Posts Tagged ‘Md Moshiur Rahman’

Today’s GuruWeb:glamnglory.com

Friday, March 12th, 2010

“A woman one of the most beautiful creation of GOD, showering her respect as daughter, feel her care in the form of a sister, feel her warmth in the form of a friend.
Now we come to know why did God create man 1st before creating a woman ? Of course, because its alawys gud to make a rough draft 1st before making a MASTERPIECE..”

http://www.glamnglory.com/

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Posted in Bangladesh, World, culture | No Comments »

Eid Mubarak

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

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Bangladesh on Saturday celebrated Eid-ul-Azha festival, the Muslim’s second largest festival, in a befitting manner and religious fervor.

Bangladesh President Zillur Raman greeted the people of the country in a message. He also exchanged Eid greetings with people after saying the prayer at the national open-air mosque Eidgah in the capital Dhaka.

The Eid-ul-Azha was celebrated across the country on Saturday and sacrificed cattles and other animals like goat and camel marking the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim (SW) to sacrifice his son Prophet Ismael (SW) as an act of obedience to Allah over 4,000years ago. But later Allah advised Ibrahim (SW) to sacrifice an animal. Since then Muslim started to celebrate the occasion.

On this day, people of profession and class forget their differences and exchange greeting with each other.

Almost all able persons sacrifice cattle or other animals of both and distribute those among poor people, who cannot offer to sacrifice animals.

There is provision that seven families can share one cattle. Many rich persons in Bangladesh sacrifice more than one cattle and distribute the meat among the poor.

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Posted in Bangladesh, guru | No Comments »

Former Army chief Moeen U Ahmed gets deadline in defamation suit

Monday, August 17th, 2009

mosi- moienA Bangladesh court here on Sunday asked the country’s former army chief Moeen U Ahmed to submit his reply by Sept. 13 in a one billion taka (about 14.3 million U.S. dollars) defamation case filed by a former state minister.

Former Bangladesh’s army chief Moeen U Ahmed, who retired on June 15 this year, was sued on July 12 for making derogatory comments against the country’s former state minister for power Iqbal Hasan Mahmud in March 2007.

Following the defamation suit, Judge SM Saiful Islam ordered the former army chief to appear before the court and submit a written statement on Aug. 16.

The same Judge Islam on Sunday re-fixed the date of submitting the reply upon a petition filed by the defendant’s lawyer Humayun Kabir.

In the case statement, it was stated that Moeen in March 2007 had alleged that 200 billion taka (about 2.9 billion U.S. dollars) of the power sector was misappropriated or smuggled out of Bangladesh during the 2001-2006 rule of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) when Mahmud was in charge of the power ministry.

Mahmud, also a leader of the main opposition BNP, said Moeen’s remarks published in different newspapers undermined his image in the society.

During the last caretaker government, which ruled the country from early 2007 to end of 2008, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud, his wife and children were also arrested on charge of corruption. Recently he was released on bail from higher court.

Moeen, who was appointed the country’s army chief on July 15, 2005, went into retirement on completion of his tenure of service on June 15 this year.

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Moeen kept his promises to the nation in preserving democracy

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Iqbal Quadir , GURU of Bangladesh- Gurumia.com

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

iqbal-quadirGurumia.com awards Iqbal Quadir As GURU

Iqbal Z. Quadir (Bengali: ????? ???. ?????) (born August 13, 1958 in Jessore, East Pakistan, present day Bangladesh), founder of Gonofone and GrameenPhone, is currently the Founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the founding co-editor of Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, a journal published by MIT Press.

Early years

Quadir was born in Jessore, Bangladesh and moved to the United States in 1976 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He passed his secondary and higher secondary from Jhenidah Cadet College, Bangladesh. He received a B.S. with honors from Swarthmore College (1981), an M.A. (1983) and an M.B.A. (1987) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania[1].

Finance, development, and entrepreneurial success

Quadir served as a consultant to the World Bank in Washington, D.C., (1983?1985), an associate at Coopers & Lybrand (1987?1989), an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank (1989?1991), vice president of Atrium Capital Corporation (1991?1993), and founded GrameenPhone in Bangladesh during 1993-1999. He served in the management and on the Board of GrameenPhone during 1996-1999.

