Brig. Sabihuddin Ahmed: An intrepid soldier passes away

BRIG. Sabihuddin Ahmed, the founding chairman of the Rural Electrification Board, passed away quietly on May 30 in Maryland, USA, far away from the country he loved, worked for, and was devoted to.
An obituary for this true soldier of life should probably have been drafted twenty-three years ago when he was diagnosed with an untreatable heart condition, and could be saved only with a transplanted heart, impossibility in Bangladesh. He came to the US with only God and his iron will as support to have a transplant. His was a hopeless case, since as a foreign national he had almost no chance of getting a transplant in the US.
But a miracle did happen. The circle of friends led by James Cudney, then international program chief of US National Co-Operatives of Rural Electrification, the agency that partnered with REB, came to his help. These friends were also his admirers. They admired his tireless efforts, and exemplary integrity in building the now famous entity in rural electrification in Bangladesh. They admired him because this fledgling entity would go on to provide electrical power to over 46,000 villages in Bangladesh. Sabihuddin became one of the very few foreign recipients of heart transplant. That was twenty-three years ago.
Ironically, it was not the transplanted heart to which he fell; he fell to a more common invasion of the body by cancerous cells that gradually eat you away. For more than two decades he carried himself with a transplanted heart in ways that would put most able-bodied youth to a challenge. In that period, before he was restricted to the confines of his home to attend to his newly found adversary in cancer, he traveled widely and frequently, home and abroad, footloose and fancy-free. He was like a kid who had acquired a new car.
But traveling is not the only thing that Brig. Sabihuddin did in that remarkable life span of his. He was always engrossed with new technology, new ways to meet old challenges. He read voraciously, and used all varieties of information medium -- newspapers, internet, television -- to keep himself updated on political events, every new invention, and discovery. He was an amazing source of information for us all. In the knowledge front, we were in an unequal race with him as he had an encyclopedic mind -- always ahead in wisdom and information.
He had an incisive mind, a keen power of observation, an exceptionally analytical faculty, and an immense organizational capacity. These are qualities that were spotted in his career by his superiors in the Army, and civil sector. Very early in his career with the army, Sabihuddin was asked to form the Air Force Intelligence School -- a task he completed so well that he was decorated by then chief of air force for notable achievement. He would later move on to help build up an Advanced Intelligence School for the army. After liberation of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would ask him to help build the Jatiyo Rakkhi Bahini along with his friend and colleague late Brig. Nuruzzaman.
Sabihuddin had succeeded in life because he believed in a mission, with a profound courage of conviction. When offered by President Ziaur Rahman the job of founding the Rural Electrification Board as its first chairman, he made it a condition that he would have complete autonomy for the new entity, that there be no political pressure. He never yielded on his principles, and stood by his beliefs and moral ground. The result was that REB was the first ever public entity in Bangladesh that was admired internationally for its efficiency, freedom from corrupt practices, and high degree of trust among its clients.
His observations and analysis of events at home would be so accurate that we wondered if he were actually privy to some decision making. Part of this was because he had a superior mind; but a large part of it came from his own experience with the personalities in news making, a deep understanding of the environment, and of course, his analytical ability.
His hope and anxieties for Bangladesh would never abate. Even in his failing days in the hospital he enquired of a visiting friend from Bangladesh in a barely audible voice the latest news on the political front. He was anxious that the fruits of our hard fought independence not be frittered away.
I frequently prodded him to write a book on the rich experience that he had had in his life, the challenges that he had faced, and the solutions that he was able to deliver. He always kept quiet. In one of his last conversations with me he stated that his decision not to write was deliberate. All his life he had believed in telling the truth. In a book, he would have to tell all truth; and it would have hurt many. He would rather speak the truth in front of a person, than write about it, he said.
He will be missed by his wide circle of friends and admirers, both in Bangladesh and abroad. A true soldier, he faced all adversities in life with courage, determination, and conviction. It was an honor and privilege to know him. There are not many of his kind that one can meet in one's lifetime.
Goodbye, friend and mentor.

Ziauddin Choudhury is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.