Using army during hartal

Hartal is not a new phenomenon in this country and in many past occasions when situation was far worse, contingents of police were sufficient to bring mob frenzy under control. No matter how violent some of the past hartals had been, on no occasion civil law enforcers had to call in the army to help quell the political unrest. On a few extreme cases we have noticed contingents of the BDR patrolling the streets alongside the police forces.

The last known case of deploying the army to handle a hartal took place 16 years ago during the military rule of HM Ershad. But, as said, it was done by a military ruler and not by a civilian government, and then again not by a caretaker government. Pressing the army into action on Thursday to tackle a rather insipid hartal thereby was ill-advised. By exposing the army to a confrontational situation with the public cannot be called a good decision. It remains to be seen what were the processes of taking such a decision.

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After a decade and half military and autocratic rule, the armed forces have taken great pains to rebuild their image and they have done it successfully to everyone's satisfaction. Now our armed forces are recognised all over the world as a disciplined professional body worth the name. Since then they have stayed out of politics even though oftentimes they have been victimised by unfavourable political decisions. It is therefore unfortunate that when our armed forces continue to earn good name abroad for themselves as a disciplined peace keeping force, at home the name is being trivialised by certain quarters seemingly to fulfil partisan political objectives. The armed forces are there to defend the sovereignty of the country, therefore they should be kept above all controversy.