BIR UTTAM QUAZI NOOR-UJJAMAN'S TOUR DE FORCE

A saga of valour: Memoir of Liberation War

Reviewed by A.U.M. Fakhruddin

Liberty is the eternal flame of freedom, self-determination and sovereignty achieved by people from alien domination often at the cost of tens of thousands of martyrs' blood, as in our case. Independence is our most precious possession. Roman gladiator slave Spartacus in 73 BC pronounced, "We will go to war against Rome; don't be afraid, we will take weapons from soldiers... That's why we'll win."
   The masses of Bangladesh had the burning zeal to tear off the shackles of Pakistan's quasi-colonial exploitive and repressive rule for twenty-four years; so they fought and won victory. In the annals of our Liberation War, Colonel (Retd) Quazi Noor Uzzaman, Bir Uttam, is one of those frontline commanders of eleven Sectors whose names will last forever. This memoir of our war, in which he lost his son Nadeem Omar, is the latest book of Col. Zaman who has always been resolute in the pursuit of idealism, and uncompromising vis-à-vis his principled stand, as is evident in his life and career.
   Memoirs are useful ingredients of history, provided these are written by those whose integrity is beyond question. Ekattarer Muktijuddha: Ekjon Sector Commanderer Smritikatha (Liberation War of 1971: Memoirs of a Sector Commander) by Col. (Retd) Zaman is published by Abosar from Hemendra Das Road, Sutrapur, Dhaka. Having joined in the Indian Navy in 1943, Col. .Zaman had fracas twice with British officers who despised Indians (p.15). While in Pakistan Army in 1949 he had the guts to retort upon General Ayub Khan's derogatory remarks on the Bangalees; and at the Staff College he refused to sign the note stating allegiance to Gen. Ayub when he declared martial law in 1958 (p.17).
   Packed with a wealth of many unknown facts about the astounding sequence of events, the book makes the reader convinced of the crude and objectionable impropriety in the conduct of affairs from the very outset at Agartala in April 1971. There, Col. Zaman suggested that educated and properly oriented young men be recruited as Freedom Fighters (FFs), but prominent student and youth leaders decided otherwise. At Agartala exigencies compelled Col. Zaman to sell off his finger ring as no Awami League (AL) leader bothered to care how he would survive; but he took no umbrage as his singular goal was to fight for freedom. The book consists of concise but revealing sequences of events, poignant ordeals as well as trials and tribulations of the juggernaut of the war; he recounts acts of gallantry and lays bare unpleasant truths thus exploding many myths.
   When the Pakistani tanks rolled on Satsmasjid Road at Dhanmondi on the night of March 25, exuding undaunted spirit his fifteen-year-old adolescent son Nadeem Omar went out of the house to put up a barricade against the troops with a point-22 bore gun to join a few boys of his age to fight the enemy forces and rescue the unquestioned leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They surmised that Sheikh Mujib's house was raided at about 11 pm. When the entire scenario was in a flux and utter confusion pervaded the scene amidst gunshots and shellings all around the city the genocide named 'Operation Searchlight' began that was his moment of truth to respond to the call of the motherland.
   On the following day the author's daughters, Naila and Lubna, darted into his room with a transistor radio over which Major Zia gave the declaration of Independence as President of Bangladesh. "Words are inadequate to express what a delight this declaration was", he writes (p.11). Similar enthusiasm about Zia has been expressed by Bir Uttam Abdul Kader Siddiqui in his book, "Swadhinata Ekattor".
   At Agartala, Tajuddin, who was unusually nonchalant and mute about Zia's momentous declaration, held a long closed-door meeting of MCAs and MNAs (p.32) where some were sobbing loudly amidst raucous altercation. Flabbergasted, the author wondered what made them cry aloud as a large contingent of foreign journalists had already thronged the town.
   Again at Agartala --- where Maj. Shafiullah, Maj. Zia and Maj. Khaled were busy planning --- Col. Zaman spent some days in April sharing the same house with AL leader Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury, an MNA from Chittagong. In reply to Col. Zaman's query about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's declaration of Independence over the radio, claimed to have been read out by AL leader M. A. Hannan in Chittagong, Chowdhury said, "I heard what you heard about it". Col. Zaman opines, if Zia was the first proclaimer of Independence, this in no way belittles Sheikh Mujib or AL, "Zia's call for the Liberation War inspired us".
   Col. Noor Uzzaman gathered his family around and proclaimed his intention to join the freedom fighters. Father and son joined the war, with the Colonel himself as commander of Sector 7. Headquartered at Tarangapur, Sector 7 under his command had force strength of 14 thousand freedom fighters, and it comprised the districts of Rajshahi, Pabna, Bogra and part of Dinajpur district.
