Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late

I am pleased to note that in the past weeks we have seen eloquent and heartfelt appreciations of the man from many of those who had known him for decades and can do his memory far greater justice than I possibly could. I cannot add to the encomiums that have been bestowed upon him -- that he was a faithful public servant, that rare breed of honest, decent, and trustworthy politician, and an intellect of rare perception and ability has been testified to in these pages as well as elsewhere.

In my all too brief encounters with Mr. Kibria I always found him to be genuinely encouraging and generous in a manner that came as quite a shock to this new face on the media landscape. That a man of his eminence would take the time to call me up on the phone to say nice things about pieces I had written that he appreciated is something that I will never forget. Not only that, but whenever we used to meet at forums such as seminars and dialogues, he always had a kind word or two of advice for me. He was truly one of the most decent men that I have had the pleasure of knowing.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

This wasn't meant to happen. Not again. Not after August 21. We all hoped that at the very least that incident would represent a watershed in our dealings with terrorism and the politics of conflict, but as we have now been reminded, nothing has changed. Six months later and we are burying yet another top leader of the opposition. The truly tragic thing is that this has become merely another chapter in the same old story of politics as usual in this benighted land of ours.

This is where we have come to as a nation. Mr. Kibria's death shocks and saddens but does not really surprise us. His death was tragic, but not altogether unexpected or inexplicable.

I think that the time is long overdue for us to face the facts squarely. Let us review the evidence of the past year. The killing of AL MP Ahsanullah Master on May 7. The massacre of August 21 that left 20 dead. The latest addition to our calendar of horrors: January 27.

It is now crystal clear -- as it should have been to anyone with eyes to see after August 21 -- that the AL high command is under serious threat. Someone is trying to wipe them out, or failing that, to intimidate them into silence.

But once again, as after August 21, the AL cannot catch a break from a certain section of the intelligentsia and perhaps the general public as well.

Newspapers and talk shows have been filled with comment about the foolishness of the AL for the hartal programme it has embarked upon in the wake of the killings (please recall that four others lost their life in Hobiganj alongside Mr. Kibria). There have been the by now typical complaints that the AL has been intransigent and uncooperative and is mining the tragedy for political gain.

Excuse me?

If the assassination of one of your top leaders on the watch of an administration either uncaring or incompetent to protect him is not an appropriate issue to mine for political gain, then what is?

It's pretty simple, really. It's one of three things.

One, the government is behind the attacks. I personally see no evidence of this and don't believe that this is the case.

Two, the government isn't behind the attacks, but knows who is, and is either unwilling or unable to rein them in.

Three, the government is absolutely clueless as to who could be behind the attacks.

Either way you slice it up, it is clear that the government has plenty to answer for and that the AL has reason to feel aggrieved. At the very least, the government has signally failed to protect them to the extent that the AL made sure the BNP high command was protected when it was in power.

The repeated attacks on the AL are a legitimate issue.

The August 21 massacre was a terrifying moment for the country. The government on whose watch it occurred must bear some culpability. Has anyone resigned or been asked to resign due to the lapses in security that permitted the carnage? Has anyone been brought to justice for the crime? Has anyone been disciplined for failure to uncover anything at all in this most crucial of investigations? What about the massive arms haul of last April? Has any headway been made in that investigation? And now this?

The government has apparently failed to uncover a single meaningful clue with respect to the April 1 arms haul and the August 21 massacre and as a result another opposition leader lies dead. If this isn't evidence of monumental administrative ineptitude then I don't know what is.

In light of these massive failures, the carping about the folly of the AL calling hartals is almost farcical. So far as I can tell, almost as much has been written on the hartals now as on the killing of Mr. Kibria.

Now, of course, I too wish that the hartals hadn't been called. Hartals, to my mind, as I have written, serve no constructive purpose and only add to the miseries of the populace at an already tense time.

I also agree that the hartals were politically unwise as they helped to dissipate whatever sympathy and good will the AL had garnered as a result of the killing. Similarly, had the AL high command handled the situation a little more diplomatically, then it could have translated into great gains for the AL in terms of public support and credibility, and been good for the country as a whole.

Such a stance might even have had the effect of thawing relations between the government and opposition and helped further the various on-going investigations, though, frankly, I doubt that.

But never one to fail to capitalise on an opportunity, Sheikh Hasina has brilliantly hit upon the one tactic guaranteed to lessen support and sympathy for the AL even at this extremely sympathetic moment.

But let's get serious here. Hasina's political miscalculations are not the real issue.

The real issue is that the government is either unable or unwilling to get to the bottom of these terrorist attacks. Whether the government is behind the attacks, or is merely doing nothing to stop them, or doesn't have the faintest idea how to stop them is more or less a moot point. Any way you look at it, the government has a responsibility which it is not meeting. How long will we have to wait for some accountability?

What is needed is for the government to take some responsibility for its failures and not to blame the attacks on the AL itself and send its goons into the street to beat demonstrators to jelly.

The consensus among the chattering classes seems to be that Hasina is the prime culprit when it comes to the detente between the two parties as she has been so intransigent in refusing to meet with the PM and sticking to the oppositional politics of hartal (despite the fact that the BNP was every bit as enamoured of hartals when it was in the opposition, with, one might add, considerably less cause than now).

I would like to suggest that the government under whose watch the opposition is being systematically decimated bears slightly more responsibility for the current breakdown in civility than the understandably confrontational posture of the leader of the opposition.

The problem seems to me to be that too many people simply refuse to see the truth of what is going on right in front of their eyes.

Their implacable hatred of the AL makes them blame the AL for everything, even when the AL is quite clearly the victim. They even make the preposterous suggestion that it is the AL itself that is behind the attacks. Most recently this was the rallying cry at a JCD meeting on the Dhaka University campus.

I suppose that we shouldn't expect any better from professional politicians and their paid sycho-phants. Upton Sinclair once wrote that "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" and the entire existence of certain BNP leaders seems tied up in their demonisation of the AL and willingness to say things that even they know are not true.

But what about the rest of us? When are we going to look squarely at the problem of political terrorism in this country and state unequivocally that the time for self-serving and comforting falsehoods is over?

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.