Bangladesh intensifies crackdown with Islamist party ban

The banning of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party while the nation is on the boil amid student-led protests about government job quotas that have morphed into something much larger has put the ruling Awami League on a razor’s edge.

The Awami League, which has been in continuous power for the last 15 years thanks to three consecutive controversial elections, has always portrayed Jamaat-e-Islami and its Bangladesh Islami Chhatrashibir student wing as political bogeymen.

Blaming Jamaat for episodic unrest has often allowed the Awami League to distract from its own flaws or to incite politically expedient communal tensions over the past decade. The strategy has helped create a strong stigma around the Islamist party.

To be sure, this stigma is partly of Jamaat’s own making. The party supported the Pakistani junta during Bangladesh’s liberation war and many of its top leaders were sentenced to death for their roles in crimes against humanity.

The punishments were handed down during the Awami League’s first of four consecutive terms, from 2009 to 2014. Although the trial process was controversial, Jamaat has never publicly apologized for its support of Pakistani oppressors during the 1971 liberation war.

Additionally, the party’s student wing, known in short as Shibir, has also been involved in significant and well-documented “heinous” activities, particularly in the country’s southeastern region, including the major port city of Chattogram.

These activities are often reported and sometimes exaggerated by mainstream media, especially under the Awami League’s rule.

However, the narrative of faulting Jamaat and Shibir for all of Bangladesh’s problems and ills has lost its effectiveness as the public has become increasingly