Legacy of Dependence
Mashooq Salehin
April 20, 2009
As a nation-state Bangladesh has never faced such crisis and threat since her independence in 1971. The carnage occurrence held in Pilkhana would remain as a historic disaster. We are depressed and no verbal expression is adequate enough to display our grief. Much has been discussed since the brutal killing happened in Dhaka regarding the reasons behind the so called mutiny and its aftermath. Many conspiracy theories are coming out from our think tank and again, unfortunately, we observe the politicization of such theories. The nation is crumbling as our political think-tank leading them to discrete through their conventional blame game. The government was busy with taking the praise for ‘so called’ competence in crisis-handling thus actually failed to assess the draw-back of the whole incident. Effete force of BDR is exhausted and literally the government did not find any failure of her on it but only a conspiracy against an elected power with a sole intention to destabilize it. We are also hearing applaud from the biased quarter of the print media and in many cases from the electronic media as well regarding the competence of chief executive of the present AL government. A veteran leader of the ruling party also buttered up the Prime Minister Sheikhe Hasina by saying that- only reason she could handle the crisis successfully is the blood in her vein which she is inheriting from Sheikh Mujib. However, we don’t know how much effective was the blood pressure of her late father, but we have witnessed death of 67 officers even after four hours of the break-out, unnecessary delay to move armed forces, to create pressure on the so-called rebels, a mysterious blackout in the effected area and not a single admonish for the minister in charge of the Home. Consequently, we heard that the most responsible minister was put in charge of the investigation and sorry to say, Army had to move to create pressure on the democratically elected government to remove Ms. Sahara Khatun.
We know the political culture of Bangladesh has not been matured enough to make our political leaders stepping ahead for resignation from their position in case of failure. However, can’t we just expect at least someone from the elected government take the responsibility? If the leaders of the ruling party are asked about such accountability, we are informed about the ongoing conspiracy against them to cease the progress and development of the nation. We would like to remind them with respect: taking measure against such conspiracy is their responsibility as well, and failure of such incompetence should be considered as their deficiency in dutifulness. State Minister of Home Affairs has already set up an example of sincerity (!) as his absence was noticeable. He could not get back to Bangladesh before early march! Should any individual holding such constitutional position of the state have realized the significance of crisis, no one would prolong their stay even for an hour. However, such patriotism and sincerity we haven’t witnessed yet, though we hope to.
There are many conspiracy theories evolving around this issue. Unfortunately, Sheikh Hasina and her party itself are attempting to point their fingers to some shadow enemy. As former president of United States George W. Bush declared the war against terror that kept people of US waiting to “smoke em’ out”. Neither he nor his big military power could ignite the fire throughout his era. And billions of taxpayer’s money instead has been burnt to ashes in the desert for searching the so called terror. Bush made to o his people different color code of alarm- yellow, pink, purple or red. However, war on terror continued without any result but killing thousands of Iraqi civilian including children. This war is still going on, and we don’t know how and when this would end. Referring this post 9/11 consequence to the Pilkhana Massacre has a reason. The brutal killing of talented officers of our defense force lead us to think in details.
It is now becoming an evident that the present government preferred to curtail up the face of this shadow enemy as we observe the theory of finding evidence of JMB involvement—addressed by Lt. Col. Faruque Khan. Such theories would not be accepted unless we are ensured about the benefits of JMB from organizing such a large scale attack. True that this militant group has been previously found involved in anti-state subversive activities. Common pattern of previous attacks made by such group indicates they take responsibilities of every attack made by them as their main reason of operating any attack is to convey their message to the government and people that they are fighting in the name of “jihad” against the non-Islamic states to establish Islamic rule. In this case, such symptom was not seen and such a well-designed informal combat operation could not be resulted from a semi-skilled militant force. Even if JMB is to be found as the mastermind of this occurrence, failure of intelligence should not have any mercy at all. Not only the chief(s) of such intelligence should face deposition, they should face the trial as well. We hope the committees formed by the government would be able to investigate the root and its branches. However, comments made by Lt. Col. Faruque Khan indicating JMB as the culprit make us thought that Government has a plan of logical deduction already and such comments are being made to switch the public opinion into a particular trail.
