THE CONSPIRACY, COMMAND FAILURE, & THE CONSEQUENCES
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By: Shahid Islam
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February 25, 2009 was an indelible day in the memory of Bangladesh. For over six months before that day, I was virtually locked in my room in Toronto; busy in writing one of my books, Geopolitics of Islamic Revival, to be published by the University of Toronto press.
The late night dash to the bed kept me in sleep until 8.30 am. Awaken, I switched on the CNN and caught a glimpse of a breaking news about the BDR mutiny in Bangladesh. My pulses froze, as if jolted out of a stupor.
About 20 minutes later, my phone rang. A former journalist colleague from the Daily Star, who conversed with me occasionally in the past, said that sounds of gunfire inside Peelkhana echoed around. He lived on the 6th floor of an apartment in Zigatola, overlooking the BDR barracks.
One more veritable piece of information he gave. “Officers are under attack by troops, I heard,” he confirmed.
I spent almost 30 minutes in a desperate bid to connect with the army chief, Gen. Moeen Ahmed, unsuccessfully. I then called the director of military intelligence (DMI). Upon being informed that the officers in Peelkhana were under attack, the DMI told me in a drenched voice: “we’ve no order to intervene.”
In the following hours, news sipped in from multiple sources, including from Bangladesh’s electronic and print media. I finally managed to talk to one of Gen. Moeen’s personal staff who told me that the General was at the PM’s office.
In the PM Hasina’s office, three service chiefs were summoned. Their phones switched off by order, they spent the better part of the day, well past the noon, with the PM while a group of the mutineers under the lead of DAD Towhid arrived to meet the PM amidst the carnage, the rampage, and the killings being under execution.
A former Lt. Col. of the army was present in the PM’s company; coincidentally or by design. Months later, as the ferocity of the carnage began to sink in, he told a former colleague something very shrill. “Finish your job sooner. I can’t hold them any more,” the PM told someone over the phone from a room away from the one where she parloured with the three service chiefs.
The killings started in earnest by 11 am, once the mutineers were assured that the army wouldn’t intervene. The PM also declared a general amnesty to the mutineers without ensuring that the officers inside were safe.
Above all, the main killers were whisked out of the country by an evening flight while most of the other mutineers were allowed to flee under the cover of a curfew imposed after the sunset.
One could argue at length about the precise sequence of the events, but some indisputable truths are hard to be shrugged off or overlooked. The standard procedure followed in quelling any mutiny — dialogue and inducement, if failed, followed by overwhelming use of force — was not followed.
The army chief should have left order with his Chief of General Staff (CGS) before moving to meet the PM how to mobilize, coordinate and execute the operation. And, the PM had no jurisdiction to stop a legitimate military operation taking place to quell a rebellion on one hand, and acting in self defence after an army soldier was shot dead by the mutineers and the military helicopter hovering above was shot at, on the other.
More alarming was another fact. A civil pickup carried about 11 masked BDR soldiers inside through the Zigatola gate at about 9.15 am. Multiple sources confirmed later that they were aliens and seen involved in breaking the armoury at about 10.30 am to arm most of the about 2,900 soldiers present at the darbar hall where the carnage unfolded.
This constitutes the external nexus, tied to the PM and the defence minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, who’d intentionally, and deliberately, stopped the army from quelling the rebellion to help save the lives of 57 professional military leaders of the nation, and, dozens of civilians.
The conspiracy had paid off. The Bangladesh military, under a corrupt, corporate leadership, watches for years from the shielded ivory tower, with oblivious glee, the withering of the nation’s democracy, human rights, constitution, rule of law, and, the sovereignty of the nation at large.
(Pic: The BDR mutineers of February 25-26, 2009).
