In fact, the people expected to hear from her much earlier in a positive voice. Truly, the national dailies had hinted more than once about the probability of her addressing the nation well before.

Incidentally when grenade blasts occurred in London, the prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair kept attending members of G-8 seated at the parley table and flew to London to address the nation. Further, he obviously conferred with the opposition leader on the issue.

Our prime minister reiterated that she learnt about the bomb blasts on her flight to China. She said she did not return home immediately to deny the perpetrators of the blasts a victory.

Of course the difference is between the sense of urgency and that of strategy.

The Prime Minister said the bomb operators were trying to hide themselves under the veil of religion. They will be identified in definitive form and apprehended one by one. She said, "We shall have to do everything keeping in mind the constraints of our resources. We cannot afford to have CCTVs."

The prime minister emphasised that Bangladesh is known as a Muslim-majority liberal democracy. The perpetrators try to tarnish that image and portray it as a country afflicted with religious extremism.

Begum Khaleda Zia tried to boost the morale of the people by lightening the impact of the blasts of 8/17, saying that bomb blasts are nothing new in the world, it is a day-to-day phenomenon of the globe, that August 17 blasts have not caused much destruction either in men or in property, and that the CIA and FBI on billion dollar budget could not avert 9/11 and that Britain's million pound sanction on intelligence agencies failed to ward off the recent London blasts.

Unfortunately government functionaries' versions of the 8/17 blast have changed from one stance to another. The State Minister for Home at first named Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) as the perpetrators of the bomb incidents. But thereafter he linked up the JMB with a socialist-like outfit named the Janayudhya in the blasts. On the other hand, the Industries Minister raised his accusing finger at India and Israel. What caused more flutter in the matter was the BNP's Sr Joint Secretary-General Tareq Rahman's interview with the BBC in which he admitted that the al-Qaeda may be involved with the bomb blasts of 8/17 (however he later refuted this report, claiming that his statement was not properly reflected). Everyone hoped that the Prime Minister would clear up the smoke created by the divergent statements given by her ministers and political aide. But her speech made the confusion more confounded.

In fact the Prime Minister's speech was in line with her earlier statements of denial. Back in the month of July 2003, standing on the floor of the parliament, she stated that no al-Qaeda men existed in Bangladesh. Again, the same year in September she declared, in a conference of the Ulemas, there lived no fundamentalists in this country. She continued that it was only the propaganda and conspiracy of the opposition parties, mainly the Awami League, supported by the media, to tarnish the image of the country abroad.

The newspapers running volumes of stories on the confessions of scores of suspects of the 8/17 blasts arrested by the police, DB, Rab, etc with cartloads of bombs, explosives, time devices, leaflets, literature, books, manuals, diaries, throughout the length and breadth of the country have unequivocally vouched that the religious militants are the operators and masterminds behind the blasts of August 17.

Coincidentally, the very day the Prime Minister delivered her speech in parliament, the detective branch of the Rab on a tip-off arrested Ataur Rahman, brother of the JMB chief Abdur Rahman, by raiding his rented house at Goran, Dhaka city, and seized huge quantities of bombs, explosives, literature, papers, and charts. It is learnt they have unearthed a conspiracy of the religious militants to make a second offensive in the capital Dhaka in the coming days. The militants have already built up about 50 outfits in the capital alone.

It is unique in itself that the bomb perpetrators of 8/17 had no intent to conceal their identity. They have as well made it clear their object to establish sharia law to rule the country. They seem to have intentionally left leaflets at the places of blast in 63 districts on that fatal day to make the public aware of their identities as religious militants committed to replacing the law of the land by sharia law. Many of the suspects rounded up by the law enforcing agencies following 8/17 have confessed their involvement in the incident and admitted to their belonging to the banned JMB cadres.

The question that agitates the mind of the people is that why the Prime Minister, despite the above documentary proofs and confessional statements, labours to hide the identity of the perpetrators of bomb blasts of 8/17?

The ruling BNP has painstakingly worked out a sum to clinch the coming national polls in alliance with the Islamic parties. Though it has, by now, felt that the vote equation is not working that well, but it has neither the courage nor the wisdom to part from the unholy alliance with the religious parties in the greater interest of the country and nation. On the other hand, the allied Islamic parties have played masterfully on these sensitivities of the BNP. The ultimate consequence is that the top BNP leadership is frantically trying to hoodwink the nation by a lullaby without being aware that Bangladesh is now practically sleeping on a volcano.

Worryingly, our governments care little for the people and enjoy giving them bluffs. But the same governments are pathetically docile to the US and other donor countries. Our governments as well sometimes try to mislead those countries by shameless blandishments, only to expose their naivety. This is an era of "war on terror'" as envisioned by President Bush. Unfortunately, by and large, terrorism is, in practice, treated to be identified with Islamic terrorism by the western powers.

The US and other western powers are of the belief that the escalating terrorism in Bangladesh is nothing other than religious terrorism. They have their own diplomatic dynamics on how far to let a country indulge in Islamic terrorism before giving it a final tilt. Bangladesh may have reached close to that point. Alas, this poor country is faced with danger from within by the Islamist militants and from without by the US and her partners on terror! May God save Bangladesh.

A R Shamsul Islam is Retd Principal, Govt Mohila College, Pabna.