Boston University professor Nazli
Kibria pens an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles
Times, in which she warns that Bangladesh’s unchecked ruling party is rife
with terrorist tendencies. She needs only point to the January assassination
of her father, Shah A.M.S. Kibria, a renowned member of the opposition party,
and a former undersecretary-general of the United Nations:
He had traveled from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to address a public meeting in the northeastern part of the country on Jan. 27. Hundreds of people had gathered to hear him speak. As he left the auditorium, without any police protection, a series of grenades exploded. My father was badly hurt, but despite the frantic requests of my mother and many of his colleagues in the hours after the attack, the government did not provide him with helicopter transport to medical facilities in Dhaka. His ambulance ran out of gas as it raced toward a hospital, and he bled to death. Four other opposition party members also died in the attack. [Los Angeles Times]
She laments the lack of concern from the U.S.:
Even as the U.S. has expanded its war on terrorism across more and more of the world, Bangladesh has escaped attention. In many ways this is not surprising. Bangladesh has never, since its bloody and triumphant birth in 1971, been seen by the U.S. to be a country of much strategic importance. In the calculations of those who make foreign policy, Bangladesh is greatly overshadowed in significance by its feuding nuclear-power neighbors, Pakistan and India. But in the long term, the price of inaction could be high. Is it prudent to ignore a political crisis in a country of 141 million people, home to the fourth-largest concentration of Muslims in the world? Are we better off dealing immediately with a problem that can most likely be solved through firm international diplomacy or waiting for a later time when we may be contending with a rogue state that lends aid and comfort to Islamist extremists? [Los Angeles Times]
A professor should know the answer to that. History clearly demonstrates that we don’t intervene until after a rogue state becomes an uncontrollable mess. Like with Alabama (circa 1963).
Los Angeles Times: Bangladesh’s lurking terror
