootout in the capital Dhaka has spread to towns across the country. While the main reason for the mutiny is a pay dispute, it is also likely be a test of power for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who has only been in the job a month. Ranjit Bhaskar says the fact that the army had to be called out to quell the uprising just weeks after December's election is “an important reminder that the country's political situation remains complex and fragile despite the restoration of democratic rule”.

Nevertheless the most proximate cause is a pay dispute involving the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). The standoff at the BDR headquarters began yesterday when troops took dozens of high-ranking officers and military brass hostage after a gun battle erupted between rebels and loyal police and troops that killed 50 people. The dead included passers-by who were caught in mortar fire when the violence spread to the nearby streets. Afterwards, the BDR had reportedly accepted an offer of amnesty from the prime minister and agreed to lay down arms earlier on Thursday. But the fighting resumed later in the day.

The BDR is the country’s border security and anti-smuggling force. Known by the grandiose nickname of “The Vigilant Sentinels of Our National Frontier”, the force was set up after partition in 1947 as a descendent of the British East Pakistani Rifles. In 1971 it fought for the liberation of Bangladesh from West Pakistan and emerged as the new country’s leading paramilitary force. There is confusion over exactly how big the force is. The BBC thinks it is 40,000. The Guardian today was reporting 42,000 posted across 64 camps whereas Al Jazeera claim there are “50,000 paramilitary soldiers”. Meanwhile, BDR’s own website says they have a total manpower of 65,000 troops.

Whatever the size, it is a significant security organisation that the government needs to control. According to police reports, BDR members had revolted in 12 border districts which represents a quarter of the zones where they are stationed. The initial revolt started in the capital Dhaka and then fanned outwards. One local police chief reported heavy fighting at a BDR training centre in the southeastern town of Satkania. Another talked of indiscriminate gunfire in the northeastern Moulivibazar district where the commanding officer fled the camp. Violence was also reported in Chittagong and Naikhongchari in the south, Sylhet in the north-east, and Rajshahi and Naogaon in the north-west.

Back in the capital, the soldiers initially agreed to surrender after the government said it would grant amnesty and discuss their grievances. But it was little surprise to hear that fighting had resumed later in the day. The mood was full of resentment about army entitlements as one rebel soldier told television reporters. Unlike the army, the BDR is under the Home Ministry and has a different pay scale. "Army troops are sent abroad to work in UN peacekeeping missions and they get fat salaries,” he said. “But they don't take border guard personnel for peacekeeping. That's discrimination."

A government spokesman said mutinous soldiers would be treated harshly. Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Cabinet members met in an emergency session today as the Dhaka standoff entered a second day. Some diplomats in the capital speculate that an ulterior motive of the violence is to test Hasina. She succeeded a military-backed administration last month and is the daughter of Mujibur Rahman, who is considered the father of Bangladesh. He won an election in 1970 and led the country to independence one year later which earned him the nickname of Bangabandhu "friend of Bangladesh". However in 1975 his own army officers assassinated him and 23 family members. Hasana and her sister were away in Germany at the time, and were the only ones left to carry on his line.

Since Bangabandhu’s death, Bangladesh has been dominated by military dictatorships, either overtly or disguised by stooge leaders. Hasina inherited the leadership of her father’s party and suffered imprisonment at the hands of several Bangladesh rulers. She was elected Prime Minister in 1996 after two disputed elections and ruled for five years. She was defeated in a landslide in 2001 but continued to lead the party despite criminal charges of extortion and murder. The High Court dismissed all the charges last year and she returned from exile in November to fight the election which she won in a landslide. But defeated Premier Khaleda Zia rejected the result saying the poll was ‘stage-managed'.

Pranab Dhal Samanta writing in Indianexpress.com noted that the BDR is heavily penetrated at the lower and middle ranks by affiliates of Zia’s party. There are also links between Zia’s brother and a disaffected BDR general. It doesn’t take much to join the dots. Samanta believes the force is now being controlled by disgruntled military officers who are known affiliates of Zia’s party. “A spectre of instability coupled with suspicious battles within the Army…and a new government wanting to try 1971 war criminals could rapidly trigger an unexpected crisis in Dhaka,” he writes.

British curry houses face major skills shortage

Last month, Indian restaurant owners in the UK warned they may have to close because Bangladeshi immigrants who do the cooking are banned from entering Britain under new rules requiring them to speak English. Business Secretary John Denham stepped in saying he wanted a thousand British curry chefs trained as soon as possible and has provided emergency funding to the catering industry emergency to set up courses in ethnic food.

Curry is a $6 billion industry in Britain. Of the countries 8,000 or so Indian restaurants, the great majority are run by Bangladeshis. A staggering 90 percent of these come from the seaman’s zone in the small district of Syhlet. Until 1947 Syhlet was a part of the Assam province in British India. After the partition, it was partitioned from Assam and included as a part of East Pakistan and now is a part of Bangladesh. During the Raj it was strategically important due to the series of waterways which linked the Assam tea plantations with the port of Calcutta. When the British introduced steamships, the Syhleti boatmen became employed as sailors in the engine rooms.

