[Saturday was the 12th consecutive
day in which crowds of protesters have poured into the Shahbagh site for
demonstrations. The movement began Feb. 5, when a coalition of bloggers called
for protests against a verdict by the special tribunal prosecuting people
accused of committing atrocities during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence
from Pakistan.]
By Jim Yardley
 |
Pavel Rahman/Associated Press
Mourners in Bangladesh on Saturday carried the coffin containing the body
of Rajib Haider, an organizer who was killed.
|
NEW DELHI — Tens of
thousands of people resumed mass demonstrations in Bangladesh’s
capital on Saturday, intensifying their demands for more severe punishment for
war criminals from the country’s 1971 liberation war, while also demanding
justice for the slaying of a blogger who had been a leading organizer of the
protests.
The coffin bearing the
body of Rajib Haider, an architect and blogger, was carried through the crowd
in a public funeral at Shahbagh, a major intersection in Dhaka, the national
capital. Bangladeshi television showed thousands of people kneeling in prayer,
chanting slogans or waving banners bearing Mr. Haider’s image. The crowd were
estimated at more than 100,000 people.
Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina visited Mr. Haider’s family on Saturday to express her condolences. Mr.
Haider’s body was discovered Friday night near his home, after he had been
savagely stabbed. His family has told the Bangladeshi news media that they
believed that he was killed for his role in the protests and his outspoken
criticism of the fundamentalist Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami.
“Haider’s killing
occurred at a time when the youngsters have awakened and united the whole
nation,” the prime minister told Bangladeshi reporters during her visit to the
family’s home. “Let me promise that we will not spare the killers.”
Saturday was the 12th consecutive
day in which crowds of protesters have poured into the Shahbagh site for
demonstrations. The movement began Feb. 5, when a coalition of bloggers called
for protests against a verdict by the special tribunal prosecuting people
accused of committing atrocities during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence
from Pakistan.
The tribunal had handed
down a life sentence to Abdul Quader Mollah, a Jamaat leader, after convicting
him of murder, rape and torture. Protesters, however, demanded that he be sentenced
to death, given the severity of his crimes. Many suspected that some sort of
political deal had been reached to spare Mr. Mollah’s life.
The bloody legacy of the
1971 war continues to cast a shadow over Bangladesh: an estimated three million
people were killed and many of those suspected of committing atrocities have
never been prosecuted. Besides the protests in Dhaka, demonstrations have
spread to other major cities and towns across the country.
By the weekend, protest
organizers had agreed to reduce their round-the-clock demonstrations to only
seven hours a day. But they reversed that decision after the killing of Mr.
Haider, and the crowds quickly swelled with college students, workers and other
citizens.
Meanwhile, followers of
Jamaat-e-Islami have staged often violent protests against the government,
which the party has accused of manipulating the tribunal as a way to go after
political rivals.
The presiding justice of
the tribunal has resigned over irregularities that arose over its proceedings.
RENEWED PUSH FOR AFGHANS TO MAKE PEACE WITH TALIBAN
[Interviews
with more than two dozen officials involved in the effort suggest a
fast-spinning process that has yet to gain real traction and seems to have
little chance of achieving even its most limited goal: bringing the Afghan
government and Taliban leadership together at the table before the bulk of the
American fighting force leaves Afghanistan in 2014.]
By Alissa J. Rubin and Declan Walsh
Frozen for months last year as another fighting season
raged in Afghanistan, and as election-year politics consumed American
attention, diplomats and political leaders from eight countries are now
mounting the most concerted campaign to date to bring the Afghan government and
its Taliban foes together to negotiate a peace deal.
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the
country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined
President Hamid Karzai of
Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for
fast-track peace talks. Weeks earlier in Washington, Mr.
Karzai met with
President Obama and committed publicly to have his representatives meet a
Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, to start the process.
Yet so far the energized reach for peace has achieved
little, officials say, except to cement a growing consensus that regional
stability demands some sort of political settlement with the Taliban, after a
war that cost tens of thousands of Afghan and Western lives and nearly a
trillion dollars failed to put down the insurgency.
Interviews with more than two dozen officials involved in
the effort suggest a fast-spinning process that has yet to gain real traction
and seems to have little chance of achieving even its most limited goal:
bringing the Afghan government and Taliban leadership together at the table
before the bulk of the American fighting force leaves Afghanistan in 2014.
“The year 2014 has begun to be seen as a magical date, both
inside and outside Afghanistan,” said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national
security adviser. “It’s difficult to find what is realistic and what is
illusion.”
That is not least because the major players — Pakistan,
Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban — have fundamentally different
visions of how to achieve a post-2014 peace, according to accounts of setbacks
in the process.
For the Afghans, the simple act of considering what a peace
deal might look like has inflamed factional differences that are still raw two
decades after the country’s civil war.
The Afghan High Peace Council, which Mr. Karzai has
empowered to negotiate for his government, has put forward a document called
“Peace Process Roadmap to 2015.” While many Afghan leaders say they have not
seen the proposal, first
reported by McClatchy
in December, those who have view it as outlining a striking number of potential
concessions to the Taliban and to Pakistan. They include provisions for the
Taliban’s becoming a political party and anticipation that some of the most
important government positions could be open to them, including provincial
governorships, police chief jobs and cabinet positions.
