Politics in Bangladesh, the world’s third largest Muslim nation, revolves around two ladies who, for the past 15 years, have refused to even speak with each other. Both Begum Khaleda Zia, who stepped down from office as PM in October on completion of a five-year term, and her political rival Sheikh Hasina Wajed, entered Bangladesh’s turbulent and often bloody politics through a route familiar in Asia — public sympathy following putsches that eliminated powerful male relatives. And now, in the runup to general elections set for January, the ‘Battle of the Begums (ladies)’, is turning red hot once again. It is easy to believe that the rivalry is the result of personal feuds, but analysts say it is aligned with a larger political struggle and that the two have no choice but to maintain a relationship of vitriolic hatred. Wajed and Zia, head the two most important political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) respectively, have served either as PM or as opposition leader since 1991, following the ouster of the military dictator HM Ershad and the reintroduction of popular democracy.

While Hasina Wajed inherited the leadership of the Awami League from her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Khaleda Zia heads the party created by her husband Ziaur Rahman — a military general turned politician.

Over the years, the rivalry has resulted in hundreds of deaths, in anything from street fights to vigilante killings. The latest violence, raging for the past three weeks, has been over the formation of a neutral, interim caretaker government that would be responsible for conducting the elections. While Hasina Wajed and her party have acquiesced to the self-appointment of President Iajuddin Ahmed as head of the caretaker government, they want him to prove his neutrality by sacking chief elections commissioner MA Aziz and his three deputies. “We’ll not join the polls unless Aziz and his deputies are removed,” Hasina Wajed warned. Countered Khaleda Zia with her own rebuttal: “We’ll not join the polls and initiate streets agitation if Aziz and the other commissioners are removed. It’ll be unconstitutional.”

“The two ladies could not sit together even on questions of national security in the last 15 years,” M Sakhawat Hussain, a retired general of the Bangladesh army, said. Sakhawat believes that Islamists have taken advantage of the rivalry between the two ladies and their political formations to make inroads into the country. “I don’t say the ladies are radicals or extremistsà but neither of them could ignore Islam as means of making political gains in Muslim-majority Bangladesh,” he said. Bangladesh drew international attention, in August 2005, when Islamists carried out a series of near-simultaneous bombings across the country in a demonstration of their newfound power and influence.

With international pressure growing, the government cracked down on the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh group, arresting its top leaders and bringing them to trial resulting in some of them being awarded the death sentence. But typically, the two leaders have been blaming each other for the rise in fundamentalism and violent militancy in this densely populated country of 145 million people, who rate among the world’s poorest. — IPS