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When a bomb exploded at a cultural program of Udichi in Jessore on March 6, 1999 and killed 10 and injured about 100, that was the first awakening. Nobody bothered; no one was caught and punished. Then there was the second awakening several months later when a bomb blast in a communist party rally killed 7 leftist leaders in Kushtia. We did not pay heed. There was a ‘Laden Bahini Dance Party’, wrote a local English daily, which was apparently a fun and frolic party which featured a few female dancers too in a jungle in Cox’s Bazar area. When police raided the party, a fierce gun battle ensued that resulted in 30 injuries including 5 policemen. This was probably the third awakening but we did not pay attention – the episode died off.
   Then came the big awakening on Pahela Baishakh celebration on April 14, 2001 at Ramna Batomul which was marred by a huge bomb blast that killed 10 people. No body bothered, no one was apprehended and justice was not handed. Then there was an awakening when secularist Poet Shamsur Rahman was attacked at his residence by alleged cadres of underground terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad but no body was caught and brought to justice.
   Then came the awakening of international flavour on September 11, 2001 when 19 Islamic terrorists rammed airplanes into the World Trade Centre in New York and Pentagon Headquarters in Washington. We should have paid attention to our backyard but we did not bother. We thought our home was clean and we went to sleep. Thus, awakenings one after another failed to catch our imagination – then foreigners came to awaken us, first on April 4, 2002, when Bertil Linter published his highly-debated article titled ‘BANGLADESH: A Cocoon of Terror’ in the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) journal. The author suggested that ‘Rising fundamentalism and religious intolerance were threatening secularism and moderate Islam. The implications for the region and beyond are grave, but it’s not too late for a counter-revolution.’ Instead of being alerted, the whole nation, from government to intellectuals to man on the street, went mad after Bertil Linter. Instead of being awakened we took Bertil Linter and FEER to court for his vile attempt to malign the image of our clean nation. Then came another foreigner in Alex Perry whose article in New York Times (NYT) titled ‘Deadly Cargo’ (October 21, 2002) described purportedly al-Qaeda and Taliban Jihadists armed with AK-47 weapon caches entering Southern Bangladesh through Burma. The story also cited al-Qaeda’s number two lieutenant Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri’s visiting Dhaka briefly. We did not get alerted, we did not investigate but instead we denied as usual and we condemned it as an attempt to malign the good name of Bangladesh by NYT. Then came another foreigner Eliza Griswold early this year who published her story titled ‘The Next Islamist Revolution?’ (NYT, January 27 2005) which painted a grim picture of Islamic extremist activity in Bangladesh, especially by the group of Bangla Bhai, whose Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) had launched a campaign of terror to Islamise the Northern Bangladesh. We did not get awakened but instead we again condemned Eliza Griswold and NYT for trying to spoil the image of our good nation. The terror of Bangla Bhai and his JMJB thugs were so widespread and well reported in the national media that included barbaric murder of 35 people in Northern Bangladesh and yet, our judicious government, instead of investigating the matter became so furious that it started looking for the informers in an attempt to punish them. In between and subsequently, there have been so many incidences of awakening, including uncovering many terror-training camps in jungles run by militant Islamist groups, many of which followed gunfight with the police. Yet, we did not get alerted. We continued to deny the presence of any Islamic terrorist groups – definitely shamelessly.
   One of the biggest home-grown awakenings came on August 21 2004, when grenades were thrown into the rally of opposition leader and former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, which killed 18 people including a senior female leader, wife of former minister Zillur Rahman. The government put the blame on the opposition party itself terming it latter’s effort to destabilise the country. We did not bother – no one was caught and punished. This followed by another similar awakening this year on January 26 in Habiganj when grenade-throwing again on an opposition party rally killed the former finance minister and a seating MP, SAMS Kibria. The government tried to put the blame on the opposition party again but this time pressure from the western nations including the EU and the United States led to some botched investigation, which could not catch any of the real masterminds.
