When a City Chooses the Wrong Enemy, It Endangers Itself

On Facebook, his name is MD Ziaul Haque. Out of curiosity, I visited his profile. Why, I wondered, had this man suddenly become so invested in campaigning against stray dogs under the slogan “We Want a Safe City”? What had he been doing before this? Where was he during the recent public controversy over vaccine management and systemic healthcare failures? 

I found that he is the convener of an organization called Students for Sovereignty—a platform I will return to later. But first, let us begin with a critical lesson from history. After the Chinese Revolution, sparrows were targeted for extermination under the state-led “Four Pests Campaign” initiated by Mao Zedong. The birds were declared enemies of agriculture because they consumed grain. Citizens were encouraged to destroy nests, smash eggs, and chase sparrows until they dropped from exhaustion and died. In the eyes of the state, sparrows had become a problem that needed to be eliminated.

Nature, however, does not operate according to political slogans. Sparrows did not merely eat grain; they also consumed insects. Once their population collapsed, locusts and other agricultural pests multiplied dramatically. China’s devastating famine was caused by many factors, including disastrous agricultural policies, manipulated production figures, coercion, and administrative failures. Yet the sparrow campaign remains a powerful symbol of what happens when a state identifies the wrong enemy. 

Sooner or later, nature sends the bill. A similar principle applies elsewhere. Frogs may appear insignificant, but they feed on mosquito larvae. Remove frogs from an ecosystem, and mosquito populations inevitably surge. In Dhaka, frogs have become increasingly rare due to unplanned urbanization, while mosquito infestations have reached alarming levels. 

This ecological relationship illustrates a broader truth: ecosystems are interconnected, and simplistic, heavy-handed solutions often create far more dangerous problems.

Today’s debate about stray dogs in Bangladesh should remind us of that lesson. Whenever interest groups invoke the fear of rabies to justify calls for dog extermination, an important question arises: are we once again choosing the wrong enemy? Rabies is a terrifying disease, and dog bites can be dangerous. Once symptoms appear, rabies is almost always fatal. Yet the solution is not to kill dogs. 

The solution lies in vaccination, treatment, sterilization, effective waste management, the availability of Rabies Immunoglobulin (RIG), and rigorous public awareness. According to the World Health Organization, vaccinating at least 70 percent of the dog population is sufficient to interrupt transmission and bring rabies under control. The scientific solution is already well-established. The real question is whether governments are willing to invest in it, or if they prefer to let panic be weaponized for political leverage.

Rabies deaths do occur in Bangladesh, and every such death is a preventable tragedy. At the same time, public-health priorities should be determined through empirical evidence rather than manufactured panic. International agencies, including UNICEF and the WHO, have repeatedly noted that over 14,000 Bangladeshi children die from drowning every year. How, then, should public-health priorities be set? 

On the basis of data and preventability, or according to whichever issue dominates social media for a few days? If destruction were the answer to every public hazard, then one could argue that every pond, reservoir, and river should be filled in because drowning claims lives. Such reasoning is obviously absurd. It resembles suggesting that the cure for a headache is to amputate the head.

The recent fatalities following dog bites in the Gaibandha district understandably shocked the public. 

However, those incidents raise structural questions that go far beyond the animals themselves. Were the wounds washed properly with soap and water immediately after the bites? Were rabies vaccines readily available at nearby public hospitals? Was RIG accessible? Was the vaccine cold chain maintained correctly? Did patients receive the full course of treatment? These questions matter because rabies prevention depends not only on dogs but also on the efficiency and accountability of public-health systems. 

If someone claims that a person developed rabies and died within a day of being bitten, that claim deserves strict scientific scrutiny. Rabies symptoms generally appear weeks or months after exposure, depending on the location of the bite, the viral load transmitted, and how quickly medical treatment begins. Blaming dogs alone while ignoring possible institutional failures in healthcare delivery risks obscuring the real causes of preventable deaths.

Another question is difficult 

to ignore. Why has this fear of dogs become such a dominant issue at a time when public confidence in vaccination programs has faced serious challenges? During recent debates over vaccine supply, storage, distribution, and critical medical errors, public attention was focused on significant weaknesses within the healthcare system. 

While it would be irresponsible to make claims without direct evidence, asking questions remains the fundamental duty of journalism. Are public-health failures being deliberately overshadowed by a simpler, more emotionally charged narrative that identifies dogs as the ultimate enemy?

The language of extermination is not merely about animals; it also reflects a particular way of thinking about society. Once a culture becomes accustomed to solving problems by removing the vulnerable, the same logic can eventually be applied to people. Phrases like “they are dirty,” “they are dangerous,” or “they must be removed” transition from animals to marginalized human communities far more rapidly than many assume. 

This concern becomes especially relevant when examining the role of organizations and political campaigns that build public support by identifying targets for collective anger. Today the target may be stray dogs; tomorrow it may be another marginalized group. The politics of creating enemies has always been a familiar instrument of authoritarian power.