   His wife, a former Professor of Dhaka University and founder of the Kalyani, a centre for retarded children, Dr Sultana Zaman and her two daughters --- Naila and Lubna --- joined him afterwards. The account of ordeals of his family at Karatia is depressing (p.24). The mother and the daughters worked as volunteers at hospital for the treatment of injured freedom fighters under Sector 7. Thus, this is a unique instance where the entire family actively participated in the Liberation War.
   Some veteran freedom fighters have published their experiences carefully avoiding sensitive and controversial matters. For example, writes Col. Zaman, the 'Mujib Bahini' fighters as a group of ''political commandos'' were recruited by senior Indian Army officers to counteract and diminish the effect of Charu Majumder's Naxalites. According to General Aurora and General Jacob, eastern command headquarters was not in favour of forming Political Commandos (p. 9). In Sector 7 under his command he managed boys of Promethean spirit, but also noticed quixotic misdemeanour and unpredictable eccentricity of VIPs and men in high places. There were many heroes but the number of villains was not small.
    At Maldah arrogant armed young men commanded by an Indian Major caused unrest for some time. Concerned at the developments the Sector Commander complained to Brig. Prem Singh who said he had been asked "not to disturb them.'' Besides a few others, this remains a hitherto unanswered enigma. At Tarangapur he met about ten trained youths who were driven out from different sectors for their offence of being leftists. Towards the end of December Capt. Idris and his FFs caught red-handed 10 armed men as their accomplices had been looting Bogra town's main marketplace. Next morning the author visited the place and was shocked to learn that a very highly placed Bangladesh army officer had ordered Idris to release hand over the culprits to the local AL leaders (pp. 7 - 9).
   A brigadier, who was the author's military academy course mate in 1947, burst into laughter when the elected Awami League MPs wanted visa to enter their respective constituencies!
   At Bogra an Indian military police captain requested him to recommend his application for the post of superintendent of police. While some Biharis were being killed, Marwari merchants started doing business. He says a section of political leaders were involved in smuggling timber to India. Brig. Prem Singh told the author to recruit Hindu boys from among the refugees into the Bahini but the initiative did not bear fruit. In some rural areas in his sector people were much afraid of the FFs and raised alarm by calling Azan so they could be careful. The reason is not far to seek: most of the FFs recruited under the aegis of the AL leaders were illiterate and had no motivation about the cause of freedom. Worse still, near Teliapara a trained lieutenant got himself admitted to hospital with self-inflicted injury. The ugly face of communalism was evident in Calcutta when some Muslim refugees were in trouble at Kalyani. But at Tarangapur some very poor Hindu men and women spontaneously came forward to help them.
   After the Victory Gen. Osmany sent an urgent note to Col. Zaman requesting him to come and see the former in Dhaka; accordingly he came but despite repeated efforts for a week could not meet him. Never caring for power and pelf, he went back to Rajshahi, handed over charge to a military officer there and returned to civilian life where he involved himself with various progressive democratic activities.
   A man of indomitable courage and spirit, the author of this eyewitness account was a 46-year-old retired Lieutenant Colonel who has three other thought provoking books to his credit. Col. Zaman is one of the founders of the Muktijuddher Chetana Bikash Kendra, was close to Dr. Ahmed Sharif, an outspoken social critic. Since 1962 he had been involved in the association of progressive teachers, thinkers and writers. A Judge of the "People's Court for Trial of War Criminals" in 1986, he was a vanguard of the Democratic Cultural Front.
   He lets us know about the vicissitudes of the battlefield, and nastiness beneath the polished veneer of a section of politicians. Like most of those who study history, says A J P Taylor, Napoleon III learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. In independent Bangladesh it was amply seen that very little was learnt from history.
   As regards arrangement of events, there ought to have been headings for all the chapters; while some unfamiliar acronyms need interpretation. Furthermore, an index should have been appended for quick reference. To conclude, the bottom-line is: politically conscious people and students of history will find in this memoir of Col. Zaman valuable material for research, discourse and brainstorming.