   Again there was a bombing in a Shah Jalal Sufi Shrine in Sylhet on May 21 2004, which injured the British High Commissioner amongst others and no one was brought to justice. And there was the huge arms and ammunitions haul in Chittagong on April 2, 2004 which included 2,000 automatic and semi-automatic weapons namely Kalashnikov-type assault rifles and rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launchers; quantities of 40mm RPG ammunition; 25,000 hand grenades and 1.8m rounds of small-arms ammunition. There was no credible investigation and no real culprit but a few dock-workers were charged. There have been bombings in movie theatres, considered sinful in true Islam, killing a number of people. And there was fatal attack on the secularist writer, Dr Humayun Azad. No one was brought to justice. Then there have been hundreds of threats to secular and minority religious persons and traditional cultural and entertainment activities and programs over the years. All these terror attacks and threats, targeting secular writers, politicians and supposedly un-Islamic cultural and entertainment activities, bore the clear hallmarks of significant Islamist terrorist activities across Bangladesh over these years.
   However, the greatest awakening came on August 17, 2005 when a series of about 500 bombs were set off all across the country within one hour in an amazingly coordinated manner. Execution of such massive bombing has been unprecedented in the modern history of terrorist activities of any kind anywhere. The government once again tried to deflect the responsibility on the opposition party and neighbouring India to destabilise the country. As pressure mounted especially from overseas, the government had to go back to do some homework and until now 260 people have been arrested all of whom are connected to Islamist organisations, including JMJB and Harkat-ul-Jihad. Surprisingly, none of the arrestees are members of government’s pet scapegoats, namely RAW (India), MOSAD (Israel), CIA (USA) and the opposition party.
   Yet, the latest awakening came from an individual from the home front, unlike Bertil Linter et al., ruling BNP’s Tareque Rahman. He confessed to the existence of the activity of international terrorist organisations in the country in a BBC Bangla program by saying, ‘It is my personal opinion that the same things happened in the US and Britain a few days ago. People there have been the victims of international terrorism and what’s happened here is continuation of those acts of terror.’ This is the first time someone in the ruling alliance has admitted to the presence of international terrorist elements in Bangladesh. This must have shocked the nation and the international community alike, since the government has persistently taken the stand of adamant denial about the presence of any terrorist organisations in Bangladeshi soil. Is this a real awakening or another attempt by Tareque Rahman to malign the good name of our good nation? Or is it an honest admission on behalf of the government which it has shamelessly denied for so long against the presence of glaring hallmarks of significant Islamic terrorist activities in the country. Now the government has announced bounty for the head of the so-called Bangla Bhai, whom the government termed a figment of imagination of the media and opposition party just the other day. Not only that, they now even have a picture of a nonexistent Bangla Bhai and published it in all the major newspapers while announcing the bounty for his head. It appears that the menace of Islamic extremism has gotten to the point of strangulating the government and it has no other choice but to act – for domestic as well as international pressure.
   Does not it prove that Bertil Linter, Alex Perry and Eliza Griswold were all correct in painting the picture of Bangladesh to become the frontier for the next Islamic revolution unless actions were taken? Does not it prove that those very few home grown secularists were always correct, when they raised an alert of Islamic terrorist activities in the country every time the so-called religiously sinful targets such as jatras, cinema halls and traditional cultural activities and programs etc. were attacked or bombed? Yet, the government and many people including the intellectuals termed these sensible citizens anti-Bangladeshi, agents of RAW, MOSAD, CIA and what not?
   It turns out that what opposition leader Sheikh Hasina has been trying to highlight about the presence of terror organisations (Taliban, al-Qaeda) in the country over the last few years have become true. Of course, being the former PM, Hasina must have known it best, since such terrorist activities started during her tenure itself. But those attacks attracted no tangible actions from her government either. We must not condone the former PM either for her failure to take stark measures to punish those culprits.
