Editorial
PM's call for security coordination
Intel agencies must go back to their defined tasks
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has directed the various intelligence agencies to work in a coordinated manner so that the kind of tragedy that befell the Bangladesh Rifles last month and other tragic happenings in earlier years do not recur. The prime minister's thoughts are not only appreciated but also shared by the nation as a whole. There can be no denying that repeated intelligence failures, beginning with the assassinations of Bangabandhu in 1975 and President Ziaur Rahman in 1981 and leading up to the BDR carnage on February 25, have left the nation traumatised. All these failures have now thrown up the question of what must be need to restructure or reconfigure the intelligence bodies as a way of ensuring foolproof national security in the future.
The need for intelligence to operate efficiently and on a round the clock basis in a modern nation-state can hardly be over-emphasised. More pertinent is the truth that in recent years new issues of security, both within states and on a global scale, have come up and have revealed the complicated nature of the problems that must be handled. It is from such a perspective that a modern state must today reorder its security-related priorities. For Bangladesh, such reordering must necessarily be based on a monitoring system that eschews the means and methods which led to the creation of such giant monoliths, indeed a system of a state within a state, as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. In other words, what is of importance here is that the growth of intelligence outfits must be commensurate with their need or relevance.
No time could be better than now to suggest some ways in which Bangladesh's intelligence networks, disparate as they are, can be recast in the larger interest of the nation. In the first place, it would be well to remember that the intelligence agencies have well-defined tasks they are meant to perform twenty four hours a day. That being so, steps must be taken now to ensure that the compartmentalised ways in which these bodies, five in all, have been working, are replaced by a healthy, strongly monitored system of coordination. In the second place, intelligence agencies, having overstepped their terms of reference by involving themselves in political matters or been influenced into playing a political role, must now reinvent themselves by going back to their fundamental reasons for being, namely, to ensure the security of the state from internal as well as external disruptive elements. In this regard, the political classes have a necessary role to play, which is to ensure that the intelligence bodies are no more turned into organisations ready to serve those in power by harassing or intimidating those out of it.
The bottomline is obvious: the intelligence bodies must work strictly within the parameters originally set for them. Moreover, they must prove their skills and efficiency within these parameters. And we suggest that, as a way of ensuring that security lapses do not mar lives or governance in the future, an apex body responsible for ensuring and supervising coordination among the existing intelligence agencies (they will be accountable to such a body) be set up at the earliest. A security infrastructure without rigorous coordination will be a fallacy and a risk to boot.
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