Quadir?s vision, which was deemed radical at the time, was to create universal access to telephone service in Bangladesh and to increase self-employment opportunities for its rural poor. In 1993, Quadir started a New York-based company named Gonofone (Bengali for ?phones for the masses?), which later became the launch-pad for GrameenPhone. Currently the largest telephone company in Bangladesh with nearly sixteen million subscribers, GrameenPhone provides telephone access to more than 100 million rural people living in 60,000 villages and generates revenues close to $1 billion annually. With infrastructure investments of more than $1 billion, GrameenPhone is providing cellular coverage throughout Bangladesh.

Quadir’s vision of a large-scale commercial project led him to organize a global consortium involving Telenor, Norway?s leading telecommunications company; an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize); Marubeni Corp. in Japan; Asian Development Bank in the Philippines; Commonwealth Development Corp. in the United Kingdom; and International Finance Corp. and Gonofone in the United States. He attracted these investors by complementing his vision of connecting all of Bangladesh with a practical distribution scheme whereby village entrepreneurs, backed by micro-loans, could retail telephone services to their surrounding communities. In fact, Quadir coined the phrase ?connectivity is productivity? to explain the unique impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly mobile telephones, in improving economic efficiency. [1][2][3]

GrameenPhone?s success has been lauded as a model for a novel approach to improving economic opportunity and connectivity and empowering citizens in poor countries, through profitable investments in technology. According to Economist Jeffrey Sachs GrameenPhone ?opened the world?s eyes to expanding the use of modern telecommunications technologies in the world?s poorest places.? [4]

From 2001-2005, Quadir served as a fellow at the Harvard’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and at the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (now Capgemini). As a lecturer, he taught graduate-level courses on the effects of technology in developing countries at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. Quadir subsequently moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where in 2007 he founded the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.

Quadir coined the phrase invisible leg to describe how technological innovations change economies in terms of the distribution of economic and political influence.[5] [6]

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Current Projects

In 2004, he founded, with his siblings, the Anwarul Quadir Foundation to promote innovations for Bangladesh. In 2006, the foundation established a $25,000 global essay competition, the Quadir Prize, through the Center for International Development at Harvard University. In October 2007, the foundation made its first award to two recipients [7]. In April 2009, Stephen Honan was the winner of the second award. Mr. Honan developed an innovative way to extract arsenic from drinking water and soil [2].

Quadir founded Emergence BioEnergy, Inc., as an effort to apply his development approach to electricity production in Bangladesh, where 70 percent of the population does not have access to the national electricity grid. This and other current projects (including removing arsenic from water) were featured in an article entitled ?Power to the people? in the March 9, 2006 issue of The Economist. In 2007, Emergence BioEnergy won a Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award.

In September 2007, Legatum, a Dubai-based private investment firm, committed $50 million to the creation of a new Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Quadir [8]. The goal of the Legatum Center is the promotion of bottom-up entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Iqbal Quadir is the Chairman of the judging panel for the Legatum FORTUNE Technology Prize, an annual competition with a prize fund of USD 1 million, created to recognise and reward for-profit businesses and individuals that demonstrate exemplary results at the intersection of business, technology and development.?

Iqbal Z. Quadir, Founder and Director the Legatum Center(MIT)

Welcome to the Legatum Center , where you can learn more about how our Center is promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in low-income countries. Established in 2007 with a generous $50 million gift from Legatum, a global investment firm, our Center runs a competitive Fellowship program to prepare MIT students to create enterprises in developing countries. Our current and future Fellows seek to implement for-profit businesses that empower ordinary citizens and virally spread prosperity and development.

Featured Content

Foreign Aid and Bad Government

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Iqbal Quadir writes about how development is most effective by aiding entrepreneurs.

Communication Breakdown

Iqbal Quadir and Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop per Child, debate the merits of technology in the developing world.

It hurts to fund governments

Iqbal Quadir writes about the lack of progress being made in attaining the UN Millenium Development Goals.

No point reinventing the wheel

Article in African Business discusses Legatum Center and its inaugural conference.

Iqbal Quadir Upends Development

The Legatum Center at MIT, Quadir?s latest brainchild, provides a ground-breaking approach to development studies.

A bottom-up plan to turn Bangladesh’s economy upside-down .

