The Guns of November

In the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide, the captain, Gene Hackman, and his number two, Denzel Washington, clash over the interpretation of an order that could launch a nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Washington mutinies and takes control of the submarine, to be confined by officers loyal to Hackman, before being freed by his men.

Watching this on TV years ago, an elderly uncle-type commented: Ei ta toh purai Bangladesh (this is just like Bangladesh) -- coup, countercoup, counter-countercoup, as in November 1975.

In the blood-soaked history of Bangladesh, this week marks the 50th anniversary of a particularly dark and grim episode. This week in 1975, dozens of army officers were killed by mutinous jawans. The mutiny was orchestrated by Lieutenant Colonel Abu Taher, who was retired from services a few years earlier and at that time was a key leader of the radical Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD).

The mutineers killed Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf, who had led a coup few days earlier against the regime of Khondaker Moshtaq Ahmed, in power since the bloody putsch of August 15, when a group of majors killed President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family.

Amid the confusion caused by Mosharraf’s manoeuvres against the majors, four senior Awami League leaders -- including Tajuddin Ahmed, the country’s first prime minister who led the war effort in 1971 when Mujib was interned in Pakistan -- were assassinated in the central jail, almost certainly with the consent of President Moshtaq.

The chaos and carnage of November 7, coming on the heels of the August massacre and the jail killing, threatened to put the very existence of Bangladesh at risk.

A Game of Coups

Fortunately, Taher’s mutiny proved short-lived as the army rallied behind Major General Ziaur Rahman. Why is it that it was Zia, and not Taher or Khaled, who emerged out of carnage? Ideas of Naunihal Singh, an American political scientist, can offer us some clues.

Mr Singh’s book Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups is a major contribution to the literature on military coups. 

A Washington Post review from 2015 summarizes his thesis:

Coup attempts are best understood as coordination games, or “situations in which each individual has an incentive to do what others are doing, and therefore each individual’s choices are based on his or her beliefs about the likely actions of others.” Instead of thinking about coups as battles (e.g. the side with the greatest military power will win) or coups as elections (e.g. the side with the most public support will win), Singh pushes us to think of coup success as being driven by coup-makers’ ability to get others to believe that their coup attempt will be successful.

How do coup-makers convince others their coup attempt will be successful? They convince military actors that the success of the coup has the support of almost everybody in the military and that any possible resistance is minor.

Let’s think about the events of 1975 through the prism of Singh’s analysis.

On the morning of August 15, 1975, radio blared the news of Mujib’s death while tanks roamed the streets of Dhaka. There was no resistance against the coup-makers. Senior officers like Major General Shafiullah pleaded over the years that there was nothing they could do to save the president. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps not. But Singh’s logic tells us that once Mujib and family were dead and one of his senior ministers appeared as the leader of the new order, the killer majors succeeded in getting others to believe that their coup attempt was successful. After that, toppling the Moshtaq regime would require a counter-coup.

Khaled’s counter-coup and Taher’s counter-counter-coup failed because neither managed to get others to believe that their respective coup attempts would be successful. Khaled negotiated for hours with the majors and ultimately let them go while the jail killings happened. His aims were never made public, and he was vulnerable to the accusation of ushering in a Mujibist restoration or being a puppet of Indian hegemony. In Taher’s case, ordinary soldiers chose as their leader Zia, who did not share Taher’s politics.

By the same logic, Zia succeeded in restoring order and consolidating power because of his ability to get others to believe that he would be successful. It is ironic that Zia’s political heirs spent so much energy in trying to elevate Zia’s 1971 role while his detractors spent decades portraying him as the arch-villain of 1975. A less blinkered view of history would hold that the political importance of the March 1971 radio broadcasts from Chittagong was the rank and not the person holding it -- that it was a major of Pakistan army telling the world, in English, that a war of resistance against the Pakistanis had begun. It may well have been another major in Kalurghat that day in 1971, and things probably wouldn’t have been all that different.

Not so after November 7, 1975, when Zia, and only Zia, could get others -- initially the army, then the bureaucracy, the urban elite and foreign donors, and eventually the entire nation -- that he would be successful in preserving Bangladesh’s existence. In the post-July Bangladesh, one hopes that for a more mature political discourse that acknowledges Zia as the hero of 1975.

A Republic of Rebels

“The country of Bengal is a land where, owing to the climate’s favouring the base, the dust of dissension is always rising,” said the Mughal court chronicler Abul Fazl in the 16th century (translation by Richard Eaton in The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier). Four centuries later, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has been a country where the dust of dissension has repeatedly risen among the men armed to guard the republic.

