Hot pursuit, cold feet

BB Avenue grenade attack killed 21 including AL leader Ivy Rahman (left) and Sylhet Shah Jalal Majar blast injured British High Commissioner.

Since the grenade attack last August at the AL meeting at Paltan maidan, the demands that government do something have reached a crescendo. Barring a few leaders in the ruling coalition and on the lunatic fringe of the hard-core extremist leaning politicians, there is a general consensus that the grenade attack of August 21, the bomb attack on the British High Commissioner, the assassination of Ahsanullah Master, and lastly the killing of SAMS Kibria are evil designs directed to destabilise the country.

These attacks are defining moments for the country, irrespective of party affiliation, politics, or religion, and if the government fails yet again to take convincing and decisive steps, there will be a dangerous loss of faith in its ability to act.

What most people mean by decisive action is to strike against the godfathers and masterminds working and designing such nefarious policies. Precisely true, there should be people in the government firmly convinced in the ethos and philosophy in the creation as well as in the existence of Bangladesh.

Sadly enough, we have still such person holding ministerial status in the government who often says that he feels embarrassed to see a screen, not a flag fluttering over the flag stand of his car! He goes further, pointing a finger of doubt if this country was liberated at the cost of the blood of three million people. A patriot, no doubt with doubtful allegiance to the country he belongs to, he laments the unfortunate state of the country that could not produce a poet who could compose a national anthem for the country, and is in such a pathetic state that we had to borrow some lines from Rabindranath. Exhorting people to compose a national anthem after more than three decades of liberation speaks of an evil mind taking refuge and growing in strength in the sanctimonious glory of power and influence.

Salahuddin Quader Chaudhury, an adviser to the Prime minister on parliamentary affairs, who made such utterances as reported in the newspapers in the recent past, is a product of time and generation that was long in eclipse, but whose outlook and attitudes are now making a comeback at the highest levels of the government.

The law enforcement agency in the country is in "hot pursuit" to exact a confession from one Jaz Miah, nabbed after one year, who they claim was utilised by the clandestine Seven Star killer group to explode the bombs on August 21. The reports about confession as published in the newspapers in the country were hardly credible, either to the people or to the FBI or Interpol, and they went away, further embarrassing the government.

Nothing that our intelligence agencies have done in the past few years since indicates that they improved their information gathering system. So the question is: can they work independently, free of all outside influences? The absence of full comprehension of the nature of the problem we currently face is something that baffles our hunt for killers and perpetrators of crime. In the early years of the 1980s, we had political problems that bred violence. Currently we are dealing with jehadi terrorism of an altogether different type and infinitely more dangerous kind.

The other frightening aspect of the government's understanding of the problem is that almost nothing has been done to train our police force in dealing with terrorists and crime investigations. Merely raising the number of thanas from 22 to 51 in the Dhaka metropolitan city will not improve the efficiency of police work. Say, for example, hundreds of policemen and intelligence agencies were on duty very close to the meeting venue during the August 21 attack, yet the terrorists made good their escape after finishing their assigned job. The same was the case in connection with the attack on the British High Commissioner at Shah Jalal Majar in Sylhet and at Kibria's meeting venue at Habiganj.

Immediately after the incident on August 21, the Home Minister's announcement of the award of Tk one crore as a reward to anyone providing a clue to the attack went up in smoke, without anyone giving any clue or any crime investigation agency making any headway in booking the culprits. By and large, police work in the country is shoddy and amateur. Interrogation methods continue to be primitive and hectic activities follow for some days when a terrorist attack has hit someone somewhere. In most cases, policemen and curious onlookers can be seen trampling flat-footedly over evidence, instead of sifting through it with necessary care, a most vital aspect in the modern day crime investigation.

SAMS Kibria, Ahsanullah Master, and Professor Yunus of Rajshahi, to name only a few of the political leaders and educationists killed in the recent past, went the way of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib, Ziaur Rahman, and the four liberation war leaders, falling victim to a climate of violence, hatred, and power politics that have steadily overtaken the country. With investigations proceeding at snail's pace and criminals adopting new tricks and strategies, the country has become hostage to terrible uncertainty and anarchic situation. The killing of all such patriotic leaders and educationists of name and fame sickened the country with shame and impotent rage.

Not that violence would strike the country with surprise nowadays. On the other hand, the bloody ideologies of extremism and inter-party vengeance have been threatening to eclipse all norms of democracy in the country. In recent times, as the administration led by the ruling coalition is caught in a maze of corruption resorted to by some over-ambitious leaders and greedy officials, a virus of cynicism and violence have so infected public life as to raise the danger of a moribund political system.

Mentionably, the LGED ministry has recently constituted an enquiry committee to probe how a hefty sum of Tk 25 crore could be spent by Dhaka Wasa from the last week of May to June this year to remove illegal structures over the old canals of Dhaka city with no tangible result of relieving the residents from the problem of water-logging that disrupted civic life recently just with the on-set of the rainy season.

Political vengeance and business feuds lead to a wave of killings in urban areas almost every day. In recent times, DMP and intelligence agencies could not make any headway in arresting the killers of criminal turned politician Sagir in the old part of the city.

The counter killing of Shawon, one of the alleged killers of Sagir, reported to be in police custody, is also shrouded in mystery, as newspaper reports quote witnesses who differ with the police version. Meanwhile, if the enquiry committee formed to probe the killing of Shawon could go ahead with their work unhindered and find the real accomplice, people's faith in the crime investigation system that seems to be fast eroding might be restored.

In the past three and half years there was so much the ruling coalition government could do to give governance a new direction, but they did nothing but tinker. At a time when the nation was facing a series of crises ranging from spiraling price hike of food items, sporadic killing of businessmen and politicians in the safe zone of their houses and business firms compounded by Tangratila gas well explosion, the administration allowed the Ershad-Bidisha marital drama (totally a non- issue in the national perspective) to come on the centre-stage.

If the government is keen to nab the real culprit in the money laundering case, it would do well to concentrate its attention on the real one, leaving aside the lesser devil. It seems, as if governance in the country has been reduced to a bizarre satire in which farcical issues assume gigantic proportions and real issues are treated as immaterial.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET