১২ comments

1. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১:৩৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   ঠিক সাল বছরের হিসাবে কোন সংঘাত পৃথিবীতে সবচেয়ে বেশি আধিপত্য বিস্তার করবে তা বলা যায় না। কিন্তু প্রতিটি বছরই সংঘাতের নতুন পরিস্থিতি ও পরিমণ্ডলের সাথে আমাদের জানাশোনা হয় আমরা দেখি শক্তিমত্ত দেশগুলো কিভাবে এর থেকে তাদের আরাধ্যকে পেতে চায়। ঠিক এই উন্মত্ততা নিরসনের তো কোনো কিছু আমরা আদৌ খুঁজে পাচ্ছি না।

   Which Global Conflicts Will Dominate in 2014?

   The three potential flashpoints for international conflict in 2014—East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa—are distinguished by the involvement of autocratic forces in regional troubles

   The world is becoming more interdependent and not just in trade and capital flows; the interdependencies extend to technological, public health, environmental and climate spheres. Several challenges, extending from jihadist terrorism to climate change, are intrinsically international in character. But even regional challenges, such as in the Middle East or East Asia, carry important global implications.

   The interdependencies have not reduced conflict in the world. Many regions remain torn by conflict, even as the ongoing economic and political shifts gradually alter power equations and maritime realities. There is no inter-country war raging currently, but the high number of internal wars—many fuelled by external players—point to the larger dangers.

   Three factors will have a bearing on global conflicts in 2014. One is the rise of unconventional threats, which underscores the changing nature of conflict.

   Two is the phenomenon of failing states, which continues to trouble international and regional security. This development is a direct consequence of the end of the Cold War. While the Cold War raged, weak states were propped up by one bloc or the other. After the Soviet Union’s disintegration, the United States got out of that game. That is why dysfunctional or failing states began to emerge from the 1990s in a significant way.

   The phenomenon of failing states has contributed to making such nations a threat to regional and international security either because they are home to transnational pirates (Somalia) or transnational terrorists (the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt), or because of their defiance of global norms (North Korea) or their internal conflicts (Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya).

   Compounding this phenomenon is the sanctity attached to existing borders, which has become a powerful norm in world politics. Yet, paradoxically, this has allowed the emergence of weak states, whose internal wars spill over and create wider regional tensions and insecurities. This norm, however, is likely to come under challenge in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere where the dangers of political fragmentation can no longer be dismissed.

   A third factor is the growing power of autocrats. In a reflection of the changing balance of financial power, autocracies are increasingly funding democracies, with Western economies dependent on capital inflows from the cash-laden Chinese and Persian Gulf economies. As a result, the foreign assets of the world’s undemocratic governments are on the rise while those of the deeply rooted democracies are on the decline.

   In this light, is it any surprise that the leading financiers of foreign jihadist groups are oil-rich Saudi Arabia and gas-exporting Qatar, two of the most oppressive states in the world?

   In fact, the three potential flashpoints for international conflict in 2014—East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (Mena)—are distinguished by the involvement of autocratic forces in regional troubles.

   Take East Asia: The new geopolitical crisis there has been triggered by China’s muscular move in declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone (Adiz) extending to territories it does not control. This is just the latest example of China’s territorial creep in Asia.

   As China accumulates economic and military power, it has increasingly taken to flexing its muscles, ratcheting up territorial disputes with multiple neighbours and seeking to alter the status quo through surprise actions. It is nibbling at territories held by several neighbours, as highlighted by its growing military incursions across the long and disputed Himalayan border with India, its success in outwitting the Philippines to gain effective control of the Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal, and its aggressive moves against Vietnam over their unsettled maritime boundary.

   Log in to Reply
2. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (২:২১ অপরাহ্ণ)

   ভারত সরকার তার দেশে আমেরিকান দূতাবাসের ‘বাণিজ্যিক কার্যক্রম’ বন্ধের আদেশ দিয়েছে, কথা হচ্ছে আমেরিকান দূতাবাসে ‘বাণিজ্যিক কার্যক্রম’ চলত কেন? আমাদের দেশেও নিশ্চয়ই তারা ‘বাণিজ্যিক কার্যক্রম’ চালায় — খবর নিয়ে তা বন্ধ করা জরুরি, বিশেষত এখন যখন আমাদের উপর বাণিজ্য নিষেধাজ্ঞা আরোপের কানাঘুষা চলছে।

   India asks US Embassy to stop commercial activities

   In further retaliatory steps over the arrest of diplomat Devyani Khobragade, India has asked the US to “discontinue” commercial activities being undertaken from its embassy premises in Delhi by January 16.

   India’s action comes ahead of the January 13 deadline for the indictment in New York of Ms. Khobragade, Deputy Consul General in New York, on visa fraud charges.

   Acting tough, the government has asked the embassy to stop commercial activities undertaken under the aegis of the American Community Support Association (ACSA), including restaurant/bar, video club, bowling alley, swimming pool, sports field, beauty parlour and gym.

   The US has also been asked to provide the tax returns filed by it with Indian authorities for commercial activities which are afforded through ACSA to non-diplomatic persons, including private American citizens and their families, government sources said.

   Indian authorities have cited the provision of such commercial facilities to non-diplomats as a violation of Article 41(3) of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961.

   The Convention states that “the premises of the mission must not be used in any manner incompatible with the functions of the mission as laid down in the present Convention or by other rules of general international law or by any special agreements in force between the sending and the receiving State.”

   It is also understood the US diplomatic vehicles will now attract penalties for all traffic-related offences such as unauthorised parking, red light jumping, dangerous driving etc.

   Log in to Reply
3. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (২:৩৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

   পাকিস্তানের পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়ের মুখপাত্র আবারো বললেন, দাউদ ইব্রাহিম পাকিস্তানে নেই। ভারত তারেক জিয়াকে একবার জিজ্ঞেস করে দেখবে কিনা? — যেখানে দেখিবে ছাই কুড়াইয়া দেখ তাই!

   Dawood Ibrahim is Not Here: Pakistan

   Pakistan today said fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim is not present in the country, a day after India asserted that its most wanted terrorist was living in the neighbouring country.

   “We have repeatedly informed Indian authorities that Dawood Ibrahim is not in Pakistan,” Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told PTI.

   Asked if Dawood was ever present in Pakistan, she said, “This issue has been raised in the past too. We have checked and have said he is not present here”.

   Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had said, “As per our information, Dawood is in Pakistan.”

   “When I went to America last year to discuss inland security, I met the Attorney General who looks after the FBI. I talked to him and we decided that we will pass whatever information we have on Dawood amongst each other. We decided we will make joint efforts,” Shinde had said when asked about the whereabouts of Dawood, who is wanted in a number of cases by Indian security agencies including the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

   Dawood, who heads a vast and multifaceted illegal business, has emerged as India’s most wanted terrorist after the 1993 Mumbai bombings, which he allegedly organised and financed.

   An INTERPOL red corner notice is still pending against him.

   According to the US, Dawood maintains close links with terror outfit al-Qaeda.

   As a result, the US declared him a “global terrorist” and pursued the matter before the United Nations in an attempt to freeze his assets across the world and crack down on his operations.

   During the past two years, security agencies successfully brought back several wanted terrorists including Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, the key plotter of Mumbai attack terrorists Fasih Mahmood aka Fasih Mohammed, Abdul Karim Tunda and Yasin Bhatkal.

   Log in to Reply
4. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৪:৫৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

   পৃথিবীতে অ্যান্টার্কটিকার রস সাগরই [ Ross Sea] একমাত্র সমুদ্র যার পানি এখনো মানুষের দ্বারা কলুষিত হয়নি।

   The world’s last pure ocean: Beautiful images of the only body of water that has still not been spoiled by mankind

   These are the stunning images of one photographer’s mission to shoot the world’s last remaining pure ocean.

   The Ross Sea in Antarctica has been considered by many to be the world’s only body of water not altered or damaged by humans.

   The breath-taking pictures were captured by photographer John Weller, from Boulder in Colorado, USA.

   He shot the set over four trips to the Antarctic, all prior to 2009, which have just been turned into a new book called ‘The Last Ocean: Saving the Most Pristine Ecosystem on Earth.’

   The project, which included shots of Emperor and Adelie penguins, silverfish, seals, and minke whales, was supported as one of the Pew Research Center’s Environmental Initiatives.

   Prior to his voyages, John helped set up the Last Ocean Organisation in 2004, joining scientists and environmental groups in a campaign to have the entire Ross Sea designated as an international marine protected area – it is yet to be declared so.