Military and civil experts of security, political leaders and others agreed unanimously that such killing could not be possible without prior planning and back up of big power. First segment of this statement refers to the prior planning of this operation— which is appearing with more details as days are passing. Obviously the failure of intelligence was one of the main reasons behind such tragedy. In addition, involvement of some part of the military intelligence in the whole occurrence is also under consideration. Prior planning also involved many issues that took place after the attack such as, fleeing away of at least six battalions’ rebel troops. Such planning did have almost all the elements of an unconventional warfare. Killing of top brass in the middle of the capital city has a significant meaning which government failed to realize, at least instantly. Former US president George W. Bush spent seven minutes silently after someone whispered about the attack on WTC. People of US, at least a major portion of them got angry with their president because he took (according to their judgment) too long to realize the significance of attack. Well, now they can relax a bit, it took 33 hours for our prime minister to realize the significance, yet she failed to mention the threat on our nation state in her speech, while Bush did not!
Any unconventional warfare has some features that could be easily identify in the whole scenario. Unlike the conventional war, such warfare follows some exceptional criteria in target selection such as: the value of the target should be high to the enemy. In this case, Bangladesh defense force is the target enemy which lost the best officers with high quality, training and experience. Target value was high, in terms of human resource or in terms of a human life. At the same time we have lost several civilians including daily laborer and young university students in the center of Bangladesh’s capital. While aiming a high value target, the attack also succeeded to affect the command control of the nation’s defense. We observed volatile activity of a Para-military force with no effective chain of command for more than 24 hours. Literally, Bangladesh’s border was without effective defense for more than a day; many Border opposition post’s were ineffective, command centers of BDR in border districts were dissolved and it was possible for any invaders to take control of small or large segment of Bangladesh’s land for minimal time period. Such unsecured situation could occur in a state with no effective mechanism—as new term of political science are being referred as ‘failed state’. Bangladesh as a state faced a crucial situation of insecurity and threat to its sovereignty while the attack could successfully paralyze the country’s civil and military hub. Despite the willingness of Bangladesh Army to resolve the crisis in military way, they exhibited high level of professionalism by abiding the decision of the government. The success of political solution took thirty six hours and invaluable lives. There were several negotiations with the mutineers and fourteen of them eventually were brought to the Home of the Prime Minister. We don’t know on what issues the discussion was continued on but the bargaining did not raise the question of officers believed to be hold as hostage inside Pilkhana. At one point Home Minister herself went to the BDR headquarter and brought some of the family members from their residence. While she was asked about the hostage officers, she expressed her ignorance. The question needs to be raised here is that: Did she ask? Or did anyone ask about the officers held inside as hostage? Such skill of negotiation, whether or not should be mentioned as a successful one reveals the psychological paralyzed state of the authority.
The location of the whole incident indicates a superior master mind behind the plan. Dhaka is the life-center of Bangladesh in all aspects. This city is not only the center of administrative body; Dhaka is the heart of economic activities, trade and commerce. In the aspect of Bangladesh’s military security—Dhaka is in the focal point, which is termed as “Center of Gravity”. As renowned German General Von Clause Witz referred the term as “…hub of all power and movement which everything depends on” – Dhaka is that hub for Bangladesh, without any doubt. The attack of BDR took place in the city center, the killing could scare the citizen and made the command control ineffective for certain hours, indicates a clever selection of the location because the focal point of Bangladesh’s military strategies is to save Dhaka. Vulnerable safeguard mechanism of Dhaka thus revealed to international media and government actually failed to take prompt action. True that government can claim the success of resolving the crisis without any more civilian casualties, yet they (govt) have to take the responsibility of keeping the country and its capital under attack and threat for 36 hours. Meeting the criteria to be considered as an unconventional warfare requires us to realize the significance of the attack. Unfortunately, political arena of Bangladesh did not delay to take advantage against their rival from this issue. Failure or deliberate failure of Intelligences is a vital reason behind this occurrence, yet we did not witness any authority to take responsibility for such lacking.
