Military-backed Government Research Articles

Evolution of Civil-Military Relations in Bangladesh: A Comparative Study in the Context of Developing Countries

Although Civil-military relations have historically been recognized as a subject of study in the developed world, it has become a subject of study in the region since World War II due to military intervention in newly independent Third World countries. Although the country became independent on the basis of Civil-Military relations in the war of liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the relations did not last long. Civil-Military relations have been the subject of renewed research in Bangladesh since the establishment of the military-backed government on 1/11, 2007. The study discusses the historical context of Civil-Military relations, the nature of Civil-Military relations in Bangladesh, various activities under military rule, and political leadership. The roles of the military in the formation of the country have been analyzed. The limitations of Bangladesh's Civil-Military relations have been discussed on the basis of the experiences gained through personal interviews of high-ranking Civil-Military members and general public. In this study has been described on the civil-military relations in the light of developing countries which have been under military rule for several decades during the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Therefore in carrying out this study, the civil-military relations in other developing countries and Bangladesh have been analyzed to understand the comparative aspects of civil-military relations at both local and global level. In addition, guidelines have been given on what should be the military-civil relations in the Political System of Bangladesh.

The Role of External Actors in the Unmaking of the Egyptian Revolution

In 2013, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown by a military coup. Since then, the country has undergone serious setbacks in terms of democracy, individual freedoms and social justice. Egypt’s failed revolution and the military coup in Egypt could not be thought independent from the role of external actors either directly or indirectly involved in this process. Despite their political rhetoric emphasizing democracy promotion and political reforms, both the US and the EU failed to pursue consistent and contributory policies in promoting democratic transition in Egypt in the fear that the electoral victory of Islamist groups would harm their interests in the region. On the other hand, the Gulf monarchies played a pivotal role in the entrenchment of the military rule by providing financial and political support to the military-backed government as a shield against the democratically elected regime in Egypt. This article investigates how the policies adopted by Egypt’s key allies, the European Union, the United States and the Gulf Monarchies, in the face of the January 25 revolution and 2013 military coup impacted the trajectory of Egypt’s political transition. The main thesis of the article is that the policies pursued by the external actors created a political environment unconducive to democratic change in Egypt.

Creating the enemy, constructing the threat: the diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East

ABSTRACTOn 25 December 2013, the military-backed government in Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. A few months later, the Saudi Kingdom followed suit and attempted to build a regional coalition to counter this constructed enemy. Although the Saudi Kingdom, acting as an aspiring regional autocratic power, exerted pressure to compel other regimes to follow its lead, the recipient states varied in their willingness to converge. Whereas the United Arab Emirates followed the Saudi lead, Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain resisted the diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood to their domestic spheres. This article examines this variation in the (non-)convergence of repressive policies as an outcome of diffusion. While most explanations of how autocratic policies diffuse focus on either ideology or interest as drivers of state behaviour, this article provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon. Based on a neoclassical realist approach, I explore the variation in the convergence with fellow autocrats as the result of interaction between regional interests and regime autonomy vis-à-vis societal groups. By looking at autocratic diffusion of repression as a process lying at the intersection of regional and domestic spheres, this article contributes to the literature on the international diffusion of authoritarianism.

Nationalism and anti-ethno-politics: why ‘Chinese Development’ failed at Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam

In 2011, the Burmese military-backed government stunned global audiences by unilaterally suspending the construction of the Myitsone Dam, the cornerstone of China’s largest hydropower project abroad. This prominent failure of China’s “Going Out” investment strategy reverberated globally. Both Western and Chinese accounts frame the event as a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s celebrated reform process, the cooling of China–Myanmar relations, and US–China geopolitical rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. However, my ethnographic field and media research from 2010 to 2015 reveals that the mega-project’s failure does not originally stem from inter-state geopolitics or contested economics and ecology. Through chronological narration, I show how the Myitsone Dam is primarily the casualty of a distinctly ethno-political causality, whereby three nationalisms clashed and the replication of China’s “anti-ethno-political” model of development failed. Though no monolithic Chinese state directs “Chinese Development” overseas, individual Chinese entrepreneurs nonetheless draw from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) anti-political and state-centric paradigm when facing foreign social worlds. In the particular case of Myitsone, Chinese proponents drew from PRC’s state-nationalist heuristics of “national minorities and state-led development” and “Western anti-China conspiracy,” when facing Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and Burman nationalisms. State ideological subjectivities of these developers seemed to blind them to the weakness in their own anti-ethno-political strategies, even when those collapsed publicly. I conclude that the Myitsone Dam’s construction will likely not be restarted, despite the hydropower company’s efforts. The Myitsone case also exemplifies how China’s previous historical entanglements in its neighboring regions uniquely disrupt the progress of “Going-Out” in Asia.