   ‘The Ross Sea is fantastical, and I hoped to capture some of the humbling beauty. Every creature that I encountered in the Antarctic demanded my immediate and complete attention and respect.

   ‘The Ross Sea is the last large, intact marine ecosystem left on Earth, illuminating the devastating assessment by the United States National Science Foundation.

   ‘A more sobering discovery is that little if any of the ocean remains unaffected by fisheries, agricultural runoff, sewage, aqua culture and industry.

   ‘The scariest estimates are that we’ve eaten our way through 90% of the world’s top predatory fishes – tunas, groupers and sharks – since 1950. The most optimistic estimates aren’t much better.’

   
   
   
   

   Log in to Reply
5. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১০:০১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   আমার বন্ধু মুহাম্মদ হাবিবুর রহমান
   সালাহউদ্দীন আহমদ

   আমার প্রিয় বন্ধু বিচারপতি মুহাম্মদ হাবিবুর রহমান যাকে আমরা শেলি বলে জানতাম। তাঁর অকস্মাৎ মৃত্যুতে আমি নিদারুণ দুঃখ ও বেদনায় আক্রান্ত। বহুমুখী প্রতিভার অধিকারী এই প্রাণবন্ত মানুষটির সঙ্গে আমার পরিচয় দীর্ঘ ৬ দশকের বেশি সময় থেকে। তাঁর প্রতি আমার বিশেষ আগ্রহের কারণ তিনি ১৯৪৭ সালে পাকিস্তান সৃষ্টির আগে কলকাতা প্রেসিডেন্সি কলেজের ছাত্র ছিলেন।

   আমিও সেই কলেজে পড়েছি। বলা যেতে পারে এক ধরনের ভ্রাতৃত্ববোধ যাকে ইংরেজীতে Fraternity বলা হয়, আমাকে তাঁর প্রতি আকৃষ্ট করেছিল। তিনি ছিলেন মনেপ্রাণে খাঁটি বাঙালি। এই বাঙালিত্বের চেতনাকে তিনি সারাজীবন লালন করে এসেছেন এবং এই চেতনা তার সকল মননশীল তথা মনোজাগতিক কর্মকাণ্ডে সার্থকভাবে প্রতিফলিত হয়েছিল। অক্সফোর্ডে পড়াশুনা করতে গিয়ে হাবিবুর রহমান ইউরোপের উদারনৈতিক ও মানবতাবাদী দর্শনের সঙ্গে গভীরভাবে পরিচিত হন যা তাঁর চিন্তা-চেতনাকে বিশেষভাবে প্রভাবিত করে। পাকিস্তান সৃষ্টির পরপরই যখন হাবিবুর রহমান ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ছাত্র ছিলেন সে সময় আমাদের ভাষা আন্দোলন শুরু হয়ে গিয়েছিল। এই আন্দোলন হাবিবুর রহমানকে গভীরভাবে প্রভাবিত করেছিল। ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে তরুণ শিক্ষক থাকাকালীন তিনি এই আন্দোলনের সঙ্গে গভীরভাবে জড়িয়ে পড়লেন। এর জন্য তাকে বেশ কিছু সময়ের জন্য কারারুদ্ধ থাকতে হয় এবং তাকে বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের চাকরিও হারাতে হয়। এই সময় ছিল তার জীবনে এক ক্রান্তিকাল। তার চিন্তা চেতনায় এক গভীর অন্তবীক্ষণের প্রক্রিয়া শুরু হয়ে যায়। তিনি স্বদেশ চিন্তায় গভীরভাবে আত্মমগ্ন হন। তাঁর সমসাময়িক প্রিয় বন্ধু জিল্লুর রহমান সিদ্দিকীর মত তিনি সক্রিয় রাজনীতির পথে না গিয়ে সৃজনশীল বুদ্ধিবৃত্তিক চর্চায় নিজেকে নিয়োজিত করেন। বাঙালি জাতিসত্ত্বা এবং সাংস্কৃতিক ঐতিহ্যকে গভীরভাবে উপলব্ধি করার উদ্দেশ্যে তিনি বাঙালির ইতিহাস, ভাষা, ও সাহিত্য সম্পর্কে অধিকতর জ্ঞান অর্জনের দিকে মনোনিবেশ করেন। বস্তুত এটা হয়ে পড়ে তার জীবনের সাধনা। পেশাগত দিক দিয়ে তিনি পর্যায়ক্রমে ইতিহাসের অধ্যাপক, আইনজীবী, ব্যরিষ্টার এবং বিচারকের আসনে অধিষ্টিত থাকলেও বুদ্ধি ও তার চর্চার প্রতি ছিল তার প্রগাঢ় অনুরাগ। এটাকে তিনি সবসময় লালন করে এসেছেন। এর ফলশ্রুতি হিসেবে প্রকাশিত হয়েছে তার রচিত বাংলার ইতিহাস, ভাষা ও সাহিত্য, বিশেষ করে, রবীন্দ্র সাহিত্য সম্পর্কে কয়েকটি অসাধারণ বই যেমন “গঙ্গা ঋদ্ধি থেকে বাংলাদেশ”, “যথাশব্দ”, “মাতৃভাষার সপক্ষে রবীন্দ্রনাথ,” “রবীন্দ্র রচনার রবীন্দ্র ব্যাখ্যা” “রবীন্দ্র বাক্যে আর্ট সংগীত ও সাহিত্য” প্রমুখ। বাংলা সাহিত্য বিশেষ করে রবীন্দ্র সাহিত্যের প্রতি হাবিবুর রহমান অসাধারণ অনুরাগ পোষন করতেন। সমগ্র রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলি অত্যন্ত যত্নের সঙ্গে পাঠ করে তিনি রবীন্দ্র সাহিত্যের যে বিশ্লেষণমূলক ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন সেটা সত্যি বিস্ময়কর।

   অন্যান্য বিষয় সম্পর্কেও হাবিবুর রহমান বিশেষ দক্ষতার সঙ্গে লিখে গেছেন। আইন সংক্রান্ত তার কয়েকটি মূল্যবান বই রয়েছে। ইদানিং হাবিবুর রহমান বিভিন্ন পত্র-পত্রিকায় বিভিন্ন বিষয় নিয়ে প্রচুর লিখেছেন। শুধু তাই নয়, কবিতা ও ছড়া রচনাও তিনি ছিলেন সিদ্ধহস্ত।

   হাবিবুর রহমানের প্রতিভার আর একটি অসাধারণ দিক হল তার ধর্মচেতনা। কিন্তু তাঁর এই চেতনা অন্ধবিশ্বাস ও গোঁড়ামি বিবর্জিত। প্রথম যৌবনে পশ্চিমি দুনিয়ার উদারতা যুক্তিবাদী, মানবতাবাদ যেমন তাকে গভীরভাবে আকৃষ্ট করেছিল, বিশেষ করে অক্সফোর্ডে অধ্যায়ন কালে, তেমনি পরবর্তীতে পরিণত বয়সে তাঁর চিন্তা-চেতনার আধ্যাত্মিক ধর্মীয় অনুভূতির জাগরণ দেখতে পাওয়া যায়। এই প্রসঙ্গে আমি তাঁর দুটি অসাধারণ প্রকাশনার কথা উল্লেখ করতে চাই। প্রথমটি “কোরআনসূত্র”। এই গ্রন্থটি বাংলা একাডেমি কর্তৃক প্রথম প্রকাশিত হয় ১৯৮৪ সালে। এর পর এর বেশ কয়েকটি পুনঃমুর্দ্রন প্রকাশিত হয়েছে। বস্তুত এই বইটি কোরআন সম্পর্কে এক ধরনের কোষগ্রন্থ বা অভিধান হিসেবে বিবেচিত হতে পারে। নিঃসন্দেহে এটি হাবিবুর রহমানের অতুলনীয় কির্তি। এর পর ২০০০ সালে প্রকাশিত হয় হাবিবুর রহমানের “কোরআন শরীফ: সরল বঙ্গানুবাদ”। মূল আরবী ভাষায় রচিত ‘কুরআন’ এবং বিভিন্ন সময় প্রকাশিত এর ইংরেজী ও বাংলা অনুবাদসমূহ গভীর ও তুলনামূলক পাঠ করে হাবিবুর রহমান এই মহৎ কাজটি সম্পন্ন করেছেন।

   হাবিবুর রহমান এত সহজ সরল এবং যুগোপযোগী ভঙ্গিমা এবং ভাষায় কোরআনের যে অনুবাদটি সম্পন্ন করেছেন সেটি পাঠককে আনন্দ দেয় এবং পবিত্র গ্রন্থের মর্মবানী উপলব্ধি করতে সাহায্য করে।

