Bangladesh is revolting, again

Naomi Hossain

Anyone with a Bangladesh connection remains fixated on the two week occupation of Shahbag junction and the wider movement it has spawned. Shahbag, in case you missed it, is a mass movement protesting that Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah got off too lightly with a life sentence on February 5th for convictions that link him to mass murders and child rape during the 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan; justice has long been delayed, and now most people think, it has been denied, too (as novelist Tahmima Anam explained last week . Even Mollah reckons he got off lightly: his infamous two-fingered gesture when leaving the courtroom will go down in history as the first hand gesture to launch a mass movement.

The need for justice for the genocide of 1971 is so glaring that most Bangladeshis choose to overlook the problems in the misleadingly-named International Crimes Tribunal (its mandate is domestic, not international; see http://bangladeshwarcrimes.blogspot.co.uk/). As the party that won the war (but arguably not the peace) for Bangladesh, the Government was only too pleased to change the law yesterday, allowing it to appeal decisions of the Tribunal it disagreed with.

Shahbag is being feted as the return of the spirit of ’71, and it has many of the qualities of that wonderful tragic time: cross-class, secular, youthful, nationalistic, idealistic (bar the pro-hanging bit). It probably will mark a shift in Bangladeshi political culture, as middle class and elite young people are getting a crash course in street politics they won’t unlearn in a hurry. There is a lot of social media and good visuals, all of which matter a lot in 21st century protest. And at a time when the organized religious right has stolen popular revolutions across the Middle East, it is sheer joy to see Jamaat on the backfoot. This is partly catharsis postponed: the Pakistan ‘tilt’ in US foreign policy and other reasons best known to the international community meant they discouraged a process of transitional justice 40 years ago, when it would have made most sense. War-torn, aid-dependent and starving, Bangladesh was in no position to insist back then. So the injustices of the war and postwar period were institutionalized in some of our more unique political pathologies, the personalized animosity between The Two Begums included.

So all in, there is a lot to like about Shahbag. It feels like something fresh. In fact the only audible ambivalence – other than among the fundies and war criminals – is among the good governance / human rights types, who see patterns we don’t like. The pro-hanging stance is a source of some discomfort. Mollah’s crimes would test the softest-hearted liberal’s views on capital punishment, yet it is probably the main reason the international media found Shahbag hard to make sense of. Two robust yet telling arguments are made in support of hanging. One is that the argument against capital punishment is a separate debate: this argument is that the crimes of Mollah et al merit the highest punishment under the law, which happens to be hanging. A second is that in a country in which every aspect of life is party politicized, Mollah and his gang would only have to wait for the government to change (which it does regularly) to get their release. So they need to be hanged to ensure they get the punishment they have earned. This was a reasonable enough argument before the Government changed the law to allow appeals; now it has changed the law, it is surely watertight.

Both pro-hanging arguments tell us something important about why Shahbag has happened, and why all other forms of important progressive change, big and small, tend to involve such unruly politics in Bangladesh. Both are arguments about the importance of rules, and both say it is important to break rules precisely because they are so important. This is the powerful logic of Bangladeshi political culture: a schizophrenic desire for order that requires the overthrow of order. All relevant examples of progressive political change – starting with the struggle against the Raj – feature a powerful sense of exceptionalism (‘this time is different’) coupled with an equally powerful desire for rules that work. In Bangladeshi politics the ‘state of exception’ is the norm, so rules are routinely broken precisely with the aim of achieving a more ordered state. A series of genuine political and economic crises through our history coupled with a political DNA imprinted with the successes of unruly politics makes this a winning repertoire it will be very hard to unlearn.

It is too early to be discerning larger meanings from Shahbag, but here is my ten takas’ worth: Shahbag will matter partly because it will reinforce the message that it is only through breaking the political (and indeed judicial) rules that progressive change can be achieved. Once again, we learn that we need a mass movement, not due process; a huge upsurge of human emotion, not rational rules or agreed, adhered-to systems or laws, if we are ever to resolve our problems. So let us hope that this time it really is different.

Naomi Hossain is a Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS.

Read other recent blog posts by Naomi Hossain:

• Prices that bounce
• No gong for Cameron’s Hunger Summit
• Why inflation is so unpopular
• Why predict a riot?