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Efficient use of fertilizer can boost
crop production

Dr. Syed Anwarul Haque

Loss of urea in crop production is a serious problem under tropical agriculture. The available results on the investigations indicate that 40 - 70 per cent of applied urea is lost from the crop fields. Particularly, rice ecosystem favours high losses of applied urea fertilizer. Urea losses include (a) volatilisation in the form of ammonia, (b) leaching of nitrate, (c) de-nitrification of nitrate as elemental nitrogen and nitrous oxide, (d) microbial assimilation of urea and (e) fixation of ammonium by clay. It is now apparent from the above facts that a major portion of applied urea is not available to rice plants and other crops. As a result urea fertilizer use efficiency is reduced to about 30-60 per cent. Because of poor use efficiency of prilled/granular urea by plants, there is a need for application of additional quantity of urea than it requires. The part of urea fertilizer lost (40-70 per cent) also causes environmental pollution. Thus, the best fertilizer practices should be to minimize losses of urea in crop fields, which will both save urea fertilizer from losses and the environment from being polluted.
   As such, there was a need for research to improve the efficiency of urea fertilizer. Scientists around the world have been concentrating their efforts on regulating the nitrogen supply to crops by reducing the rate of either hydrolysis or nitrification or both of urea so that the optimum supply of nitrogen can be ensured to match the requirement of crops at different stages of growth. Slow-release fertilizers constituted urease inhibitors and/or nitrification inhibitors. In this context, slow-release urea forms such as sulphur-coated urea, lac-coated urea and polymer-coated urea have been extensively investigated However, for reasons of high cost of coating materials and other factors, none of these materials are currently being used in Bangladesh or in any other neighbouring countries of South Asia or elsewhere in the developing countries of the world.
   Nimin-coated urea in crop production
   Recently, nimin a self-adhesive concentrated neem extract responsible for inhibition of nitrification in soils has been developed in India. Application of nimin-coated urea reduces loss of N fertilizer through leaching and de-nitrification by 30-35 per cent and increases yield in treated crops up to 25 per cent. Nimin-coated urea has been found easy to use and appears to be cost effective in crop production. It is now being commercial produced in India for use in agriculture.
   Under Bangladesh condition, a few experiments were conducted with different crops by the author of the article such as rice, wheat and mustard. The results were very encouraging. So far five experiments were conducted, four at Bangladesh Agricultural University farmland on Brahmaputra floodplain siltloam soil with (1) wheat (cv. Kanchan) in 2004, (2) mustard (cv. BINA Sarisha-4) in 2004 (3) rice (cv. BRRI dhan 30) in 2006, and (4) rice (cv. BRRI dhan 29) in 2007 and one with (5) rice (cv. BBRI dhan 11) in 2004 on Modhupur red-terrace soil under IFDC project funded by IFAD. The yield increase for different crops ranged from 17-35 per cent for rice, 20 per cent for wheat and 29 per cent for mustard.
   Economic benefit, environmental pollution cut
   Nimin is a reasonably inexpensive biological product (US $ 3/kg), which shows great promise for the resource poor farmers of developing countries with an average increase of roughly 20 per cent crop yield. This means 100 kg urea = 80 kg nimin-coated urea. For every 100 kg urea, there will be a saving of 20 kg urea. The extent of use efficiency of nimin-coated urea can be easily understood from the following calculations. The annual consumption of urea in Bangladesh in 2007-2008 was 26,85,000 metric tons (source: Bangladesh Fertilizer Association). The consumption of urea could be reduced to 21,48,000 metric tons, if nimin-coated urea is used with a net savings of 5,37,000 metric tons of urea. The cost price of 5,37,000 metric tons of urea @ Tk 12/kg is Tk. 6,444 million, which could be saved. To develop coating on 1 kg urea only 5 gram nimin is required, which cost Tk.1. The farmers will get substantial economic benefit on use of nimin-coated urea (instead of using granular urea) and the nation will be largely benefited economically. Thus there is a need for seriously examining the potential of the use of nimin in Bangladesh agriculture as a coating material of urea, which also ensures environmental safety to a great extent being environment-friendly. It reduces environmental pollution by about 30-35 per cent.
   The writer is Senior Agriculture Specialist, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), Dhaka.