Colonization, war, and natural disasters have wrought havoc upon Bangladesh, but Henry Kissinger and George Harrison, quips Iqbal Quadir of Lexington, did the most damage to the country of his birth. The former US secretary of state’s infamous description of the South Asian nation as an “international basket case” and the former Beatle’s legendary Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 saddled the war- and flood-ravaged land with
an unshakable reputation as hapless and dependent on handouts for survival.

“That has been very damaging to us,” said Quadir, who is the executive director of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. “Because the country is a so-called basket case, investment never came to us.”

Quadir, 49, doesn’t dispute that Bangladesh has its troubles but rejects the notion that Bangladeshis need to be rescued by rich countries. On the contrary, said Quadir, Bangladeshis are as innovative and hard-working as anyone but until recently have lacked the means to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit and rise from
poverty. He proved it with his own company, GrameenPhone, which became the largest cellphone company in Bangladesh largely by selling its phones on credit to poor rural women who in turn rented phone minutes to neighbors, making money for themselves while providing a public service.

This “bottom-up” approach to development, Quadir believes, can work anywhere in the developing world. At the Legatum Center, he is helping a growing crop of entrepreneurially minded students do for other poor countries what he did for Bangladesh.
Although Quadir has spent most of his life in America and considers himself an American, he values his Bangladeshi roots, knows the country’s history, cuisine, and literature, and speaks his native tongue with his children.

“I happen to be Bangladeshi, which is why I had some emotional reason to think about it seriously. I know where the shoe pinches,” he said. Nevertheless, Quadir is driven less by Bangladeshi patriotism than sympathy for the poor. “I’m motivated by creating a level playing field for the world so that the weak have a chance.”

When Bangladesh revolted against Pakistan in March 1971, Quadir and his family fled his hometown of Jessore to escape the ensuing war and roamed the country until the fighting ended with an independent but devastated nation. A decade later Quadir graduated from Swarthmore College with honors and went on to the Wharton School and then Wall Street, where he earned an investment banker’s salary.

But even mighty Wall Street, he learned, was vulnerable to the same obstacles that kept societies like Bangladesh from developing. When his firm’s computer network went down one day in 1992, the communications breakdown meant he couldn’t do his job. It was then that he realized that people in Bangladesh, with no telephones, faced a similar problem. Quadir spent the next few years cobbling together a consortium of banks, telecoms, and other investors willing to risk money and reputation on his idea of creating a cellphone company that would cater to Bangladesh’s rural poor.

If the idea sounds reminiscent of the micro-loan industry pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work, it’s because Quadir was partly inspired by his fellow Bangladeshi whose Grameen Bank helped finance GrameenPhone. While Yunus envisioned poor women using his micro-loans to buy assets such as a cow and then selling the milk for profit, Quadir saw the cellphone as a cow. Today, 11-year-old GrameenPhone counts 16 million subscribers, including 250,000 rural “phone ladies” who rent
their phones to millions of others.

While Quadir has no aversion to wealth, he far prefers creating businesses to managing them.

“What drives him is not making money or building a business but solving problems,” said Nicholas Sullivan, author of “You Can Hear Me Now,” which documents GrameenPhone’s rise. “Once he thinks a problem has been solved, he’s more driven to go onto the next thing, and apply what he’s learned with problem A to problem B.”

Quadir gave up his managerial duties at GrameenPhone and in 2001 joined Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government before finding his next cow two years later. Through a Cambridge-based company he calls Emergence BioEnergy Inc., Quadir is helping develop a generator that produces one kilowatt of energy, enough to power 70 energy-efficient light bulbs. The generator, about half the size of a washing machine, will also have a dehydrator for drying produce and medicinal plants, and runs on cow dung, which Bangladesh has
plenty of. Quadir hopes to sell the generators to rural villagers whom he expects will put the machines to entrepreneurial uses.

“There’s no magic here – that’s how complex economies develop,” Quadir said.

It’s this kind of thinking that convinced Firas Ahmad, a Kennedy School graduate who was taught by Quadir, to pass up several secure and high-paying consulting jobs and work for his former teacher at his unusual energy start-up.

