Ah, that national security thing!
A group of individuals have made it known that national security is in a state of threat with the present government running the show. They are dead wrong. And how they are wrong is for the government to explain. But, yes, national security has been under threat for much of the time we have been a free nation since liberating ourselves from Pakistan in 1971. Sit back and we will try telling you of the moments when Bangladesh's security has been under a cloud, when the state felt shaky at its political base.
The very first instance of national security getting to be a wobbly affair is surely the coup of August 15, 1975, when an entire government was dislodged in a most reprehensible manner. And national security remained in a state of the precarious with Khondokar Moshtaque and his murderous cabal of majors and colonels ensconced at Bangabhaban for close to three months. And security took another huge mauling when the four national leaders, men who spearheaded the battlefield struggle for Bangladesh in 1971, were assassinated on November 3, 1975. The murder four days later of General Khaled Musharraf and his fellow officers dug another hole in the wall of national security. The "sepoy-janata revolution" diffused indiscipline in the military, leaving the state in a grave condition of instability.
In 1975, therefore, it was an endangered state that Bangladesh was reduced to. The swift overturning of the four state principles and an overt attempt to convert the state into a quasi-communal geographical entity, along with the adoption of the Indemnity Ordinance (later insidiously incorporated in the constitution) were steps that undermined this free Bengali state.
Accommodating Bangabandhu's killers in the nation's foreign service was the ultimate humiliation of the republic, a clear message that assassins could have the state mutate into the macabre. Indeed, following Bangabandhu's assassination, the state tottered along through a process of captivity at the hands of elements determined to divest it of its aesthetic and political values.
In the Zia era, the repeated coup attempts against the regime were patent pointers to the weakening structure of national security on the watch of those holding the reins of authority at the time. The Zia assassination itself and the terrible aftermath of it were once more signs of national security laid low. All too often it has been unbridled individual political aggrandisement that has left the state reeling. In the Ershad years, the assassins of the nation's founder strutted about as politicians behind the smokescreen of the Freedom Party.
Talk about threats to national security? We can keep talking, until the stars drop dead and powdery from the skies. When General Ershad demanded of President Sattar in 1981 that the head of state constitute a national security council, a move clearly aimed at reducing the president to a figurehead, it was again national security that came under the spotlight. Men in the service of the republic do not coerce the elected president of the country into adopting positions that undermine the essential principles of governance. In similar manner, when a coup d'etat overthrows a legally constituted government, or attempts to do so, it is national security that takes a beating.
Mark, though, that national security may not always be about coups or murderers of elected leaders going free. There are other ways in which men and women of evil intent may pose huge risks to national security. They do it by belittling the state, making it subservient to personal or party interests. And the belittling is done through having a pliant Election Commission produce on the voters' roll huge numbers of people who simply do not exist. It is done through placing at the Anti-Corruption Commission men willing to do the bidding of the powers that be. It is done through doing away with the Collaborators Act and allowing known enemies of the state to rear their heads in public once more, their sights fixed on an eventual seizure of power. It is done through placing at the top echelons of national security individuals who assisted the government of Pakistan in prosecuting the Agartala conspiracy case in the late 1960s.
A state goes through severe haemorrhaging when elections are stolen, when the government of the day attempts diverting the course of investigations into grave instances of political calamity in order to protect itself from public humiliation. When policemen dwindle into being goons of the party in power and swoop on citizens demanding rule of law, it is national security which crumbles. National security develops cracks when civil servants gather, in clandestine fashion, in the nocturnal hours and then run from the media in full glare of the cameras.
It takes brave individuals and bold acts to solidify the base of national security. Think of the Chittagong Hill Tracts deal. Think of the water-sharing agreement between Bangladesh and India.
Need we say more?
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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