   The persistent denial of Sheikh Hasina (1999-2001) and Khaleda Zia (2001-2005) governments about the presence of terrorist groups in Bangladesh, despite having all the evidence, is not only a glaringly shameless act but also a sad episode since their denials took lives of more than 200 innocent people. Of course, if not for the pressure from outside –mainly USA, UK and EU – that tragic tale of denial would continue even today. Sadly, it is the responsibility of a democratic government to ensure the welfare of the nation and its citizens! It is a sad and tragic story of denial. But let us hope that the government has finally come to its senses and would take some real measures that would exterminate all the elements behind these tragedies once and for all. Will this desire of the peace-loving common people become a reality or remain a pipe-dream? With Jamaat – the likely behind-the-scene patronisers of these activities – in the alliance government, I am not putting my money in favour of any tangible actions by the government. Only time can tell.
   Alamgir Hussain is a researcher and a freelance writer

‘WATER is your friend’ was the advice regularly given to a truly good friend of mine in the Middle East. The speaker was a member of the One-Thousand-Litres-a-Day-Keeps-Dehydration-at-Bay Brigade, although I have to say that the Arabs take a different view.
   After generations of sword-like desert heat, they take tea in the morning, endure an oven-like day without sustenance, and then sip another scalding tea at dusk. The less you drink, the less you perspire, the less you need to drink. In a land with few oases, it’s a craft worth learning.
   The problem is that today, water is not our ‘friend’. It comes smashing into New Orleans; it drowns the nursing home elderly in their baths; it assaults Galveston and Houston; it kills millions in Bangladesh, dozens in Andhra Pradesh; it floods south from the great ice-cold green bays of the Arctic; it carries 19th-century houses through the centre of Prague, and it bubbles into the bars of English pubs from the ancient, overflowing river-banks of Kent. Water has become our enemy.
   There is a beautiful, delicate, inevitably cruel irony at the way in which nature and man conspire to uncover the lies of the rich and powerful. Just as President Bush’s disastrous environmental policies are now destroying the southern coast of the United States — yes, it is global warming that causes this massacre of the innocent — America is preparing to receive its 2,000th dead soldier back from Iraq. No bodies, please — let’s not dishonour the dead of New Orleans by taking photographs of them. Nor the American dead of Iraq by taking pictures of their coffins en route home. Death, as usual, is what happens to other people.
   But the photographs of British soldiers, cowled in fire, hurling themselves from the top of their Warrior fighting vehicle in Basra this week, were the final iconic images of our uniquely British folly in Iraq. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara’s henchmen have concocted another monstrous lie about all this, of course. The Iraqi policemen who protested at Britain’s destruction of their prison — and the crowds who set fire to the Warrior (and its crew) — were only a few hundred people.
   Who were we to suggest they represented the millions of Shia Muslim voters who solemnly went to the polls last January? And who were we to suggest that the ‘few hundred’ Saddam ‘remnants’ identified as troublemakers in mid-2003 represented a Sunni insurgency? And who were we, back in 1971, to suggest that a few hundred stone-throwers in the Falls Road and Short Strand in Belfast represented ‘the vast majority of ordinary peace-loving Catholics’ in Northern Ireland?
   When will the bubble burst? With the insurgent capture (and massacre) of a US base in Iraq? With the overrunning of the Green Zone in Baghdad? Every day now brings Vietnam-style evidence of our collapse. The Americans batter their way into Tal Afar and kill, so they say, ‘142 insurgents’. Get that? US forces manage to kill 142 of their enemies, not a single innocent man, woman or child among them! But let’s go back to the Brits.
   Remember how we were told that our immense experience of ‘peace-keeping’ in Northern Ireland had allowed us to get on better with the Iraqis in the south than our American cousins further north? I don’t actually remember us doing much ‘peacekeeping’ in Belfast after about 1969 — the rest, I recall, was about biffing the IRA - but in any case the myth was burned out on the uniforms of British troops this week.
