Hartals getting too violent

The two consecutive hartals enforced by Jamaat-e-Islami on Monday and Tuesday saw violence that was unprecedented in scale and lethality across the country.
According to reports so far, the hartals, from the evening of Sunday till Tuesday, have claimed some four lives, caused countless number of injuries and inflicted huge damage to public and private properties including vehicles on the roads. The collateral damage to public life was immense-- businesses suffered, day labourers went without work, critical patients went through untold ordeals and prices of essentials sky-rocketed.
What baffled all is the behaviour of the law-enforcers in the face of the destructive fury of the Jamaat-Shibir activists. Sometimes they acted as if in desperation and fired indiscriminate shots at the unsuspecting crowd.
Initially, the police seemed caught unprepared and endured the fury of the Jamaat-Shibir elements, thereby somewhat undermining public's confidence in the law-enforcement agencies. But they have bounced back and particularly, with reinforcement from RAB and BGB, the law-enforcers should be in a better position now to tackle the hit and run tactics of the agitators in future.
The question is what does the Jamaat-e-Islami hope to achieve by these violent means? Taking the entire population hostage they will not be able to win people's sympathy. Neither would they be able to intimidate the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) where their leaders are facing trial for committing crimes against humanity during the War of Liberation. On the contrary, their violent methods will only tell upon the people's level of tolerance, with dire consequences.
So, they must see reason, shun the path of violence and learn to respect the law of the land. At the same time, they must allow the law to take its own course.