When the Policy Exchange treats with Awami League Militants

LONDON - The Policy Exchange, the Conservative Party think tank favoured by leader David Cameron, played host to a political rally for the militant and avowedly violent Bangladesh Awami League in London last Tuesday, 14 November 2006.

In bed with Extremists
The rally took place under the euphemism of an international conference on political Islam in Bangladesh. The Policy Exchange proceeded to organise the rally despite widespread accusations of violence and intimidation carried out by Awami League supporters, especially in the capital city, Dhaka. This culminated last month when AL supporters were filmed beating to death supporters of opposition parties.

The Party is orchestrating the latest spate of violence in order to force the interim Bangladeshi Government to appoint a compliant electoral commission that will eventually submit to the voter manipulations required by the Awami League. In most countries this would be called intimidation and an abuse of the democratic system, in Bangladesh this is termed as the pursuit of democracy.

By organizing this political rally, the Policy Exchange is now complicit in this endevour to subvert democracy in Bangladesh. The 'conference' included a who's who of the Awami League gangster class. Saber Hussain Chowdhury, Political Secretary to leader Sheikh Hasina led the charge but refused to adequately answer questions of violence from his supporters. The conference also heard from Awami League lawyer Samsuddin Chowdhury Manik. A retinue of Awami League sympathizers took part as supporting cast. So spoke the editor of the Awami League propaganda newssheet, the Daily Star and leaders of AL affiliated NGOs including Shariar Kabir, a party propagandist and Dr Ahmed Ziauddin a lobbyist keen to hunt down non-Awami League criminals of 1971 (but strangely silent of excesses committed by his own party).

Collectively, this delegation attempted to pursue an Awami League policy of pulling the wool over the eyes of the international community. As if violence and intimidation at home is not enough, the neo-Stalinist Awami League is now unleashing an international propaganda campaign to ensure that its violence and oppression goes unchecked. As the Bangladeshi nation witnessed the horror of the violence unleashed by Awami League supporters last month, many agree that this is very much in keeping with AL party policy.

During its last tenure in government (1996-2001), the party presided over unmitigated corruption and its supporters were noted for defying law and order to enrich their own coffers, often with the aid of arms and private armies. The most notorious case was of Jainul Abedin Hazari, an Awami League MP from the Bangladeshi district of Feni. So confident was he that he had rights of overlord in the area (thanks to Awami League patronage) he killed a resident in broad daylight by drilling into his head. To this day the AL is silent over the grisly murder and the killer is still at large (examples of brutality [in English, here.

Back at the Policy Exchange-sponsored rally, unsuspecting members of the audience who thought they were actually going to an academic conference found themselves amidst uncoothed Awami League supporters ready to shout down anyone they disagreed with. As if learning from the best traditions of the neo-conservative Fox News, the Policy Exchange made a feeble attempt to place a gloss of neutrality over the event by offering two, often inarticulate Bangladesh National Party responders. When the articulate Moudud Ahmed took to the stage, AL hoodlums and militants wasted no time to interrupt and shout down the speaker – to the bafflement of the presiding chairman (and AL lobby-fodder), the aristocratic Lord Avebury. In fact, anyone who dissented from the Party line espoused by the Policy Exchange or the Awami League would be promptly shouted down by the mob. This, no doubt is a taster to what Bangladeshis must undergo on a daily basis in Bangladesh.

In Bed with Hateful Ideologues
So, why does the Policy Exchange treat with Awami League militants? One suspects that this is due to the unholy alliance that has been brokered by the far-left party and the neo-conservatives, particularly from the United States. Licking its wounds from the right royal drubbing it had received at the hands of the American electorate, neoconservatives are now looking elsewhere to wreak havoc and mayhem. It is not content with the disasters it has presided over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, enter stage right the Hudson Institute, whose hall of infamy includes the disgraced Conrad Black and whose policies include a harsh critique of environmentalism. Not exactly in the interest of a Bangladesh that is at the mercy of climate change is it? And who leads the Bangladeshi charge for this ultra-right outfit? One Mazneena Hossain whose father Anwar Hossain Monju served in the government of dictator H. M. Ershad and who switched to the Awami League to enrich his career. Unlike most Bangladeshis, daughter Manzeena Hossain is part of that privileged class of the Bangladeshi elite whose American education was funded by money extracted through corruption. Ms Hossain has been part of the Hudson Institute’s charge to lead neoconservatives against the Iraqi people. She has managed operations of the Iraq Democracy Information Center and is therefore complicit in the US policy disaster of post-Saddam Iraq.

