General Command

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Camp Rules
In political terms, the military's biggest failure in the many months it has held sway over the country has been its inability to smash the power of the AL and BNP. Efforts to force Hasina and Zia into the type of exile imposed upon Pakistan's late former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, proved abortive. (Hasina, however, was released to much acclaim on parole on June 11 to seek medical treatment in the U.S.) Also unsuccessful have been attempts to lure away party stalwarts. Given the aura of their pedigreed leaders, the two parties still command a vast following among Bangladesh's population — a combined 80% by most estimates — and the length of the two begums' detention has drawn the ire of millions. As elsewhere in impoverished South Asia, populist dynasties hold strong. "Hasina had her shortcomings, but she is a legendary figure," says Abdur Razzaq, a prominent member of the Awami League. "Charisma is very important; it really means something."

As the caretaker government seeks to cleanse the country's politics, many in Dhaka worry about the ensuing assault on democratic rights. By some accounts, a total of 440,000 people have been rounded up under the emergency, with less than a quarter still detained. Journalists formally complained a month ago of a clampdown on press freedoms: some TV talk shows have been suspended, while more than a few editors are practicing self-censorship after receiving communiqués from military intelligence. "Everywhere you look there are watchmen outside your door," says Adilur Rahman Khan, member of Odhikar, an outspoken human-rights group. "Just open your mouth and you're liable to be jailed," says Khondkar Delwar Hussain, secretary general of the BNP. In recent raids across the country over the past few weeks, the government has arrested around 25,000 people, including many local party activists, on vague grounds of curbing criminal activity. An Amnesty International report released last month condemned the "severely restricted" state of human rights in Bangladesh, citing, among other cases, the torture of journalists by state security forces.

Growing frustrations with the military come as Bangladesh is reeling from a colossal crisis in food security. The price of rice has soared 60-80%, a rise that spells hunger for millions. "This is not even a question of choice for the poor," says the AL's Razzaq. It's a global problem, but Moeen knows all too well that in this case, as he says, "bread is as important as freedom." The caretaker government has frantically tried to address the crisis, draining waterlogged lands for cultivation and growing alternate crops like potatoes in between harvests. But little can be done to avert the fact that, over the past three years, rising inflation has led to an additional 8.5% of the country's households falling below the poverty line (nearly half are already there). Uncertainty over the caretaker government's future has also led to a dip in foreign investment compared to previous years, according to a recent study published by the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a Dhaka-based think tank.

A Sense of Unease
The political parties have seized upon the government's diminishing credibility. "We're in grave economic peril," says Hussain of the BNP. "It's time for democratic unity." His party and the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that has existed for decades in direct antagonism to the secular-left Awami League, took the unprecedented step of calling for even Hasina's release from prison. They bridle at the caretaker government's undemocratic attempts to reform democracy from the top down. "Just see the U.S.," says Jamaat's Ali Ahsan Mojaheed. "It took hundreds of years to establish fair democratic norms there. We also need time."

The sense of solidarity that these parties now share flies in the face of their past: since the restoration of electoral politics in the 1990s, Zia's BNP and Hasina's AL alternated divisive spells in power, terms that were marked by bitter partisanship, rampant corruption and little to no sense of national consensus. "We need to reduce the cost of electoral defeat. [Elections] used to be winner-take-all with the loser in the streets," says Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Chowdhury. To that end, the government has attempted to engage political parties in an ongoing series of dialogues focused on constitutional reform, pivotal in the advisers' estimation to strengthening democratic governance. But the main parties, including the BNP and Jamaat, have so far refused to join in the discussion — though with Hasina's recent release, the AL has warmed to government overtures.

Many Bangladeshis suspect that Moeen and the advisers are happy to press ahead with both local and national elections, crafting a government of "national unity" with handpicked candidates and without the backing of any of the major parties. If Hasina and Zia are convicted of crimes before December, they'll be disqualified from competing in the polls. This, reckons one Western diplomat, may finally break the parties and lead to a series of significant defections.

But another scenario is also possible: that the growing outrage among the political parties and their cadres may spill onto the streets in the form of mass people-power protests. "If they want to make trouble," says Moeen, "let them" — but that belies very real concerns on the part of the government of the threat of widespread dissent. Across the walls of Dhaka University's sprawling campus are murals of activists and revolutionaries breaking their chains and fighting the state. Military rule may be encoded in Bangladesh's DNA, but so too is resistance to it.

The government has made no promises about when it will lift the emergency. Shying away from democratic commitments, Moeen is far more eager to talk about building effective leadership in Bangladesh and educating its vast, illiterate masses — as he himself puts it — "so that they don't keep on cutting off their own feet." Such a tone is fitting for a man who styles himself the redeemer of his country. "You can judge the people of a nation by the type of leaders they select," he concludes. Most Bangladeshis are wondering when they'll really get that chance.