A command performance?
Hafiz Shamsheer
The cat is out of the bag. By recourse to what a daily newspaper described as hour-by-hour running commentary on the inquiry into the 25 - 26 February BDR butchery, retired Lieutenant Colonel Faruk Khan has come up with a brash revelation that investigators have found evidence of some JMB connections in it. In so doing, he has clearly mucked up the investigation and thus has done more harm to the nation than good. Why was he in such a hurry to sell some names to the media? Why didn't he let the investigation finish? Mysterious though, but nobody knows.
Imposed as the chief coordinator of the two enquiry committees that are neutral and non-political per se, the politician commerce minister with a past military background has already put the cart before the horse. He has obliquely told all and sundry that they must forget about a neutral conclusion of the committees. Instead, they must expect a coordinated report that is tailored to the political expediency of the ruling party.
Open to question
More than 70 people died when rank-and-file border guards turned on their superiors, killing at least 56 senior army officers, during a 33-hour bloody revolt in Dhaka on February 25 and 26 last. The events shocked the entire nation because those killed were precious sons of the soil. Two teams of investigators are currently at work to unfold the causes of this brutal massacre, though the impartial frame of mind of the ones headed by a retired civilian bureaucrat is open to question.
The insertion of a political coordinator, blessed by a political government to poke his snout into the investigation, is a half-baked farce commandeered by the ruling party whose primary aim, to put it mildly, lies far afield of full disclosure.
No football match
The committees are still halfway through their investigations into the February carnage. And any individual with minimum element of sanity will agree that the findings must be shrouded in confidentiality until they are finished. An investigation like this is no football match in the Bangabandhu stadium. Secrecy must be its essence. But the military officer-turned-politician, foisted in the task with a veiled party agenda, doesn't think so. He believes that the whole exercise of investigation must be a goldfish bowl with a line dictated by him, because that's where the interest of his party lies. And hence his daily - or hourly - expos� of the findings. It's a barefaced design to put words into the investigators' mouth, almost tantamount to forcing them to take the cue from his words.
He said a week ago that the investigators had found clues of the involvement of Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) in the massacre.
Nobody rules out the possibility of JMB involvement. By the same token, nobody yet agrees that JMB was really behind it, because the investigation report is not yet out. But why this rush on the part of Col Faruk? Who is pressurising him to be in such a hurry?
Oblique caveat
He repeated his assertion a week later and, to make it more juicy from his party's standpoint, said proofs of some civilians with links to JMB had also been found. Most political analysts perceive it as an oblique caveat, an attempt to fudge an honest and truthful investigation, and, if one may, to let the real culprits off the hook.
Even his colleagues in the government, as well as the chief investigator, have publicly distanced themselves from Col Faruk's views. Both the LGRD Minister Syed Ashraful Islam and Law Minister Barrister Shafiq Ahmed have said it would be premature to point finger at anyone until the probes are complete. Chief Investigator Abdul Quahhar Akhond said nothing could be assumed on who was or were behind the carnage until the last piece of evidence was examined. In an enquiry like this, implications and ramifications may emerge at the last moment. And the last moment has not yet arrived.
Partisan coordinator
The analysts also question the need to have a coordinator at all, and that too in the person of a highly partisan politician. As many as five independent agencies conducted investigation into Mumbai massacre on 27 November 2008. But there was no coordinator, not to speak at all of a political coordinator.
Three agencies - FEMA, NIST and FBI - worked separately to get to the bottom of the WTC collapse in New York on 11 September, 2001. But there was no coordinator, not to speak of a political coordinator. Neither was any politician involved in any of those investigations. The tasks were left entirely to the specialists. Why then do you need a coordinator unless the intention is to prejudice the investigation?
Fudging the probe
Analysts cite three reasons for the apparition of the political coordinator. The first is to fudge the investigation in a way that benefits the ruling party and to shield forces the government would not like to be implicated, although conjectures would not rule out their direct benefit from such attempted emasculation of Bangladesh military.
The second is to keep the investigators away from the basic question of why the entire intelligence network failed? The third is perhaps to discourage the investigators from delving deep into some nitty-gritty of the 25 February incident. Why did Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina start negotiations with the rebels exactly at a time when the slaughter of the army officers was going on inside the BDR headquarters?
Questions
Why did the government not let the army follow its basic military manual and move in soon after the mutiny broke out? Who is the beneficiary of this decision? Why did the government allow more than 24 hours to let the rebels flee with arms and ammunitions and the properties they looted from the army officer's quarters? These are tough questions, and they will continue to beg answers for God knows how many light years. But the immediate job of the coordinator is to see that the investigators don't spend too much time on it.
The fourth and the fifth aim of the coordination is perhaps most interesting. The fourth is to see if the entire incident could be exploited to catch some political rivals with charges of their involvement in the carnage. Should it succeed, the physical annihilation of the BNP and Jamaat will start. This is a great opportunity to bring the BAKSAL era back.
Barmy politics
The game plan is there. The blue print is there. On the question of whether it will ultimately work, only time can answer. The only fear is that the real culprits may go at large and come back with even more ferocious attacks if this welter of barmy politics is not at once dispensed with.
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