Within a decade of the independence, much of the political and military leadership of the Liberation War was either killed or politically delegitimized by successive coups. Of course, what actually happened in the 1970s, and beyond, should be subject to serious debate. History is not, after all, a mere recount of dates and facts. History should be about understanding what happened and why.

And I contend that our history made us more coup-prone.

As with judicial decisions, so it is with transgressions where precedence matters a lot. If you have never smoked an illegal substance, or flirted in the absence of your spouse, it would be hard for you to even contemplate a cocaine-fueled orgy. But one is on a slippery slope when, well, a certain Rubicon is crossed.

That is how it has been with military interventions, from the time of the Romans (and earlier) all the way to our republic. If a general gets away with toppling a government and annulling the constitution, his successors are encouraged by the precedent. All of Bangladesh’s army chiefs until Lieutenant General Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury were commissioned in the Pakistan army, and thus had the precedent of General Ayub Khan’s dabbling in politics as far back as the early 1950s. Lieutenant General HM Ershad and Lieutenant General ASM Nasim chose to act on those precedents, thereby creating precedents of their own for Lieutenant General Moeen U Ahmed.

Of course, Bangladesh’s experience of military interventions date way before Ershad became the chief. In fact, none of the military coups -- successful or otherwise -- of the first decade were led by the highest-ranking officers -- Majors General Shafiullah, Khalilur Rahman, and Ziaur Rahman. It appears that there was more to the mayhem of the 1970s than the ghost of Ayub Khan.

And there was. An insidious precedent was created in the very foundational moments of the country. Following the military crackdown in Dhaka on March 25, 1971, a number of officers of Pakistan army -- trained to follow orders, ostensibly to defend Pakistan -- rejected their allegiance to that country for “Bangla Desh.” They led their entire units into rebellion. Others joined them in individual capacity. Some even escaped from Pakistan to join the Mukti Bahini.

How do we know that they were motivated by some political ideology, and not personal reasons such as safety?

We know that not every Bengali in the Pakistan army joined them. Major Abdul Mannan helped the assault on Comilla and Chittagong. Lieutenant Colonel Qaiyum Chowdhury -- brother of prominent intellectuals Munier (killed by the Al Badr on December 14) and Kabir (national professor in liberated Bangladesh) -- stayed on in Pakistan after 1971. Lieutenant Colonel HM Ershad served in the military court set up to try those who joined the Mukti Bahini.

Majors Ziaur Rahman or Khaled Mosharraf, for example, could have easily stuck with the Pakistanis. Instead of leading a ragtag rebel force against a vastly better equipped army, they could have simply melted away in the crowd in the last week of March, and reported for duty once the Pakistanis captured Chittagong or Comilla. Their war actions were not just heroic, but crucially, entirely political.

Zia famously made a series of radio speeches, first in his own name, and then on behalf of the “Great National Leader, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.” For decades, our pathetic history wars focused on who got to the microphone first, and we lost the political relevance of Zia’s radio speeches. His messages were in English, telling the world that a new country was born and Pakistan was now an occupying power. He was announcing to the world that there was a government, led by Mujib who had won the people’s mandate in December 1970. He was affirming to the world that Bangladesh would abide by all international rules and obligations that befit a sovereign state. These were the stuff of politics.

Through Rehman Sobhan, Khaled implored the Awami League leaders to form a government as quickly as possible and commission the rebel commanders appropriately. Until this was done, the majors and their men were nothing more than mutineers and defectors. He created a special guerrilla force to hit high profile targets in occupied Dhaka. He understood the old dictum -- war is politics by other means.

Zia and Khaled both participated in a conference of Mukti Bahini commanders in Teliapara on 4 April 1971, before the Mujibnagar government was formed, to coordinate the resistance strategy. Not just Zia and Khaled, but also Abu Taher, or MA Jalil, or Abul Manzur -- they all understood very well that choosing Bangladesh over Pakistan was a political act.

The thing is, once you have defied orders and rebelled for one political reason -- no matter how justified the reason may be -- you have also created the precedent for someone else to defy orders for some other political reason. Once Major Zia took control of a radio station and made one historic announcement, he created a precedent for a Major Dalim to make another, far more insidious, announcement.

