Bangladesh’s army has won paludits as leading United Nations peacekeepers, but the January coup attempt against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has exposed lurking religious extremism within its ranks.

Coffins of the 57 army officers killed in an armed forces mutiny in 2009. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

At a rare press conference in the Dhaka cantonment, Brig. Gen. Masud Razzaque, flanked by senior officers, said: “Specific evidence has been unearthed that a group of retired and serving officers have been involved in the conspiracy to topple the democratic government through use of the armed forces.”

Razzaque said two of the alleged conspirators had admitted to having connections with the outlawed political party, Hizbut-Tahrir (HuT), suggesting that religious extremists continue to maintain links within the country’s armed forces.

The HuT website openly urges army officers to “Remove Hasina, the killer of your brothers and establish the Khilafah to save yourselves and the Ummah from subjugation to U.S.-India.”

“Initial investigations suggest that links with non-resident Bangladeshis could not be ruled out,” Razzaque said, hinting that forces inimical to Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation from Pakistani rule were at work and may also have had a hand in the coup conspiracy.

The HuT is known to have strong links with Bangladeshi expatriates in Britain along with other Islamist groups such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) opposed to the professed secularism of the AL and to the 1971 liberation.

This was the first time that the defence establishment has admitted to extremists in its midst, though the country has seen a series of coups, starting with the one in which Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the founder of Bangladesh and father of Sheikh Hasina was killed.

Indeed the army is known for the deep divide that exists between officers who fought for Bangladesh’s liberation and those who did not and this has fomented no less than 19 coup attempts.

Significantly, the January coup attempt follows the execution of a number of officers convicted for the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur, 40 years ago.

Hasina has also put on trial several religious political leaders, including the former chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), Golam Azam, for alleged collaboration in the genocide committed by the Pakistani military in trying to bludgeon Bangladesh’s struggle for independence.

The JeI is one of the key allies of the four-party main opposition led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former prime minister Khaleda Zia.

The path for the trials was cleared on Mar. 25, 2010 when the government set up a special tribunal to try the religious leaders for their alleged crimes against humanity committed during the country’s liberation war four decades ago.

Five of the JeI’s top leaders, including its party chief, Prof. Motiur Rahman Nizami and secretary general, Ali Ahsan Mojaheed, both former ministers in BNP government, are currently being held in prison.

Soon after taking office for the second time in January 2009, the Hasina government banned 12 religion-based organisations suspected to have strong militant bases across the country.

Among them was Jamaat-ul Mujahideen, Bangladesh (JMB), the second largest Islamist organisation and one that is believed to have links to the banned Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

After the JMB carried out 500 synchronized bombing attacks in almost all the 64 districts of the country on August 17, 2005, police have arrested over 200 of its members.

Many of its leaders have been executed, including its founder – Shaikh Abdur Rahman and the man known to be second in command, Siddiqul Islam, popularly known as ‘ Bangla Bhai’.

But, the arrest of about 100 JMB activists since October 2008 and the unearthing of huge caches of firearms, explosives and ammunition demonstrated the JMB’s ability to regroup, recruit and reorganise.

The Hasina government faces increasing challenges in restoring a secular outlook for the country’s polity originally promoted by her father and the Awami League (AL) party as opposed to the more Islamist face of the opposition.

Significantly, Khaleda Zia alleged at a rally held in Chittagong on Jan. 9 that the government had kidnapped certain army officers and was torturing them. While Khaleda’s statement was refuted by the army, it admitted to trying officers for ‘dereliction of duty’.

Over the years Hasina’s pro-liberation, secular AL party has faced violent challenges from the so-called Islamic nationalist and anti-liberation forces which apparently also do not believe in democratic principles.

Hasina’s government has also been extending friendly gestures to India which helped Bangladesh in its struggle for freedom from the military junta then ruling Pakistan.

After being swept back into office in January 2009 with a two-thirds majority in parliament, Hasina’s 14-party grand alliance restored the four fundamental secular principles of the constitution enacted by her father.

That step angered many religion-based political parties. In February 2009, the national border guards, then known as the Bangladesh Rifles mutinied killing some 70 people including 57 army officers.

The revolt was believed to have been orchestrated by anti-liberation forces and the names of the religious extremist groups were not far down the list of suspects.

It is unlikely that the Bangladesh army would venture to take over power from a democratically elected government – that would jeopardise its prized role as top international peacekeeper – but it will certainly have to deal with extremism within its ranks, as the January events show.

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Elizabeth Zainab Kargbo was a successful young woman, eight months pregnant and working in Sierra Leone’s civil service, when she had her first seizure.