Intellectual class of the country again bisected according to their political loyalty. Two schools of thought evolved as usual, blaming each other on their left or right. Without considering the threat to our nation’s sovereignty, intellectual class of progressive camp indicated the contribution of different foreign powers behind it; same opinion came from their rivals. However, unlike the media in our two great neighbors, our TV-talk show participants showed modesty and generosity to their suspects. Nonetheless to mention that this generosity is not the outcome of media protocol, rather it reveals our lack of courage to express the truth which we actually believe on. It makes us ashamed that, whenever such a crisis appears in India or Pakistan, the media anchors or their civil society intellectuals do not hesitate to take the responsibility of accusing their rival neighbor without considering reactions from the government and/or public. In many cases such accusation appeared to be fictitious afterward, but both of the counterparts are dedicated on establishing a national agenda, which is- making the enemy familiar to its people. However, neither our generous analysts willing to utter the name of the foreign enemy but also trying to leave their hinted analysis upon us so that we can use our own head and find out what is that foreign power and what was its motive. But, we believe it is more important to aware people of Bangladesh about their national security threat than to keep a good-neighbor relationship if that relationship takes chances of it.
In this point we expected someone responsible would come up and directly discuss about the beneficiaries of the Pilkhana Massacre. Whether believing on our big neighbor’s genuine interest for a friendly relationship with us or not, we all know that the vulnerability of Bangladesh obviously would be fruitful for her though current ruling party of Bangladesh has a historical bond with the political and state mechanism of this South Asian superpower. Of course we believe that there is no other alternative but to keep a friendly relation with India, however we should prioritize our spirit for the country’s independence and sovereignty first. Historical bond between India and Bangladesh during the regime of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib was not a total gain for Bangladesh or for him. Pro-people leaders like Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed and his associates were thrown out of the board and thus a distance was created between the Military and Sheikh Mujib in a planned way. Mistrust grew and rose as Para-militia force “Rakhhi Bahini” took lead in implementing law and order. As a matter of fact, Sheikh Mujib was derailed from the course of a democratic government mechanism and last phase of his life as a ruler actually was not that popular. Whether or not BAL acknowledge, it is true that, the brutal killing of Sheikh Mujib and his family could not draw that much sympathy from the people only after four years of the coronation as a king accepted by the heart of his people. However, Mujib failed or ignored to realize that emergence of Bangladesh as a nation state in this geographical location appeared to be a threat to the unity of India, particularly in her north-east region. Sheikh Mujib rather relied on Indian intelligence’s advice and he appointed one of the Brigadier of Indian Army to develop the Rakhhi Bahini. Dependence on foreign force and intelligence actually never been found fruitful in the course of human civilization, neither did Bangabandhu. He had to pay with his life for the mistaken security policies he accepted for Bangladesh and himself. With respect we just want to remind Sheikh Hasina: Don’t you see any resemblance of the contemporary days with the situation your father faced?
We know the political culture of Bangladesh has not been matured enough to make our political leaders stepping ahead for resignation from their position in case of failure. However, can’t we just expect at least someone from the elected government take the responsibility? If the leaders of the ruling party are asked about such accountability, we are informed about the ongoing conspiracy against them to cease the progress and development of the nation. We would like to remind them with respect: taking measure against such conspiracy is their responsibility as well, and failure of such incompetence should be considered as their deficiency in dutifulness. State Minister of Home Affairs has already set up an example of sincerity (!) as his absence was noticeable. He could not get back to Bangladesh before early march! Should any individual holding such constitutional position of the state have realized the significance of crisis, no one would prolong their stay even for an hour. However, such patriotism and sincerity we haven’t witnessed yet, though we hope to.
There are many conspiracy theories evolving around this issue. Unfortunately, Sheikh Hasina and her party itself are attempting to point their fingers to some shadow enemy. As former president of United States George W. Bush declared the war against terror that kept people of US waiting to “smoke em’ out”. Neither he nor his big military power could ignite the fire throughout his era. And billions of taxpayer’s money instead has been burnt to ashes in the desert for searching the so called terror. Bush made to o his people different color code of alarm- yellow, pink, purple or red. However, war on terror continued without any result but killing thousands of Iraqi civilian including children. This war is still going on, and we don’t know how and when this would end. Referring this post 9/11 consequence to the Pilkhana Massacre has a reason. The brutal killing of talented officers of our defense force lead us to think in details.