“He had a completely different way of teaching and looking at problems. Most of the classes at the Kennedy School were based on doing problem sets, homework, and reading,” said Ahmad, a Pakistani-American. “But his was based on totally changing the way you think about a problem.”

Critics argue that micro-finance and entrepreneur training have done little to lower poverty, and that investment should go into factories that employ many people. Factories have a role in development, Quadir agrees, but that makes little sense in rural areas, where people are dispersed and transportation is difficult.

Despite the skeptics, Quadir and his handful of Legatum colleagues have attracted a new generation of bottom-up believers. In one recent class, students presented business plans for socially responsible yet profit- minded projects. One team was developing a cellphone that could detect cataracts and send the diagnoses to otherwise out-of-reach hospitals. Another aspiring entrepreneur laid out her plans for an inexpensive motel chain for Kazakhstan, where lodging-less highways force travelers to spend nights in their cars.

As entrepreneurship and development become increasingly intertwined, Quadir is cautiously optimistic that, along with technology, they can be used to reduce poverty.

“I think it’s possible to have technologies that empower individuals, from a business point of view. That’s the Western value that we should spread,” he said. “The best way poor people can come out of their poverty is to get on the global highway, not on some dirt side road.”

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M A Latif was involved in a scuffle -A Short Personal Interviews on the scuffle by M A LATIF

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

ma-latif1p://gurumia.com/?attachment_id=1008″>

M A Latif at Metropoliton Hospital bed

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M A Latif at Metropoliton Hospital bed?

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Lawmaker of ruling Awami League, who earlier took newspaper headlines several times for his erratic and rude behaviour, on Friday landed in hospital after being beaten by own partymen for assaulting police officers at Chittagong port city.

The Water Transport Coordination Cell began operations on Friday after dropping MP and CCCI president Mohammed Abdul Latif from the post of adviser and convenor, leading to a run-in with police.

Shipping minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong City Corporation mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury attended the launching programme as chief guest and special guest respectively.

The WTCC was formed in 2005 in association with Coastal Ship Owners’ Association and Bangladesh Cargo Owners’ Vessel Owners’ Association.

A memorandum of understanding signed with the chamber stipulated that the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and senior most vice-president would hold the post of adviser and convenor respectively.

But Latif, Awami League MP from Chittagong-10, thrust himself into the post of both adviser and convenor on being elected CCCI chief eight months back.

The aggrieved ship owners sat with the shipping minister who on June 3 directed senior vice president of the chamber Mohammed Abdus Salam to take the charge of convenor.

Ignoring the minister’s directives, Latif expressed his desire to retain the convenor’s post and got related papers signed by the chamber directors.

He decided to launch WTCC operations without intermediaries of the ship owners’ association while the latter retaliated by cancelling the MoU with the chamber signed four years ago

Around 10am on Friday when Latif, accompanied by some hundred supporters, attempted entering the WTCC office, the police stopped them and an altercation arosema-latif

A close aide of the lawmaker, Enamul haque Muniri, alleged that the policemen and the supporters, belonging to a particular faction of the ruling party, have manhandled the lawmaker sending him to a private facility for treatment with a fractured arm.

He(latif) kept lying there even after Shipping Minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury walked past him to the meeting where they were the chief guest and special guest.

Later, Bangladesh Chhatra League activists carried the lawmaker out of the building around 5:30pm.

The WTCC was formed in 2005 merging two organisations of inland cargo vessel owners–Coastal Ship Owners Association of Bangladesh (COAB) and Bangladesh Cargo Vessel Owners Association (BCVOA).

As per a memorandum of understanding COAB and BCVOA signed with the CCCI, the senior vice-president of CCCI was to act as the convener of WTCC while the CCCI president would act as an adviser.

However, Latif even after becoming the president of CCCI on December 15, 2008, clung on to the convener and the adviser posts.

As vessel owners drew the shipping minister’s attention to the matter, the minister directed them to form an ad hoc committee following the rules of the organisation.

On June 3, COAB and BCVOA formed the 14-member ad hoc committee, excluding Latif, and made Gazi Belayet Hossain Mithu the convener.

The ad hoc committee was to form a new constitution to run WTCC under a new management, excluding the CCCI, and elect a new committee.

The ad hoc committee informed Latif of his expulsion from WTCC in a letter Thursday.