Of course, there is nothing inevitable about history. Things happen because of specific actions by specific people at specific points in time reacting to specific incentives and exigencies. So, coups were not inevitable in Bangladesh. They could have been avoided in the past, and they can certainly be avoided in the future. Zia’s actions in 1971 did not make Dalim’s actions in 1975 inevitable.

And Ayub’s actions in the 1950s did not make Ershad’s in the 1980s inevitable. Just the way Zia and others created a precedence of mutiny, they also created the precedence of following political leadership. They fought the war under the command of General MAG Osmani, who was appointed by a government composed of civilian politicians and led by Tajuddin Ahmed.

But the point remains that our history was such that our country was born with a high risk of susceptibility to coups. To overcome that susceptibility, we needed judicious leadership. Something, regrettably, we did not get in our first years.

The Men Who Would Not be Kings

On August 15, 1975, the people of Bangladesh woke with a radio announcement that the country was under indefinite curfew and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was dead. Upon hearing the news, Major General Ziaur Rahman, the second highest ranking officer in the army, calmly told his juniors that while the president was dead, there was a vice president and the constitution should be upheld. Had the then army chief and other senior officers shared Zia’s mettle and rallied around Syed Nazrul Islam, history would have been different.

This was not the first time that Ziaur Rahman had appreciated that the armed forces should be subordinated to a civilian, constitutional government. His first radio speech in March 1971 claimed that he was heading a provisional government to lead the war against Pakistan. Recognizing that a civilian government would have greater legitimacy, his subsequent iconic speech claimed that the government of Bangladesh was being headed by Mujib. Zia’s radio broadcast was to be retrospectively subsumed into the Mujibnagar Proclamation, which affirmed the supremacy of the civilian political leadership over the soldiers spearheading the armed resistance against Pakistan.

Indeed, not just Zia, but the other commanders of the Mukti Bahini too accepted the political leadership. Many a country has been born through a violent conflict. It is hard to think of a case where the armed men voluntarily lowered their guns and gave up a seat at the table of power once victory was achieved, deferring to a leader who chose to remain absent from the battlefield. Except Bangladesh, that is, where the political power following December 16, 1971 did not emanate from the barrel of a gun.

Of course, political power returned to those wielding guns in August 1975, and soldiers eventually put Zia at the helm by November.

Consistent with his actions in 1971, and his counsel in August 1975, Ziaur Rahman worked towards suborning the military to a constitutional order. He believed that his transformation into a civilian politician would gradually establish a political culture that would avoid the sort of crises that could lead to coups. He also believed that his own military background, coupled with more resources for the army, would dissuade any potential coup-maker.

Whatever one thinks of his politics, it’s self-evident that Zia was a failure when it comes to demilitarization. Firstly, Zia was killed in a failed coup -- not the first one attempted against his regime. More importantly, his very success as a politician has resulted in several ambitious generals attempting to become a national saviour.

Zia’s successor as the army chief turned military strongman turned civilian politician was of course HM Ershad. He did tame the army, faced no coup threat, and the only time the army disobeyed him was when he asked it to put down a student-led urban uprising. That uprising ended his regime, as the army chief Lt Gen Nuruddin Khan, declined to assist Ershad by cracking down on the protesters.

It seems that the Bangladesh army would rather accept civilian leadership than use large scale violence against civilians.

And that makes sense. The army rank and file are drawn from the same socioeconomic class whence the university students come from. The captain or lieutenant in charge of firing on the demonstrations would quite likely have a cousin in his targets. Since the Ershad regime had no ideological foundation that the army was motivated to defend, it was always vulnerable to popular uprising.

In August 2007, a similar event played out (albeit in a much smaller scale), dooming Moeen U Ahmed’s political ambitions (of course, Moeen’s ambitions and abilities were dwarfed by those of Ershad, let alone Zia).

This gives us another way to demilitarize -- through protests and uprisings that makes a general to suborn himself to a civilian government.

The thing is, history suggests that successful uprisings are rare, and even the seemingly successful ones carry with them unintended consequences. And in Bangladeshi context, protests may lead to generals’ downfall, but they don’t seem to stop other generals’ rise.

Of course, we are again at a point in history where the armed forces are intricately involved in politics, and we need a way send the forces back to their bases.

The Monsoon Revolution that toppled the despotic Hasina regime involved protests that were much larger than those against Ershad, with reprisals far more violent. The army had been called in. There was strong discontentment among junior officers, and there were external pressures. In a staff conference on August 3, Gen Wakar-uz-Zaman had ordered his troops to not use force against civilians come what may -- that was the moment of military intervention.

