Still no answers

If I sound uncharitable, it is only because, as a member of the media, I have a clear memory of the government's initial response to the rise of the militants and its on-going duplicity and mendacity in this connection.

The reason the government should not be able to claim any anti-terrorist triumph as its own is that it was only the constant reports in the media, that were bitterly criticized by the government at the time, of the reign of terror that the terrorists had imposed on the north-west of the country, that forced the government to actually pursue the militant threat in the first place.

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It is quite clear that left to its own devices the government would have preferred to continue to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being perpetrated by the terrorists. Indeed, according to ex-BNP MP Abu Hena, who has been cashiered from the party for having the temerity to speak the truth, and numerous other credible and substantiated sources, sections of the administration were deeply complicit in the rise of the militants, and local government leaders actively collaborated in their reign of terror.

The sequence of government responses has been very revealing. Its initial disgraceful gambit was to contemptuously deny the very existence of any kind of a threat and to accuse those who suggested such a thing of conspiring to discredit the country.

Parenthetically, one would have thought that the capture of senior terrorist leaders would lead to the resignation of those government ministers who have stated publicly that such a threat did not exist and that the country's biggest enemy was not the terrorists but the media who were claimed to have fabricated the entire threat.

I seem, however, to be mistaking Bangladesh for a country where there exists any concept of shame or accountability, and to be mistaking the ruling alliance ministers who made such slanderous claims for people with any sense of decency or honour.

Then, when the media drumbeat grew too loud and the terrorist atrocities too numerous and horrific to ignore or deny, the government quietly, and with neither apology nor embarrassment, back-tracked and conceded that militants did indeed exist and present a threat to the security of the nation.

Not that this initially inclined the authorities to do anything so radical as to actually actively pursue the militants. Once again, the question of government complicity raises its head. The reason that it took so long to bring the senior JMB leadership to justice was that they retained the support and sponsorship of a section of the government. It is not for nothing that it took one year and one week after the banning of JMB and six months after the serial bomb blasts of last August 17 that the top two JMB leaders were captured.

Together with the tactic of soft-pedaling the anti-terror campaign went the tactic of implicating, with neither support nor substantiation, the opposition and an unnamed "foreign hand" for fomenting the terror in order to discredit the government and the country. Meanwhile, even though the government had been forced to tacitly concede the point that terrorism was indeed a threat, the ugly campaign to impugn the motives and patriotism of the media continued.

This, let us not forget, is the background to the recent sensational capture of JMB chief Shaekh Abdur Rahman and operations commander Siddiqul Islam (could we please stop referring to him by the sobriquet Bangla Bhai, which he has done nothing to merit and which demeans our entire nation).

Given the full context of its actions of the past few years with respect to the terrorist threat, I see little for the government to congratulate itself upon.

Congratulation and commendation can be reserved for when we get to the bottom of who is behind the terror threat and uncover precisely how the militants have managed to operate and establish themselves so widely and without detection for so long.

There is no doubt that the capture of five out of the seven members of the JMB executive council, including the two biggest fishes, has opened up a door of opportunity for the country in terms of uncovering those who are responsible for the sponsorship, support, and sheltering of the militants, and ensuring that the threat can be extinguished once and for all.

However, at this early stage there are still more questions than answers, and it is in finding the answers to the questions that success in the counter-terrorism campaign lies. The recent captures have not as of yet answered any of the questions that the nation has with respect to the militants, and things are as uncertain and as opaque as they were before the captures, if not more so.

The burning question with respect to the terrorists remains who is behind them. Where has their funding come from? Where have their weapons come from? How is it that they have enjoyed virtual immunity for so long?

The government has pointed the finger at the opposition and a "foreign hand," though it is perhaps worth remarking that in the PM's speech in the aftermath of Abdur Rahman's capture, she did not repeat this accusation.

The opposition has similarly made allegations that the government has been behind the terrorism. There is more corroboration for the opposition's accusations in the form of confessional statements and established links of the captured JMB cadres, but this allegation, too, raises more questions than it answers.

Is it the high command who might be responsible or another faction of the government? If it is another faction, is this faction at odds with the high command, and what exactly would either have to gain from sponsoring such actions? Even if the opposition allegations are taken at face value, these are all questions that need to be addressed.

At long last, we might now get some answers. Or not. But, either way, it will be instructive. If the captures do not ultimately lead to any new revelations, that in itself would be significant.

The government, as all previous ones, has played its investigations into the terror threat very close to its chest. This has, understandably, created suspicion, and now is the time to dispel it. Even the arrests have raised suspicions which need to be fully answered.

What are we to make of Abdur Rahman's reported request to speak to the State Minister for Home Affairs before surrendering, or the reports that he has identified three senior government officials as his sponsors, or the reports that the video-tape of his interrogation was turned off when he made this statement?

This is reminiscent of reports of the local authorities' refusal to question the lead suspect in custody for the murder of Shah AMS Kibria, allegedly for fear of whom he might implicate.

What are we to make of the fact that Bangladesh's most wanted, who had been underground for over a year, was found "hiding" in plain sight together with his wife, child, grandchild, and several others?

What are we to make of the fact that the government's most concerted actions against the terrorists always seem to coincide with external pressure?

The banning of extremist groups JMB, JMJB, and Ahab, and the arrest of Ahab leader Asadullah al Galib in February last year came on the eve of a meeting of donors in Washington to discuss, among other things, the government response to extremism, and the two latest arrests appear to have been timed to coincide with the visit of President Bush to India, in which India was reportedly "preparing to present the visiting president with a large dossier of evidence" about the extent of the terrorist threat in Bangladesh.

Thus, we can see that the captures of Shaekh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam actually have given rise to more questions than they have answered. Let's have some answers.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.