It is now becoming an evident that the present government preferred to curtail up the face of this shadow enemy as we observe the theory of finding evidence of JMB involvement—addressed by Lt. Col. Faruque Khan. Such theories would not be accepted unless we are ensured about the benefits of JMB from organizing such a large scale attack. True that this militant group has been previously found involved in anti-state subversive activities. Common pattern of previous attacks made by such group indicates they take responsibilities of every attack made by them as their main reason of operating any attack is to convey their message to the government and people that they are fighting in the name of “jihad” against the non-Islamic states to establish Islamic rule. In this case, such symptom was not seen and such a well-designed informal combat operation could not be resulted from a semi-skilled militant force. Even if JMB is to be found as the mastermind of this occurrence, failure of intelligence should not have any mercy at all. Not only the chief(s) of such intelligence should face deposition, they should face the trial as well. We hope the committees formed by the government would be able to investigate the root and its branches. However, comments made by Lt. Col. Faruque Khan indicating JMB as the culprit make us thought that Government has a plan of logical deduction already and such comments are being made to switch the public opinion into a particular trail.
Military and civil experts of security, political leaders and others agreed unanimously that such killing could not be possible without prior planning and back up of big power. First segment of this statement refers to the prior planning of this operation— which is appearing with more details as days are passing. Obviously the failure of intelligence was one of the main reasons behind such tragedy. In addition, involvement of some part of the military intelligence in the whole occurrence is also under consideration. Prior planning also involved many issues that took place after the attack such as, fleeing away of at least six battalions’ rebel troops. Such planning did have almost all the elements of an unconventional warfare. Killing of top brass in the middle of the capital city has a significant meaning which government failed to realize, at least instantly. Former US president George W. Bush spent seven minutes silently after someone whispered about the attack on WTC. People of US, at least a major portion of them got angry with their president because he took (according to their judgment) too long to realize the significance of attack. Well, now they can relax a bit, it took 33 hours for our prime minister to realize the significance, yet she failed to mention the threat on our nation state in her speech, while Bush did not!
Any unconventional warfare has some features that could be easily identify in the whole scenario. Unlike the conventional war, such warfare follows some exceptional criteria in target selection such as: the value of the target should be high to the enemy. In this case, Bangladesh defense force is the target enemy which lost the best officers with high quality, training and experience. Target value was high, in terms of human resource or in terms of a human life. At the same time we have lost several civilians including daily laborer and young university students in the center of Bangladesh’s capital. While aiming a high value target, the attack also succeeded to affect the command control of the nation’s defense. We observed volatile activity of a Para-military force with no effective chain of command for more than 24 hours. Literally, Bangladesh’s border was without effective defense for more than a day; many Border opposition post’s were ineffective, command centers of BDR in border districts were dissolved and it was possible for any invaders to take control of small or large segment of Bangladesh’s land for minimal time period. Such unsecured situation could occur in a state with no effective mechanism—as new term of political science are being referred as ‘failed state’. Bangladesh as a state faced a crucial situation of insecurity and threat to its sovereignty while the attack could successfully paralyze the country’s civil and military hub. Despite the willingness of Bangladesh Army to resolve the crisis in military way, they exhibited high level of professionalism by abiding the decision of the government. The success of political solution took thirty six hours and invaluable lives. There were several negotiations with the mutineers and fourteen of them eventually were brought to the Home of the Prime Minister. We don’t know on what issues the discussion was continued on but the bargaining did not raise the question of officers believed to be hold as hostage inside Pilkhana. At one point Home Minister herself went to the BDR headquarter and brought some of the family members from their residence. While she was asked about the hostage officers, she expressed her ignorance. The question needs to be raised here is that: Did she ask? Or did anyone ask about the officers held inside as hostage? Such skill of negotiation, whether or not should be mentioned as a successful one reveals the psychological paralyzed state of the authority.
