বিডিআর বিদ্রোহ নিয়ে একটি লেখ। একটু পড়ুন না........................(রিপোস্ট)

১৫ ই এপ্রিল, ২০১০ সকাল ১০:০৭

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The day before the mutiny at the Peelkhana headquarters of the BDR started, I came back to Dhaka after a short visit to my district town in North Bengal. I have retired from the Bangladesh army almost a decade ago. Since then, I have been living the life of a pensioner, enjoying a life of leisure playing golf, reading books and journals and doing a bit of charitable work. On that day, as usual, early in the morning after Fazar prayer and a quick cup of tea, I went to play golf and came back home around half past nine. After shower, while having breakfast with my wife and browsing the morning paper, there came a telephone call. My wife took the call at the other end of the drawing-dinner. There was nothing unusual in having a telephone call or two at this hour of the day. I continued sipping tea and going through the newspaper without lending my ear to the conversation my wife was having. But she came back to the dinning table wearing an anxious look on her otherwise radiant face. I gave her an asking glance.



It was Nazma, our niece who lives in Dhanmondi, on the phone. Apparently, a mutiny has broken out at the BDR headquarters, next to Dhanmondi. Apart from giving us the news, Nazma was anxious to know whether our only son, a lieutenant colonel posted at the GHQ in Dhaka, was likely to be on the harm’s way. Even if there was a mutiny and the army were to be sent to suppress it, there was no particular reason to worry about the safety of our son. My wife and I had spoken to him the previous evening. He was due to leave Dhaka for Comilla early in the morning on official duty. Moreover, had he remained at the GHQ, it would have been most unlikely for him to be sent out to battle against the mutineers.



However, a mutiny by the principal para- military force of the country, if true, was an altogether different matter. It was an outrageous act of indiscipline, which no government could conceivably tolerate. Moreover, in the given political condition of our crisis-ridden country, it could not have been seen anything other than an ominous disloyalty to the newly elected govern-ment. It deserved to be quelled quickly, as was done in the case of the Ansar mutiny at Shafipur several years ago, regardless of whether their grievances had any merit or not. My immediate reaction was to rush to the TV to make sure that the news was true. After all, Dhaka is a city of wild rumours and since the national election it had become more so. The sordid news was, indeed, all over the BTV, the government owned channel.



I was sure in my mind that soon the army would be sent in and the mutineers would be quickly brought to their knees. Nothing of its kind happened. Instead, in the afternoon we saw the PM personally meeting the leaders of the mutiny at her official residence and offering them a blanket amnesty, together with an assurance that all their grievances would be looked at sympathetically. The Home Minister and other grandees of the government even went inside the BDR HQ to speak to the mutineers and oversee their agreed surrender. A number of mutineers were even allowed to justify their action before the TV camera. The next day we learnt, that instead of surrendering all the mutineers had melted away from the unguarded Peelkhana in the darkness of the night, leaving a horrific scene of utter carnage behind. Understandably, the army officers were outraged by the needless loss of so many colleagues and friends and the country was shocked by the despicable barbarity of the mutineers towards their commanding officers and their wives and daughters.



Tahmid From the beginning, the government’s handl-ing of the mutiny looked strange. I do not know of any mutiny, military or paramilitary, any where in the world, which had been dealt with in the manner the Bangladesh government had dealt with the BDR mutiny. The government treated it, as if it was a kind of industrial dispute involving a discontent unarmed workforce with no one’s life and limb on the harm’s way. It was, to say the least, injudicious and inept. Although as a military man I had no doubt that the army, with a show of readiness by the air force to bomb if necessary, could have ended the mutiny within half an hour, I, like many at that point in time, thought this softness of the leaders of the govern-ment towards the mutineers was due mainly to their inexperience in handling such a matter as well as a well-meaning but misplaced eagerness to avoid bloodshed, borne out of their populist bend of mind. Furthermore, I thought the PM’s insecure grip on power and her deep-seated distrust of the army may have also played a part in her velvety approach towards ending the mutiny. I could not be more wrong.