Of course, this was followed by his assumption of responsibility -- his words, on the afternoon of August 5, 2024 -- in what must be one of the most soporific public address by a general in history.

Note the assumption of responsibility, not power. And indeed, this is more than just rhetoric. The army has been charged with maintaining law and order across the country because the civilian police force -- corrupted and used as an instrument of oppression by the Hasina regime -- practically collapsed in August 2024 and is yet to become fully functional.

If with great power comes great responsibility, is the reverse also the case?

Evidently not, according to Gen Wakar, who has not assumed power, nor suspended the constitution, promulgated martial law, not even a state of emergency.

Army of the People’s Republic

The distrust of the army is a general theme in our political discourse. This is understandable given our history, which should make us ever vigilant about Bonapartism in our cantonments. Bangladesh army, after all, was conceived in mutiny.

The army does, however, have in its institutional DNA a respect for civilian political authority that goes back to the very foundational moment. This is why Major Zia followed up on his initial radio speech in March 1971 with the reference to a government constituted under Mujib’s leadership. This is also why the Mukti Bahini fought under the authority of the Mujibnagar government, and then Bangladesh Army returned to barracks after the war was over. This is also why Zia said in the morning of August 15, 1975 that if the president is dead, the army should uphold the constitution and let the vice president take over.

Gen Wakar took responsibility on August 5, and worked with the youth leaders and the politicians to install a civilian government, declining to assume power. Evidently, he has been following  the principles that Zia adhered to in March 1971 and August 1975.

And yet, he still carries the responsibility of maintaining stability in the country as long as we remain in the current de facto extraconstitutional interregnum. We remain in an extraordinary situation where military is involved in politics. The question really is, how do we end this?

Our history suggests that two factors are needed to end military involvement in politics -- generals who would prefer to suborn themselves to a constitutional order, and civilian government capable of upholding the constitutional order. Zia followed the constitutional order in 1971, as did Nuruddin Khan in 1990. Zia had to craft a constitutional order by transforming himself into a civilian politician after 1975.

Thus far, Wakar is following in the footsteps of Zia 1.0 and Nuruddin, and wants to avoid the path of Zia 2.0, from all accounts. But there is only one way that will happen -- through an election and transfer of power to people’s representatives.

Wakar knows this, and has been asking for an election by winter 2025-26. Of course, an election is not a panacea. A free and fair election always carries the possibility of a result one might not like -- just ask Yahya Khan.

An election in Bangladesh might produce anything from a Jamaat landslide to a BNP landslide. It is clear that BNP is not keen on any major constitutional reform, which means we will remain vulnerable to the winner-takes-all politics that led to the Hasina despotism.

And the army has skeletons in its closet that an elected government, and a newly free civil society and the media, must scrutinise. It’s not just the civilian police that aided and abetted Hasina’s violent despotism — military intelligence tapped people’s phones and officers participated in gross human rights abuses. Perpetrators must face justice.

However, there is a particular nuance here that is not well appreciated, but one that could make it easier for us the achieve justice as well as demilitarization. With the advent of the Rapid Action Battalion, Hasina regime could use violence against dissidents without pitting the army as such against the civilian populace. For example, think about the events of Shapla Chattar in May 2013. The army rank-and-file is drawn from the same socioeconomic class whence the Hefazot gatherers came. Any given captain in charge of firing on the gathering might well have had a cousin in his target. The thing is, the army was never called in to disperse the crowd in Motijheel.

Rather, it was a particular unit of RAB that was deployed.

Now we know that routine RAB posting of majors and colonels acted as a screening device for the fallen regime to determine which officers and their men could be trusted for such sensitive assignments. The whole army needed never be involved in any political mess. Indeed, it was the necessity to deploy the army on 20 July 2024 to enforce shoot-on-sight curfew that doomed Hasina by putting the army squarely in the middle of a political mess.

And we have seen the army top brass co-operating with the tribunal set up to hold into account the perpetrators of the worst massacre in the history of independent Bangladesh. Despite provocations from social media troublemakers or politicians who don’t want an election because they are not ready to face the voters, the most consequential army chief since Zia has been a force for stability.

There is a broader acceptance of the fact an elected government is needed before Wakar and his soldiers can truly return to the barracks. And the election campaign seems to have begun. There are so many things depressing about today’s Bangladesh. At least one upside is that it appears political change in Bangladesh will have to come not from the barrel of a gun, but from popular will. May the guns of November remain silent.