What were the PPSC blog’s Top 10 posts of 2012?

Stephen Wood

On behalf of the IDS Participation, Power and Social Change research team, I’d like to welcome back our readers to what we hope proves to be a fascinating year for our blog. Reflecting the outputs from several research projects and a number of pressing global debates and issues we are engaged in, the PPSC research team have some really interesting pieces in the pipeline in the next few months.  I hope you’ll continue to read and engage with the debates and discussion that arise from our articles.

However, in case you missed some of our blogs last year, I thought you might like to look at our Top 10 most popular pieces, as well as some of our articles that you might have missed! Please do share these with your networks, add comments if you haven’t already and as always, encourage others to subscribe to the blog!

Top 10 blog posts of 2012:

1. “Just do women’s empowerment”  by Naomi Hossain
2. “On having Voice and Being Heard: Participation in the Post-2015 Policy Process”  by Elizabeth Mills
3. “Spring uprisings calling spring academics: #bring books out to the streets” by Maria-Josep Cascant Sempere
4. “Global development: the new buzzword?” by Maria-Josep Cascant Sempere and Alex Kelbert
5. “Eleven predictions for Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood (if they continue to remain in power” by Mariz Tadros
6. “Post 2015: What do policymakers know about poverty?” by Joanna Wheeler and Danny Burns
7. “No gong for Cameron’s Hunger Summit” by Naomi Hossain
8. “Challenging attempts to silence civil society in Uganda” by Stephen Wood
9. “Are we ready for an ‘academic spring’?” by Danny Burns
10. “Digital activism in post-revolution Egypt: How relevant is online dissidence in the marathon for democracy?” by Hani Morsi

Excellent blog posts you might have missed in 2012:

• “Participatory visual processes in Nairobi’s margins” by Thea Shakrokh
• “States of Exception, A Tragedy in Unceasing Acts: Development Encounters” by Patta Scott-Villiers
• “Putting pleasure into safer sex interventions” by Stephen Wood
• “Can the North hear?” by Tessa Lewin
• “What keeps unpaid care off development agendas?” by Rosalind Eyben

Stephen Wood is a researcher on the Sexuality and Development Programme within the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS and can be found on Twitter as: StephenWood_UK

Read other recent blogs by Stephen Wood:

• The stark realities lying behind the Ugandan Anti-Homsexuality Bill
• Putting pleasure into safer sex interventions
• Diversifying our strategies for sexual equality
• Challenging attempts to silence civil society in Uganda

The real story after ‘Kony2012′

Marjoke Oosterom

NB: This post is an expanded version of a piece recently published on the African Arguments site.

The ‘Kony2012‘ documentary film was put online on March 5, by the US-based organisation Invisible Children. Within days the film raised $5m and within a week attracted 70m viewers worldwide. The film calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Acholi region of Uganda. Although the film shows the acute suffering of LRA victims, especially children, what really remains invisible are wounds of a society years after the LRA left.

Since its release, the film has been surrounded by social media hype and the film and the organisation behind it has been subject to much criticism. Concerns have been raised about Invisible Children’s finances; how the ‘slick Hollywood style’ plays straight into the emotions of the (American) audience when seeing children suffer; and how the simplicity of the story doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the war. Critics have made an effort to give details about the style of the campaign and have challenged the notion that a ‘US solution’ would be the right solution. Quite a bit has been said about problematic video advocacy and manipulation. But here is the real story for after Kony2012, as told in the recent film The Governance Gap to stop Kony does not put an end to the suffering of people.

The Governance Gap demonstrates the enduring – often invisible – legacy of the LRA war through the story of Nighty, a 44 year old Acholi woman. First of all, the Acholi developed a ‘survival mindset’ to cope with decades of violence, from both the LRA and the Ugandan military. Food and safety were people’s priority, not the ordinary governance processes. The conflict undermined the capabilities of the Acholi as citizens and their confidence to re-engage in democratic processes after war. Having lived in a militarised environment, people are still reluctant to raise issues they perceive to be sensitive. Moreover, they have little experience with a developmental state. For years, all they asked for was security and now that they have it, many won’t ask for more. This undermines the ‘demand side’ of governance; Acholi lack experience to actively engage in the reconstruction of their region and in decision-making. Nor are they actively invited to.