   উপসংহারে বলা যেতে পারে যে বিচারপতি মুহাম্মদ হাবিবুর রহমানের মানসভূবনে তিনটি ধারার সুস্পষ্ট প্রভাব লক্ষ্য করা যায়:(ক) দেশজ বাঙালিত্বের ধারা; (খ) আধুনিক ইউরোপীয় উদারনৈতিক, যুক্তিবাদী ও মানবতাবাদী ধারা এবং (গ) ইসলামী ধারা। যদি বলি আমার এই বরেণ্য সুহৃদ হাবিবুর রহমান শেলির ইন্টালেকচুয়াল বা মনোজাগতিক সত্ত্বায় এই ত্রি ধারার সমন্বয় সার্থকভাবে ঘটেছিল তাহলে বোধ হয় অত্যুক্তি হবে না। তার আত্মার শান্তি কামনা করি।

   সাবেক প্রধান উপদেষ্টা, প্রধান বিচারপতি ও রবীন্দ্র বিশেষজ্ঞ মুহাম্মদ হাবিবুর রহমান মারা গেছেন। http://t.co/vzHJszKtTK pic.twitter.com/bS2mgXX8qJ

   — masud karim (@urumurum) January 12, 2014

   Log in to Reply
   • 

     মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১০:৪৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

     বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান: মহাপ্রয়াণের পর
     সলিমুল্লাহ খান

     কিমাশ্চর্যম্! টানা আট বছর কোমায় থাকার পর গতকাল–১১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪–পশ্চিম এশিয়ার ত্রাস জঙ্গিরাষ্ট্র ইসরায়েলের সাবেক প্রধানমন্ত্রী অ্যারিয়েল শ্যারন শেষনিঃশ্বাস ত্যাগ করিয়াছেন। তাঁহার বিরুদ্ধে অনেক মানবতাবিরোধী অপরাধের, অনেক যুদ্ধাপরাধের অভিযোগ ছিল। বিশেষ করিয়া ১৯৮২ সনে লেবাননের দক্ষিণে দুই ফিলিস্তিনি শরণার্থী শিবিরে বিস্তর অসামরিক নিরস্ত্র মানুষকে পাইকারী হারে হত্যা করিয়াছিলেন তিনি। শিবির দুইটার নাম শাবরা ও শাতিলা।

     গায়ের জোরে তিনি রেহাই পাইয়াছেন। কিন্তু ফিলিস্তিনিরা এই বাবদ তাঁহাকে আজও ক্ষমা করে নাই। আমি সন্ধ্যায় এই খবরটা দেখিয়া ঘুমাইতে গিয়াছিলাম। সকালে ঘুম হইতে জাগিয়া পত্রিকায় দেখিলাম আরেক শিরোনাম: ‘আরেক এক গুণীজনের প্রস্থান’। বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান সাহেব গত হইয়াছেন গতকাল। গতকাল ছিল ১১ জানুয়ারি। কিমাশ্চর্যম্! বাংলাদেশের ইতিহাসে ১১ জানুয়ারি একটি আশ্চর্য দিন।

     পত্রপত্রিকায় প্রকাশিত হিসাবে বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানের জন্ম হইয়াছিল ইংরেজি ১৯২৮ সালের ৩ ডিসেম্বর। অতয়েব হিসাবমাফিক বলিতে তিনি ৮৫ বছর পরমায়ু পাইয়াছিলেন। আমার পরম সৌভাগ্য ২০০০ সালের পরে কোন এক সময় তাঁহার সহিত পরিচিত হইয়াছিলাম। এমনকি বার কয়েক ইস্কাটনের উপকণ্ঠে ইস্পাহানি উপনিবেশে তাঁহার বাসাবাড়িতে তাঁহার মহান সান্নিধ্যও লাভ করিয়াছিলাম। সাবেক সরকার প্রধান বলিয়া তাঁহার বাসার সামনে একটি কি দুইটি পুলিশের লোক দণ্ডায়মান থাকিত।

     শুমার করিয়া দেখিতেছি বয়সে তিনি আমার তিরিশ বছরের বড় ছিলেন। কিন্তু ব্যবহার দেখিয়া কখনও কখনও বুঝিতাম তিনি আমার সহিত বয়স্যোচিত আচরণই করিতেছেন। তিনি নানাবিদ্যায় এবং নানান বিদ্যায় মনোনিবেশ করিয়াছিলেন। এমন কি কবিতার মতন ক্ষেত্রেও তিনি কখনও কখনও কাচা ফসল ফলাইয়াছিলেন। সাহিত্যের নানারাজ্য-পর্যটক রাজু আলাউদ্দিন তাঁহার রূপক নাম রাখিয়াছেন ‘গালিভার’। আর এক আলোক-বিশারদ সাজ্জাদ শরিফ তাঁহাকে বলিয়াছেন ‘আলোর দিশারি’। দুইটি উপাধিই যথার্থ হইয়াছে।

     যখন তাঁহার পরিচয় লাভ করিয়া ধন্য হই ততদিনে তিনি সাবেক হইয়াছেন। সকলেই বলিতেন তিনি ‘তত্ত্বাবধায়ক সরকারের সাবেক প্রধান উপদেষ্টা।’ পত্রিকা সম্পাদকরা শুদ্ধ ব্যাকরণে লিখিতেন ‘সাবেক তত্ত্বাবধায়ক সরকারের প্রধান উপদেষ্টা।’ যতদূর মনে পড়ে বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানের সহিত আমার পরিচয় ঘটাইয়া দিয়াছিলেন সাজ্জাদ শরিফ। আজিকার ‘প্রথম আলো’ পত্রিকার প্রথম পাতায় তিনি যাহা লিখিয়াছেন তাহার কিয়দংশ উদ্ধার করিবার উপযুক্ত। কি কঠিন সময়ে না দেশ পরিচালনার ভার কাঁধে লইয়াছিলেন বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান! তাঁহার পথ ফুলে ফুলে ছাওয়া ছিল না।

     সাজ্জাদ শরিফ লিখিতেছেন, ‘বাংলাদেশের অবিশ্বাসের রাজনীতির প্রেক্ষাপটে সংবিধানের ত্রয়োদশ সংশোধনীর মাধ্যমে তত্ত্বাবধায়ক সরকার পদ্ধতি প্রবর্তিত হয়। ১৯৯৬ সালের নির্বাচনে মুহাম্মদ হাবিবুর রহমান বাংলাদেশের প্রথম তত্ত্বাবধায়ক সরকারের প্রধান হিসেবে সুচারুভাবে তাঁর দায়িত্ব পালন করেন।’ তাহা সত্ত্বেও স্বীকার করিতে হইবে তিনি সকল পক্ষকে সন্তুষ্ট করিতে পারেন নাই। নির্বাচনে যাঁহারা সেইবার পরাজিত হইয়াছিলেন তাঁহারা নির্বাচনের পর তাঁহার বাড়িঘরে পর্যন্ত হামলা করিয়াছিলেন। কথাটা সত্যই মিথ্যা নহে।

     তাঁহার অন্যতর কীর্তির কথা সাজ্জাদ শরিফ উল্লেখ করিয়াছেন এইভাবে: ‘এ দায়িত্ব পালনকালে সেনাবাহিনীর তৎকালীন প্রধান লেফটেন্যান্ট জেনারেল আবু সালেহ মোহাম্মদ নাসিম বিদ্রোহ করলে জাতির উদ্দেশে এক নেতাসুলভ প্রজ্ঞাপূর্ণ ভাষণের মাধ্যমে জাতিকে সুসংবদ্ধ ও পরিস্থিতিকে নিয়ন্ত্রণে রাখেন।’ এই কথাটাও সত্য। অস্বীকার করিবার উপায় নাই।

     কিন্তু চাঁদেরও কলঙ্ক আছে। বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান ভরাযৌবনে বাংলাকে পাকিস্তানের অন্যতর রাষ্ট্রভাষা করিবার আন্দোলনে এক প্রকার নেতৃত্ব দিয়াছিলেন। দেশ স্বাধীন হইবার পর একসময় প্রায় কুড়ি বছর ধরিয়া তিনি বাংলাদেশের সর্বোচ্চ আদালতের বিচারক পদে আসীন ছিলেন। শেষ পর্যন্ত তিনি প্রধান বিচারপতিও হইয়াছিলেন। ‘প্রজাতন্ত্রের রাষ্ট্রভাষা বাংলা’–সংবিধানের এই প্রস্তাবনার তাৎপর্য কি? তাহা কি তিনিও ধরিতে পারেন নাই? সমালোচকরা বলিতেছেন তিনিও রাষ্ট্রভাষায় আদালতের রায় বিশেষ লেখেন নাই। কেন এমন হয়?