   Indeed, much of the war in Northern Ireland appeared to revolve around the use of covert killings and SAS undercover operatives who blew away IRA men in ambushes. Which does raise the question, doesn’t it, as to just what our two SAS lads were doing cruising around Basra in Arab dress with itsy-bitsy moustaches and guns? Why did no one ask? How many SAS men are in southern Iraq? Why are they there? What are their duties? What weapons do they carry? Whoops! No one asked.
   What we were actually doing to ‘keep the peace’ in Basra was to turn a Nelsonian ‘blind eye’ on the abuse, murder and anarchy of Basra since 2003 (including, it turns out, quite a bit of abuse by our very own squaddies). When Christian alcohol sellers were murdered, we remained silent. When ex-Baathists were slaughtered in the streets — including women and their children, a civil war if ever there was one — our British officers somehow forgot to tell the press. Anything to keep our boys out of harm’s way.
   But this is what has been happening in Basra. As the locally recruited police force (paid by the occupation authorities) sucked into its ranks the riff-raff of every local militia — as it did in Sunni areas to the north — we ignored this. Even when an American reporter investigating this extraordinary phenomenon was murdered — almost certainly by these same policemen — the British remained silent.
   We were ‘controlling’ the streets. In Amara — by awful coincidence, the very same Kut al-Amara with whose name, I’m sure, my favourite prime minister will soon be ennobled — British soldiers now operate just one heavily armed convoy patrol a day. That is the extent of our ‘control’ over Amara. Now we are reducing our patrols in Basra. You bet we are.
   And a familiar bleat is rising from the sheep pen. ‘Outside powers’ are interfering in southern Iraq. Thirty-five years ago, it was the Irish Republic that was assisting Britain’s IRA enemies. Now it is Iran that is supposedly urging the Shia of Basra to revolt. In other words, it’s not our fault — yet again, it’s the bloody foreigners who are to blame.
   Alas, it is not. Iraqis do not need Iranian weapons or military expertise. Their country is afloat with weapons and they learned how to make bombs — in their millions — during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Half the Iraqi cabinet is linked to Iran — have the British forgotten that their honourable Dawa party government officials in Baghdad worked for the very same Dawa party that blew up the US and French embassies in Kuwait, and tried to kill the emir in the late 1980s? That these same gentlemen belong to a party which was effectively controlling the western hostages in Beirut during this same period?
   No. All this is forgotten. Blame Iran. Later, no doubt, we’ll blame those ungrateful Iraqis and then we’ll declare victory and do what Defence Secretary John Reid claims we won’t do: cut and run. And there again, we’re in danger of forgetting the origin of such things. Faced with the imminent destruction of his vessel, a sailing ship captain would cut his anchor or sail ropes to allow his ship to move away from rocks or from being overwhelmed by the waves. Cutting and running was often an eminently sensible thing to do. But not for John Reid. We’re not going to cut and run. We’re going to be blown on to the rocks.
   This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn

The UN Charter prevents intervention in matters that are within the jurisdiction of any state. But the high-level panel agreed that the principle of non-intervention could no longer be allowed to shield genocidal acts and other atrocities. It recommended that the UN should assume irresponsibility to protect civilian populations when government failed to do so. Military action may also be sanctioned by the Security Council. America refusing to be tied down to a legal obligation changed the formulation of the recommendation making it weaker and discretionary in nature.
   On non-proliferation of nuclear weopons and disarmament differences of opinion surfaced between America and other countries even at the drafting stage. While America was in favour of non-proliferation, its interest in disarmament was lukewarm. As a result there was no consensus on this in the summit.
   Though an agreement in principle was reached in the summit regarding setting up a Peace Building Commission to help prevent post-conflict nations from relapsing into violence and civil war, the decision about whether the Security Council or the General Assembly should be in charge of this remained unresolved.