Second, it shows the gap in how Acholi perceive themselves as part of the country. ‘We are like slaves being brought into Uganda‘, Nighty says. The role of the Ugandan state is key in this. Acholi feel treated as second-class citizens. Current post-war reconstruction efforts do not sufficiently target these feelings.

Third, it shows the gap in post-conflict interventions in Acholi, which was one of the reasons to make The Governance Gap. Existing recovery efforts by the government and international donors focus on ‘hardware’; rebuilding physical infrastructure and services. This is important. Poverty in the Acholi region is far worse than in the rest of the country due to the war, and clearly visible. What is not visible is how the past experiences of war and life in the camps are carried on into the present. Interventions should therefore also focus on the ‘software’; building citizen capacities to re-engage in decision-making and democratic processes. And as The Governance Gap shows, reconstruction should include a process of national reconciliation in which the state acknowledges the atrocities committed by the military as well as its failure to end the war. Up to now citizens have few opportunities to have voice in the reconstruction process.

A campaign film such as ‘Kony2012′ may not be expected to provide the detailed nuance of a story. What it did, was remind the world of a ‘forgotten conflict’ where injustice had been done to thousands of people since the late 1980s (and don’t forget, not just by the LRA but also by the Ugandan government, and as some would argue… even by failing humanitarian actors). And true, Kony and his LRA continue to cause suffering. Every victim is one too many. They need to be stopped. They also need to be brought to justice, whether through the International Criminal Court or local forms of justice that seem more culturally accepted and appropriate.

But; if Kony is captured, the objective of Kony2012 campaign, this might solve a forgotten conflict, but not its aftermath. Since Kony left Uganda five years ago both the tangible and invisible consequences are still very real. And deserve as much attention as capturing Kony.

Marjoke Oosterom is a PhD candidate in the Participation, Power and Social Change Team at the Institute of Development Studies. She works on citizenship and participation in (post)conflict settings. The film The Governance Gap is based on her PhD research in the LRA affected areas of Northern Uganda, where she spent a year in a rural village just 10km from the border with South Sudan.

See more insights from Marjoke Oosterom’s research.

Reflecting back upon the PPSC team’s activities in 2011

Danny Burns

As 2012 begins, I want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy (and stress free) New Year. In this blog I want to talk offer a few flavours of things that members of the team have been working on; others you will see from recent contributions to the blog; more will follow over the next weeks…

An increasing area of interest for development actors at all levels, from grassroots movements to major donors, is how to better understand the complex, shifting and multi-layered social and political environments in which development and change occur. Many organisations are searching for more relevant tools of context analysis. Jethro Pettit and others have been working on new tools for power and political economy analysis. Popular frameworks like the Powercube (developed by John Gaventa) are being adapted and combined with other approaches. Recent learning partnerships on power have included Oxfam, Novib, Hivos, Christian Aid, the Swedish Cooperative Centre, and Trocaire. Work has also been carried out within the UK voluntary and philanthropic sector with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,  Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and the Carnegie UK Trust, Trust for London. This work has included three, year-long action learning processes with dozens of participants from these foundations and more than 20 of their partner organisations Training modules on power have adapted into Spanish and French and facilitated by IDS staff in universities and workshops in Spain, West Africa and Latin America.

The team’s work around “unruly politics” has been growing steadily through the “Summer of Unruly Reading” group facilitated by Akshay Khanna. We have been building a collective conceptual analysis within the team, and growing a work programme with Hivos and their partners.  We have also been building connections with people in the Occupy movement. Mariz Tadros continues to be closely engaged with the emerging situation in Egypt and other parts of North Africa.

