Tragedy strikes Bangladesh
Tragedy has again struck Bangladesh at Pilkhana BDR Headquarters. The nation lost more than sixty brave sons. The people join in anger but with solemnity with the armed forces and the soldiers without uniform to pay homage to the departed souls and pray that the families have the strength to bear the irreparable loss. They died young and premature, leaving their families and relatives in utter pain. They were always ready to die for the nation but why at the BDR HQ? Who killed them and why? At this hour of grief, we can only ask questions. The answers must come from the inquiries. The nation wants everything on the table and exemplary punishment for the murderers. Besides evidences and clues, some principles provide logic to proceed on such inquiries. Most obvious is the 'beneficiary' theory. Who could be the beneficiary of these murders- individually, collectively, politically or internationally? It could not happen without hidden motives. There may be more than one criminal motive. While there must be causes for such massacre the beneficiary theory can also be misleading. The murderers, specially the cold-blooded conspirators, always use the known discontentment to infuriate the simple-minded soldiers to accomplish the hidden motives. It is difficult to accommodate the dimension and brutality of mass killings of leaders as an outburst of anger. Experience says there was always a false front for the troubles in Bangladesh. Red headbands and masks seen among the rebels do not appear instantly without planning. The BDR men are educated and alert; knowledge and logic is no longer confined to academic certificates. Every large organization has some demands all the time; the conspirators might have camouflaged the real intention under the grievance of the jawans. I did not serve in the BDR but had operational and training association with them. BDR was built in bits and pieces for decades to be a fine lot of soldiers to augment our defense needs at the time of crisis. A great national defense asset has destroyed by the conspirators. We alarmingly hear some ammunition and equipment found in Peelkhana that do not match the government issued ones and some unidentified vehicle went in and out during the trouble. There are also talks of millions of taka and dollars distributed among the troublemakers. These clues must be dug into without preconceived ideas and wishful thinking. Bangladesh has a free market of sophisticated arms and ammunitions in the underworld. Not long ago, ten truckloads of sophisticated arms and ammunition were captured at Chittagong port area from the wholesale merchants of death. When we fail, we fall back upon God to hide our failures; only He knows how many truckloads passed through the hands of the clandestine purveyors of illegal weapons. Manmade or natural, Bangladesh is developing a naiveté to sleep on live volcanoes only to be caught in a whirlwind of crisis. We must have all the facts now and corrective measures to stop such tragedies in the future. Where are national intelligence agencies at this hour of tragedy? Why couldn't they alert about the conspiracy or mutiny in time? Why did they fail to cover, once the shooting started, live from inside Peelkhana? Several thousand people lived inside Peelkhana which included civilians. Why were reliable agents not planted routinely in such a big-armed establishment in the heart of the metropolitan Dhaka, adequately reinforced when people coming from all over Bangladesh in connection with the BDR week? One fails to accommodate such failure. If there were only one SOS message from a reliable agent about the gruesome killing of officers, the armed forces could have immediately interjected to save many valuable lives and apprehend the killers. They have been digging and dumping the dead bodies in mass graves, manholes and burning them while the nation remained helplessly ignorant for more than thirty hours. How the nation is going to take these thirty hours of inaction as a simple lapse? How the NDTV (India) by noon of the day-1 knew that the DG and the entire top leadership had been killed when our government and media channels remained mum. Did the intelligence agencies have any input in the negotiations with the killers? How had DAD Tauhid, now flushed out by our brave boys in RAB, become acting DG of BDR? When the TV channels started breaking news about the self-appointment of Tauhid after meeting the PM, why the government did not deny it immediately. Why was not all the exits blocked to prevent the killers escaping? The nation must have answers to these mind-boggling questions. When there is fire, the answer is the fire brigade, for the mutiny at Peelkhana army was the only answer and reportedly they were ready. Negations should be for saving lives. Many may ask as to who is going to take the political responsibility of the gruesome killings in Peelkhana? If the politicians want to confine politics to fighting for position only, they may have the chair but cannot earn respect. Let the oldest political party convert the tragedy into strength following the parliamentary traditions. The nation in utter shock cannot but resent the mud slinging in the parliament between government and the opposition. For the survival and growth of democracy, the occupant of the august house must go with the mood of the nation. The opposition is greatly weakened almost to the detriment of the parliamentary system and the government has a responsibility to be conciliatory the opposition, particularly at a time like this. The government must reply to the allegations made by the opposition, but counterattack is not only unnecessary it is also counterproductive. Look at President Obama, after barely two months people are almost forgetting that he is a Democrat. We can learn to be great by closely observing the contemporary greats in the profession of politics.
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