The meeting of the ad hoc committee was held as scheduled.


Latif earlier took the newspaper headlines first for humiliating two police officers at Patenga on one occasion, misbehaving with another police officer on a Biman flight and rudely rebuked deputy commissioner of the port city in two other incidents.

On another occasion he was criticised for his rude behaviour with a port officials, including a senior navy officer serving on deputation at the main port, in presence of a visiting parliamentary delegation.

?Interview:

Latif alleged, “Shipping minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong mayor ABM mohiuddin Chowdhury set the police to stop him entering WTCC office.”

“At their instruction police kept beating me mercilessly until I fell on the ground.”

He alleged that the minister and his men were trying to occupy WTCC office to establish a reign of plundering.

“It is because of them that the country has become a land of thieves and cheats,” he said.

A Short? Interviews on the scuffle by M A LATIF ?from Metropolitan Hospital with The editor( www.gurumia.com ?) Md Moshiur Rahman ?when meet him to see his phisical condition .

Grumia : Say something in short about the scuffle.

M A Latif : I have courage to say truth and i am a politician to change the Contry? to a expected developed level. Problem is our system does not allow change easily .(system- political and burucrates positions- traditions-profit maker). So this is an example that the root of facilitor goast are still strong . To get real change of? the old political goast and get ?a real reform political views ?we may? sometime fall in such a situation .

Gurumia: How are you felling now ?

MA Latif : I feel pain on my left hand ?.neck and backbone,

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Posted in Bangladesh, Chittagong, Development, election, port | No Comments »

Army Chief General Moeen U Ahmed Visit at Chittagong

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

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Yasterday chief of army stuff General Moien-u- Ahmed visited Chittagong Cantonment .moienin picture chief and the high officers of army with the editor gurumia.com Md Moshiur Rahman at the opening ceremony of Chittagong Army shooting club.
sakil
Sakil Md Israt Hossain National shooter (pistol Event)-Marketing Manager ZamZam Lands Development (ltd) , Lt Colonel Jubeyer Salehin and Md Moshiur Rahman -(Editor gurumia.comexecutive Director-ZamZam Lands Development ltd.)
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About General Moeen U Ahmed

General Moeen U Ahmed, ndc, psc, the Chief of Army Staff of Bangladesh Army started his military career from January 1975. His service profile started as Distinguished ‘Chief of Army Staff’s Cane’ holder of the Pioneer Short Service Course-1 from Bangladesh Military Academy. General Moeen has the experience of commanding all echelons and levels of command commensurate to his rank from the company commander to General Officer Commanding of Infantry Division.

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??? His service profile is a combination of important command, staff and instructional appointments. He started his instructional career as Weapon Training Officer and then Platoon Commander in Bangladesh Military Academy. He then served as a Brigade Major of an Infantry Brigade.

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? Besides commanding two infantry battalions as Lieutenant Colonel, he also served as a Grade One Staff Officer in Army Headquarters, Military Operations Directorate. As a Colonel, he served as Colonel Staff of an Infantry Division. A veteran instructor, General Moeen has served in Defence Services Command and Staff College in three terms as Directing Staff in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Senior Instructor of Army Wing in the rank of Colonel and Chief Instructor in the rank of Brigadier General.

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General Moeen commanded two Infantry Brigades. He was also the Commandant of School of Infantry and Tactics. In Army Headquarters he served as Military Secretary and Master General of the Ordnance. He then commanded two Infantry Divisions. He had a tour of duty as Defence Adviser of Bangladesh in Pakistan. Before taking over as Chief of Army Staff, he was Chief of General Staff, Bangladesh Army.

General Moeen in his charismatic career also served in UNAMIR, Rwanda under United Nations. In his distinguished career he has received two Commendations. They are ‘Force Commander’s Commendation’ for his excellent contribution in UNAMIR and ‘US Force’s Commendation’ for his outstanding contribution in ‘OPERATION SEA ANGLES’ conducted by US Forces in Bangladesh. He was awarded with the highest peacetime military award ?Order of National Security Merit Tongil Medal? by the President of the Republic of Korea for his distinguished service in promoting military cooperation between the two countries and contribution in international peace keeping activities. Beside these as a sports organizer he was also awarded with National Sports Medal-2008. ?

