In the last week of August, the Home Minister of Bangladesh, Asaduzzaman Khan, led an official delegation to the United Nations Chiefs of Police Summit held in New York. The delegation drew international attention as it included Benazir Ahmed, Bangladesh’s Inspector General of Police. Mr. Ahmed, who subsequently retired as the country’s police chief on September 30, had hit the headlines in December 2021 when the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on seven serving and former officials of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which has become synonymous with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s counter-terror crackdown. The U.S. government accused the RAB of at least 600 forced “disappearances”. Mr. Ahmed, who had assumed charge in 2015, served as the head of the RAB till 2020. The sanctions included a travel ban on him and six others. But Ms. Hasina’s Awami League government refused to be deterred by the sanctions and nominated him to be in the team of officials. The U.S. protested, but nevertheless issued a visa for Mr. Ahmed.
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This episode highlighted how posturing on certain issues with foreign critics helps Ms. Hasina cater to her core supporters domestically, but these periodic assertions of power have not prompted political stakeholders in Dhaka to kickstart a dialogue process on the modalities of conducting the next general elections, with the term of the current parliament finishing in end 2023. Without credible institutional mechanisms, any reconciliation seems difficult. The ruling Awami League perceives the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its cohorts as “anti-liberation”, while the BNP is unable to prove that it has matured and is willing to acknowledge its past mistakes.
