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RIOTS IN HILL TRACTS
Government may redeploy the army
Sadeq Khan
Like last year, end of February is witnessing a traumatic syndrome of clashes and conflicts through out the country. Last year, in the form of Peelkahana massacre, it was more area-specific, though entirely unexpected, virulent, barbaric and deeply injurious for the nation-state, for the national army and for the unsuspecting victims of carnage. This year, violent disorder and murderous incidents, including misapplication of the nation-state's own coercive power, are taking place in fits and bounds all over the country for all sorts causes or excuses...[ FULL STORY ]
Fire in the hills
Special Correspondent
A tense situation looms over the Chittagong hill tracts region where the ethnic groups and the Bengali settlers locked in clashes over the land ownership dispute. Clashes and arson attacks left at least three people dead in Khagrachhari and Rangamati districts in six-day violence that forced the members of the law and order agencies to open fire and impose night time curfew.
On Thursday, Parbatya Bangalee Chhatra Parishad enforced a daylong road and waterway blockade programme in Rangamati and Khagrachhari districts in protest against the attack on Bangalee settlers by a section of indigenous people...[ FULL STORY ]
Govt.'s priority is to bring Mujib killers back, execute
Shahriar Noori
The top leadership of ruling Awami League (AL) has told its important leaders not to worry about bringing back the remaining seven fugitive anti-BKSAL coup leaders now staying in different Western countries, said the sources. For bringing the coup leaders back no change in the present economic policy will be needed, assured the top AL leadership to the concerned leaders, the sources added.
Meanwhile the most powerful country in the Middle East (ME) has been entrusted for the job and with its strategic relations with India, Bangladesh through its big closest neighbour is getting the desired cooperation on the issue, as in the recent past...[ FULL STORY ]
Indo-Bangla ties may sour if Teesta issue isn't solved
Faisal Rahim
Has India started maneuvering with the Teesta water sharing talks which kicked off in the city last week?
An Indian team of water experts took up the matter for discussion with their Bangladesh counterparts in Dhaka last week to sort out issues to resolve the Teesta river water issue. India agreed to resolve the Teesta problem immediately after the Delhi meeting of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.
Bangladesh Prime Minister in the Delhi meeting agreed to all major Indian demands including strategic concessions, security cooperation and use of transit facilities through Bangladesh territory over land, railways and waterways, in addition to using two major sea ports...[ FULL STORY ]
Reflections on past assassination attempts on Sheikh Hasina
Dr. Habib Siddiqui
Last Week my attention was drawn to an article: 'The plan to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina Wajed: How LTTE deal was blocked, suicide bombers failed to explode' published in a Sri Lankan virtual library (http://www.lankalibrary.com/pol/hasina.html). It provided an interesting reading on a subject of immense interest to anyone who grew up in Bangladesh. This concerns assassination attempts in 1996-2000 on Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League and daughter of Bangabandhu, and the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. The plotters included the killers that had killed her father, and are reportedly aided by the Pakistani intelligence agency - ISI...[ FULL STORY ]
TROUBLES IN THE HILLS
Anatomy of a conspiracy
M. Shahidul Islam
Coincidences may not brook scientific explanations. They do, nonetheless, portray the exterior of a given phenomenon. The ongoing chaos and instability in the CHT, a non-functional parliament, unbridled price hikes of essentials, large number of prisons who apparently had nothing to do with either the attack on MP Taposh or the ongoing mayhem and chaos in educational institutions, are likely to add up to fill the bigger canvass in order to have a fulsome view of the nation's body politic.
In the process, one might be lucky to uncover a cobweb of conspiracies that seems to have lumped together to make Bangladesh a failed state by making smooth governance an act of impossibility, especially at a time when the PM is scheduled for a visit to Beijing sooner...[ FULL STORY ]
Political conflict looms
Amanullah Kabir
The often spasmodic speeches and actions by the government leaders including the prime minister create new issues adding to the piled up ones which are dragging the nation into confrontational politics. Recently, the government, emboldened by the court verdict, has secretly passed an instruction to the authority of private television channels, particularly to those who have a tilt towards a nationalistic policy, not to project Ziaur Rahman as the proclaimer of independence. The TV channels fearing the price they will have to pay for defiance, have responded with their news bulletins and other programmes dropping the words 'proclaimer of independence' which Zia deserves historically. Moreover, they often go out of the way to make loathsome remarks on the late president branding him as a 'killer' and 'autocrat' in and outside the parliament, obviously to tarnish the image of Zia thought to be the rival of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the country's politics...[ FULL STORY ]
IMPOSING URDU WAS A FOLLY
Ambassador of unity calls subcontinent's rulers anti-people
Abdur Rahman Khan
It was the folly of the then Pakistani rulers to impose Urdu as the state language of East Pakistan. That was the beginning of mistrust, which led to successive protests, agitations, revolts and finally a bloody armed struggle resulting in the creation of an independent state named Bangladesh.
It has been observed by Mian Muhammad Rafiq, a member of the Punjab Provincial Assembly, during his stay in Dhaka with a six-member delegation from Pakistan. At an invitation from the Dhaka Chapter of Bangladesh-India-Pakistan Peoples' Forum, they came here on the occasion of the Ekushey February, which is also the International Mother Language Day...[ FULL STORY ]
Mossad's licence to kill
Gordon Thomas
The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service. One of the leading chroniclers of the agency gives a unique insight into its methods.
The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month.
The Israeli government's refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad's attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies...[ FULL STORY ]
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