   On the reconstitution of the Human Rights Council, there was agreement on making it a smaller body but the America proposal to exclude certain countries remained contentious and was side-stepped for the time being.
   The Summit was also meant to reaffirm the Millennium Development Goals declared five years ago in a similar summit with pledges to free fellow human beings from the “abject and dehumanising conditions “ of extreme poverty. The pledges were translated into eight Millennium Development goals (MDG) which aim to halve poverty by half, enroll every child in primary school, reduce child and maternal mortality, protect environment and promote global partnership for development. Before the summit, the American ambassador to the UN told that America was in favour of the MDG declaration but not the specific goals and the indicators and schedules. The chief attraction and importance of the MDGs being the conversion of rhetoric into hard numbers, the explanation given by the American ambassador surprised and disappointed the developing countries. Referring to the target of 0.7% of GDP to be given as aid, the America ambassador told that America had consistently opposed numerical aid targets from their inception in 1970s. As in the case of the proposals to reform the UN, the affirmation of pledge to reach MDG targets was also frustrated by America’s selfishness attitude and arrogance. The summit that took place in New York between 14 and 16th September was doomed to fail because one country, the only superpower in the world and the richest one, to boot, refused to think beyond its own narrow interests. That sat ill with UN reform, Kyoto Protocol and MDGs, which were global in nature and scope.

Advice to the next caretakers

by Esam Sohail

There are certain absolutely needful things that no elected government can do. Well founded fears of intra-party feuding, bureaucratic resistance, electoral considerations, and opportunistic opposition tactics have kept both major parties from instituting those key reforms that will address the most persistent national obstacles to development. Fortunately, for us there exists in our constitution the provision for non-party caretaker governments in the interregnum between partisan cabinets. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the only times Bangladesh has ranked amongst fully ‘free’ countries in global rankings has been during the time of caretaker administrations. The next caretaker government can take bolder steps and do more and it should because political parties cannot and will not.
   Except for nostalgic septuagenarians and political godfathers, nobody believes that the so-called student politics is good for the country any more. Such politics, which are really nothing more than extortion rackets for middle aged hooligans, must be banned forthright and educational atmosphere restored on our public campuses. Those students who want to do politics should graduate, get a job, and join a political party to do so.
   Similarly, trade union racketeering and politicking in public corporations must be stopped cold. Taxpayers should be thanked for providing for the salaries of public sector employees but they cannot be asked to subsidise indiscipline and arrogance. Punitive measures to control such union-mob mentality must be followed by turning public corporations from drains on the exchequer into customer service oriented, profit making enterprises. In this day and age, one should not have to wait six years for a phone line and six days for a Biman ticket (and that is after paying a bribe!).
   The same philosophy applies to the white collar government jobs-police, customs, revenue-where corruption and disservice is far more pronounced than at government owned factories and corporations. A police which refuses to accept FIRs without palm greasing and a customs house where assistant commissioners build houses in Gulshan needs to be harshly treated: exemplary punishments with jail time preceded by summary dismissals on a massive scale are the requirements of the day.
   Finally, there must be reforms at the social level to arrest the meteoric and increasingly violent rise of religious militancy. Mosques, imams and madrassahs should be registered and their activities closely monitored by means of new regulations. Those even suggesting, let alone advocating, establishing a theocratic state must be tried for sedition and dealt accordingly. Political parties should be prohibited from contesting elections if they do not pledge unconditional allegiance to the secular, republican constitution of our land.
   The tasks are daunting for the next caretaker administration, its time woefully short, and the need immense. Most of these reforms will need legal cover. Ideally, the caretakers, like in the past, should go ahead and promulgate an omnibus ordinance to affect these changes with the provision that the ordinance shall retain the force of law unless overturned by the next parliament. A closely divided future parliament, watched by a sceptical public, may not have the foolhardiness to undo such reforms despite the politicians’ desire to do so.
   The gambit is worth a try.
   Esam Sohail writes from Kansas, USA