PPSC has been contracted to engage in a number of new programmes this year. These include:

• a three year programme on gender and sexuality funded by SIDA (Sweden)
• a three year programme with SDC (Switzerland) – on participatory methodologies and developing the resource centre as a hub for materials on participatory methodologies
• a three year programme with SDC working with the IDS Governance team to support the work of their Decentralisation and Local Governance Network
• an extension of Gates Foundation funding for our Community Led Total Sanitation Hub

The PPSC team played a major role in designing and delivering the Bellagio initiative on the future of international development and philanthropy in pursuit of human well being which comprised a series of global dialogues, commissioned papers and a major international summit. PPSC fellows – Danny Burns (Delhi and Kinna, Kenya), Patta Scott-Villiers (Kinna, Kenya), Alex Shankland (Sao Paulo) and Mariz Tadros (Cairo) – facilitated four of the global dialogues. Georgina Powell Stevens co-ordinated the summit participation of around 200 participants. In June of this year Alex Shankland and I, will be facilitating another Bellagio conference on Indigenous health with colleagues from KIT (Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam).

Rosemary McGee has recently carried out a major review of accountability and transparency initiatives with John Gaventa. Naomi Hossain continues her longitudinal work with Oxfam and others on food price volatility; Joanna Wheeler, Peter Clarke and I are working on a six country action research programme with VSO and the international volunteering network FORUM on the impact of volunteering on poverty; Joanna Wheeler and Tessa Lewin have been working on a range of participatory video initiatives; Marzia Fontana has been working with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Lao PDR on a project which has brought Lao-based women’s groups and international organisations into dialogue with each other. Rosalind Eyben has been organising The Big Push Forward – an international initiative that links practitioners and researchers to identify and share strategies and approaches for fair assessment and evaluation. Patta Scott Villiers is leading a programme of action research in Karamoja Northern Uganda funded by Irish Aid. Alex Shankland is opening up new areas of work on the role of emerging powers in reshaping development especially through civil society.

Pathways to Women‘s Empowerment in the Middle East hosted a UN Women organized conference on “Pathways for Women in Democratic Transitions: International Experiences and Lessons Learned” in Cairo. The meeting featured Michele Bachelet and others discussing legal reform, women’s movements and gender-responsive accountability systems. Mariz Tadros was a speaker on the panel “Building Strong Women’s Movements in Democratic Transitions”.

The team has recently published a number of IDS Working Papers and Bulletins and will publish a bulletin on Action Research in International Development this spring.

Finally I want to say a huge thank you and good luck to John Gaventa and Kate Hawkins. John has been an inspiration to the PPSC team for more than a decade. He has joined the Coady Institute in Canada as their new Director. Kate Hawkins our sexuality programme convenor who has initiated and developed a great deal of exciting work within the team will be leaving IDS (but will continue to work with us as a free lancer). I would also like to welcome to the team Research Fellow Jerker Edstrom and Jas Vaghadia who will be working on our gender, masculinities and sexuality programmes. Welcome also to Naomi Vernon who is joining our CLTS team.

As I say, just a few flavours of the many different things that are happening. If you want to find out more, follow the links, or contact us directly.

Danny Burns is the Team Leader for the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS and will be publishing IDS Bulletin 43.3 ”Action Research in Development” in May 2012

We, the women who revolt

Mariz Tadros

I went to Tahrir Square at around 6:30pm expecting a small, marginal crowd of women who would have bothered (or dared) to respond to the calls for a general protest against the brutality of the army in stripping, molesting and harassing female protestors a few days earlier. There were many reasons to expect a low turnout: for one, most Egyptians are sick and tired of protests and they want to get on with life. They are exhausted, energy depleted and believe enough is enough. For another, the army and the Islamists had managed to turn public opinion against them: they were the thugs, the unruly ones, the dissidents, those who disrupt, who are keeping the rest of the population from moving forward – or so the mainstream media has people to believe. Second, the army has no qualms in using its military clout to terrorize and obliterate and the images are enough to send chills down anyone’s spine, let alone go out and face them.  Third, any protest to claim women’s rights is usually small. Lets be honest here: the country does not exactly have a civil or political society that is sympathetic to women’s issues. But instead I found Tahrir Square full of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands of women congregated despite the fact that Tahrir Square was completely dark – presumably a strategy by the army to dissuade people from joining and to allow it to strike away from the public and international gaze.

In order for me to join the protests I first I had to pass through the rows of men who had formed a cordon around the women protestors. A few months ago when I joined a protest in Tahrir Square, I refused to bow to the idea of men on the outside, women on the inside. I had felt enraged: the women don’t need protecting, we are perfectly capable of protecting ourselves, thank you very much. But this time it was different – the army had shown that they will target women specifically to molest, to grope, to humiliate. And we needed the strength of numbers.