Some Western commentators as well as Afghans view this as
returning to the past or opening the door to a division of the country. Senior
members of the powerful Tajik and Hazara factions, both of which suffered
greatly under Taliban rule, charged that they had been left out of the
deliberations. When they are asked about striking a peace deal, they make
veiled references to a renewal of ethnic strife.
“The president is acting on an ethnic basis,” said Haji
Mohammed Mohaqiq, a powerful ethnic Hazara leader from northern Afghanistan.
“He is trying to win the hearts of a group of Taliban so they back him in the
election.”
Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun, the ethnic group predominant in
the Taliban. Mr. Spanta, the national security adviser, countered that any
realistic attempt to end a war involves compromise. “I think peace in a country
after 33 or 34 years has a price — a very heavy price,” he said. “But we are
paying a heavy price every day with our lives.”
One factor fueling the peace drive is that Pakistan, long
considered the Taliban’s silent sponsor, professes to have had a change of
heart. For more than a year, Pakistani generals and ministers have assiduously
courted their traditional rivals in Afghanistan, particularly from non-Pashtun
ethnic groups, as part of a strategy that, they say, favors an inclusive
democratic settlement after 2014 — even one that does not include the Taliban’s
full return to power.
But Pakistan’s biggest public gesture so far — the release
of 26 Taliban prisoners from Pakistani jails, intended as a trust-building
measure to help the peace process — has been shadowed by the old mistrust and
accusations of double-crossing.
The Pakistanis refused Afghan demands to release the
prisoners into Afghan custody, arguing it would scare the Taliban away. “The
moment we hand them over, it would be the end of the process,” said a senior
Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Instead, the Taliban prisoners were allowed to roam free,
prompting fears from some Afghan and some American officials that they would
simply return to the fight — at least two already have, according to one
Western official. At Chequers, the Pakistanis agreed to give the Afghans
one-week notice of all future prisoner releases.
“Pakistan is serious about facilitating the peace process,”
said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and political commentator,
citing growing fears that chaos in Afghanistan after 2014 would further
destabilize his country.
But Mr. Masood added that the military was also hedging its
bets by maintaining some Taliban links. “They want to retain a certain level of
leverage in talks,” he said. “That’s the crucial nuance.”
Hopes for Pakistani cooperation dimmed further on
Friday when Pakistan’s most senior cleric pulled out of a meeting planned
for March with Afghan clerics in Kabul, after disagreements over the role of
the Taliban. But Afghan clerics appeared to believe that the meeting would go
forward, illustrating the tentative and equivocal nature of the peace effort.
“We want them to invite the Afghan Taliban to the talks. Without them, peace is
not possible in Afghanistan,” said Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan
Ulema Council.
Afghan senior clerics said they remained hopeful that the
talks would be held and that a majority of Pakistani clerics would attend.
The most immediate obstacle to talks is an apparent
standoff between Mr. Karzai and the Taliban. The insurgents refuse to deal with
Mr. Karzai, whom they have branded as an American “puppet.” The president, in
turn, recently reiterated his demand that the Taliban must recognize the
legitimacy of his government and speak to the High Peace Council, which he has
appointed to negotiate with the insurgency and which has representatives from
many Afghan factions.
Mr. Karzai, forever fearful of being sidelined by a
Western-dominated talks process, has effectively
banned the kind of
informal discussions with Taliban
leaders that have
raised hopes over the past few months, including Afghan-centric conferences in
France and Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, and, earlier, in Germany and Japan — even though those
talks appeared helpful in easing tensions between longtime enemies.
Pressure from Mr. Karzai forced the United Nations to
abandon a planned “Track Two” meeting, an unofficial diplomacy session
involving Taliban representatives and Afghan political leaders, due to take
place in Turkmenistan this month, diplomats in Kabul and Islamabad said.
Within the Taliban, a fierce debate is under way between
commanders who support talks and those who have never given up on seeking
military victory, instead biding time until the Americans are mostly gone,
Taliban watchers say. The group’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, widely presumed
to be sequestered at his hide-out inside Pakistan, has been silent on the
subject. Even if he were to support a deal, it is unclear whether his movement
is sufficiently united to stick to it.
The Americans have quietly pledged not to move forward
without the Afghan government’s benediction, so previous efforts to build
confidence with the Taliban by releasing some of their prisoners from the
Guantánamo Bay prison camp are on hold, although the Americans retain the right
to consider a prisoner release for strategic reasons of their own. An American
soldier is being held by the Taliban, and there has been talk of a prisoner
exchange to free him.
In Afghanistan, the fighting has continued in some places
through the winter, and the start of the main spring fighting season is just
weeks away.
“We are stuck here, trying to work out how to take it
forward,” said a senior Western official in Kabul, discussing the talks
process. But even Western diplomats hold different views on how best to
advance, depending on whether they are based in Kabul or Islamabad, reflecting
the different outlooks in two capitals that are barely an hour apart by
airplane.
As the snows begin to melt in the high passes between
Pakistan and Afghanistan, senior Afghan officials say they will be watching the
Taliban’s moves closely to see if attacks this year slow down, remain the same
or accelerate. In the absence of more concrete progress, that means that the
pace of peace will, at least for now, most likely be determined by the forces
of the war.