Enter stage right also one Chris Blackburn, a curious figure unheard of amongst experts but a familiar face amongst far right and US evangelists. A contributor to xenophobic hate site ‘Frontpagemag.org’ he also claims to have participated in the ‘International Intelligence Summit' a shady body of reactionaries, neoconservatives and disgruntled military officers unhappy that the ‘War on Terror’ is not as harsh as it should be. The Awami League's international spin-doctor (mentioned above) Saber Hossain Chowdhury is also a participant to this sinister body.

In some respects, this Policy Exchange event appears to emulate in Britain the divisiveness and the climate of fear that has been successfully created in the United States. Now on the decline, these preachers of hate are looking for fertile breeding grounds in the United Kingdom. So, enter stage right Daniel Pipes, a figure at the forefront of reactionary American neoconservativism who loses no time to demonise Muslims. This is a man that Christopher Hitchens describes as one ‘who confuses scholarship with propaganda and who pursues petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity.’ The Vanity Fair columnist tells us that Pipes ‘employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him’.

The Pipesian tradition has now found willing champions here in Britain through the Policy Exchange. Of course, this agenda of hate existed well before the Policy Exchange decided to take on the mantle. In Britain, we were all too familiar with the views of BNP leader Nick Griffin, doommonger Melanie Phillips and former chairman of the Policy Exchange, Michael Gove. Now they have a voice through the work of the Policy Exchange who takes credit, unashamedly, for readjusting Government attitudes towards Muslims: an approach that is even more harsh and discriminatory towards Muslims. As David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, tries to throw off the adage of the ‘nasty party’, his task is even more challenging as his favourite think-tank pursues the worst traditions of the Thatcherite, hard-right wing of the Tory Party.

In Bed with Corrupt, Parochial Reactionaries
Yet, the Policy Exchange’s goal continues unabated. Their task is made easier as they seek support from across the political divide. Enter, stage left Martin Bright, political editor of the New Statesman who has made it his mission to expose ‘Islamists’ everywhere. At the Awami League-Policy Exchange rally he claimed that he, along with other Western journalists are ‘pig-ignorant’ about Bangladeshi affairs. As Mr Bright sets himself up to be the spokesman of a violent political party in Bangladesh, his pig-ignorance is only matched by his docile willingness to be lobby-fodder to a movement intent on subverting democracy and shutting out a diversity of voices.

Mr Bright took part in a panel that was decrying the loss of power of corrupt Awami League-inspired Bangladeshis who dominated London Tower Hamlets politics and society. Tower Hamlets today is more diverse than the Tower Hamlets eulogized by panelists at the Policy Exchange event. Panelists were bemoaning how some Bangladeshis lost power and influence. No mention was made of the fact that they made no attempt to forge British identities, but were obsessed with the parochial politics of back home. As young British-Bangladeshis roamed free, pushing drugs and fighting gang wars, AL-backed civil society leaders, now termed as ‘secularists’ were intent on dothing their cap to the corrupt politics of Bangladesh and emulating that to the streets of London. At the top of this pyramid were Labour councilors who have since been stigmatized for their rampant corruption.

Speakers at the Policy Exchange now hark back to those days. In her presentation, Policy Exchange researcher Munira Mirza belittled local faith groups that drew from their philosophy to contribute to a progressive British society. Her example: the contrast between ‘moderate’ Brick Lane Mosque and the ‘extremist’ East London Mosque. So moderate is the Brick Lane Mosque that it allows no women into that parochial place of worship. So extremist is the East London Mosque that not only are women welcomed, but women participate in droves, operating dozens of services that empower women and have gym facilities for women – unheard of in any mosque in the United Kingdom. The hypocrisy is evidenced by throwing labels, ‘moderate’, ‘extremists’ without a shred of evidence. (For the parochialism and backwardness of Brick Lane Mosque officials, click here and see Brick Lane Mosque Vice-President protest about Monica Ali's Brick Lane)

And so it seems the Policy Exchange has embarked on a Pipesian charade of hate and untruth, supping with a Leftist group intent on violence and subversion. In the 1980s the Conservative Party refused to deal with anyone that dealt in violence. This was applied as much to the Loyalist UDA as much to the IRA. And yet, the Awami League has armed cadres that even now indulges in violence. But as the Policy Exchange pursues a neoconservative agenda of divisiveness and hate, it seems today the maxim is: by any means possible.