The Ringing Wake-up Call
The attempt on poet Shamsur Rahman's life has deeper roots than any isolated bid to take the life of a celebrity as the unfolding details of the macabre incident point to. Coming in the wake of the Bhrammanbaria fundamentalist rumpus it could be deemed as part of a general pattern of theocratic swipes against liberalism and progressive secularist ideas.
Just piece together what the arrested assailants have admitted to the police on interrogation and be self-damned for being caught napping on some vital national interests: internal security, protection of social fabric, intellectual freedom and pursuit of progressive ideals. They have named the supremo under whose orders they purportedly acted adding that the latter bore links to Harkat-ul-Jihad, an international organisation based in the Middle East. One of the arrested has even confessed to having received training at a 'secret camp' at Ukhiya in Cox's Bazar.
There have been occasional weapons seizures in the country, and every time a clandestine incident takes place it invariably appears as another chink in our armour, this time a deeper one than the earlier one. It raises eye-brows about the degree of surveillance being maintained over questions of national security and defence of the social fabric. Whereas the vigil should have increased with each incident it has only lagged behind the levels mounting of sophistication and orchestration attained by the forces of regression and bigotry.
We regard this as a wake up call - of the last ringing type - to the NSI and DGFI that they act with professionalism to fend off deeper threats to internal security brought on by the lack of an all-out extended vigil. That their personnel, equipment, and logistical requirements need to be met on a top priority basis is amply illustrated by the recent breaches in the surveillance system. A poor, populous country like Bangladesh is vulnerable in so many ways to threats of bigoted ideological intrusions, something that our intelligence agencies must be adequately motivated and trained about to fight off. How thoroughly our knee-jerk reaction can be to a faxed-in 'security risk' was brought to a shocking realisation by the 'Absar'' episode. That was wasted dynamism, an added novelty to massive surveillance failures.
Our intelligence agencies to be really effective need to link up with their counterparts overseas, on a selective but reasonably wide scale, given the fact that terrorism and militancy are being defiant of boundaries more than before.The attempt on poet Shamsur Rahman's life has deeper roots than any isolated bid to take the life of a celebrity as the unfolding details of the macabre incident point to. Coming in the wake of the Bhrammanbaria fundamentalist rumpus it could be deemed as part of a general pattern of theocratic swipes against liberalism and progressive secularist ideas.
Just piece together what the arrested assailants have admitted to the police on interrogation and be self-damned for being caught napping on some vital national interests: internal security, protection of social fabric, intellectual freedom and pursuit of progressive ideals. They have named the supremo under whose orders they purportedly acted adding that the latter bore links to Harkat-ul-Jihad, an international organisation based in the Middle East. One of the arrested has even confessed to having received training at a 'secret camp' at Ukhiya in Cox's Bazar.
There have been occasional weapons seizures in the country, and every time a clandestine incident takes place it invariably appears as another chink in our armour, this time a deeper one than the earlier one. It raises eye-brows about the degree of surveillance being maintained over questions of national security and defence of the social fabric. Whereas the vigil should have increased with each incident it has only lagged behind the levels mounting of sophistication and orchestration attained by the forces of regression and bigotry.
We regard this as a wake up call - of the last ringing type - to the NSI and DGFI that they act with professionalism to fend off deeper threats to internal security brought on by the lack of an all-out extended vigil. That their personnel, equipment, and logistical requirements need to be met on a top priority basis is amply illustrated by the recent breaches in the surveillance system. A poor, populous country like Bangladesh is vulnerable in so many ways to threats of bigoted ideological intrusions, something that our intelligence agencies must be adequately motivated and trained about to fight off. How thoroughly our knee-jerk reaction can be to a faxed-in 'security risk' was brought to a shocking realisation by the 'Absar'' episode. That was wasted dynamism, an added novelty to massive surveillance failures.
Our intelligence agencies to be really effective need to link up with their counterparts overseas, on a selective but reasonably wide scale, given the fact that terrorism and militancy are being defiant of boundaries more than before.
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