The location of the whole incident indicates a superior master mind behind the plan. Dhaka is the life-center of Bangladesh in all aspects. This city is not only the center of administrative body; Dhaka is the heart of economic activities, trade and commerce. In the aspect of Bangladesh’s military security—Dhaka is in the focal point, which is termed as “Center of Gravity”. As renowned German General Von Clause Witz referred the term as “…hub of all power and movement which everything depends on” – Dhaka is that hub for Bangladesh, without any doubt. The attack of BDR took place in the city center, the killing could scare the citizen and made the command control ineffective for certain hours, indicates a clever selection of the location because the focal point of Bangladesh’s military strategies is to save Dhaka. Vulnerable safeguard mechanism of Dhaka thus revealed to international media and government actually failed to take prompt action. True that government can claim the success of resolving the crisis without any more civilian casualties, yet they (govt) have to take the responsibility of keeping the country and its capital under attack and threat for 36 hours. Meeting the criteria to be considered as an unconventional warfare requires us to realize the significance of the attack. Unfortunately, political arena of Bangladesh did not delay to take advantage against their rival from this issue. Failure or deliberate failure of Intelligences is a vital reason behind this occurrence, yet we did not witness any authority to take responsibility for such lacking.
Intellectual class of the country again bisected according to their political loyalty. Two schools of thought evolved as usual, blaming each other on their left or right. Without considering the threat to our nation’s sovereignty, intellectual class of progressive camp indicated the contribution of different foreign powers behind it; same opinion came from their rivals. However, unlike the media in our two great neighbors, our TV-talk show participants showed modesty and generosity to their suspects. Nonetheless to mention that this generosity is not the outcome of media protocol, rather it reveals our lack of courage to express the truth which we actually believe on. It makes us ashamed that, whenever such a crisis appears in India or Pakistan, the media anchors or their civil society intellectuals do not hesitate to take the responsibility of accusing their rival neighbor without considering reactions from the government and/or public. In many cases such accusation appeared to be fictitious afterward, but both of the counterparts are dedicated on establishing a national agenda, which is- making the enemy familiar to its people. However, neither our generous analysts willing to utter the name of the foreign enemy but also trying to leave their hinted analysis upon us so that we can use our own head and find out what is that foreign power and what was its motive. But, we believe it is more important to aware people of Bangladesh about their national security threat than to keep a good-neighbor relationship if that relationship takes chances of it.
In this point we expected someone responsible would come up and directly discuss about the beneficiaries of the Pilkhana Massacre. Whether believing on our big neighbor’s genuine interest for a friendly relationship with us or not, we all know that the vulnerability of Bangladesh obviously would be fruitful for her though current ruling party of Bangladesh has a historical bond with the political and state mechanism of this South Asian superpower. Of course we believe that there is no other alternative but to keep a friendly relation with India, however we should prioritize our spirit for the country’s independence and sovereignty first. Historical bond between India and Bangladesh during the regime of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib was not a total gain for Bangladesh or for him. Pro-people leaders like Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed and his associates were thrown out of the board and thus a distance was created between the Military and Sheikh Mujib in a planned way. Mistrust grew and rose as Para-militia force “Rakhhi Bahini” took lead in implementing law and order. As a matter of fact, Sheikh Mujib was derailed from the course of a democratic government mechanism and last phase of his life as a ruler actually was not that popular. Whether or not BAL acknowledge, it is true that, the brutal killing of Sheikh Mujib and his family could not draw that much sympathy from the people only after four years of the coronation as a king accepted by the heart of his people. However, Mujib failed or ignored to realize that emergence of Bangladesh as a nation state in this geographical location appeared to be a threat to the unity of India, particularly in her north-east region. Sheikh Mujib rather relied on Indian intelligence’s advice and he appointed one of the Brigadier of Indian Army to develop the Rakhhi Bahini. Dependence on foreign force and intelligence actually never been found fruitful in the course of human civilization, neither did Bangabandhu. He had to pay with his life for the mistaken security policies he accepted for Bangladesh and himself. With respect we just want to remind Sheikh Hasina: Don’t you see any resemblance of the contemporary days with the situation your father faced?
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