Honest Iago? A media and academic freedom case study

This case study involves issues of academic freedom and media freedom at the regional University of the South Pacific (USP) in a dispute between the senior administration of the university and two journalism lecturers over the impact of media releases and media comments made between May and July 2014, about the military-backed government and the right to freedom of expression. In May 2014, just four months before Fiji’s post-coup general election, a student at USP, suddenly and unexpectedly, had his scholarship cancelled. As a result, USP student journalists wrote a radio news story, which was broadcast on the USP radio station Radio Pasifik. A few days later, the scholarship was reinstated. Shortly afterwards, the USP journalism lecturers issued a joint media release criticising the military government on two issues: (1) their support of torture; and (2) the refusal of accreditation for two senior Fiji journalists to attend an international conference being held in Nadi. This action brought the two lecturers into an acrimonious dialogue with the USP administration. The article reviews the media coverage and examines the issue from the perspective of the head of the journalism programme.

‘Justice and Peace Will Kiss Each Other’ (Psalm 85.10b): Minjung Perspectives on Peace-building

During the period of military-backed government (1961–1988), South Korea faced various political and economic challenges: poverty and inequality in society; human rights abuses by military governments; and confrontation with the communist North. This article examines Psalm 85: 10 in the light of the political context of South Korea and the way minjung theologians and artists understood and utilized the passage for their struggle with the governments and mega-companies. The article argues that the fight for justice for the poor and oppressed is what has brought a sustainable peace in South Korea, and that although justice seeking and peace-building should be implemented simultaneously as the Scripture implies, if one has to prioritize between the two, justice-seeking has to take precedence.

Failure of the Saffron Revolution and Aftermath: Revisiting the Transitologist Assumption

Myanmar often baffles political scientists throughout the world for the resilience of its military regime and its resistance to attempts at democratization. Although Eastern Europe provides a plethora of examples reaffirming the rosy picture that Western democracy will gradually prevail as the universal political system, Myanmar seems to offer an exception. Paradoxically, most of the factors conducive to the introduction of democratization — such as increasing costs for military maintenance, a long-term economic fiasco, widespread local mobilization, sweeping electoral defeats for the military-backed government, international boycotts and condemnation — exist in Myanmar. In August 2007, a new spate of uprisings, later to become known as the “Saffron Revolution” or the “Saffron Uprising,” was suppressed by the Myanmar junta, leaving the junta to continue in power to mishandle the disastrous cyclone of May 2008. Why does the transitologist assumption for democratization record consistent failure in this cou...

Party politics under a non-party caretaker government in Bangladesh: the Fakhruddin interregnum (2007–09)

This paper explores the logic and politics of the range of measures undertaken by the non-party caretaker government to reform the political sector, particularly political parties, in Bangladesh between January 2007 and December 2008. It was argued by the military-backed government, and supported by civil society, that the reforms were necessary to cleanse party politics which was considered to be a serious obstacle to the institutionalisation of elections and the consolidation of democracy in Bangladesh. The article argues that rather than achieving any major success in reforming the party system, measures taken by the non-party caretaker government reinforced the ‘old’ party politics characterised, among others, by over-concentration of power in the party chief, inter-party rivalry and suspicion, lack of mutual trust, dynastic domination of party leadership, and lack of democratic orientation of parties. It examines the factors that account for the resilience of ‘old’ party politics and explains its implications for party institutionalisation and democratic consolidation in Bangladesh.

Thailand's Political Crisis: Which Color Is Conservative?

