Combating Crime with a Broken Force: The Operational Challenges Facing Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed”
After the July Revolution, a myriad of state institutions, apparatus and specifically the police force faced an egregious collapse. Elucidating most revolutions throughout the world such as Ukraine in 2014, Egypt in 2011, Tunisia in 2011 as well as Bangladesh in 2024 confronted a complete collapse of law enforcement agencies for a certain time frame. Assessing the pattern of all these revolutions, post-revolution governments face an incredibly complex task when reorganizing a collapsed or discredited police force. Because the immediate aftermath of a regime change is usually marked by high public expectations, institutional trauma, and volatile security vacuums, governments universally grapple with certain core structural challenges. Although the tenure of the previous advisor of Home Lt General Jahangir Alam bore the brunt of the daunting task of reorganizing the police force into a Subsistence functioning force, despite the insurmountable odds of many non-compliant cadre and non-cadre officers, noncooperation by a certain elements of bureaucrats the pressure of by various revolutionary groups to prosecute the police personnel involved in the July killings of protestors and simultaneously delegating the personnel to undertake law enforcement duties confronted a complex oxymoron. The subsequent Ansar revolted on August 25, 2024, which was imbued with loyalists of the previous Awami league regime was quickly quelled by the concerted efforts of the Bangladesh Army, Police and Pro July revolutionary groups. The alleged pre-planned conspiracy to sabotage by inciting the fire inside the secretariat on December 26, 2024, also further exacerbated the situation. Despite the consecutive emerging challenges of rising crime, mob violence and deteriorations of law enforcement agencies, the post revolution tenure of Lt general Jahangir and special assistant Khoda Baksh Chowdhury were able to successfully revive the decimated police force into a functioning organization despite the various efforts by Awami loyalists within the states hierarchy to sabotage their progress, a fact that largely went under looked. Considering the Current Tenure of Salahuddin Ahmed, the home ministry is confronting a different set of challenges and obstacles. The transition from the interim government and the post 2024 institutional restructuring left deep operation scars across both BCS(Police) cadre officers and subordinate non-cadre personnel. There is a deep-rooted trepidation within the organization regarding political vetting, transfers and post-election administrative realignments have severely reduced initiative and morale among senior officers. Subordinate ranks, having faced direct public scrutiny during prior political upheavals, remain reluctant to enforce authority vigorously. To accumulate further, the post July ambience of Bangladesh saw many general citizens Intrepid, aggressive and a generic non-cooperative attitude towards law enforcement officers which further contributed to a rise in criminal offences. The reluctance and a lack of incentive to enforce the law effectively also gave rise to various organized criminal groups conducting extortion, robbery, land grabbing and murder etc. In a few cases, the friction between cadre leadership and non-cadre operational units delegated with ground level implementation weakens execution efficiency and creating an internal governance gap to a certain degree. A deeper more concerning factor such as the sudden flash march by the banned Awami league in Gulshan on September 11, 2026, and the viral audio clip of former cantonment police station Officer-in-Charge Md Rakibul Hasan professing support to the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina reflects a dangerous lack of an effective preventive intelligence network. Local human intelligence gathering relies on a sustained community policing presence and institutional confidence, something that completely collapsed after the July revolution. The erosion of Police-community trust disrupted proactive intelligence channels, forcing law enforcement to act predominantly after crimes occur (Reactive policing) rather than preventing them (Preventive policing). Since the post revolution phase, accountability fears and heavy public scrutiny, field officers frequently default to minimal intervention unless explicit higher-level orders are instructed during civil unrest and localized conflict giving rise to cognizable offences and severely impeding timely escalation controls. Another major challenge is that most BCS police officers who were experts in their relative field such as intelligence led policing in DB (Detective branch) or SB (Special branch) were marked directly or indirectly as Pro Awami league loyalists and were transferred out in nonoperational roles. This made intelligence policing departments lack specialists or experienced officers in their related fields further impeding proactive policing methods. While it is documented that law enforcement agencies have engaged in brutal and oppressive crackdowns on citizens during the Awami led regime including the July revolution, section 23 of the Police Act 1861 expressly states “It shall be the duty of every police-officer promptly to obey and execute all orders and warrants lawfully issued to him by any competent authority.” Additionally, section 29 also imposes punishment for non-compliant officers such as imprisonment. Section 12 of the Police Act also states “”Every police officer… shall be subordinate to and is bound to carry out any legal order given by any police officer of superior rank”. While this does not justify the mass murders or unlawful acts undertaken by law enforcement agencies, it would be a strategic pivot by the home minister if he would be able to identify the core Awami league loyalists within the BCS(Police) of an estimated number of a hundred officers which gave orders to shoot unarmed protestors unlawfully, mark them and take appropriate legal proceedings against them. Motivate and empower the rest of the Cadre and non-cadre police officers back into the vigilant operational spectrum of law enforcement. It is quite coherent that combating crime with a demoralized and non-empowered Police force is impractical. It would be prudent for the home ministry to adopt a Problem-oriented Policing (POP) model developed by Professor Herman Goldstein in 1979. The core theme is a law enforcement strategy that police should identify and analyze the root causes of recurring crime problems in society, rather than simply responding to individual cases such as very recently the Salman Muqtadir studio vandalism incident. Sun Tzu once famously quoted in The Art of War “It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results”. Therefore, adopting a POP model without a strong and effective intelligence unit that specializes in HUMINT (Human intelligence), SIGINT (Signals intelligence), CYBERINT (Cyber intelligence), intelligence-led policing (ILP) and other pertinent intelligence would conclude in failure in combatting crime. A strong intelligence unit could assist the home minister in identifying the root causes and providing a surgical method for targeting the hyper-partisan nucleus of top pro- Awami League brass who issued unlawful lethal directives to keep Sheikh Hasina in power and currently clandestinely attempting to destabilize the regime, while re-empowering the broader cadre and non-cadre ranks under statutory protections. An effective law enforcement mechanism is one of the core pillars of society; a weak enforcement mechanism would deter Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and other development partners from investing in Bangladesh as well as have an adverse impact in a multitude of sectors. It would be imperative for Salahuddin Ahmed to adopt a proactive approach to immediately resolve the problems facing the internal bureaucracy of the Bangladesh police. It is only with an uplifted and empowered force that the police can truly combat crime. James A. Garfield, the 20th US president once famously quoted “A law is not a law without coercion behind it.” This perspective states that rules without an enforceable penalty are mere polite suggestions. Liberty is good but not to an extent where citizens can do whatever they want e.g. mob violence, murder. Coercion by law enforcement is wrong but sometimes a necessary evil for the greater good in establishing law and order.
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