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Scientists have discovered a new technique for turning embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic tissue in what could prove a significant breakthrough in the quest to find new treatments for diabetes.
   The University of Manchester team, working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, were able to genetically manipulate the stem cells so that they produced an important protein known as a 'transcription factor'. Stem cells have the ability to become any type of cell, so scientists believe they may hold the key to treating a number of diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.
   However, a major stumbling block to developing new treatments has been the difficulty scientists have faced ensuring the stem cells turn into the type of cell required for any particular condition - in the case of diabetes, pancreatic cells. "Unprompted, the majority of stem cells turn into simple nerve cells called neurons," explained Dr Karen Cosgrove, who led the team in Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences. "Less than one per cent of embryonic stem cells would normally become insulin-producing pancreatic cells, so the challenge has been to find a way of producing much greater quantities of these cells."
   There are two forms of the disease: type-1 diabetes is due to not enough insulin being produced by the pancreas, while type-2 or adult-onset diabetes occurs when the body fails to respond properly to the insulin that is produced.
   The team found that the transcription factor PAX4 encouraged high numbers of embryonic stem cells - about 20% - to become pancreatic beta cells with the potential to produce insulin when transplanted into the body.
   "Research in the United States has shown that transplanting a mixture of differentiated cells and stem cells can cause cancer, so the ability to isolate the pancreatic cells in the lab is a major boost in our bid to develop a successful therapy," said Dr Cosgrove.
   "Scientists have had some success increasing the number of pancreatic cells produced by altering the environment in which the stem cells develop, so the next stage of our research will be to combine both methods to see what proportions we can achieve."
   But the more immediate benefit of the team's research is likely to be in providing researchers with a ready-made supply of human pancreatic cells on which to study the disease process of diabetes and test new drugs. The research, which was funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Medical Research Council, is published in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One.
   Type-1 diabetes develops most frequently in children and adolescents; it is most commonly treated through regular injections of insulin into the bloodstream.
   Type-2 diabetes is much more common, accounting for about 90 per cent of all cases. It occurs most frequently in adults and is best controlled through careful regulation of sugar intake in the diet.
   The pancreatic beta cells produced by the team resembled foetal pancreatic cells rather than the adult tissue. However, tests elsewhere on mice have shown these foetal cells are able to develop into adult cells following transplantation.
   Stem Cell Regenerative
   Medicine Centre
   The University of Wisconsin Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Centre (UW-SCRMC) is a campus-wide centre under the joint direction of the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Graduate School. The UW-SCRMC is co-directed by Dr. Clive Svendsen and Dr. Timothy Kamp. An executive committee provides leadership and is composed of diverse group of faculty from across campus. A steering committee of campus leaders provides guidance in planning and oversight.

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