     উচ্চ আদালতে বাংলা ভাষার প্রবর্তনে তাঁহার ভূমিকা তিনি পালন করিয়াছেন। তবে পরে। অবসর গ্রহণের পরে তিনি অনেক প্রবন্ধে এই বিষয়ে তাঁহার মতামত দ্ব্যর্থহীন ভাষায় লিখিয়াছেন। রাষ্ট্রের অন্যান্য বিভাগের মত বাংলাদেশে আদালতের ভাষাও বাংলা হওয়াই উচিত। দুঃখের মধ্যে এদেশের বিচার বিভাগে বাংলা ভাষার ব্যবহার এখনও অবাধ হয় নাই। তাহার দায় একা বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানের উপর চাপান ঠিক হইবে না। তবে একথা ঠিক যে লোকে তাঁহার কাছে কিছু বাংলা রায় উদাহরণস্বরূপ আশা করিত।

     বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান বাংলাটা নিজে ভাল লিখিতেন। তাঁহার লেখা যে বহিটির সহিত আমার প্রথম পরিচয় ঘটে সেই বহির নাম যথাশব্দ। বইটা ১৯৭৪ সালে বাংলা একাডেমী হইতে বাহির হইয়াছিল। এই বহির লেখক হিসাবে তাঁহার নামযশ আমি এখনও করিতেছি। অনেক দিনই করিব। এই জাতীয় বইকে ইংরেজিতে ‘থেসরাস’ বলা হয়। তাঁহার লেখা বাংলা থেসরাসটি বেশ উপকারী বই হইয়াছিল। তিনি বাংলা ভাষাটাও খুঁটাইয়া পড়িতেন। রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুরের লেখা তাঁহার প্রিয় ছিল–একথা বলাই বাহুল্য। শেষ বয়সে–আমাকে একবার বলিয়াছিলেন–তিনি চীনা ভাষাও শিখিতেছিলেন।

     সমালোচকরা তাঁহার দুইটি দোষ ধরিতেন। একেত তিনি বেশি লিখিতেন। দ্বিতীয়ে অন্যের লেখা হইতে অধিক উদ্ধৃতি ব্যবহার করিতেন। কেহ কেহ এমন অভিযোগও করিয়াছেন তিনি উদ্ধৃতি না দিয়াও অন্যের লেখা কখনও কখনও ব্যবহার করিতেন। দৃষ্টান্তের মধ্যে পরলোকগত মহান লেখক আহমদ ছফা আমাকে একবার একথাটি বলিয়াছিলেন। অধ্যাপক আবদুর রাজ্জাকের স্মৃতি রোমন্থন করিয়া আহমদ ছফা যে বইটি লিখিয়াছিলেন তাহার নাম যদ্যপি আমার গুরু। ইহা হইতে কোন কোন অংশ হাবিবুর রহমান সাহেব তাঁহার লেখায় চাকা চাকা ব্যবহার করিয়াছেন। অভিযোগটির সত্যতা আমি যাচাই করিয়া দেখি নাই। তবে অস্বীকার করিবার উপায় নাই। অনুবাদেও তিনি সিদ্ধহস্ত ছিলেন।

     বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমান সাহেবের রাজনৈতিক চিন্তাধারা ছিল ইংরেজিতে যাহাকে বলে ‘লিবারেল’ তাহার প্রমাণস্বরূপ। বাংলায় এই শব্দটির প্রচলিত অনুবাদ ‘উদারনৈতিক’। লিবারেল অর্থ যাঁহারা লিবার্টি বা স্বাধীনতায় বিশ্বাস করেন। জামায়াতে ইসলামীর সাবেক আমীর অধ্যাপক গোলাম আজম এখন মানবতাবিরোধী অপরাধের অভিযোগে দণ্ডপ্রাপ্ত। এই গোলাম আজমের নাগরিকত্ব বাতিল মামলার আপীলের যে রায় ১৯৯৪ সালে দেওয়া হইয়াছিল তাহাকে উদারনৈতিক ব্যবহারশাস্ত্রের পরাকাষ্ঠা বলা যায়। বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানও এই মামলার অন্যতম বিচারক–সত্য বলিতে প্রধান বিচারক–ছিলেন। এই মামলায় গোলাম আজমের নাগরিকত্ব মঞ্জুর করা হইয়াছিল। প্রকাশ থাকে যে গোলাম আজম সাহেব ১৯৭৮ সাল হইতে বিনা ভিসায় বিনা নাগরিকত্বে বাংলাদেশে অবস্থান করিতেছিলেন। ১৯৯৪ সাল নাগাদ তিনি নাগরিক হইলেন। ইহার সামান্য কৃতিত্বে বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানেরও ভাগ আছে।

     এই মামলায় মাননীয় বিচারপতিরা যে সিদ্ধান্ত লইয়াছিলেন তাহার গোড়ায় একটি চিন্তা কাজ করিতেছিল। সেই চিন্তা অনুসারে, নাগরিকত্ব জিনিশটা জন্মের–অর্থাৎ প্রাণীবিজ্ঞানের–বিষয়। অথচ রাষ্ট্রবিজ্ঞান অনুসারে নাগরিকত্ব জিনিশটা কর্মের–কৃতকর্ম বা রাজনৈতিক ব্যবহারের–বিষয় বটে। যাহারা ১৯৭১ সালের মুক্তিযুদ্ধে দখলদার পাকিস্তান সেনাবাহিনীর সহিত সহযোগিতা করিয়াছিলেন–মায় হত্যা, ধর্ষণ, অগ্নিসংযোগ প্রভৃতি মানবতাবিরোধী অপরাধে অপরাধী–তাহাদের নাগরিকত্ব বা ভোটাধিকার বাতিল হইবে। রাষ্ট্রবিজ্ঞানের সামান্য তত্ত্ব যাহা ‘সমাজচুক্তি উপপাদ্য’ নামে পরিচিত–অন্তত সপ্তদশ শতাব্দী হইতে যাহা আধুনিক রাষ্ট্রের ভিত্তি বলিয়া গণ্য–তাহাতে সাব্যস্ত আছে যে যুদ্ধাপরাধীর নাগরিকত্ব বাতিল হইতেই পারে।
     কিন্তু সেদিন–১৯৯৪ সালে–বাংলাদেশের বিচারপতিরা অন্য চিন্তা করিতেছিলেন। মনে হইতেছে বিচারপতি হাবিবুর রহমানের পবিত্র স্মৃতির তলায়ও এই শ্যামল ছায়াটি পড়িয়াই থাকিবে। কতদিন থাকিবে কে জানে!

     Log in to Reply
6. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১০:৫৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   আট বছর কোমায় থাকার পর গতকাল শনিবার ৮৫ বছর বয়সে কারো কাছে নায়ক কারো কাছে শান্তিকামী কারো কাছে কসাই ইসরাইলের প্রাক্তন প্রধানমন্ত্রী অ্যারিয়েল শ্যারন মারা গেছেন।

   Ariel Sharon, former Israeli prime minister, dies at 85

   Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon died Saturday after a significant deterioration in his medical condition over the past two weeks. Sharon, who was 85, was comatose for the past eight years.

   On January 4, 2006, Ariel “Arik” Sharon was at the height of his political power: His newly founded Kadima party had just beat the rival parties to a pulp in pre-elections polls, which predicted it securing 40 Knesset seats in the approaching election.

   Then in a single moment, the 78-year-old Sharon fell from the political stage, suffering his second serious stroke within two-and-half weeks and bringing his electoral blitz to a halt. Israel’s prime minister was brought to Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem, and his illness soon became the focus of world attention in the frenzied 2006 Israeli election campaign.

   Everyone had expected Sharon, the controversial military and political leader, to substantially push forward the peace process with the Palestinians, the primary reason he had left the Likud party and established Kadima.

   A huge upheaval swept Israeli politics when Sharon established his centrist party, setting a platform for the biggest step in his life as a daring politician, and also dramatically changing his reputation.

   Just two decades earlier, Sharon had been considered a leper in the international community and among a wide swathe of Israelis, was seen as wearing around his neck the albatross of the Israeli sins committed during the First Lebanon War, following his humiliating removal as defense minister by the government’s Kahan Commission. That inquiry found Sharon personally responsible for not preventing the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by forces belonging to the Lebanese Christian Phalange party.