Elizabeth Zainab Kargbo suffers from epileptic seizures. Suffers in Sierra Leone are often undiagnosed and unaware that their condition is treatable. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

No one knew what it was. She lost her job and the baby, and as the attacks kept coming, most of her friends, neighbours and family stayed away.

“When I get the attack and drop down, people are so afraid of me, they run,” says Kargbo.

“They say, ‘Oh, don’t touch her, don’t touch her, it will spread.’ So sometimes when I drop down, I have damages to my face.”

Kargbo has epilepsy, a neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people in this West African country of just over six million. Most are never diagnosed and only about 2,500 of them receive medical treatment. Sufferers here are often isolated, driven from their communities, and unaware that what they have is a highly treatable medical condition.

After Kargbo began experiencing seizures, her mother took her to a traditional healer. She was taken into a room and told to remove her clothes – and made to promise that she would not tell anyone what happened.

She wanted to get better, so she promised not to tell, took off her clothes and was molested.

Despite her promise, Kargbo told her mother. That was the end of traditional healers, she says with a smile.

Max Bangura, the coordinator and founder of the Epilepsy Association of Sierra Leone, has heard dozens of stories like Kargbo’s.

Seizures are often attributed to witchcraft, curses or demonic possession, says Bangura, whose association provides counselling and treatment to epilepsy patients and runs a small vocational training programme.

There is widespread belief that it is contagious, which further isolates people with epilepsy. Bangura says even those who have gone to medical centres for treatment have been referred to traditional healers because medical staff weren’t aware of the symptoms of epilepsy.

People with epilepsy are often driven from schools, jobs, homes, and subjected to traditional treatments that, he says, are “tantamount to torture” – cuts, burning, inhaling or drinking potions. One of the association’s members survived drinking two litres of kerosene. Girls and young women are subjected to sexual assault as a purported “cure,” says Bangura.

Treatment with phenobarbital, an anti-epileptic drug, costs 10,000 Leones (about two dollars) per month in Sierra Leone and is up to 70 percent effective in controlling epilepsy. But few people access it – and many cannot afford it.

“People do not come out. People do not want to be identified as having epilepsy,” says Bangura. “The stigma attached to the disease makes people not go to health centres because they don’t want anyone to know.”

The challenges of treating epilepsy in Sierra Leone are daunting. The country’s fledgling healthcare system struggles to cope with far more common — and deadly — afflictions such as malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory infections with little infrastructure and few professional health staff. It is one condition competing with many others in a system painfully short of resources.

Dr. Radcliffe Durodami Lisk, the only neurologist in a nation of about six million, runs the Epilepsy Project, which works with Bangura’s association to provide care throughout the country.

Funded by a British charity, the project runs three clinics in Freetown and one in Bo, the country’s second-largest city, which operate out of government hospitals. Workers travel to other areas of the country each month to disperse medication and provide care.

Sierra Leoneans have higher rates of epilepsy than most Western countries, due to risk factors such as meningitis, traumatic births and cerebral malaria.

Many patients cannot afford drugs, even at a cost of two dollars a month, says Lisk.

“It would be great if we could provide free treatment because most of these patients cannot work – no one will hire them,” says Lisk. “We end up giving quite a few patients free medication and trying to absorb the cost.”

But the biggest challenge, says Lisk, is convincing people to come forward and access treatment.

“They do not believe it’s a medical illness,” he says. “They don’t even think of going to see a doctor because as far as they are concerned, this is a demon or witchcraft.”

On a narrow lane behind a mosque in eastern Freetown, a handful of students lean over sewing machines under an awning that juts out from a partially finished building. The epilepsy association’s headquarters doubles as Bangura’s family home, and a vocational training centre, dubbed “The Love Institute” for about 20 people with epilepsy.

Here, people with epilepsy learn trades and are offered counselling, support and treatment. Bangura has been running the association for 11 years with funds from donations and membership contributions.

Chernor Dumbuya was carrying a basket of cooking items home from the market in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for his mother the first time he had a seizure. Thirteen at the time, Dumbuya dropped his load and fell to the ground with froth coming from his mouth. Everyone ran away.

The attacks kept coming, and no one knew what was causing them. Neighbours and friends were afraid of him.

“They all went far away,” says Dumbuya, who is now 28. “They all stayed away.”

Since starting treatment, he has had almost no attacks, and was the first graduate of the association’s three-year training programme, finishing in 2007 and carrying on to work as a tailor.

After years of living in isolation, Kargbo began taking classes here a year ago and the association connected her with treatment. She gets the money to pay for her medication from her church.

“If you expose (your illness), you get help.”

