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Washington Meet

Donors rethink aid strategy for rise in militancy

Inam Ahmed
For the first time in Bangladesh's history, donors are sitting in Washington in a high profile meet to take some serious decisions on their aid strategy against the back-drop of their heightening concerns about deteriorating governance, rising lawlessness and the fear that fundamentalist militancy gaining grounds because of the government's inertia.
According to highly placed diplomatic sources, a large group of European donors, an influential European country having substantial aid involvement in Bangladesh and some Scandinavian countries want to persuade the multilateral donors and the US to take a tough line on aid and link it with greater response to good governance and human rights and restraining
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militants, all issues of serious international concerns.
Their logic is based on their view that Bangladesh government has b e e n t o o l e n i e n t t o militants, which led to the recent spate of armed attacks and killings. The failure to solve any of the recent political carnage has fuelled their concern.
The meeting in Washington on February 23-24 is being jointly organised by the World Bank, the EU and the US State Department. US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca will be present at the meeting.
According to information available, these countries and blocs, which gave Bangladesh $60 million in FY03, want the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the US to rethink their financial assistance to Bangladesh. They feel that the two multilateral donors which have the biggest stake in Bangladesh has not been sufficiently vocal about these threats that are undermining stability and are rather focussed only on the positive macroeconomic indicators.
Both the WB and the ADB think the position of these particular countries is not helpful to mitigate the situation that Bangladesh is facing today. Rather, they feel any such steps would be counterproductive and throw the country in a deeper turmoil.
However, the sentiment of the European donors has put the government on a high-lobbying mode. Adviser to the foreign ministry Reaz Rahman now in Washington discussed the matter with Rocca and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman. Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman went to Brussels in a bid to persuade the EU to rethink its steps.
How far they have been successful is yet to be known.
On the other hand, the State Department is keen to hear the views of the EU and some other bilateral donors about Bangladesh. The US feels although the presence of fundamentalists is felt in Bangladesh, their threat is not that imminent.
However, it has been learnt that the donors are frustrated with the inaction of the government on the human rights and terrorism fronts. They feel that their repeated requests to improve governance have not been working and there has been a disconnect between them and the government.
The government has created an anticorruption commission, a longstanding demand of the donors, but in a stillborn form because of selection of wrong people and contradictions of laws. The separation of the judiciary and an independent human right commission are still not in sight.
The EU has gone public on the extra-judicial killings by Rapid Action Battalion (Rab). Although the Rab have been able to catch some criminals, the use of this force and the way of operation of the so-called elite force has been critically taken by the western countries and put Bangladesh in a bad light.
The donors now feel that instead of addressing the urgent issues the government is now too focussed on the electoral balance. The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) alliance with two fundamentalist parties -- Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikyo Jote which have perceptible link with militants -- have been jeopardising stability.