   After his ouster from office, Sharon remained an outcast in the political arena, carrying the image of an extreme right-winger, almost demonic in nature. However,true to the motto he coined himself, Sharon “always stayed at the wheel” and patiently waited for an opportunity to make a comeback. That opportunity eventually arrived and not only brought him into the Prime Minister’s Office, but also repaired his reputation among the local public and in international opinion.

   Early days and time in the army

   Nothing over the course of Sharon’s stormy life, whether in his temperament or home life growing up, would have predicted his about-face in the latter part of his political career. Sharon was born under the name Ariel Scheinerman to Shmuel and Vera in February 1928 in the village of Kfar Malal in Mandatory Palestine. His sister Yehudit (Dita) is two years his senior. Sharon’s father was an agronomist by training and his mother was a medical student who never completed her studies. His parents immigrated to Israel from Georgia six years before Sharon’s birth and barely made a living from raising crops and farm animals. Until her dying day, his mother would sleep with a rifle tucked under bed, Sharon would say, a memory from the fearful nights she spent hiding with Ariel and Dita in Kfar Malal’s cowshed from roving Bedouin gangs during the 1929 Arab riots.

   Dita married at a young age and immigrated to the United States with her husband, and still lives in New York today. A split developed between Sharon and his sister after she moved to the U.S., and they remained estranged for decades.

   When he was just 14 years old, the young Ariel joined the ranks of the Haganah, the pre-independence underground army of Jews living in Mandatory Palestine. As a member of the Haganah, Sharon received training in navigation, marksmanship and face-to-face combat. A year before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Sharon became a guard in the Jewish communities’ police force, which operated under the aegis of the British Mandatory police. All the while, he continued his activities in the Haganah.

   After the passage of UN Resolution 181, which called for Mandatory Palestine to be divided among Jews and Arabs, Sharon was made a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade, where he continued to serve during the War of Independence. Some 10 days after the Declaration of Independence, on May 14, 1948, Sharon was seriously wounded in his stomach during the Battle of Latrun. His life was saved by one of his soldiers who evacuated him from the battlefield.

   By the end of the War of Independence, Sharon had already been promoted to company commander, and after several months was appointed commander of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit in the North. In 1950, Sharon attended the brigade commanders’ course taught by Yitzhak Rabin. Following that, Sharon was appointed intelligence officer of Israel Defense Forces Central Command and later GOC Southern Command.

   In 1953, Sharon founded the legendary “101” commando unit. This unit was the first in IDF history to carry out pinpoint assault operations in enemy countries, utilizing sophisticated fighting techniques in-use in the IDF until then. At this time, Sharon began to develop a reputation as a daring commander who viewed military regulations and orders as mere suggestions, already making into a controversial figure.

   Thus, in October 1953, he led the raid against the Palestinian village of Qibya which a group of Palestinians terrorists had used as a staging point several days before for the murder of a mother and her two children in the Israeli town of Yehud. Sharon’s force blew up some 40 homes in the village, unintentionally burying 70 residents in the rubble, most of them women. The operation sparked harsh international condemnation, with then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion rejecting Israeli government responsibility for the operation. Several months later, the legendary Unit 101 was disbanded and merged into the paratroopers’ 890 Battalion. Sharon was appointed commander of the new brigade created by the merger and orchestrated a long list of “payback” operations beyond Israel’s borders. In one of these operations, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Sharon was wounded again when he was hit in the leg by a bullet.

   During the Sinai Campaign in 1956, Sharon was the commander of the Paratroopers’ 202 Battalion, and yet again things became complicated. This time it was at the Battle of Mitla Pass near the Suez Canal. Sharon commanded a force that hadn’t been authorized to go through the narrow pass which Egyptian forces could have used to surreptitiously encircle his force. Nevertheless, the entire battalion became bogged down in a drawn out battle and took heavy losses. IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan accused Sharon of violating an explicit order and Sharon was also criticized for leading his men from behind.

   Then Prime Minister Ben Gurion had direct contact with the young officer Sharon back from his days leading Unit 101, but he had his reservations regarding Sharon’s character. Ben Gurion once recounted in his diary a conversation with the young Sharon. “Sharon told me he would cure himself of his trait of not speaking the truth.” In his memoir published in 1979, “Service Book”, Rabin describes a conversation he had with Ben-Gurion about Sharon. “You know that I have a special relationship with Arik Sharon,” Rabin recounted Ben Gurion telling him. “I view him as one of the best military people, but if he would only be more of a straight-shooter it would help him get promoted.”

   Sharon studied at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law in the early 1960s, while still serving in the army. Before reaching the age of 40, Sharon was promoted to major-general. During the Six Day War in 1967, months after his promotion, Sharon won much praise for his leadership in the victories at Um-Katef and Abu-Ageila commanding the 38th Armor Corps (reserve) on the Sinai front. Sharon took umbrage that his brigade had been assigned a purely defensive role on the southern front and drew up a complex offensive plan of battle that combined forces of tanks, infantry and paratroopers in helicopters and planes that was executed with great precision and that destroyed the Egyptian forces in the sector.

   Sharon showed further military initiative after he was appointed GOC Southern Command. In 1971, he initiated a series of military actions to “cleanse Gaza” of the terrorists.

   In 1973, after David Elazar was appointed IDF chief of staff, Sharon was forced to retire from the IDF. Around the same time, Sharon purchased 4,000 dunams of land in the western Negev, close to the Israeli town of Sderot, and built Havat Shikmim (Sycamore Ranch). The ranch, which was purchased for $600,000, today is estimated to be worth millions of dollars.

   Beset by personal tragedies

   Sharon’s personal life was also a stormy one. Sharon met his first wife, Margalit Zimmerman, when she was a young girl of 16 studying at the Mosenson boarding school near the Scheinerman family fields in Kfar Malal. He was smitten with a serious case of puppy love. Sharon would call her Gali. In 1953, when Sharon took a break from his military career to learn Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University, the two married and moved to northern Tel Aviv’s Tzahala neighborhood. Their eldest son, Gur, was born there. On May 2, 1962, Margalit was killed in a car accident on the road leading to Jerusalem on her way to work as a psychiatric nurse. The young Sharon became a widower with a five-and-a half-year-old son.

   One year after Margalit’s death, Sharon married her sister, Lily, who he had known since the age of 12 and treated as his younger sister. Lily was about a decade younger than Sharon. Sharon and Lily grew close after Margalit’s death, and a great love blossomed between them. Lily filled in for her deceased sister as a mother to Gur.

   After Lily and Sharon married, they had two children of their own: Omri and Gilad. But Sharon’s personal tragedies didn’t stop there. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah in 1967, when Gur was 11-years-old, he was killed by an accidental discharge while playing with an antique rifle at the Sharon family home in Tzahala with a friend from the neighborhood. Sharon was at home when the shot rang out and he ran to the yard and found his son bleeding profusely and in critical condition. Sharon held Gur in his arms and ran into the street to stop a passing car. When they arrived at the hospital, Gur had already died in his arms.

   At 75-years-old and the prime minister of Israel, Sharon made a rare comment about the tragedy during an interview: “There is no cure for that kind of pain,” he said. “At first, it hits you a thousand-fold in the moment. Yes, you say to yourself, what would have happened if I had done this or that? If I had done things differently…”

   Like after Margalit’s death, so too after Gur’s death, Lily served as Sharon’s shoulder to lean on. The relationship between husband and wife only grew stronger. Lily continued to play an active role in promoting her husband’s career, appearing alongside him at every event and serving as a sounding board and adviser. The family that Lily managed with a strong hand was a source of strength for Sharon. Lily and their two sons were an anchor for Sharon, the home to which he would always return. However, Lily wouldn’t live to see Sharon’s election to the premiership; she died in 2000 from cancer. For months, Sharon would tend to her at the hospital until her passing.

   Political career

   After Sharon retired from active IDF service in 1973, he decided to enter politics and was one of the forces behind the establishment of Likud, which combined all the right-wing parties of the time into a single electoral list. Back then Israeli politics was dominated by the left-of-center Alignment, a successor to the Mapai party and predecessor to the Labor Party. Sharon arranged a press conference to announce the formation of the Likud, saying that “an alignment against the Alignment” had been created. The Herut party led by Menachem Begin and the Liberal party led by Shmuel Tamir were two the factions to comprise the new Likud. In the meantime, the Yom Kippur War broke out.

