Bangladesh is not a place with much going for it. About a third
of the country floods each monsoon season. Only 30% of the
population has access to electricity. Corruption is rampant. The
government is heavily dependent on aid from the U.S. and Japan.
Much of the labor force is exported to Malaysia and the Arabian
Peninsula states. Radical Islamism has been a problem for about the
past six years.
The one thing Bangladesh does have going for it is democracy.
The country has been democratic for the past 14 years, though
hardly a commercial for elected government. The leading opposition
party, the Awami League, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party,
which dominates the ruling coalition government, differ little on
most domestic policy questions but are violently polarized over
historical grudges: The parties are led by women who are,
respectively, the daughter of a leader in the movement for
independence from Pakistan (achieved in 1971) and the widow of a
man alleged to be complicit in the 1975 assassination of said
leader (which paved the way for 15 years of military rule). Though
the 2001 election was called generally free and fair by outside
observers, 140 people were killed in violence surrounding the
campaign season.
Since spreading democracy in the Muslim world is a critical
component of the Bush Administration’s strategy against Islamist
terrorism, it is instructive to look at how a barely-functional
democracy like Bangladesh, with its 83% Muslim population, handles
violent radicalism.
Last week 434 bombs went off across Bangladesh, each found with
a leaflet from the banned terrorist organization
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen advocating Islamic law for Bangladesh, along
with denunciations of the U.S. and Britain. Two people were killed
— a rickshaw-puller and a ten-year-old boy — and more than 100
were injured; the casualty count stayed relatively low because most
of the bombs, fortunately, contained no metal shrapnel and were
little more than glorified firecrackers.
Many Bangladeshis are furious at the BNP for the widespread
security failure; that two hardline Muslim parties are part of the
ruling coalition doesn’t help matters. The AL and other opposition
parties called for a one-day strike in protest, and the country was
more or less shut down on Saturday. The protests were, by
Bangladeshi standards, relatively peaceful; no one was killed and
only a few dozen, at most, were injured in clashes with police.
Democracy, obviously, is no panacea against violence, but it can
be a safety valve; the ability to take one’s grievances to the
electorate greatly narrows the appeal of radicalism. A poll in
June showed 39% of Israelis opposed to the Gaza disengagement. Last
week, only a small percentage actively resisted the dismantling of
settlements; most anti-disengagement Israelis accepted their
democratic loss as fair (and some actually served as soldiers
executing the disengagement policy). And because democracy is the
only system where the views of those unwilling or unable to
physically fight for them make a difference to the direction of
public policy, it is the most effective way to marshal a moderate
majority. That the millions of Bangladeshis who oppose Islamism
have a legitimately elected opposition to rally around is a luxury
that ought not be taken for granted. A major anti-terror crackdown,
or an AL victory in the next election, seems inevitable.
The odds are that Iraq, and Afghanistan, will have to deal with
Islamist violence for quite some time. Even if the democracies we
leave behind are as troubled as Bangladesh’s — and the odds are
still good that they won’t be — they will be better equipped to
fight our common Islamist enemy than they would be without
democracy. And leaving behind regimes that can fight terror is
almost as important as defeating those that sponsor it.