?The General has attended Intelligence and Security Course in School of Intelligence, Ashford, UK. He is a graduate of Defence Services Command and Staff College, Mirpur, Bangladesh as well as Command and General Staff College, USA. He has attended Senior Executive Course in Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, Hawaii and Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Boston, USA. He has also completed National Defence Course from Mirpur, Dhaka.

He is a widely traveled person and visited most countries of South Asia, Middle East, Europe and United States of America. ?

??????????? General Moeen has numerous military and non military publications in his credit. He is also author of two books namely ”NIRBACHITO SANGKALAN?’ and? ”SHANTIR SAPNEY”.

?????He is married to Naznin Ahmed and they have a son and a daughter named Nihat and Sabrina.??

General Moeen was promoted to the rank of General on 24 May 2007

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More Sources . from http://0-2-hero.blogspot.com/2007/10/general-moeen-u-ahmeds-career-details.html

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General Moeen U. Ahmed’s career details are available online. It says , of course, that he is the first Chief of Staff to be commissioned amongst the officers who graduated in independent Bangladesh. A listing is also given of the commands that he held. However, it is clear on close scrutiny that no dates are given on when he assumed command of these units or when he got his promotions.

General Moeen U Ahmed’s army career stalled until BNP was elected to power in 2001. General Ahmed is from Noakhali, in South-Eastern Bangladesh. Noakhali is close to Feni, birthplace and bastion of BNP supremo Khaleda Zia and her family. General Ahmed made this geographical proximity his selling-point and started strenuous efforts to ingratiate himself with theBNP power-brokers. He paid special attention to the two men who would emerge as the ultimate arbitrators of all military postings and promotions for the army, navy, and the air force during 2001-2006: Khaleda Zia’s brother Major (ret.) Sayeed Iskandar her nephew, Saiful Islam (Duke).

Incidentally, these two men have a lot to answer for. They have been responsible for ruining some of the most promising men in our armed forces; men who were too straight-laced and professional to kowtow to them. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for us, Ahmed was not one of them. He ingratiated himself with these two men very successfully, and managed to get for himself a prize command in Chittagong and also positioned himself as a key contender for the post of Chief of Army Staff.

Incidentally, these two men are the only two members of Khaleda Zia’s family who were part of the government apparatus for the last five years, but have not been asked to provide wealth reports to the current military government. Anyone familiar with power politics in Bangladesh is aware of the intense speculation and jockeying that precedes the appointment of the Chief of Army Staff. Various factions vie for the ear of the Prime Mnister to get their own candidates chosen. There was general consensus that Lt. Gen. Hasan Mashud had been an excellent Chief of Army Staff, and appointing another decent general after him to lead the army would have gone down well with the country in general and the armed forces in particular. Quite a few members of Zia’s kitchen cabinet were against this appointment going to a political general like Moeen U Ahmed, and her military secretary went as far as to write an official note recommending her against this appointment.

History, however, was on General Moeen’s side. During her previous administration, when it came time to pick a Chief of Army Staff who would serve through the 1996 election, Begum Zia opted for efficiency and service seniority over political expediency, and picked Lt. Gen. Nasim over commanders perceived to be more loyal to the government. Proving the adage that no good deeds go unpunished in Bangladeshi politics, Lt. Gen. Nasim promptly tried to stage a coup and overthrow the government. Keeping that particular lesson in mind, Zia decided to take the low route this time and pick a political general who would know during every second of his job that he was only there thanks to his servilityto his political masters. This, she thought, would ensure his loyalty.

The rest, of course, is history. General Moeen staged a bloodless coup on January 11th and imposed indirect military rule; he has ruled Bangladesh in all but name for the last eight months, given himself a promotion to four-star General, changed the command structure of Bangladesh’s armed forces in order to manage the nice shiny fourth star on his car, and become the first Army Chief in the last twenty years to have his effigy burnt by Dhaka University students. So this is where our Chief of Army Staff has been. What do you think his future plans are? And more importantly, what do these plans include for us,and for the future of Bangladeshi democract? Remember, whatever these plans are, he’ll be trying really hard to sell them to various American officials, during his visit to the US, as the best thing that could possibly happen to Bangladesh at this juncture.

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Posted in Army, Bangladesh, Chittagong | No Comments »