Many moved to Calcutta for work. There they joined the huge contingent of lascars who found employment on ocean-going steamships. Because the Syhletis could not speak English, they remained confined to the noisy engine rooms stoking the huge boilers with coal. Many died of heatstroke or the occasional explosion. With conditions so poor, they jumped ship whenever they could. Many ended up in London’s East End where they lived in a network of grotty boarding houses full of sly grog, gambling and opium smokers.

But by the outbreak of World War II, many landlords had cleaned up their act and a number of cafes emerged to cater for the tastes of the lascars. All along areas such as Sandy Row, Brick Lane, New Road and Commercial Road, boarding houses for Syhleti seamen were accompanied by nearby cafes which doubled as community centres. These seamen’s cafes would become the root of Britain’s Indian restaurant industry.

One of these seamen was Nawab Ali who jumped ship in Cardiff during the war. Like the majority of his fellow Syhletis, Ali got a job in catering; in his case cleaning, washing up and peeling potatoes in an Egyptian coffee shop. He moved on to Veeraswamy’s, Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant, which was visited by Gandhi and Nehru among others. At the time, Veeraswamy’s was one of just a handful of Indian restaurants in London. It served Anglo-Indian curries to rich Londoners and retired civil servants nostalgic for their colonial home.

After the war, there were plenty of bombed out cafés in need of restoration. Syhleti seamen used their savings to buy them as well as many decrepit fish-and-chip shops. Fish and chips was originally seen as slum food, but by the 1950s was gradually taken up by working class families as a change to the monotony of meat-and-three-veg. Nawab Ali was one of the many Syhletis who spruced up an old fish and chip shop and in addition sold tea, coffee, rice and curry to his predominantly white customers. The Syhleti owners also kept up the old custom of keeping their shops open after 11pm to catch the trade as the pubs were closing.

Gradually the white customers became more adventurous and began trying out the curry side of the menu. In particular the after pub crowd found that a spicy vindaloo went down exceedingly well on stomach full of beer. Thus began the tradition of a curry after a night in the pub. As the customers became more fond of the curries, the cafes simply dropped the fish and chips from the menu and became out-and-out Indian restaurants and take-aways.

New ventures in the 1950s began to choose Indian names for the restaurants and an entirely Indian menu. The close bond between the Syhletis in the community centres meant they began to dominate the trade. While they became Pakistanis in 1947 and then Bangladeshis in 1971, London-based Syhletis were mostly happy to be described as “Indians” in order to conjure up romantic images of the Raj in their clientele. The décor also projected this idea with pictures of elephants and maharajas. Most copied the menu of Veeraswamy’s and other early Indian restaurants who served the Mughlai and Punjabi vindaloo, biryani and rogan josh curries favoured by Anglo-Indians.

When Bangladeshis were allowed to apply for British passports in 1956, established immigrants brought their families over. A growing Asian immigrant community stimulated the growth of a little India around Drummond St near London’s Euston Station. Asian grocers supplied Bangladeshi spices to the restaurant trade. This was accompanied by a revolution in British eating habits in the 1960s. Syhletis responded by opening new restaurants and expanding their cuisine. By 1970, there were two thousand Indian restaurants which were part of the landscape of every British town and curry was part of the national diet.

More than any other ethnic food, curry is now a quintessential part of British culture. Britons spend $4 billion a year eating out in curry houses. Supermarkets no longer put curry paste in the ethnic foods category but define them as “mainstream British flavours”. However Lizzy Collingham, in her delightful book, “Curry – A Biography” says that despite eating large amounts of curry, the British are not always welcoming to the Asians who make it for them. She says the prevalence of curry in the British diet is not a sign of a new multicultural sensitivity, but rather is symptomatic of British insularity.

Their tastes may be cosmopolitan but their food habits remain thoroughly British. These matters clash with the mandatory English language immigration rule introduced in 2006. As the Financial Times points out, “it will count for naught that a would-be immigrant can mix a mean masala. He will need fluent English and a high-level cooking certificate too.”

Cyclone Sidr batters Bangladesh

Over a thousand people have been reported killed in Bangladesh after the coastal Sundarbans area was battered by Cyclone Sidr in the last two days, with the death toll expected to rise considerably. Hundreds of thousands of others have been affected by the storms and ensuing floods which have destroyed homes and roads, caused food and water shortages and cut off power and communication links. Most of the deaths were caused by high winds which blew down trees and debris on homes. The force of the cyclone is larger than Katrina which battered New Orleans in 2004.

The cyclone saw Bangladesh hit by tidal waves, floods and 240 kph winds that created havoc in the southern cities. The capital Dhaka was still without electricity on Friday. 20,000 homes were destroyed in the hardest-hit areas and at least 650,000 coastal villagers fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations. At least ten million more remain vulnerable in the country’s low-lying coastal region.