The debate over stray dogs in Dhaka is not new. In previous years, municipal proposals were made to relocate dogs from the city. Animal-rights advocates successfully challenged those initiatives in court, arguing that such measures should not proceed without consultation and scientific assessment. 

The controversy highlighted a deeper contradiction. Some policymakers promoted the archaic vision of a “stray-dog-free” modern city, while others emphasized humane and evidence-based approaches. Yet a truly modern city is not defined by the absence of animals. It is defined by its ability to manage the relationships among people, animals, waste, public health, and the urban environment as a single cohesive system.

Estimates of Dhaka’s stray-dog population vary, but even if the number reaches tens of thousands, the challenge is entirely manageable. 

Vaccination campaigns, sterilization programs, data collection, animal identification, and community engagement all require resources. However, the cost of such measures is well within the capacity of a major megacity. Compared with massive expenditures on cosmetic infrastructure, beautification projects, promotional campaigns, and other municipal priorities, a comprehensive rabies-control strategy represents a modest, high-yield investment in public safety.

The same is true nationally. Scientific approaches to rabies control require commitment, funding, and coordination, but they are completely achievable. The Catch-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (CNVR) model is widely recognized as the most humane and effective method for managing stray-dog populations. Rather than relying on cruel and ineffective extermination, it seeks to stabilize populations, reduce disease transmission, and improve public safety over the long term.

Urban ecology provides another reason to be cautious about simplistic solutions. In a densely populated city like Dhaka, stray dogs are part of a broader ecosystem involving waste, rodents, insects, and human activity. Open garbage dumps, market refuse, restaurant waste, and unmanaged organic material create conditions in which numerous species interact. Removing one element from that system can produce severe unintended consequences. 

For example, a reduction in dog populations may create immediate opportunities for rodent populations to expand, particularly in areas where municipal waste management is inadequate. Increased rodent activity brings its own public-health crises, including the risk of rodent-borne diseases like Hantavirus, which spreads when dried rodent excrement becomes airborne and is inhaled by humans. Likewise, stray dogs consume a significant portion of urban food waste. This is not an ideal waste-management system, nor should any city depend upon it. 

Nevertheless, abruptly removing dogs without addressing underlying sanitation problems will simply leave additional food resources available for rats, flies, and cockroaches.

There is also what ecologists describe as the “vacuum effect.” When dogs are completely removed from an area, the space rarely remains empty. If sources of food and shelter continue to exist, new dogs from surrounding territories will inevitably move into the vacant territory. In most cases, these newcomers are unvaccinated, unsterilized, and unfamiliar to local residents. As a result, extermination drives often undermine rather than improve disease-control efforts, turning a manageable population into an unmanaged hazard. 

Those who advocate killing dogs must therefore answer critical logistical and legal questions: How many dogs would be killed? Under what legal authority? Who would carry out the killings? What would happen to the carcasses? How would authorities prevent new dogs from entering the area? And how would extermination improve vaccine access, hospital preparedness, wound treatment, or public awareness?

A civilized urban policy requires better answers. Dhaka needs a comprehensive stray-dog management strategy grounded in empirical evidence. Authorities should conduct systematic population surveys, identify high-risk areas, expand vaccination coverage, implement sterilization programs, maintain reliable databases, and improve waste management. Health authorities, municipal institutions, veterinary services, and animal-welfare organizations should work together rather than pursue conflicting agendas. At the same time, healthcare systems must be strengthened. 

Every public hospital should have adequate supplies of rabies vaccine and RIG. Communities should be educated about the importance of immediate wound washing after animal bites. Vaccine storage systems should be monitored carefully, and public trust in health institutions must be restored.

The lesson of China’s sparrow campaign remains starkly relevant today. States do not win by declaring nature an enemy. They may achieve temporary political victories, but ecological and social realities eventually reassert themselves. Killing dogs does not manufacture vaccines. It does not improve hospitals. It does not repair broken waste-management systems. It does not resolve public-health failures. What it does is create the illusion of action while leaving the underlying institutional rot untouched.

Bangladesh faces a choice between two distinct paths. One is the politics of fear: identify an enemy, encourage public outrage, and seek violent shortcuts to complex problems. The other is the politics of science: vaccinate, sterilize, educate, improve healthcare, manage waste, and develop long-term policies based on evidence. A civilized society invariably chooses the second path. Cities become safer not through destruction but through responsible management. And societies become more humane not by eliminating the vulnerable, but by accepting institutional responsibility for them.

There is one final irony worth mentioning. Some critics have suggested that caring for dogs or protecting animals is somehow a foreign or Western import. Such arguments reveal more about ideological prejudice than about public health. Fear can be a powerful political tool, and societies often seek cultural or religious justifications for anxieties that have little scientific basis. Yet fear alone cannot serve as public policy. If most people die in beds, that does not mean society should stop using beds. Likewise, the existence of rabies does not justify abandoning science in favor of panic. 

The challenge before Bangladesh is not to wage war against dogs. It is to build robust, transparent institutions capable of protecting both human life and public health through reason, evidence, and systemic responsibility.

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*Writer and Journalist

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