This was a deeply moving demonstration. The women in Tahrir Square were of all ages, veiled, non-veiled women, those with children, those barely able to walk. The men who formed the cordon were equally diverse. Women were leading in shouting the slogans, and people answered back. While women took part fully in the uprisings that led to the ousting of Mubarak, this demonstration was different: they were more than participants, they were the leaders. They spoke, and everyone listened. They shouted and everyone- men and women responded back . And it was not just the urban women who were leading, it was the village women in their black gallabiyyas who were raising their voices and everyone answering back even louder. As people marched around and around in Tahrir Square carrying banners against the military, carrying a large picture of the woman who was stripped and dragged from her hair across the square by a soldier, while another soldier was shown about to stomp her bare stomach with his shoe-the determination not to let this rest was strong. I heard a young man say to another “my God, I never thought these women could be so strong. They are mightier than the Ultras” (The Ultras were the football club supporters who had protected Tahrir Square from Mubarak’s thugs during the 18 days uprisings).  Another asked his companion: “do you think these women will lead the next revolution in this country?”

At some point, the protesters were joined by hundreds of sheikhs from Egypt’s ultra-conservative Islamic establishment, Al Azhar, to express their anger at the murder of Sheikh Emad who was shot dead by a soldier’s bullet while peacefully protesting a few days earlier. The voices in Tahrir Square were united in their call: “Down, down with the military regime”, “The revolution is on-going” “Revolution, revolution until victory” people chanted, and “Leave! Leave! Leave!”.

But this was not a call for general freedom, this was a call to redeem the women of Egypt who had been sexually assaulted by sending out a clear message “Raise your head high, you are more honourable than those who tread on you.” This slogan was chanted over and over again. The women who were stripped, who were assaulted need not bow their heads low in shame, they were to be recognized as heroines: their flesh was exposed but they were now clothed with greater dignity and respect. There is no shame but the shame of the army: “Instead of protecting us, you strip us!” women chanted and in a show of defiance, continued: “Is this manliness? Come and strip us all, we are here in Tahrir Square”

And for those who had any illusion that this was about women united, the slogan chimed loud and clear “Not the [Muslim] Brothers, not the [political] parties, it is the women in Tahrir!”. Of course beneath the display of collective will, there are differences – differences that are probably significant enough to explain why this women’s movement joined by hundreds of sympathetic men is not a feminist movement.

When one of the women shouted out “There is no God but Allah, the martyr is the beloved of God”, I yelled back  “No! No! No! Madaniyya, madaniyya [civil]”.

The young women next to me looked at me in bewilderment “What is wrong with There is no God but Allah?”

“Because it is a religious slogan. And this protest is civil. There are hundreds of civil slogans we can use instead”

“But the Christians don’t mind.”

“How do you know that?” I answered

“Because they have not objected. Anyway, when they don’t like a slogan, they can just keep quiet and not reply back with the others”

So much for inclusive democracy.

The warning to El Mosheer Tantawy, the commander of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) was clear and loud: “O ye Mosheer, be you patient, the women of Egypt will dig your grave”. The words that terrorized the population were thrown back, reclaimed and given new meaning, it was no longer the authorities that pronounce the red lines, new ones were being proclaimed in Tahrir:  “The women of Egypt are a red line!”.

For the passers-by, the women protestors pointed to the rows of men who had formed the cordon: “Here are the men, where are the rest of you [men]?”. The pleas to Egyptians was made over and over again: “Come down now, join us, we will not bow down, we will raise our voices”. But the plea mostly fell on deaf ears. The call for a revolution in every alley, in every street was not having the inspirational impact it was supposed to generate: the authorities had allowed the general security situation to collapse to a point where chaos was feared by all, and stability revered above all. Then again, you never know what happens next. Within and outside Tahrir Square, many are saying: a second revolution is going to happen so watch this space.

Mariz Tadros is a Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS and will be publishing IDS Bulletin 43.1 ”The Pulse on Egypt’s Revolt” in January 2012