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Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest remains a centre of contention as the local community here plan to take their chief to court next week over a controversial 50-year land lease to a mining company.

The Gola Forest is bisected by several of Sierra Leone's major rivers. Credit: Courtesy of David Zeller/Gola Programme

Mining companies have long coveted the land here for its iron ore potential as deposits in Bagla Hills are estimated to be worth 150 billion dollars.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that because of this natural resource, Sierra Leone’s small economy will have one of the biggest growth rates in the world at a staggering 51.4 percent in 2012, on the back of legal iron ore activity and exports.

But the community of Tonika remains furious about the deal.

“The chief is guardian of the land – he can’t sell it,” Alfred Williams, a member of the Tonkia Descendants Association, told IPS. Williams says the local community knew nothing of the sale until it appeared in the local media following Sable Mining’s statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Sable Mining issued a statement in May announcing its purchase of an 80 percent interest in Red Rock Mining, which had apparently bought the lease for 206 square kilometres of Bagla Hills from the local Tonkia Paramount Chief.

But the lease has become even more controversial as the country’s President Ernest Bai Koroma declared the 75,000-hectare rainforest a protected area and a national park in December. The forest type is one of the world’s 25 global bio-diversity hotspots.

The government has also launched an investigation into what they describe as an illegal land sale.

Kate Garnett, from the government’s Forestry Conservation and Wildlife Management Unit, says Bagla Hills “is a case of Sable Mining having been deceived by a local man.” The government issued a statement saying that any sale of Bagla Hills, as well as mining in the rainforest, is illegal.

The government’s Director of Mines Jonathan Sharkar said that the Ministry of Mineral Resources has never dealt with Sable Mining Africa.

“Sable Mining have never applied for a mining concession in this country – we have no dealings with them,” Sharkar says. He also points out that any land rights are also only surface rights – any minerals are owned by the government.

A Sable Mining spokesperson, who did not want to be named, confirmed that they do not hold a current mining licence for Bagla Hills.

Sable Mining would not comment on the land rights and referred IPS to their statements from earlier this year. These claim land registration documents proving ownership of Bagla Hills by Sable Mining have been filed at the land registry. The government, however, denies this.

But the case still dominates talk shows in this West African country. It led to a local demonstration, and in September the country’s Resident Minister William Juana Smith requested journalists refrain from reporting stories that had “the potential of creating conflict.” He had threatened that serious action would be taken against anyone doing so.

But the issue remains volatile as it concerns the livelihoods of the community. The Tonika community once made a good living mining gold in the forest, selling timber, farming and hunting. This will now stop because of the lease, says Williams.

“While the chief gets rich, people in Tonkia are left poor and aggrieved, without schools, hospitals and jobs. Young people need work – some of us say through mining, some say through the Gola reserve,” says Williams.

Augustine Sannoh, from the civil society movement, East Kenema, says that the chief has mobilised a small band of pro-mining individuals.

“He continues to galvanise support – even though there’s a court case to answer. The problem is that local people struggle to see the financial benefits of Gola Rainforest National Park. You can now only take firewood and fish for personal consumption. You can make honey or rattan products to sell, but these have a lower economic value than hunting and mining. It’s a big local dispute still.”

Williams also says the Gola Forest Programme (GFP) that manages the national park is yet to help people find alternative livelihoods as promised.

GFP’s Guy Marris denies this.

“We’ve supported with roads, bridges, culverts, and medical centres,” he says. Marris says the GFP recognises that providing alternative livelihoods to the community is a key strategy to forest preservation.

Plans are underway for various projects including carbon trading “which could earn tens of millions dollars,” as well as small enterprise development, and eco-tourism.

“It’s a process, it’ll take time, but in the meantime, we are mandated to represent government – no mining is permitted by individuals or by companies,” says Marris.

However, Garnett says communities still believe that mining will transform their lives.

“There are many examples where only environmental destruction has been left behind,” Garnett says.

She says the Forestry division was planning to take communities on visits to mined sites, “to show how mining can leave little positive community impact.”

“The law says no mining and we agree with conservation for now, but I have to say people want mining here because it is a quick way of getting money. No one wants to be poor, everyone wants to be rich,” Musa Taimeh, chairperson of the Tonkia Descendants Association, says.

Natalie Ashworth, from watchdog group Global Witness, says that people have an unrealistic expectation of what mining can offer them.

“People think it is going to change everything and provide thousands of jobs, which of course it is not. I doubt Sable Mining would have acquired Red Rock if they did not think they would be able to apply for a mining license at some point. As long as Sierra Leone is poor and has so few options, Gola Rainforest will always be threatened,” she says.  

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