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The military's expanded presence within the country's administration will be very hard to remove now that it is becoming entrenched. The extent to which the military has spread its tentacles is visible in the country's various bodies that administer sports. High-ranking armed forces officials have captured key positions within these bodies, and no doubt plan to regiment the country's athletes and force them to produce heroics for the glory of the nation. Military dictatorships have a nasty habit of making use of sports for their self-aggrandisement and political gain.
The army chief, Gen. Moeen U Ahmed, has added the positions of chairman of the National Sports Council and president of the Bangladesh Olympic Association to his portfolio. While it is true that the latter post has traditionally been occupied by armed forces' top dogs, there are other recent appointments that verge on the absurd.
The Bangladesh Hockey Federation is now being headed by the chief of the air force, Vice Marshal Ziaur Rahman Khan. Apparently it does not matter whether he has any background in or understanding of hockey, unless, of course, this is a strategic and military decision? Will Bangladesh's airmen soon be adding hockey sticks to their combat arsenal?
Similarly, the country's naval chief, Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam, has now been appointed to head the Swimming Federation, replacing retired Bangladesh Navy Commodore M. A. Kabir, who was himself appointed as the federation's chairman only a few weeks ago, removing the previous elected body. While there appears to be more logic in this appointment than that to the Hockey Federation (one would hope that persons serving in the navy would see the value of swimming), the appointment of an acting head of a key military branch to a sports body is highly questionable. Unless, again, there is a strategic purpose that we are not aware of? Perhaps the navy's budget is under threat and it will be seeking to replace its current vessels with armoured and weaponized swimmers in the future?
Maj. Gen. Ahsab Uddin, who is the Ninth Infantry Division's general commanding officer, has recently become the president of the National Shooting Federation. In taking the position, the general admitted that he didn't have sufficient knowledge about shooting (as a sport). If past practices are anything to go by, we can imagine that the targets used in the sport might soon be replaced by Bangladeshi citizens. The army is well known for using extra-judicial killings as a means of maintaining so-called law and order in the country. Persons are frequently arbitrarily shot and killed by the military, and then it is claimed that they were caught in the "crossfire" of a shoot-out with armed criminals or suchlike. This problem is so prevalent that the term "crossfire" has entered everyday language as a synonym for murder -- the army and police even threaten people with being "crossfired" unless they do their bidding.
Furthermore, the chief of the army's General Staff, Maj. Gen. Seena Ibn Jamali, has been named president of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, with retired Lt. Col. Md. Abdul Latif Khan being appointed as the board's vice president. Another retired army officer, Lt. Cmdr. A. K. Sirker, has been named general secretary of the Basketball Federation. It is currently a little difficult to comprehend the strategic, military value of cricket or basketball.
Of Bangladesh's 39 sports federations and associations, the most important ones have already been filled to the brim with military top brass. The 30 remaining ones, including the bodies administering tennis and volleyball, will likely swiftly fall prey to the medal-hungry military.
Why is the sports sector being targeted in this way by the military? It could be that this represents the beginning of a fully-blown, long-term take-over of the country by the military, which raises serious concerns. The officers that have taken over the various sports bodies have begun using language that gives credence to such fears. They have promised to "remove the rubbish of the past," as if presaging a new order in the country that is here to stay.
They have already gone beyond mere words on several occasions. For instance, the members of the national cricket team who were named to represent Bangladesh at the sport's Twenty20 World Cup to be held in September in South Africa, have been forced to undergo military commando training. From Aug. 11 to 16, all members of the squad were sent to the School of Infantry and Tactics in the Jalalabad Cantonment in Sylhet. The cricketers were seen in media reports rappelling down cliffs, jumping from a high platform into a lake and crossing eight hills one by one within the stipulated 16 minutes in a so-called "tiger chase" event. There is, in reality, little need for rappelling, high-diving or tiger-chasing in cricket.
The military appointees do not appear to be bound by the inconvenient boundaries of sanity, and will likely repeat such training exercises for the cricketers in the future, and may extend these to other sports. As the military's tentacles spread further, will we see other sectors also being forced into boot camp? Picture if you will the country's musicians, film stars, teachers and surgeons, all in commando attire and jumping into lakes...and weep.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human right defender of Bangladesh who has been working on human rights issues in the country for more than a decade and who was a journalist in Bangladesh in the 1990s.)