Thailand’s political crisis has raged since February 2006, when a new protest movement, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) or “Yellow Shirts,” took to the streets. Their goal was to depose Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, elected in 2001 and reelected in 2005 with substantial parliamentary majorities. Continuous protests culminated in the December 2006 military coup after which the TRT was dissolved and Thaksin went into exile. Following a year of military rule and the promulgation of a new, more conservative constitution, fresh elections were held and the Thaksin backed party, reformulated as the People’s Power Party (PPP), won for a third time. The PAD reactivated the protests and took over the international airport for eight days until a court ruling dissolved the PPP. The Democrats, the PAD backed main opposition party in parliament, were able to cobble together a fragile coalition government made up of defecting former Thaksin allies. Since Democrat Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva took power in December 2008, Thaksin’s supporters, the “Red Shirts,” have taken to the streets to oppose what they claim is an undemocratic, illegitimate, and military backed government.

Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed

Although there is a limited literature in English on Algeria, it does contain some gems. This is one of them. It is a balanced and sympathetic approach which will enhance our understanding of that country. Martin Evans and John Phillips tackle a difficult subject: our view of Algeria has tended to focus on the traumatic war of independence from France in the 1950s, framed for many by Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers (1966). Following Independence in 1962 a state socialist Algeria played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, until the turbulent years of the 1980s and 1990s during which the majority of the population was trapped between the military-backed government and radical Islamists in a civil conflict of which there remain echoes today. Faced with the complexities of a society where almost anything one can say about it as well as its opposite may be true, many writers fall into the trap of focusing on the extremes in Algerian society, taking refuge in easy generalisations. Rejecting such an approach, Evans and Phillips write: The aim of this book is to scrape away at the layers of confusion and obfuscation in order to reveal the causes of this violence. We want to go beyond stereotypes which interpret the conflict as the consequence of a pathological Oriental mindset, the simple battle between secularists and Islamists or the inevitable failure of the post-independence regime. There is nothing inevitable or predetermined about Algeria (p. xv).

Fiji

Fiji Jon Fraenkel (bio) Fiji in 2007 was marked by cycles of conciliation and repression that echoed like seismic aftershocks from the December 2006 coup. Steps were taken by the new military-backed government to reconfigure the established order, by purges at the top of the public service and throughout the boards of the state-owned corporations; by reconstruction of the Great Council of Chiefs; and by reform of the Fijian Affairs Board, the Native Land Trust Board, and the Fiji Development Bank. Although there was diplomatic disapproval for the overthrow of Fiji’s elected government, the new regime’s reformist credentials, as well as its anticorruption and antiracist platform, won it a fair number of overseas admirers and some domestic supporters. But the authoritarian aspect of the coup—that it flew in the face of majority ethnic Fijian opinion—prevented any lasting consolidation. Efforts to build legitimacy thus tended to generate mounting controversy, while phases when criticisms grew brought a furious but realpolitik-driven response. On 4 January 2007, Republic of Fiji Military Forces (rfmf) Commander Frank Bainimarama relinquished his temporary position as president, and reappointed Ratu Josefa Iloilo as head of state. A month earlier, Ratu Josefa had been removed from that office because he had disassociated himself from the coup, on the advice of Roko Tui Bau and Vice President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi. Bainimarama had, at that time, said he was only temporarily “stepping into the shoes of the President” (Bainimarama 2006). Now restored to office, the eighty-six-year-old president lamented that cultural reasons had prevented him from “fully performing [his] duties” on 5 December 2006, referring to the anti-coup pressure from his sacked high-ranking deputy. But he said that he “would have done exactly what the Commander of the rfmf, Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama did since it was necessary to do so at the time” (Iloilo 2007). Read from a script prepared by military officers who had, over the previous month, kept him virtually secluded from public contact, the speech was carefully contrived to fit the anticipated “doctrine of necessity” defense of the coup before the courts. Yet it constituted a gross abdication of the president’s constitutional responsibilities. The normally obsequious Methodist Church, doubting that the president was in full possession of his faculties, suggested that he be “medically boarded, and if necessary, retired with dignity and respect” (Methodist Church 2007; see also Fraenkel 2007). The next day, Bainimarama was formally appointed prime minister, [End Page 450] ending the month-long tenure of that post by the army camp medical practitioner, Dr Jona Senilagakali. “Extra-constitutional steps,” Bainimarama insisted, had been “necessary to preserve the Constitution,” claiming that legal precedents existed for such usage of “reserve powers” (Bainimarama 2007a). These arguments strongly resembled those put forward by Fiji Human Rights Commission Director Shaista Shameem (2007a, 2007b), but they found little support among Fiji’s senior lawyers (Ali 2007a, 2008). Ostensibly to facilitate an inquiry into the activities of the judiciary at the time of the 2000 coup, Chief Justice Daniel Fatiaki and Chief Magistrate Naomi Matanitobua were sent on leave a day before the presidential handover. At the instigation of the attorney general, a hastily convened meeting of the Judicial Services Commission, chaired by Judge Nazhat Shameem (Shaista Shameem’s sister), appointed Justice Anthony Gates as acting chief justice. That appointment was defended by the attorney general, but it was deemed unconstitutional by most legal scholars (Crawford 2007; Cox 2007; Leung 2007). It signaled the start of a wholesale restructuring of the judiciary, resulting in the August resignation of most of Fiji’s Court of Appeal judges. On 6 January, Bainimarama, now figuring as prime minister, outlined the “President’s mandate” that was intended to guide his interim administration. The new government would provide amnesty for the soldiers who had carried out the coup; it would validate the decrees, suspensions, dismissals, and appointments of the past month; and it would set out to eradicate corruption. The sixteen-member interim lineup included two former rfmf commanders, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau as foreign minister, and Ratu Epeli Ganilau as minister of Fijian affairs. Both men have close links to the family of deceased former...