   Following his retirement from active duty, Sharon received a temporary appointment as a reserve commander of an armor division in the south. Several months later, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, this appointment proved to be a fateful one. During the initial days of the war, the armor division fought battle after battle of heavy fighting against many Egyptian army divisions to halt their advance. At the same time, Sharon argued with his superior officers, including GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Shmuel “Gorodish” Gonen, former IDF Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, who took de facto control over the southern front as the war progressed, and IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar, who all accused him of violating orders. The post-war Agranat Commission cleared Sharon of these accusations.

   As the war progressed, the IDF shifted to the offensive and Sharon commanded the force that crossed the Suez Canal, a move that determined the outcome of the war. By the war’s conclusion, Sharon had become “Arik, King of Israel.” In the eyes of many soldiers and citizens on the home front, Sharon was the war’s hero and had saved the perilous situation on the southern front after the initial failures there.

   Immediately after the war ended, Sharon was elected to Knesset for the first time, on the Likud list. Sharon, who had hopes of bringing Likud into power in the government, was disappointed with the election results. After the publication of the Agranat Commission’s report and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir and IDF Chief of Staff Elazar, Sharon tried to pressure the new prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to appoint him IDF chief of staff. However, Rabin tapped Motta Gur to fill the position instead. In June 1974, Sharon joined 150 settlers in establishing the first settlement founded by the religious Zionist Gush Emunim group, Elon Moreh, near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Sharon was removed from the area by IDF soldiers, along with the other settlers. In the following years, Sharon would provide assistance to expanding the settlement enterprise in Gaza and the West Bank in all future roles he served.

   One year after his election to the Knesset, Sharon resigned as a MK and was subsequently appointed as defense adviser to Prime Minister Rabin, over the objections of IDF chief of staff Gur and Defense Minister Shimon Peres. Sharon served in the position for only nine months, but during that time he managed to get government approval for the Israeli settler in Sebastia to establish a permanent settlement in the West Bank at Kedumim.

   Ahead of the 1977 elections, Sharon decided to leverage his popularity from the Yom Kippur War and establish a new right-wing party, Shlomtzion. It only managed to win two Knesset seats in the elections. Begin who was elected prime minister after the Likud’s 1977 electoral upset, brought Sharon back into the party fold and gave a position as agriculture minister and chairman of the inter-ministerial committee on settlement matters. In this post, Sharon continued to work diligently to multiply the number of settlements. It’s no wonder that the settlement movement saw Sharon as their political patron.

   After the 1981 elections, Sharon’s status grew in the Likud and in the government and Menachem Begin appointed him as defense minister in his second term in office. The prophetic statement voiced by Sharon’s friend the journalist Uri Dan had come true: Those who wouldn’t accept Sharon as IDF chief of staff would have him as defense minister. In his capacity as defense minister, Sharon was responsible for evacuating the Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula, including the Israeli city of Yamit.

   The curse of the Lebanon War

   After the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Shlomo Argov in the summer of 1982, Sharon convinced Begin to authorize a “limited” IDF operation in southern Lebanon with the goal of pushing the “terrorist infrastructure” away from the Israeli border in Operation Peace in the Galilee.

   The operation was supposed to last 48 hours and the IDF was expected to reach a line 40 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border. However, the operation developed into a protracted war with the Syrian army, Palestinian forces and local guerilla groups with the IDF becoming “stuck in the Lebanese mud” for 18 years.

   Sharon was blamed for leading Begin and the entire government astray and for not letting them in on his plans to create a new order in Lebanon. Over the course of the war, the IDF entered Beirut and cooperated with the Maronite Christian Phalange militia led by Bashir Gemayel. On September 16, 1982, a day after Gemayel was assassinated, Sharon authorized the entry of Phalangist militiamen into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in West Beirut. The militiamen proceeded to butcher the camps’ inhabitants, killing hundreds, for which Israel was held to be ultimately responsible.

   Following the massacre, the Israeli government gave in to pressure from 400,000 Peace Now protesters who gathered in central Tel Aviv and it ordered the establishment of a government-led inquiry. The Kahan Commission laid indirect responsibility on Sharon for the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla, stating that he should have expected it and implemented measures to prevent it. The Commission said Sharon should “draw personal conclusions,” from the affair. The very same day wherever he went he was followed by left-wing demonstrators who let out cries of “murderer.”

   Sharon subsequently resigned from the defense portfolio, but remained in the government as a minister without portfolio.

   Entering the political wasteland, then rehabilitation

   Ahead of the 1984 elections, Sharon decided to run for the Likud party leadership. Even though he lost to Yitzhak Shamir, the 42 percent turnout in support that he received was a considerable accomplishment. With the creation of the national unity government after the general elections, Sharon was appointed industry and trade minister. He opposed the initiative by then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin to withdraw IDF forces to a “security strip” in south Lebanon and proposed the creation of a Palestinian state east of the Jordan River. Before the 1988 elections, for which he was placed third on the Likud’s electoral list behind Yitzhak Shamir and David Levy, Sharon also proposed annexing parts of the West Bank to Israel.

   After the elections, Sharon grew close to Levy and to Yitzhak Moda’i and together the troika formed within the Likud an internal opposition to Prime Minister Shamir’s peace policy. The three were dubbed by the media as the “Hishuka’im” (“Hoopsters”) because of the hoops they wanted to make Shamir jump through. During a Likud Central Committee meeting in 1990, Sharon announced his resignation from the government. This meeting became known as the “Night of the Microphones” during which Sharon opportunistically called from the stage for vote and that “whoever is in favor of eliminating terrorism, raise their hand.”

   A short while later, the Labor Party left the national unity government in an attempt to form a new government coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties in what was known as the “dirty trick.” After the Labor attempt failed, Sharon was reappointed to Shamir’s government, this time to serve as housing and construction minister. In this role, Sharon pushed through the construction of tens of thousands of apartment units and sites for mobile homes, mostly through bypassing proper planning procedures, in the name of absorbing the massive wave of immigrant from the Former Soviet Union.

   Sharon subsequently spent four years in the opposition during the premierships of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres between 1992 and 1996. He was one the staunchest critics of the Oslo Accords and called for implementing Israeli sovereignty over most of the Palestinian territories. Sharon participated during this time in several of the vicious demonstrations that occurred before Rabin’s assassination and stood onstage when the crowds shouted “Rabin is a traitor.”

   After the 1996 elections, during which Benjamin Netanyahu defeated Peres for the premiership, Sharon joined the Likud government at the last minute, after David Levy issued a political ultimatum to Netanyahu. A special ministerial portfolio was created for Sharon, who over the years had received the nickname “Bulldozer,” the National Infrastructure Ministry. Two years later, Levy left his position as foreign minister and Sharon, who grown close to Netanyahu during this period, replaced him.

   Sharon traveled with Netanyahu to the negotiations over the Wye River Memorandum with the Palestinians in the United States and established himself as Likud’s No. 2. On election eve in 1999, when Netanyahu conceded his defeat to Labor leader Ehud Barak, it was Sharon who was standing by his side and who became his heir to the Likud leadership. Sharon was elected Likud chairman and as opposition leader, took on the task of rehabilitating a party with just 19 seats and burdened by debts.

   Second intifada erupts

   On September 28, 2000, Sharon ascended the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as Knesset opposition leader to declare that “every Jew has the right to ascend onto the Temple Mount.” The move caused an international disturbance, provoking outrage among Arab states and among Palestinians.

   Not long thereafter, the Al-Aqsa intifada broke out and to spread to the Israeli Arab communities, sparking the October Riots, during which 13 Israeli Arab citizens were killed by police fire.

   Direct elections for prime minister were announced in February 2001, in which Sharon defeated Barak with a decisive majority of 62 percent to 38 percent of votes for the premiership. Netanyahu left the political arena to Sharon when he decided not to compete for the Likud party leadership because, he said, of the impossibility of changing the composition of the Knesset in the elections for the premiership. The morning after his election victory, Sharon paid a visit to Lily’s grave at Sycamore Ranch.

   Sharon’s first act as prime minister was to invite the Labor Party to join his government in a broad-based coalition, appointing Peres as foreign minister and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer as defense minister. Nevertheless, the main task that lay in front of him was dealing with the wave of Palestinian terror that engulfed Israeli cities. Sharon took a hard-line in the military struggle against the Palestinians and authorized the policy of “targeted killings.” The policy led to the elimination of senior and junior members of terror organizations, foremost among them Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Sharon also approved military operations like Operation Defensive Shield, during which the Palestinians cities in the West Bank were re-occupied again and again by the IDF, and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat was isolated at his Muqata compound in Ramallah.