Authorities fear the death toll may actually be much higher than the reported 1,100 dead as rescue workers have not yet reached the worst affected outlying areas. The deputy head of the government's disaster management office, Shekhar Chandra Das, said they expect to find thousands of corpses along Bangladesh’s southern coast. In the coastal town of Jhalokati 140km south Dhaka, locals told AFP of their terror as the cyclone came through. "I have never seen such a terrible scene. It was like hell. I saw dozens of tin roofs flying into the air. Whole houses too," said a local businessman Manik Roy. "About 500 of us were huddled in a shelter in a government office. The windows were shattered and it seemed the whole building was shaking.”

The category five cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal and roared across the south-western Bangladesh and north-eastern Indian coast late Thursday. It brought driving rain, high waves and a seven metre high storm surge which levelled thousands of flimsy huts and destroying crops and fish farms across 15 coastal districts. Tidal waves hit also coastal areas in north Chennai in India.

Thanks to localised early warning systems such as microphone canvassing and radio bulletins, hundreds of thousands were evacuated in advance of the storm. Bloggers within Bangladesh reported on the damage. Shawn at The Uncultured Project reported from Dhaka that the city was blacked out (he was able to write using his laptop’s power), heavy rain was falling and a transformer had exploded nearby. Others blogging in Bangla said “It’s raining heavily outside. Gusty winds are also present. I am still awake to face unknown danger.”

It was Bangladesh’s fragile wilderness area known as the Sundarbans that bore the brunt of the storm. The area is a world natural heritage site and home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger. Sidr hit the eastern parts of the forest leaving a trail of severe devastation. Dr Ainun Nishat, country representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), said he fears many wildlife including, tigers, deer, crocodiles, wild boars, king cobras, and monkeys might have been washed away under the weight of uprooted trees. “Sidr practically ruined the beauty of the Sundarbans”, he said.

Storms batter the coast of Bangladesh each year causing hundreds of deaths. The deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded (pdf), the Bhola Cyclone, hit the Ganges Delta in November 1970 leaving up to half a million people dead. Another powerful storm, similar in strength to Sidr killed over 100,000 people in 1991. Most parts of Bangladesh are located in the low-lying Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta, on average less than 12 metres above the sea level. About half the country would be flooded if the sea level were to rise by 1 metre.

Yunus win the peace prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. The 87th naming of the award was announced yesterday in Oslo. Yunus and the bank won the award for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, particularly women. The committee cited their efforts to help “create economic and social development from below”.

The prize is shared between Yunus and the bank. Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist who has been praised for his novel method of “microcredit” which has helped poor women advance their lives and escape from poverty. Microcredit is the extension of small loans typically from $60 to $140 to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. He founded the Grameen Bank with a charter to help the “poorest of the poor” living without any capital in crowded rural Bangladesh. It has 6.6 million borrowers, 97% of which are women. It provides services in 70,000 villages across the country.

Yunus and the bank will share the prize of 10 million Norwegian kronor (approx $2 million) as well as the gold medal and associated diploma. Yunus told the Nobel Foundation by phone: “I’m absolutely delighted. I cannot believe it has really happened. Everyone was telling me that I would get the prize but it came as a surprise. It is fantastic news for the people that have supported us”.

Yunus won it ahead of this year’s favourite Finnish president Martii Ahtisaari who was heavily backed following his efforts to secure a 2005 peace deal between Indonesia and its separatist Sumatran province Aceh. The five member committee would not comment on who else was considered for the award except to state it received 191 nominations for the award. The committee chair Ole Danbolt Mjoes said Yunus’s efforts had clear results. He said “we are saying microcredit is an important contribution that cannot fix everything, but is a big help.” He went on to compliment Yunus saying he was creative and “his head is in the right place”.

The 65 year old economist was born in the rural part of Chittagong province. In his school years he was an active boy scout and travelled abroad to scout jamborees. He completed an MA in economics in Dhaka University in 1961 and went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee to gain his doctorate. He stayed on there to be an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University before returning home to newly independent Bangladesh to become a full professor of economics at Chittagong University. The country underwent an extreme famine in 1974 in which thousands died. "We tried to ignore it," Yunus told PBS, "But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the capital, Dhaka. Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make believe stories in the name of economics? I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence." Yunus moved to the village of Jobra to study the poor. Yunus found that very small loans could make a significant difference in a poor person's ability to survive. He established a rural economic program as a research project. His first loan consisted of $27 of his own money, which he lent to women in a village near Chittagong to make bamboo furniture.

In 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank (which means "of rural area" in Bengali). The bank uses a system of "solidarity groups" to ensure repayment. These groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment. With the sponsorship of the central bank of the country and support of the nationalised commercial bank, the bank grew to service other areas around the country. In addition to microcredit, it offers housing loans as well as financing for fisheries and irrigation projects, venture capital, textiles as well as traditional bank services. The Grameen microcredit model has spread to 23 countries. Many micro financing projects follow Yunus’s emphasis on lending specifically to women. Grameen’s stated goal is to reverse the age-old vicious circle of "low income, low saving & low investment", into the cycle of "low income, injection of credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more income". In 1983, the project was transformed into an independent bank by government legislation. Now Grameen is owned by the rural poor whom it serves. Bank borrowers own 90% of its shares, while the remaining 10% is owned by the government.