Algeria and terrorism

The involvement of a growing number of Algerians in terrorist activities in North America and Europe has raised questions about their exact motivations and objectives. On balance, their activities do not represent a straightforward externalisation of the long-running dispute between the Islamist opposition and the military-backed government in Algiers, in which violence is used in pursuit of specific political demands. Rather, the Algerian nationals involved appear to be inspired by a set of broader, more vague but also more absolute grievances against the West and its perceived attacks on Islam which are shared by organisations such as al-Qaeda.

Thailand: Toward Democratic Stability

Thailand: Toward Democratic Stability Daniel King (bio) and Jim LoGerfo (bio) In July 1995, Thailand held its second set of parliamentary elections since the country’s most recent transition to democracy in May 1992, when massive protests forced the military-backed government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon out of power and pushed parliament to democratize the constitution. In the July 1995 elections, a new coalition led by the Chart Thai (Thai Nation) party ousted the government headed by the Democrat Party of then-Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, and Chart Thai leader Banhan Silpa-archa became Thailand’s twenty-first prime minister. Was this peaceful transfer of power a sign that, in the three years since the political transition, democracy has been consolidated in Thailand? According to the editors of one comparative study of democratization, a democratic regime is consolidated “when all politically significant groups regard its key political institutions as the only legitimate framework for political contestation, and adhere to democratic rules of the game.” 1 In Thailand, the process of democratic consolidation seems well under way. Between May 1992 and July 1995, no important antisystem political parties or social movements emerged, and there were no calls from the armed forces, the capitalist class, the mass media, the universities, labor, or other social groups for the imposition of authoritarian rule. During the September 1992 and July 1995 parliamentary elections, as during the period between them, the military remained largely on the political sidelines, politicians mostly respected democratic procedures, and social groups pressed their demands and processed their conflicts in accord with the constitution and without “knocking on the barracks door.” On the level of institutions, however, the weakness of [End Page 102] parliament and of the party system continues to restrict political accountability and representativeness. Stable, consolidated democracy has long eluded Thailand. When a group of junior army and navy officers and civil servants overthrew the absolute monarchy in June 1932, they proclaimed the establishment of the first democratic regime in Thai political history. The system they created, however, was democratic more in form than in content, and it soon gave way to military-based rule. Such would be the fate of many subsequent democratic regimes. Since 1932 there have been nine successful coups and seven failed attempts. The frequent transitions to and from authoritarian rule typically involved the promulgation of a new constitution; the present charter is Thailand’s fifteenth. Not surprisingly, this lack of political continuity has hindered the institutionalization of the party system. The typical Thai political party lacks a mass base, a well-articulated organization, and, indeed, any identifiable ideology. 2 Instead, parties form around personal ties and the dispensation of machine-style patronage, in keeping with a social structure based largely on patron-client networks. Thus the primary features of the Thai political system have been military intervention in politics, the struggle between military officers and civilian politicians over the division of power and spoils, and the weakness of political institutions. Thai political history since the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932 can be divided into five periods: 1932–73, 1973–76, 1976–91, 1991–92, and 1992 to the present. Although the process of change has been uneven and discontinuous, the overall trends have been toward a declining political role for the military, a correspondingly more important place for parliament in the political process, growing identification of political parties with particular regions and constituencies along with continued party-system fragmentation and a lack of differentiation among party platforms, and an increasingly well developed and assertive civil society. Between 1932 and 1973, Thailand’s political system was at best semidemocratic. The breakthrough to mass political participation occurred in October 1973, when student-led demonstrations for a permanent constitution brought down a corrupt and unpopular military dictatorship. Yet the proliferation of parties after 1973 made parliamentary governance highly precarious, and the turmoil that accompanied democratic rule led many Thais to welcome the “restoration of order” promised by the military coup staged on 6 October 1976. The coup reestablished the preeminence of the armed forces over parliament, the party system, and civil society. But the government installed in its aftermath proved too reactionary even for the armed...

