Challenge of religious militancy

First, Gen. Amin probably overstates the extent of the militants' threat. Organisational excellence as shown by their ability to coordinate geographically separated bomb explosions doesn't necessarily translate into or generate popular support.

Such support requires a coherent and relevant ideology. This is the militants' main weakness. Their doctrine gleaned from the leaflets scattered at the bomb sites is vague; lacks coherence; relies overly on religious zeal; dismisses valid non-religious political alternatives; and uses threats to compel compliance, always a sign of feebleness.

Another weakness is that the performance of Muslim states that were or are theocracies has not been particularly noteworthy e.g. Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. So the powerful magnet of attraction by example is absent.

Gen. Amin may be right to characterise the bombs as "not just a threat to national security (but)… a declaration of war against the state."

But it's also possible to consider the explosions as a sign of the militants' strategic weakness. To get around this, the extremists are using muscle rather than brain power to get their message across and win public recognition. This rarely works though it can cause much mayhem before being contained.

Even where muscle power is used as the servant of ideology, as in the case of Naxalites in W. Bengal and focoists in Latin America, this didn't displace the state structure. The Maoists are attempting this in Nepal; its outcome still some time off.

Gen. Amin's proposal to deal with the militants' threat smacks of overkill. He suggests that BNP should drop its four party alliance, team up with the opposition to form a sort of united front of "democratic, progressive and secular forces", set up a war council or security council and not "worry about the next election".

Taken all together, the suggested measures would be a cure worse than the disease and amounts to throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There's no reason to suspend normal multiparty politics, or drop fundamental political practices such as elections. Throughout WWII, the US held presidential elections on time (1940 and 1944).

Also, Gen. Amin doesn't give the rationale for a war council. Couldn't the existing cabinet system set up a sub-committee if needed to deal with security issues?

Gen. Amin also doesn't mention the composition of this council. It's unthinkable constitutionally that serving or retired service chiefs or other defence personnel sit on this council. Surely, Gen. Amin, knowing the dangers of active or creeping military involvement in civilian jurisdictions, is not suggesting that!

Political grievances need political solutions. Military responses buy time but offer no panacea. Didn't our experience in 1971 and that of Latin America 1970-1990 demonstrate this point conclusively?

Gen. Amin's article seems to suggest that 17 August is an existential threat to us. This smacks of Bush's declaration of global war on terrorism (GWOT) following 9/11. This US policy, ill-conceived in theory and implemented injudiciously in practice e.g.

Iraq and Guantanamo, is not something we should replicate easily or lightly.

Gen. Amin also raises the spectre that the country may lapse into "a state of insurgency, a state of guerilla warfare, outcome of which is unpredictable." This depends a lot upon the capability of the Islamic militants.

While they may have access to a fairly large pool of manpower of questionable quality but undoubted devotion from madrassahs, and to some veterans of Afghanistan and Lebanon, the validity of Gen Amin's approach of using a conventional army's teeth-to-tail ratio of 1:9 to reach the figure of 15,750 'trained-fighters" is debatable.

I concur with Gen. Amin's assessment that "August 17 has sounded the warning bells loud and clear." But these bells have been sounding clearly for some time. They just sounded more loudly last month. The question is: for whom the bell tolls?

The responsibility for dealing with outrages like 17 August lies squarely with the elected government. The authorities have taken action to find out who were involved and why. But this and earlier governments' performance in tackling public safety issues doesn't give much ground for optimism. Will it be any different this time?