   Gaza disengagement

   In the area of the peace process, Sharon began to shift his position. From the beginning of his term Sharon said that Israel would be forced to make “painful sacrifices,” although a good deal of time would pass before this phrase developed real content. In September 2001, Sharon declared for the first time that the Palestinians had a right to establish their own state west of the Jordan River. Sharon’s government also passed, with 14 amendments, the “Road Map” outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush, although it was never actually implemented. Sharon dared to take a far-reaching political step on the Palestinian issue only after the 2003 elections when his popularity reached new heights and Likud’s Knesset faction grew to 38 seats (and soon gained another two seats that belonged to Yisrael B’Aliya when that party was absorbed into the Likud after the elections) in contrast to Amram Mitzna’s Labor Party, which only garnered only 19 seats.

   The move to address the Palestinian conflict was the Disengagement Plan that was announced by the Sharon government in 2003 and included the evacuation of all the Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four additional settlements in northern Samaria in the West Bank. It also called for the withdrawal of the IDF from the entire Gaza Strip. Despite the departure of the right-wing parties from his government and the rejection of the plan in Likud members in a party referendum, Sharon pushed the decision to evacuate from Gaza forward through the government and the Knesset. With the aid of the Labor Party, which returned to the government coalition, Sharon passed legislation calling for the evacuation and compensation of the settlers and prepared the IDF and the Israel Police to carry out the plan. The disengagement was carried in a shorter time frame than had been expected, eight days, in August 2005. It proceeded at a quick pace despite the “Orange Campaign” conducted by the opponents to Sharon’s plan that spread across Israel and boiled over into acts of politically inspired violence. The storm in the Likud intensified when a group of Likud rebels led by Minister Uzi Landau tried to torpedo the process. At this time, the seeds were planted for Sharon’s departure from the Likud and founding of the Kadima party.

   Police investigation

   At the same time, the threat of prosecution hung Sharon during his entire premiership. Three separate and potentially illegal scandals were investigated. All of them involved suspicions against Sharon for personal corruption, fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. However, an indictment was never filed against him.

   In June 2004, then Attorney General Menachem Mazuz closed the “Greek Island” case against Sharon and his son Gilad, after Sharon had been investigated for a suspected quid pro quo relationship with businessman David Appel. Appel had employed Sharon’s son Gilad at a very generous salary on building project for a tourist venture in the Greek islands. The Supreme Court rejected appeals against Mazuz’s decision to clear Sharon of criminal charges.

   In February 2005, Mazuz also closed the case against Sharon alleging that he knowingly funneled previous election campaign contributions through an illegal straw company, while simultaneously deciding to file an indictment against Sharon’s son Omri. As part of a plea agreement, Omri admitted to the charges and was sentenced to nine months in prison.

   The third scandal, involved wealthy foreign businessmen Cyril Kern and Martin Schlaff and was only close in 2013 due to a lack of evidence. In the beginning of 2006, the police announced that they had evidence that seemed to show that brothers Martin and James Schlaff had transferred $3 million in bribe money to the Sharon family.

   During this time, Sharon vigorously denied the accusation lobbed at him that he promoted the Disengagement Plan because of the criminal allegations made against him.

   Departure from Likud and founding of Kadima

   After the disengagement from Gaza, the internal dissensions that had erupted within Likud between supporters and opponents of the plan became impossible to bridge. After Amir Peretz was elected head of the Labor Party in November 2005, he and Sharon agreed to move forward the general elections for the Knesset from November 2006 to March 2006. Several days later, Sharon shook-up the entire political establishment by announcing he was abandoning the Likud to establish a new political party, Kadima, along with a third of Likud’s Knesset faction. The new party, which opinion polls showed would be a vote magnet, attracted Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Shaul Mofaz, Tzachi Hanegbi, Gideon Ezra and Meir Sheetrit from the Likud and Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon, and Dalia Itzik from the Labor Party, along with some newer entrants to the political arena, like Uriel Reichman and Avi Dichter.

   First stroke

   Sharon looked like a man sprinting toward electoral victory, but in December 2005, he was taken to Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem after suffering a light stroke. Sharon was released from the hospital within two days, and returned to campaigning. Nevertheless, doctors instructed Sharon to undergo catheterization to fix a problem found within his heart.

   Second stroke

   Two-and-a-half weeks, on the evening before his catheterization, Sharon was brought again to the hospital. This time the leader had suffered from a serious stroke and a team of neurosurgeons struggled for hours in the operating room to save his life.

   Sharon’s simultaneous fall into coma and off the public stage led to an upheaval in his Kadima party, less than three months before the general elections which found itself without the founder who had shaped the party in his image. Kadima was only two-months-old and still lacked an executive decision-making body or apparatus within the party. The fear that it would become a one-man party was a real one.

   Despite Sharon’s absence, Kadima’s election campaign advisers who were made up largely of people from Sharon’s famed “ranch forum” of unofficial political advisers, decided to continue to use Sharon’s figure. The campaign was renewed two weeks after Sharon’s second stroke with the founder himself up front and present, both in image and voice.

   Thus, also at the Kadima’s party headquarters in Petah Tikva, a giant photo of Sharon was placed in front of the building. After short successors battle between Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, the die was cast. It was determined that Olmert would serve both as acting prime minister and in his original role as a government minister, making him Kadima’s de facto candidate for prime minister in the elections and to his appointment as party chairman. Livni was placed as number two on the party’s electoral list.

   Olmert, though, was careful not to sit in the prime minister’s chair, which for a period remained empty. In broadcasts and speeches during the rest of the elections campaign, Kadima’s leaders were sure to express their wish and hope for Sharon’s return, even after it became clear that Sharon would not lead Kadima into the elections. At one point, the campaign heads proposed placing Sharon in the symbolic 120th spot on the party’s electoral list, but the idea was revealed to the public and received harsh criticism.

   Despite Kadima leaders’ attempts to stick to the message and gather around Sharon’s legacy as dictated by the campaign heads, it was actually Olmert who broke party discipline and in several media interviews before the end of the elections campaign revealed his “Realignment Plan” for the unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank within four years. The plan stirred up an internal storm of criticism within Kadima and among Sharon’s advisors.

   Kadima went into the elections shedding public support. At its peak the party was forecasted to receive 40 Knesset seats. On election eve, the party’s leaders found it difficult to hide their disappointment: the party ended up with just 29 Knesset seats. Still, Kadima finished the elections as the largest party in the Knesset and Olmert put together a new government coalition.

   Over time, Sharon was moved to an isolated room in Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer where he resided to his final day, still in a coma. Sharon sons, Gilad and Omri came to visit him almost every day. Beside his room stood Sharon’s guards, entitled to him as a former prime minister. The public was regularly updated about Sharon’s condition over the years of his coma, and every now and then his sons reported some sort of improvement in his health.

   Log in to Reply
   • 

     মাসুদ করিম - ১২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১১:০৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

     Sharon’s contradictory life and legacy: The good, the bad and the very, very ugly

     The first time I met Ariel Sharon he was already cast as the enemy. It was at a meeting of the Southern Command, somewhere in the Sinai Desert, during the Yom Kippur War. Sharon was the commander of the IDF’s 143rd Division, and I was serving in Avraham Adan’s 162nd. While they were repelling the Egyptians, the two generals were also at each other’s throats.

     I don’t recall what I was doing there – it certainly wasn’t to take part in any high-level consultations – but I was wandering around the guarded compound when I happened to stumble upon Sharon and some of his officers standing near an armored personnel carrier, eagerly devouring the kind of home-cooked meal that most of us hadn’t seen for many days.

     “Why are you staring at us? Come and eat,” he called over suddenly, and I, of course, was stricken with fear. Not only was this the imposing Ariel Sharon, already sporting the white bandage on his forehead that would become his charismatic trademark for the 1973 war, but I also ran the risk of being spotted fraternizing with the enemy by someone from my own unit. Sharon saw me hesitating, winked at his followers and said “Come on. I won’t bite you.”

     I spent no more than ten minutes with them, wolfing down the exquisite dishes that Sharon’s chef had concocted. Sharon didn’t speak to me again, but his sardonic observations about some of Adan’s staff officers may have been meant for my ears. I remember his hearty chuckles, the jokes that had his followers doubled up in laughter and most of all, the admiration and adulation in their eyes, the likes of which I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since.

     It was, I realized many years later, one of his secret weapons, one of the things, to paraphrase Sharon himself, that “you could see from here, but not from there.” Sharon could be cruel and callous to his enemies on the battlefield and to his rivals in politics, but he was chock-full of personal charm and possessed a wicked sense of humor with which he could beguile friends and foes alike. His soldiers on the battlefield and his lackeys in the political arena followed him blindly “through fire and water,” but many of his peers, including his harshest critics, were no less captivated by his personal appeal and charm.