The way the government proceeded with the inquiry with three parallel bodies and even before having their reports started talking loudly about de-linking the BDR from the army under a newly created officer crops recruited through the CSC and resetting it up under a new name and a new uniform started to give the sordid mutiny a new complexion. Moreover, the new DG BDR’s promotion to the rank of Major General and his hasty journey to New Delhi for the expressed purpose of thanking the Indian BSF for their magnanimity in protecting our borders during the mutiny looked odd to me. Even if that was his purpose, instead of leaving his station where his constant presence was needed, he could have telephoned or sent a letter of thanks to his Indian counterpart. If on the other hand, our government wanted to thank the government of India, the DG BDR was, as per protocol, patently a wrong person. More importantly, the mystrious absence of Sohel Taj, the Deputy Home Minister, from the day of the mutiny onward and the subsequent mysterious dash of Jahangir Kabir Nanak, the Deputy LGRD Minister who had acted as the principal negotiator on behalf of the PM during the mutiny, out of the country immediately after the arrest of Torab Ali, the AL president of Ward 48 of Dhaka and a former BDR Havildar, by the RAB utterly perplexed me. My disquiet grew further when a young relative of mine brought to my attention an investigative report in a New York based electronic media. It set out a detailed accusation against Sajeeb Wajed Joy, the PM’s son, of masterminding the mutiny together with a number of foreign intelligence agencies. It was difficult to think that Joy would seek to undermine the authority of his mother’s government. But a few years back he was at the head of a failed move to replace her from the leadership of the AL. Besides; in Bangladesh politics there is hardly anything straightforward. After all, our political stratagems have always been modelled on the game of chess. I felt, I must find out the truth, however unpalatable, for the sake of my beloved country.



Tahmid I decided what I was going to do: start my own one-man inquiry commission. I started teasing out the relevant facts from a number of highly placed friends within the civil service, army and police by way of casual conversation about the mutiny and its inquiries. Through a writer friend, I also obtained from a prominent national daily a photocopy of all the relevant media clippings that it had. I then subjected all the gathered facts to systematic crosschecking and analysis. The findings were astounding and their implications profound and disturbing. To be double sure, I took my main findings in the form of a number of disjointed information to one of the current leaders of the army, who had served under me as a young captain and to whom I remained a well regarded fatherly figure ever since. I choose him not simply because he would never betray me. It was also dictated by the twin facts that he happened to be the most discerning source of information within the present army high-ups and my visiting him at his home would not raise any eye brow, since we regularly visit each others’ family. After reading my list, he handed them back with a gentle smile. When I asked, which of these he would cross out as untrue, he simply said ‘not many’. I did not see any further need to pursue the matter with him: I have what I wanted. After a little while I got up and bade his wife and children farewell. As usual, he walked me up to the car. But before taking his leave and closing the car door, I heard him saying in a low voice: ‘Believe me Sir, like you I’m deeply worried about the country’. During my drive back home, a dark fear overtook me, I started praying silently: Oh God Almighty, save this poor country of ours.



This small booklet is the result of my self-appointed one-man inquiry commission on the Peelkhana massacre. Obviously it is not the whole truth. Nonetheless, it is the bare bone of the truth. I am confident if and when we are able to know more about the incident, this bare bone truth would continue to stand up.



In bringing this bare bone truth and its ill omen to light, I have taken grave personal risk. This I have undertaken for the sake of our beloved country and its 140 million freedom loving people. If it serves as a wakeup call to the patriots of Bangladesh, regardless of their creed, vocation and/or political affiliation and helps them to see the dangers awaiting us all with added clarity, I shall consider my toils and risk taking worthwhile. Let Allah, the Almighty, be our witness and protector.



1. The Plan



The campaign for the Peelkhana mutiny and massacre began in earnest in November 2008, nearly two months before the general election and Sheikh Hasina’s rise to power. Surprisingly, it was done with her and her son Sajeeb Wajed Joy’s consent and connivance.