How I run Radio CX-30

Radio CX-30 is a small, independent radio station in a country ruled by the military; its director explains how he and his station have managed to survive. Plaza Independencia is at the very heart of Montevideo, Uruguay's capital on the Rio de la Plata. Its buildings are symbolic of both the country's past and what has happened during the past decade of military rule. In the centre of the square is a statue to General Artigas, a hero of the fight for liberation from Spain in the nineteenth century, who put forward revolutionary land reform proposals. He died a pauper in exile. Opposite is the one-storey Presidential Palace, now in the shadow of a ten-storey military headquarters under construction for the past few years, but still unfinished. The other side of the square is dominated by Montevideo's traditional luxury hotel, the Victoria Plaza Hotel. This too has changed hands in recent times, and now belongs to the South-Korean inspired Unification Church (the ‘Moonies’) who bought it in 1982. To make their financial dealings simpler, they bought a majority shareholding in the Banco de Credito, Uruguay's third largest banking group. They also set up an evening newspaper Ultimas Noticias, run by the former secretary of the armed forces' information services. At one end of the Plaza Independencia is the arch leading to the spur of land which comprises the old city and the port. These were sealed off in June 1984 when a leading political exile, Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, returned from eleven years abroad after being elected as the Blanco party presidential candidate for controlled elections which the present military-backed government has called for November, after all their previous plans for continuing their own rule met with steadfast opposition from the Uruguayans. The radio station which has been prominent in giving a voice to that opposition is housed at the opposite end of the square, in the Palacio Salvo, a piece of grandiose Spanish architecture which somehow suffered a mid-century continental drift and found itself on the far side of the South Atlantic rather than in Barcelona. Radio CX-30 occupies the second floor of the rambling building. The defiant stance it has adopted towards the military government, particularly since 1980, has made it very popular, and its entrance is thronged constantly with people hoping to get their complaints heard, or to talk with its director, German Araujo. He is a small man with aquiline features and seemingly boundless energy. Appointed to head the radio in 1973, his personal prestige has grown with its popularity, and reached a high point last December when he embarked on a hunger strike in protest at the government's closure and occupation of the radio.

Problems Of Thai Internal Security

It has been twelve months* since the so-called National Administrative Reform Council (NARC) seized political power from the democratically elected government (on 6 October 1976) and installed the military-backed government of Tanin Kraivixien. The 1974 Constitution was scrapped, Parliament was dissolved and all political parties were disbanded. The whole country was put under maniai law. Within the first three months of the new regime about 8,000 people were arrested on suspicion of being communists or persons dangerous to society. All these were done in the name of nadonal ? to safeguard the country from communism, economic disaster and violence. Furthermore, the Prime Minister, with the approval of the Cabinet and the Military Advisory Council, has been given absolute powers to execute anyone charged with endangering the security of the country, without having to go to civil or military coun. It is the objective of this paper to analyze and assess the internal security situation of Thailand after 6 October 1976, to investigate whether the situation has improved or deteriorated and to comment on its future trend. In understanding the internal security situation of the country the attitudes and behaviour of politically potent forces are analyzed. The more important forces are the radical left in the cities, the overseas Thais, the students and intellectuals, the labour organizations, the press, the urban middle class, the politicians, the Communist Pany of Thailand (CPT), the rural poor and the military.