Dhaka in deadly denial

BANGLADESH’S garment sector may have acquired a reputation for blatant regulatory neglect, deadly commercial short cuts and wretched pay and conditions but it has nevertheless been one of the country’s great economic successes. The so-called “confection” industry produces clothes and footwear for the great majority of the dominant international brands. The products are well-made and inexpensive. Factory conditions may still often be bad and dangerous, but customer-power has pushed the big brands to force an improvement in these industrial conditions. It is also apparently producing minor improvements in wages, though some union leaders dispute this. It seems that First World consumers are prepared to pay a bit more for their leisure wear and trainers. The salaries of course are still bad but as international economists have pointed out, 20 years ago many of these job simply did not exist. Bangladeshis and their overall economy have benefitted to the tune of $26 billion annually from the rapid movement of foreign customers to its garment sector. And Bangladesh has been duplicating this success story in other manufacturing industries, including automotive parts. Foreign money and foreign technology have been flooding into a country which once appeared a helpless victim of regular Monsoon flooding, polar political divisions and exploding demographics. Thus the series of assaults on foreigners by people claiming to be part of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS), which culminated on Friday in a deadly hostage-taking attack on a Dhaka café popular with foreign businessmen, have to be a major cause for concern. Seven Japanese were among the 20 dead when Bangladeshi security forces stormed the eatery after a 12-hour siege. Just 13 hostages were rescued alive. The seriousness of this development cannot be underestimated. There are some 250 Japanese businesses in Bangladesh with hundred of Japanese executives and workers. All have now been warned to stay away from public places. Some are to be evacuated. Similar warnings are going out to other foreigners working in the country. Overseas investors, who have continued to regard Bangladesh as an important manufacturing base, will now be thinking very seriously about further commitments and worse, may even be reconsidering their existing presence. The terrorists would seem intent on destroying Bangladeshi’s one key economic sector in the same way that they have wrecked the tourism industry in Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. The problem for Bangladesh is that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has consistently denied that Daesh has arrived in her country. Police seem to have known better. They say that five of the terrorists were known to them. Their lack of action against these killers may have had a lot to do with the official denials that the evil poison of organized terror had really arrived. This looks like a depressing replay of the willful and deadly official refusal to accept that there were serious safety problems with the garment industry, until in 2013, some 1,400 workers perished in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory. Only then did the government act, even though in the opinion of many, not decisively enough. The threat from Daesh terrorists is of an even great order of magnitude. Sheikh Hasina and her ministers must pull their heads up out of the sand and address this monster immediately before it brings economic ruin to the country and plunges it into real chaos.