     It was yet another facet of a leader who was not only “larger than life” – both physically and symbolically – but also a man of extremes and seemingly irreconcilable internal contradictions. He was the epitome of that dichotomic cliché “you either loved him or hated him,” though many Israelis wavered from one sentiment to the other and often harbored both at the same time.

     So it goes with his legacy, which defies definition. Sharon undoubtedly left deep imprints on Israel’s military, political and diplomatic history, but they are a divergent mix of the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. From the bloody reprisal raids that he led as a daring paratrooper in the 1950’s that sullied the IDF’s “purity of arms” but also resuscitated the army’s failing morale, to the disengagement from Gaza less than a decade ago that extricated Israel from the quagmire of occupation, only to see it replaced by the intransigent and fanatic Hamas – much through Sharon’s own fault, as David Landau shows in his new Knopf biography “Arik.”

     And while many in the left and around the world warmly embraced Sharon in his latter years as a hardline right-winger who came to “see the light,” it is too early to tell whether history will view the withdrawal that Sharon undertook in Gaza as more significant than the one that he tried to forever obstruct with the settlements that he built in the West Bank. Or whether his handing over of Gaza to Palestinian rule could in any way dilute the streams of bilateral bad blood that Sharon left in his wake, from Kibiya to Qalqilya in the 1950’s to Sabra and Chatila in the 1982 Lebanon War. Or how his unbridled and vicious attacks on his good friend Yitzhak Rabin contributed to the atmosphere of incitement and venom that preceded the assassination, which Sharon, three weeks before Yigal Amir carried out his deed, described as a “Bolshevik invention” aimed at diverting attention away from the failings of the Oslo Accords.

     He was a bold and brilliant military commander who lacked that profession’s most basic requirement, discipline. He was a master of grand offensive maneuvers but also a connoisseur of the deceptive stab in the back. He was a clever and cunning political strategist who engineered the establishment of the Likud in 1973 but then took it apart 30 years later when he established Kadima in 2005. He was true to no one but himself and played only by the rules that suited his whims, in issues of life and death as well as those of law and order.

     In both his military and political life, Sharon knew both triumph and defeat, soaring to peaks only to come crashing down to start things all over. “Do me a favor, come talk to Sharon,” his loyal spokesman Raanan Gissin begged me late in 1999, a few months after Sharon had become leader of the opposition in the wake of Ehud Barak’s resounding victory over Binyamin Netanyahu. It was a strange request, because I wasn’t particularly close to Sharon and wasn’t charged with covering him for my newspaper, but I could hear a note of desperation in Gissin’s voice, so I went anyway.

     Sharon’s office in the Knesset was eerily quiet and seemed almost abandoned against the backdrop of the hustle and bustle surrounding it. I spent more than an hour and a half with Sharon, who took out his maps, explained the strategic imperatives of never withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and tried to seem hopeful that things would yet turn his way. But he was clearly depressed, barely coherent, his gaze wandering around the room, his words struggling to maintain the thread of his thoughts.

     “He’s too old. He’s finished,” I told a colleague later. “His career is over and he just doesn’t know it yet,” I added with supreme conviction and confidence. This was about a year before Sharon’s fateful trip to the Temple Mount, a year and a half before his election as prime minister in March 2001 and five years before his historic pivot and withdrawal from Gaza.

     “If you didn’t want him as IDF chief of staff you’ll get him as defense minister,” his trusted adviser Uri Dan once said just as presciently as when he predicted that “if you didn’t want him as defense minister, you will get him as prime minister.” It was another of Sharon’s trademark traits: He was the ultimate “comeback kid” of Israeli history. So after spending the last eight years of his life in a coma, it was only today, when his death was announced, that it finally became clear that Sharon’s comeback days were over.

     Log in to Reply
     • 

       মাসুদ করিম - ১২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১১:১১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

       Ariel Sharon: Peacemaker, hero… and butcher
       Robert Fisk

       Any other Middle Eastern leader who survived eight years in a coma would have been the butt of every cartoonist in the world. Hafez el-Assad would have appeared in his death bed, ordering his son to commit massacres; Khomeini would have been pictured demanding more executions as his life was endlessly prolonged. But of Sharon – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila for almost every Palestinian – there has been an almost sacred silence.

       Cursed in life as a killer by quite a few Israeli soldiers as well as by the Arab world – which has proved pretty efficient at slaughtering its own people these past few years – Sharon was respected in his eight years of near-death, no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker.

       Thus do we remake history. How speedily did toady journalists in Washington and New York patch up this brutal man’s image. After sending his army’s pet Lebanese militia into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982, where they massacred up to 1,700 Palestinians, Israel’s own official enquiry announced that Sharon bore “personal” responsibility for the bloodbath.

       He it was who had led Israel’s catastrophic invasion of Lebanon three months earlier, lying to his own prime minister that his forces would advance only a few miles across the frontier, then laying siege to Beirut – at a cost of around 17,000 lives. But by slowly re-ascending Israel’s dangerous political ladder, he emerged as prime minister, clearing Jewish settlements out of the Gaza Strip and thus, in the words of his own spokesman, putting any hope of a Palestinian state into “formaldehyde”.

       By the time of his political and mental death in 2006, Sharon – with the help of the 2001 crimes against humanity in the US and his successful but mendacious claim that Arafat backed bin Laden – had become, of all things, a peacemaker, while Arafat, who made more concessions to Israeli demands than any other Palestinian leader, was portrayed as a super-terrorist. The world forgot that Sharon had opposed the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, voted against a withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1985, opposed Israel’s participation in the 1991 Madrid peace conference – and the Knesset plenum vote on the Oslo agreement in 1993, abstained on a vote for a peace with Jordan the next year and voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997. Sharon condemned the manner of Israel’s 2000 retreat from Lebanon and by 2002 had built 34 new illegal Jewish colonies on Arab land.

       Quite a peacemaker! When an Israeli pilot bombed an apartment block in Gaza, killing nine small children as well as his Hamas target, Sharon described the “operation” as “a great success”, and the Americans were silent. For he bamboozled his Western allies into the insane notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was part of Bush’s monstrous battle against “world terror”, that Arafat was himself a bin Laden, and that the world’s last colonial war was part of the cosmic clash of religious extremism.

       Ariel Sharon dies: Former Israeli Prime Minister’s life in pictures

       The final, ghastly – in other circumstances, hilarious – political response to Sharon’s behaviour was George W Bush’s contention that Ariel Sharon was “a man of peace”. When he became prime minister, media profiles noted not Sharon’s cruelty but his “pragmatism”, recalling, over and over, that he was known as “the bulldozer”.

       And, of course, real bulldozers will go on clearing Arab land for Jewish colonies for years after Sharon’s death, thus ensuring there will never – ever – be a Palestinian state.

       Log in to Reply
7. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১০:০৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   থাইল্যান্ডের বর্তমান রাজনৈতিক সংকট বুঝতে ব্যাংকক পোস্টের মতামত বিভাগের এলেখাটি কাজে দেবে।

   How did Thai politics get to this juncture? To answer this question, we need to understand the drastic changes experienced by our society in the past few decades.

   To start with, the country’s per capita income has increased threefold during this period. In other words, people today are three times richer than their parents. Their aspirations have therefore changed. So have their expectations from the government as well as their views on social norms. They want equality and political participation. In the past 20 years, the many levels of elections that come with decentralisation have also empowered the citizenry, especially people in the provinces.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : We need ‘reform’ but the question is how to achieve it।

   Log in to Reply
8. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৪:০১ অপরাহ্ণ)

   সুচিত্রাবসান http://t.co/DMiirlI8wU pic.twitter.com/nkU4AfkYba

   — masud karim (@urumurum) January 18, 2014

   অন্তরালের মহানায়িকা চলে গেলেন এবার চির অন্তরালে http://t.co/DMiirlI8wU pic.twitter.com/urHaUHjOQe

   — masud karim (@urumurum) January 18, 2014

   অমন মিষ্টি মুখেই মানায় মিষ্টি গান : সন্ধ্যা মুখার্জি http://t.co/7EYFpzyTH9 pic.twitter.com/D1dhXyQCtb

   — masud karim (@urumurum) January 18, 2014

   T 1357 -Suchitra Sen .. beauty, talent, enigmatic – she adorned film world of Bengal with exquisite performances .. graced Hindi films too !

   — Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) January 17, 2014

   Log in to Reply

9. Pingback: অপ্রশান্ত মহাসাগর | প্রাত্যহিক পাঠ