It is worth recollecting that the caretaker government of the former bureaucrat and World Bank official Fakharuddin Ahmed, which the elected government of Sheikh Hasina had replaced, was put in power by the CAS General Moeen U. Ahmed, in violation of the country’s constitution as well as his oath of commission, at the behest of a cabal of Indian, US, UK and EU diplomats. It came in the wake of Sheikh Hasina’s violent political campaign and, more importantly, with her agreement. She not only blessed it by her cheerful presence at its oath taking ceremony, on several occasions publicly described it as being the ‘fruit’ of her political campaign.



General Moeen and some of his foreign instigators had, on the other hand, justified their action by claiming that they were motivated solely by the desire to save Bangladesh from a civil war. It was all bunkum. These diplomats, for their own national interests, wanted a weak and subservient government in Bangladesh and used Sheikh Hasina’s violent campaign as their handle. They got Moeen’s service by promising him the ultimate prize, provided he could manage to crown himself ‘democratically’. That means he were to



(1) Vanish both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina;

(2) Buy or drive out their ardent supporters out of politics; and

(3) Assemble his own climbing ladder in the form of a new party.



The much-publicised anti-corruption drive against politicians was meant to facilitate these. He was patently unsuccessful in achieving any of these objectives.



Meanwhile, since the life of the caretaker government could not be prolonged beyond 2008 without risking wide spread disaffection, even upheaval, the involved foreign powers were left with no option, other than to choose either Sheikh Hasina or Khaleda Zia. With India pushing, they went for the flexible Sheikh Hasina. It was also a relief for Moeen, for he had much to fear from Khaleda Zia, who had made him CAS and whose two sons were made physical wrecks by his henchmen. With the real election done, the general election went ahead.



It was in this context, preparations for the Peelkhana mutiny were taken up in earnest by the Indian RAW and the Israeli MOSSAD in the full knowledge of, and possibly with a nod from, the USA’s CIA. An article bearing the name of Sajeeb Wajed Joy and a certain Carl Siovacco, which was published in the USA in November 2008, signalled Joy and his mother’s readiness to go ahead with the planned massacre. In that article Joy accused Bangladesh army and other military and paramilitary forces of recruiting thousands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.



This type of patently anti-state concoction by the son of a prospective PM, and that too, in the middle of a general election campaign, would have, elsewhere in the world, ruined the electoral prospect of the party and dashed its leader’s hope of gaining power. But not in Bangladesh; here Sheikh Hasina and her AL have always claimed the sole proprietorship of the Liberation War of 1971 and with it, her and her party’s right to run the country as they deem fit. In fact, to strengthen their claim they had often accused their opponents as unpatriotic and anti-liberationists. Moreover, as soon as the USA started its crusade against the so-called Islamic terrorism and both India and Israel joined in that crusade, they latched in and became its ardent subscriber. The phantom of the JMB mischief-makers enabled them to harp on the baseless fear of Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh.



In fact, Joy in his article maintained this very line and emphasised that the army and other paramilitary forces of Bangladesh needed to be cleaned up of the Islamic terrorists and reshaped, so that they could never obstruct the AL’s efforts to rescue the nation from the anti-liberationists and turn it into a secular haven. With Moeen underwriting AL’s victory at the general election, Sheikh Hasina and her son had no difficulty in signalling their willingness to go ahead with the mission of neutering the country’s security forces. In his article, Joy, who is married to a Zionist woman, reaffirmed his personal commit-ment to the Indo-Israeli cause by asserting that he envisaged a Hindu PM leading the secularised Bangladesh within the next 20 years. Sheikh Hasina’s connivance was bought by kindling both her voracious appetite for power and welknown fear and distrust of the army. But, in doing so the RAW and the MOSSAD planners were driven by their desire to neuter the army for undermining Bangladesh itself. Since the 1990’s the RAW had been actively working towards this end. Over the period, several retired army intelligence chiefs of Bangladesh have publicly spoken about it. Yet the irony is that instead of being mindful of such warnings, the sitting army chief and some of his lieutenants were now ready to connive in this nefarious game of our enemies.

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